from:"Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia\-l"

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Urgent attention required because Commons is blocked in Pakistan

2024-03-19 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

It's intriguing (to me) to contemplate how the notion of restricting IP
editing in specific circumstances is often viewed as a violation of principle,
even when supported by examples or data, yet a restriction like requiring
long-standing users to jump through hoops just to use a VPN for
privacy—something standard nowadays—is considered necessary and acceptable.
Both policies aim to address issues while weighing the pros and cons and
inevitably curbing some degree of freedom.
Personally, I question the efficiency of the VPN restriction. I hold a
different perspective: implementing a one or two-year, 100-500-edit
registration threshold for automatic exemption of registered users seems
reasonable.
Nevertheless, it's important to recognize that nothing is inherently necessary;
these are always political and not technical choices.

It's not just vandals ruining it; it's also the approach taken. By granting
trolls immense power to disrupt everyone's activities, you fuel their mischief.
Thus, every time these extreme measures are enforced and standardized, they
inevitably lead to wasted time and endless debates about the status quo, and
regular users pay a price. Not hypothetically, for real we know. Whoever
prioritizes the pursuit of trolls and vandals over the work of regular users,
de facto feeds the troll.

It's important to clarify: as seasoned users, many of us have kinda learned to
navigate this "mess" and endure it... similar issues have been grappled with
for years, Commons management shows little sign of improvement and we just
don't care anymore.
However, for those who haven't mastered it or are stuck in some nationwide
quagmire as this one, suggesting VPNs as a solution is impractical—unless you
anticipate tens of thousands of users from a country with millions of
inhabitants to individually request IP exemptions. It's evident that the log of
such a system would not be sustainable.
I remain skeptical that an alternative solution will be implemented, given the
likelihood that the approach will mirror that of the VPN case or other
instances—utilizing massive and/or indefinite self-referential strict measures
that are seldom evaluated on the long term with some metrics.
Il martedì 19 marzo 2024 alle ore 20:24:15 CET, Neurodivergent Netizen
ha scritto:

On Mar 19, 2024, at 12:17 PM, Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l
wrote:
That doesn't seem logical or fair. If a user is registered and not already
blocked, the IPs they are using shouldn't matter at all.
Personally, I've never used a VPN before I got it this way (even living in the
PRC), but I understand that some people might need to do so for privacy
reasons. So, this restriction should be removed. Registered users should have
the freedom to access the platform how they want. If there's an issue with a
specific user, it's more appropriate to block their username rather than
restricting their access when logged in based on IP addresses. Adding more
bureaucracy isn't the solution if there isn't a problem to begin with.
In any case, nothing will probably change. But please don't say that VPN is a
solution. People have already enough problems that adding more and more
passages.

Il martedì 19 marzo 2024 alle ore 19:51:42 CET, Neurodivergent Netizen
ha scritto:

A few years ago, I acquired a VPN as part of an antivirus package. However,
when I tried to use it for other services, I encountered an unexpected issue
switching on wiki platforms: despite being there as a registered user, I found
myself unable to edit them.

So how can VPN be a solution?

Right, you would’ve had to use IP block exemption, which would require some
level of trust from the community that you aren’t a vandal or other blocked
user trying to circumspect said block.
From,I dream of horsesShe/her

On Mar 19, 2024, at 11:23 AM, Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l
wrote:
Why is there so much discussion about using VPNs as a solution? A few years
ago, I acquired a VPN as part of an antivirus package. However, when I tried to
use it for other services, I encountered an unexpected issue switchi

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Urgent attention required because Commons is blocked in Pakistan

2024-03-19 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

That doesn't seem logical or fair. If a user is registered and not already
blocked, the IPs they are using shouldn't matter at all.
Personally, I've never used a VPN before I got it this way (even living in the
PRC), but I understand that some people might need to do so for privacy
reasons. So, this restriction should be removed. Registered users should have
the freedom to access the platform how they want. If there's an issue with a
specific user, it's more appropriate to block their username rather than
restricting their access when logged in based on IP addresses. Adding more
bureaucracy isn't the solution if there isn't a problem to begin with.
In any case, nothing will probably change. But please don't say that VPN is a
solution. People have already enough problems that adding more and more
passages.

Il martedì 19 marzo 2024 alle ore 19:51:42 CET, Neurodivergent Netizen
ha scritto:

So how can VPN be a solution?

So how can VPN be a solution?
A.

Il martedì 19 marzo 2024 alle ore 18:17:52 CET, Saqib Qayyum
ha scritto:

Hello Mr James
Certainly, using a VPN is a workaround, but it's worth noting that obtaining an
IP block exemption is still necessary to edit Commons, and this is not always
feasible for all users. Many may not even be aware of its existence. For
instance, I couldn't edit Commons since October 2020 until I discovered the
option for IP ban exemption. .
And because of this, contributions to Commons from Pakistan have significantly
dwindled. For instance, I recall organizing Wiki Loves Monuments Pakistan from
2014, where we used to receive thousands of images annually. However, in recent
years, the number of uploads has drastically declined, with only a maximum of
100 photos being uploaded each year. This trend underscores the challenges
Pakistani users face in accessing and contributing to the site.
--Saqib Qayyum

On Tue, Mar 19, 2024 at 9:55 PM James Heilman wrote:

Can you not just use a VPN?
James
On Tue, Mar 19, 2024 at 9:29 PM Saqib Qayyum wrote:

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

I am writing to you as a concerned volunteer from Pakistan regarding a critical
issue that has been persisting for several years now. Despite multiple attempts
to communicate this matter to members of the WMF's communication team, there
has been a disappointing lack of response or acknowledgment.

For the past several years, Commons has been blocked in Pakistan. While
Wikipedia was briefly blocked last year, the swift response from both Pakistani
and international news media led to its unblocking. However, the blockade of
Commons, being a less prominent site in comparison, has gone largely unnoticed.

Furthermore, several journalists I have spoken to have also expressed
frustration over their attempts to reach out to WMF staff regarding this issue,
only to receive no response.

I urge the WMF to prioritize this matter and take immediate action to address
the ongoing blockage of Commons in Pakistan.
Thank you for your attention to this urgent matter. --
Saqib Qayyumhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Saqib
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/H5SMMTKRTUI5QLDKOCLZNWCABGDK3UHL/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org

--
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/53DBHAHGEAWIH5VI2X7YMEWYSWDHCBXM/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org
___
Wikimedia-l mailing

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Urgent attention required because Commons is blocked in Pakistan

2024-03-19 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 Why is there so much discussion about using VPNs as a solution? A few years 
ago, I acquired a VPN as part of an antivirus package. However, when I tried to 
use it for other services, I encountered an unexpected issue switching on wiki 
platforms: despite being there as a registered user, I found myself unable to 
edit them.

So how can VPN be a solution? 
A. 

Il martedì 19 marzo 2024 alle ore 18:17:52 CET, Saqib Qayyum 
 ha scritto:  
 
 Hello Mr James
Certainly, using a VPN is a workaround, but it's worth noting that obtaining an 
IP block exemption is still necessary to edit Commons, and this is not always 
feasible for all users. Many may not even be aware of its existence. For 
instance, I couldn't edit Commons since October 2020 until I discovered the 
option for IP ban exemption. . 
And because of this, contributions to Commons from Pakistan have significantly 
dwindled. For instance, I recall organizing Wiki Loves Monuments Pakistan from 
2014, where we used to receive thousands of images annually. However, in recent 
years, the number of uploads has drastically declined, with only a maximum of 
100 photos being uploaded each year. This trend underscores the challenges 
Pakistani users face in accessing and contributing to the site.
--Saqib Qayyum

On Tue, Mar 19, 2024 at 9:55 PM James Heilman  wrote:

Can you not just use a VPN?
James
On Tue, Mar 19, 2024 at 9:29 PM Saqib Qayyum  wrote:

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

I am writing to you as a concerned volunteer from Pakistan regarding a critical 
issue that has been persisting for several years now. Despite multiple attempts 
to communicate this matter to members of the WMF's communication team, there 
has been a disappointing lack of response or acknowledgment.

For the past several years, Commons has been blocked in Pakistan. While 
Wikipedia was briefly blocked last year, the swift response from both Pakistani 
and international news media led to its unblocking. However, the blockade of 
Commons, being a less prominent site in comparison, has gone largely unnoticed.

Furthermore, several journalists I have spoken to have also expressed 
frustration over their attempts to reach out to WMF staff regarding this issue, 
only to receive no response.

I urge the WMF to prioritize this matter and take immediate action to address 
the ongoing blockage of Commons in Pakistan. 
Thank you for your attention to this urgent matter. --
Saqib Qayyumhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Saqib
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/H5SMMTKRTUI5QLDKOCLZNWCABGDK3UHL/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org


-- 
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/53DBHAHGEAWIH5VI2X7YMEWYSWDHCBXM/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/SPUJHE3YFDHS2OBQT6KTJOFK7WOSGDZF/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org  ___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/RPS6LSQ7DFBOI2FVML4F2TYTKEUVPSFQ/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Recognition of Wikimedians of Japan User Group

2023-10-18 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 Very happy for you all!

Il mercoledì 18 ottobre 2023 alle ore 17:51:51 CEST, Danny Benjafield 
 ha scritto:  
 
 Congratulations...fantastic news!
Omedetō

おめでとう
Best,

On Wed, 18 Oct 2023 at 17:42, Affiliations Committee  
wrote:

Hi everyone!

I'm very happy to announce that the Affiliations Committee has recognized [1] 
Wikimedians of Japan User Group [2] as a Wikimedia User Group. The group aims 
to establish a national organization to promote Wikimedia projects and support 
Wikimedians in Japan.

Please join me in congratulating the members of this new user group!

Regards,
Jeffrey Keefer
Chair, Affiliations Committee

[1] 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Recognition_of_Wikimedians_of_Japan_User_Group
[2] 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_of_Japan_User_Group___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/BBRYSHTBT7HDUKVCF3VGZKMNZGTAKMM7/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org


-- 
Danny Benjafield
COMMUNITY COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER

Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
Phone: +49 (0)30-577 11 62-0
https://wikimedia.de

Keep up to date! Current news and exciting stories about Wikimedia, Wikipedia 
and Free Knowledge in our newsletter (in German): Subscribe now.

Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum 
of all knowledge. Help us to achieve our vision!
https://spenden.wikimedia.de

Wikimedia Deutschland — Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V. 
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Charlottenburg, VR 23855 B. Als 
gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, 
Steuernummer 27/029/42207. Geschäftsführende Vorstände: Franziska Heine, Dr. 
Christian Humborg

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/RUUDOKA3D53GWWUNSLQMTHWNRMP23RYD/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org  ___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/U7QYCRYDS6O7MWM3DBJ4GHDVI4TA4747/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org

[Wikimedia-l] Annual Activity Report of WikiClassics User Group

2023-07-31 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

Dear all, 

I hope this email finds you well. I am delighted to share with you the annual 
Activity Report of the WikiClassics User Group for the year 2022-2023. You can 
access it via this link 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiClassics_User_Group/Reports/2022
The report has also been shared on our social media today.

  In addition, I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce the new main 
contact for our user group, namely User Jahl de Vautban, who was selected in 
May. 

 Best wishes,Alessandro

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/5LV25NHAKQV3E2662Z26YM3FGFWEQOFU/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org

[Wikimedia-l] WikiClassics UG 2021 Annual Report

2022-07-30 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

Dear Wikimedia Community members,
I would like to share with you all that the WCS user group activity report for 
the year 2021 - 2022 was published on meta. [1]
Such link was also shared few hours ago on our social media.
Kind regards.A. Marchetti

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiClassics_User_Group/Reports/2021










___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/XSTVO3O76WQ5UX7UREBN3LIMXAL3GTHZ/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Announcing the six candidates for the 2022 Board of Trustees election

2022-07-23 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 Of course it's like that Ilario,sometimes some usergroups are "userpersons". 
and as person involved in the previous ASBS election I politely hinted that 
aspect as much as possible in the past. Also, sometimes even some chapters are 
mostly few key persons when relationship with WMF is involved, but it's easier 
to start from UGs to handle the issue.

i had some general idea of what you are supposed to facilitate if you want real 
transparency in these processes and I felt that was not fully there. Instead of 
building on previous know-how, the process was restarting again and that do not 
get great functionality in WMF, usually. It's like knowing for sure that these 
sort of mails would have happened at the end.

I had no time to look carefully, but that was kinda of a feeling and as a 
result, despite being a first contact and having a decent know-how, I decided 
not to engage the affiliate in the process. The affiliate I represent is small 
and fragmented and lacks a strong identity yet, I know for sure that getting to 
a meaningful ranking would have taken a lot of effort and in May and June I 
simply had no time. Or it would have resulted in me pushing my ideas in a way 
or another, and that was not correct. Like, many people are ns-0 users and 
don't now names, so they trust your side of the story.

So I decided to skip it. I was asked a contact for the first step and replied 
by mail that in May I had no time to even start a thread on meta about deciding 
whom to select (it would have been me, probably, but I did not feel it was 
correct). 

my choice was either focusing properly as a UG on the WIkisummit application or 
that, and I did at least properly the first one. I could have taken part in the 
process probably representing 90% myself, nobody would have noticed.
Alessandro

Il sabato 23 luglio 2022 17:59:01 CEST, Ilario Valdelli 
 ha scritto:  
 
 I think that there is a very sensible point here.
Sometimes behind some usergroups there is not a specific community but only few 
people and sometimes some usergroups are "userpersons".
Being more transparent helps to demonstrate that the whole process has been 
conducted appropriately but also to have an overview that affiliates have voted 
really on what their community proposed.
Kind regards

On Sat, Jul 23, 2022 at 3:28 AM Gnangarra  wrote:


I am disturbed to see some community members blithely dismissing the need to 
protect the well-being of potentially vulnerable community members, 

This is not some functionary volunteer role, nor is it a scholarship to attend 
some event. The affiliate and the members of the Board of Trustees are both 
very public facing aspects, when a person is on the Board of Trustees their 
identity is public https://wikimediafoundation.org/role/board/ .  It is obvious 
that a truly  vulnerable person would not even put themselves into a BOT 
position.  It's important for members of the community to know who their 
affiliate chose to represent them because it's a reflection of that community.  
I know some affiliates actually didnt consult their communities for input into 
the decision process before the fact so knowing after the fact is at least 
pretending to be transparent in the voting.


On Sat, 23 Jul 2022 at 06:01, Benjamin Lees  wrote:

I don't think there's anything blithe in pointing out that an after-the-fact 
promise of secrecy serves no one.  Affiliates had to decide whether to vote 
without knowing whether the list would be published (but hopefully realizing 
that the username of their voter would be published, although I'm not sure if 
this was made clear).  The main effect of post-hoc secrecy here would be to sow 
confusion and set up unrealistic expectations about future votes; in the last 
affiliate-selected board seat process, not only was the list of voting 
affiliates published, but their individual votes were as well: 
,
 and for the reasons Lodewijk describes, we might well wish to return to such 
full transparency in the future.
If a decision either way had been made and communicated beforehand, affiliate 
voters could have made an informed decision, but as with most of the rules for 
this election, it was announced in the middle of the election, rather than in 
the many months before it.  In any event, I agree with SJ that this is a 
decision to be made by the elections committee, not WMF staff.


On Fri, Jul 22, 2022 at 4:45 PM Robert Fernandez  wrote:

I am disturbed to see some community members blithely dismissing the need to 
protect the well-being of potentially vulnerable community members, especially 
in a community that usually prides itself on the ability to participate 
anonymously.
That said, perhaps we could publish the names of participating affiliates who 
affirm the wish to be named publicly. 
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list --

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees 2022 election - updates

2022-04-24 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 Last year the community voted that way putting diverse candidates at 5th and 
6th position because the election method could not work properly, even assuming 
(as it was) a general attempt of diverse choice by the electorate. The main 
issue was in the low threshold for the candidatures. As soon as I figured out 
with a simple set of simulations I tried to warn and I was semi-harassed on the 
telegram chat. One person told me to shut up because I did not understand how 
STV worked, another one accused me of being in bad taste.
However, my analysis was probably right. I expected the output to be gender 
balanced but not geographically balanced because of dispersion among 
candidates. Unfortunately people were probably too ideologically oriented by 
how good STV system was and how great was to have so many candidates. Just to 
be clear, I don't dislike STV, but at least I understand how to simulate an 
election. If you want to use STV for a diverse output, put a clear selection of 
candidates after studying how people usually vote.

In general, this community has no literacy on electoral process but more 
importantly, it does not want it. That's why discussing this topic seems almost 
useless. People could mix up everything together, sometimes they just take a 
concept and put it to the extreme. 

The direct elections was poor because of the lack of understanding of the 
voting behavior. I am sure even now somebody thinks we have elected so many 
"white people" because of the "racist" (or more nuanced adjective) electorate, 
but it would have happened with an honest attempt of diversity by voters, which 
I think it actually occurred.
As for this issue, these other seats with this system. in the end it looks that 
the power of the generic users might have increased, we are switching probably 
from a totally affiliate-oriented election to an election where the community 
in one step of the process cast a vote in a open at-large election which is 
generally good. If you have a good selections of candidates, the result might 
be balanced.

The ASBS2019 election was already an improvement enlarging the electoral base, 
it was more transparent and public the previous elections of affiliates seats, 
but it still had to face some issues. One is that some affiliates cast the 
actual vote among few people with no real participation of their members (even 
suggesting them to at least inform their members they were casting a vote was 
"too much"), the other one that a small fraction of active users could be more 
involved in the process in two or more UGs. 

Giving a power of selecting candidates and not final votes to affiliates force 
them to care more about that step, producing convincing figures while the 
at-large election still has some issues but it's more democratic for the final 
choice. It might work, if correctly calibrated.One issue of the at-large 
elections  is the threshold for candidates, but delegating to the affiliates 
might lead to both strong and diverse options, without excessive dispersion.
Another issue of the at-large elections are the votes of institutional account 
that are not properly handled. Usually people here make some weird comparison 
about civil servants voting but it has nothing to do with it. You just expect 
people to reach voting right by themselves and not as a result of c.o.i paid 
activity, and you should be more careful about it in the case of close results. 
If the internal process of affiliates select the candidates, than that would be 
a good moment to decide the weigh of this type of votes at the next step if 
it's an at large election. Again, you probably don't want to deal with  this 
problem with a close call.

In any case, again, electoral literacy is hard, while taking one concept and 
enlarging it for a "soapbox moment" is easy. just to clear I have nothing 
against one position or another per se. For example I disagree with the merge 
of the two types of seats because it might lead to some functional results if 
correctly handled but for sure with the strong ideological positions we face, 
it can only lead to more chaos. So far, I might say that both processes might 
end up to more open globally than in the past. Although they could have been 
much better. 

Like everything, we will deal with the data at the end for those who want to 
care.

Alessandro


Il domenica 24 aprile 2022, 14:58:23 CEST, Andreas Kolbe 
 ha scritto:  
 
 
On Sun, Apr 24, 2022 at 9:40 AM Chris Keating  
wrote:

On Sat, Apr 23, 2022 at 11:32 PM Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

There is no longer any distinction between community and affiliate trustees. 
For reference, see the "Type of seat" column in the current board member table 
on Meta, as well as the footnote under the table.[1] 
What Dariusz has announced here is a new process for determining 
"community-and-affiliate trustees". This new process is being "implemented on a 
trial basis for the 2022 election".  



I don't think it follows

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Open proxies and IP blocking

2022-04-20 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

Yes, it's getting frequent and not only from people in Africa.

I ended up to trouble-shoot these problems by mails or direct messaging on
Facebook more and and more frequently, maybe with simple users who just know me
or have my contact. Sometimes it looks like sharing the duties of a sysop or a
steward with no power.

It's getting less and less clear how pros and cons are calculated exactly, but
you just get the feeling that some users really care a lot about this policy
and you just have to deal with the consequences, no matter how time-consuming
it's getting.

A.M.

Il mercoledì 20 aprile 2022, 20:34:36 CEST, Amir E. Aharoni
ha scritto:

I don't have a solution, but I just wanted to confirm that I agree fully with
the description of the problem. I hear that this happens to people from
Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and some other countries almost every day.

The first time I heard about it was actually around 2018 or so, but during the
last year it has become unbearably frequent.
A smarter solution is needed. I tried talking to stewards about this several
times, and they always say something like "we know that this affects certain
countries badly, and we know that the technology has changed since the
mid-2000s, but we absolutely cannot allow open proxies because it would
immediately unleash horrible vandalism on all the wikis". I'm sure they mean
well, but this is not sustainable.
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬

‫בתאריך יום ד׳, 20 באפר׳ 2022 ב-21:21 מאת ‪Florence Devouard‬‏
<‪fdevou...@gmail.com‬‏>:‬

Hello friends

Short version : We need to find solutions to avoid so many africans being
globally IP blocked due to our No Open Proxies policy.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/No_open_proxies/Unfair_blocking

Long version :

I'd like to raise attention on an issue, which has been getting worse in the
past couple of weeks/months.

Increasing number of editors getting blocked due to the No Open Proxies policy
[1]
In particular africans.

In February 2004, the decision was made to block open proxies on Meta and all
other Wikimedia projects.

According to the no open proxies policy : Publicly available proxies (including
paid proxies) may be blocked for any period at any time. While this may affect
legitimate users, they are not the intended targets and may freely use proxies
until those are blocked [...]

Non-static IP addresses or hosts that are otherwise not permanent proxies
should typically be blocked for a shorter period of time, as it is likely the
IP address will eventually be transferred or dynamically reassigned, or the
open proxy closed. Once closed, the IP address should be unblocked.

According to the policy page, « the Editors can be permitted to edit by way of
an open proxy with the IP block exempt flag. This is granted on local projects
by administrators and globally by stewards. »

I repeat -> ... legitimate users... may freely use proxies until those are
blocked. the Editors can be permitted to edit by way of an open proxy with the
IP block exempt flag <-- it is not illegal to edit using an open proxy

Most editors though... have no idea whatsoever what an open proxy is. They do
not understand well what to do when they are blocked.

In the past few weeks, the number of African editors reporting being blocked
due to open proxy has been VERY significantly increasing.
New editors just as old timers.
Unexperienced editors but also staff members, president of usergroups,
organizers of edit-a-thons and various wikimedia initiatives.
At home, but also during events organized with usergroup members or trainees,
during edit-a-thons, photo uploads sessions etc.

It is NOT the occasional highly unlikely situation. This has become a regular
occurence.
There are cases and complains every week. Not one complaint per week. Several
complaints per week.
This is irritating. This is offending. This is stressful. This is disrupting
activities organized in good faith by good people, activities set-up with our
donors funds. And the disruption is primarlly taking place in a geographical
region supposingly to be nurtured (per our strategy for diversity, equity,
inclusion blahblahblah).

The open proxy policy page suggests that, should a person be unfairly blocked,
it is recommended

- * to privately email stewardswikimedia.org.
- * or alternatively, to post a request (if able to edit, if the editor
doesn't mind sharing their IP for global blocks or their reasons to desire
privacy (for Tor usage)).
- * the current message displayed to the blocked editor also suggest
contacting User:Tks4Fish. This editor is involved in vandalism fighting and is
probably the user blocking open proxies IPs the most. See log

So...
Option 1: contacting stewards : it seems that

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Recognition of Wikimedia Community User Group Rwanda

2022-02-10 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 All the best!

Il giovedì 10 febbraio 2022, 20:16:28 CET, Winnie kabintie 
 ha scritto:  
 
 Viva Team Rwanda.
Kind Regards,
Winnie KabintieJournalist | Communications Specialist
Cell: 0734 076 125
linkedin: https://bit.ly/2oCbtMK
Twitter:@WinnieKabintie



On Thu, Feb 10, 2022 at 8:43 PM Samuel Klein  wrote:

Hurrah!  Welcome to Derrick, Clementine and all, I hope to see the rw: wiki 
grow fro strength to strength.   SJ
On Thu, Feb 10, 2022 at 3:44 AM Camelia Boban  wrote:

Hi everyone!
 
I'm very happy to announce that the Affiliations Committee has recognized [1] 
Wikimedia Community User Group Rwanda [2] as a Wikimedia User Group. The group 
aims to improve articles on Wikimedia Foundation project websites and promote 
free and open access to knowledge locally in Kinyarwanda & English. They also 
invest in projects that sensitize and train different communities in Rwanda 
about Wikipedia with much emphasis on Kinyarwanda Wikipedia.   
Please join me in congratulating the members of this new user group!
[1] 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Recognition_of_Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Rwanda
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Rwanda   
 
Regards,


| 


 | 
Camelia Boban

Chair
Affiliation
 |

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/MFA2FLU676R43VFKRHHEW6X63M6LOBXI/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org


-- 
Samuel Klein          @metasj           w:user:sj          +1 617 529 4266
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/NBOWQYTTNZYNIOU4GA52WZRUZSZBSCQA/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/A3EF2QHDIXVFUFSUCAZCHXPWXS5ST5U4/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org  ___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/JFOCAJEW2ML5QW3R74ZJTG2AQZT2T2TA/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org

[Wikimedia-l] Re: "content was" when deleting pages - is it useful?

2022-01-22 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 Sometimes Information is important. It can make a difference not to contact a 
sysop in order to know what was it about, speeding up content creation. 
Personally, I believe that if you don't want to disclose information too much 
there, a good compromise is to make more users access the deleted versions. 
Patrollers, but even some type of auto-patrolled users should be able to do 
that. I mean if there is a decent user who you can trust reading the content 
and putting a deletion template, than making them read it should not be a 
problem. Think about copyviol: adapting a deleted text or recovering sources is 
much faster if you can access it directly. Also, the whole history of a deleted 
page should be by default visible, not hidden (maybe some specific summary if 
necessary).

Transparency means that completely hiding is the exception, not the standard, 
as much as possible. So if it were up to me I would reorganize in a way that 
local communities can rearrange the users who can access such versions with 
wider audience, or that a hint of what was there should be generally given if 
not libelous.

Also, over-hiding deleted information might lead to sloppy quality of 
deletions. It happened to me at least twice to hear sysop personally 
complaining that a certain deletion was excessive but the social strong 
peer-pressure make them uncomfortable to raise the issue. More transparency 
would clearly reduce these social mechanisms, increasing trust. 

It's in any case dysfunctional to treat all deletion cases the same way, that's 
why local communities should assume a clear public responsibility for adopting 
the most drastic strategy. It should be a deliberate and widely discussed 
choice, never a feature kept with no clear responsibility. In one way or in 
another.
A.M.




Il martedì 18 gennaio 2022, 09:23:03 CET, effe iets anders 
 ha scritto:  
 
 The main advantage I can see, is that it requires a conscious decision to not 
be transparent, rather than a conscious effort to be transparent. There are 
many cases where deletion is warranted, but the content is not of the type that 
including a sample would be harmful. So from the point of view of an early 
community, I can definitely see why this functionality would be desirable. 
The question becomes how that balance works out by now: do we need reminders to 
be transparent to non-admins about our actions? In what percentage of cases do 
we want to be transparent? And how likely is it that the admin forgets the 
default, and accidentally publishes the summary, when they wouldn't want to? 
This trade-off may be different from community to community. 
Just a thought, definitely appreciate it when communities think about these 
settings rather than accepting that it is the way it has always been!
Lodewijk
On Mon, Jan 17, 2022 at 10:35 PM Peter Southwood  
wrote:


If the reason for deletion was to suppress undesirable content, why would one 
want part of it to remain viewable? Cheers, Peter

 

From: Vi to [mailto:vituzzu.w...@gmail.com] 
Sent: 17 January 2022 23:45
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: "content was" when deleting pages - is it useful?

 

On it.wiki we removed both this and "the only editor was..." which proved to be 
misleading for newcomers, e.g. "I don't think that being the sole editor is a 
valid reason for this deletion".

 

Vito

 

Il giorno lun 17 gen 2022 alle ore 15:19 Amir E. Aharoni 
 ha scritto:


Hallo!

 

There's an old MediaWiki feature: When an administrator deletes a page, a bit 
of its content is automatically added to an edit summary. This is later 
viewable in deletion logs.

 

If you edit in the English, German, or Italian Wikipedia, then you haven't 
actually seen this feature in years, because administrators in these wikis 
essentially removed it by locally blanking the system messages that make it 
work.

 

In many other wikis, however, this feature is still working.

 

Is it actually useful? Or should it perhaps be removed?

 

Here's a Phabricator task about it:

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T299351

 

If you have an opinion, weigh in there or here.

 

Thanks!


--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/4ZONY3L5LEPO45POJ2SWTPHKFFIJ63UR/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org


 

| 

 | 
Virus-free. www.avg.com 
 |


 
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and

[Wikimedia-l] Re: [Marketing Mail] Re: Small gratitude to our fellow wikimedians

2021-11-09 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 That would enter the domain of naming guidelines and we don't have those in 
general. Again, I have been pointing out since the first years of SUL.

For example a string can look terrible in one language but not another, you 
have a normal user experience in one Wikipedia, and than you realize that you 
were blocked after the first edit in another one. If we don't fix something 
like this first, which is a first-order problem on the issue of naming 
guideline, it would be very difficult to add anything else, IMHO.
Alessandro



Il martedì 9 novembre 2021, 16:05:41 CET, Željko Blaće  ha 
scritto:  
 
 Maybe a good approach would be also to have a global rename of the user 
account to add something like _(.) so it is systematic and 'obvious' across all 
Wikimedia projects - no?

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/DNTS57ISQ5PY75UFYNW724YRKNQGEWAF/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org  ___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/6GNSZ37MGLW32H2E5RNGQERZCV65JLW6/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org

[Wikimedia-l] Re: [Marketing Mail] Re: Small gratitude to our fellow wikimedians

2021-11-09 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Deceased_editors I have created a stub. 
It will grow.
it is just time, if we don't start to focus on one page, we will have this 
discussion again and again. Now we can use that talk page or show the page as 
target for future discussion.

You can start for example to link local policies there, so people can start to 
get an idea what could be used as a reference.
Alessandro


Il martedì 9 novembre 2021, 13:46:11 CET, Peter Southwood 
 ha scritto:  
 
 
Seems a reasonable idea. Cheers, Peter

  

From: Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l 
[mailto:wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org] 
Sent: 09 November 2021 14:16
To: 'Wikimedia Mailing List'
Cc: Alessandro Marchetti
Subject: [Marketing Mail] [Wikimedia-l] Re: Small gratitude to our fellow 
wikimedians

  

  

Yes, a user status/right “deceased" is IMHO important. It was also the reason 
why I expected a SUL policy to be created soon or later. I tried two or three 
time to raise the issue since 2016.

  

Now some projects block accounts, but it's not a standard process. It has to be 
fixed soon or later. At the moment, a relative can reuse an old account in 
theory on another platform, if they wish to do so. For example I find archive 
of images of my deceased partner and despite the user being blocked on a local 
wikipedia, I start to upload them on Commons in their name. Everybody has their 
way to cope with grief. Do we accept this or not?

  

Alessandro

Il martedì 9 novembre 2021, 10:17:51 CET, Geert Van Pamel  
ha scritto: 

  

  

I do find this an excellent proposal.

 

Wouldn’t it be good to also implement a user status/right “deceased” to 
identify those accounts?

 

This information could be shown to their user rights page e.g. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:UserRights/Geertivp?

 

One could get a list of volunteers that are no longer amongst us via 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ListUsers.

 

Geert Van Pamel

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/VVK2TIYRJ56RL7JB2SDBZ2VPLZLSC7L3/


To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org

  

| 

 | 
Virus-free. www.avg.com 
 |


  
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/SB672P4RHNHF3F3E7TIDXBT56ZKQMUJ4/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org  ___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/XMVMQROFUNSU6WQS2RA5DGUAJQH23NF3/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Small gratitude to our fellow wikimedians

2021-11-09 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

often a news report about it in the next scheduled addition.

- (A newer addition to the process) If the deceased was included as a user
with access to nonpublic information, an edit is made to the talk page of the
noticeboard, and the WMF staff managing that page will remove their name (and
carry out whatever internal processes are required).

I think the page on Meta that has been pointed out is a good start for
centralizing the recognition of our colleagues who have died. As is plainly
obvious, many of our former colleagues were active on more than one project. I
have a couple of suggestions for improvement of the page:
- It might be helpful to add the date of death, or at least the year of
death.

- When identifying the projects in which the deceased was active, a link to
their user talk page and/or any other page that has been used to collect
condolences or serves as an obituary, would be helpful. I think it might be
better to express condolences at the local rather than the global level, but
that is simply my opinion.
I hope this might prove helpful to colleagues on all projects who may have to
deal with this situation in the future.

Risker/AnneEnglish Wikipedia

On Mon, 8 Nov 2021 at 23:09, Tito Dutta wrote:

Thank you very much for starting this thread.

I think that's a very important topic. I have been working on related portals
for several years now and I am always available to provide my little inputs
wherever I can. Some projects have their project space:
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4655446 (see the sitelinks), I agree that we may
think of working on global best practices now (followed by or simultaneously a
policy, if needed).
One think, I have felt, needs more attention for "Deceased Wikimedian" portal
is "privacy". If an editor wanted to remain anonymous (suppose
User:Editor09112021), and the plaque/obit should respect the privacy.

That's my initial thoughts on this.

ইতি,টিটো দত্ত(মাতৃভাষা থাক জীবন জুড়ে)

মঙ্গল, ৯ নভেম্বর, ২০২১ তারিখে ৫:৪৮ AM টায় তারিখে Alessandro Marchetti via
Wikimedia-l লিখেছেন:

Personally I think we should validate first a global policy on deceased users.
After many years of SUL it's still very fragmented from platform to platform. A
centralized procedure to confirm death and how to block account would be a good
starting step.

After that, i think we need a standard obituary page on meta, that can be
multilingual of course. Do you know
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deceased_editors exists? Probably not or Pier
Luigi would be there.

Once you have that, you can go for more initiatives on a solid base.

For example, you can get some agreement to give some names of astronomical
objects to former wikimedians (real name or username, if code allows it). There
are 1000s of them waiting for a name (for asteroids, the system was in stand by
some years ago, not sure when it will resume), but just send the list and
people will pick them soon or later. You can ask for a publication such as a
booklet. Or a plaque somewhere, maybe at the WMF office... honestly it's not my
goal to pick one now.

In any case, you need a standardized system or you can't do these initiatives
properly. You'll end up with one person remembered and the other one forgotten
because their friends on wiki are not in the "right" circle of more active
users. You have to give a fair chance to all users to be included in the list,
with a standardize guideline on every wiki.
This is something that after years of SUL we should have and we don't... to my
surprise. When I wrote some to-do-list on the topic years ago I was almost sure
it would have taken less than 2-3 years to finally write a unified guideline. I
find some long-term users who are 100% sure that it is "like this" or "like
that" but it really isn't. One day I will create a stub for a page on meta just
to see if it grows.
Alessandro

Il martedì 9 novembre 2021, 00:52:02 CET, Samuel Klein
ha scritto:

I'd like us to consider a more serious set of obits, after the fashion of the
astronomers.
On Mon, Nov 8, 2021 at 6:25 PM Gnangarra wrote:

In some ways we do https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2021:In_Memoriam
On Tue, 9 Nov 2021 at 04:46, Camelia Boban wrote:

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Small gratitude to our fellow wikimedians

2021-11-09 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 
Yes, a user status/right “deceased" is IMHO important. It was also the reason 
why I expected a SUL policy to be created soon or later. I tried two or three 
time to raise the issue since 2016.

Now some projects block accounts, but it's not a standard process. It has to be 
fixed soon or later. At the moment, a relative can reuse an old account in 
theory on another platform, if they wish to do so. For example I find archive 
of images of my deceased partner and despite the user being blocked on a local 
wikipedia, I start to upload them on Commons in their name. Everybody has their 
way to cope with grief. Do we accept this or not?

Alessandro
Il martedì 9 novembre 2021, 10:17:51 CET, Geert Van Pamel 
 ha scritto:  
 
 #yiv8261393693 #yiv8261393693 -- _filtered {} _filtered {}#yiv8261393693 
#yiv8261393693 p.yiv8261393693MsoNormal, #yiv8261393693 
li.yiv8261393693MsoNormal, #yiv8261393693 div.yiv8261393693MsoNormal 
{margin:0cm;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:sans-serif;}#yiv8261393693 a:link, 
#yiv8261393693 span.yiv8261393693MsoHyperlink 
{color:#0563C1;text-decoration:underline;}#yiv8261393693 
span.yiv8261393693E-mailStijl22 
{font-family:sans-serif;color:windowtext;}#yiv8261393693 
.yiv8261393693MsoChpDefault {font-family:sans-serif;}#yiv8261393693 
.yiv8261393693MsoPapDefault {margin-bottom:11.0pt;} _filtered {}#yiv8261393693 
div.yiv8261393693WordSection1 {}#yiv8261393693 
I do find this an excellent proposal.

  

Wouldn’t it be good to also implement a user status/right “deceased” to 
identify those accounts?

  

This information could be shown to their user rights page e.g. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:UserRights/Geertivp?

  

One could get a list of volunteers that are no longer amongst us via 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ListUsers.

  

Geert Van Pamel
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/VVK2TIYRJ56RL7JB2SDBZ2VPLZLSC7L3/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org  ___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/LRPUAZX5ILAFPSD7WHXGAQDTZE4R5UTH/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Small gratitude to our fellow wikimedians

2021-11-08 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

Once you have that, you can go for more initiatives on a solid base.

Il martedì 9 novembre 2021, 00:52:02 CET, Samuel Klein
ha scritto:

I'd like us to consider a more serious set of obits, after the fashion of the
astronomers.
On Mon, Nov 8, 2021 at 6:25 PM Gnangarra wrote:

In some ways we do https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2021:In_Memoriam
On Tue, 9 Nov 2021 at 04:46, Camelia Boban wrote:

Hi everybody.
Today, on the social media channels, we received the news about another
wikimedian who is passed away: Steve Suleeman (User:Stephensuleeman from
idwiki). As others in the recent or distant past: Spasimir Pilev (User:Спасимир
Пилев from bgwiki), Pier Luigi Rocco (User:Moroboshi from itwiki), Elena Sanz
Queiruga (User:ElsaBornFree from eswiki), User:SlimVirgin from enwiki,
Krzysztof Machocki (User:Halibutt from plwiki).
For these losses, I think we - as a community, through the Wikimedia Foundation
- need to set up a fund to build a commemorative plaque to remember all the
wikimedians we have lost.
I would suggest it to be a thought from the community, extended also to all
other major events of a wikimedian's life (marriage, birth of a child). We know
a wikimedian often sacrifices the free time, dedicating a large part of their
own real life to our projects and the movement. Would be a recognition from the
community for the work done and a memory for the families, a "small gratitude
to our fellow wikimedians" as someone said.
I know that some affiliates are already doing this (eq. Wikimedia Indonesia),
would be a lovely idea to do it in a centralized way at the level of the whole
movement.
What do you think?Camelia___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/GEA6C3J5KQA7C5A4HBRQ4VF4RLEOHWAA/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org

--
GN.
2021Celebrating 20 years of Wikipedia

Wikimania: https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:GnangarraNoongarpedia:
https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/nys/Main_Page
My print shop: https://www.redbubble.com/people/Gnangarra/shop?asc=u

--
Samuel Klein @metasj w:user:sj +1 617 529 4266
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Movement Charter Drafting Committee elections are now open!

2021-10-18 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

I still believe that a screening phase where people with limited support below
a certain threshold can quit the race or be removed is the best way to have a
functional ballot... to me it's just simpler this way. Even at real-life
elections you need to show some signatures to access the race.

If, after weeks of debate, a person get 1/5th of the support of an average
candidate, it simply does not have a real chance. I point out again here, this
would not be an additional phase, it's just something that can be done in
parallel to the presentation of the candidates. For example, at the nth support
signature, you enter the ballot.

For some reasons, some people assume that "plurality" means that everybody can
join, but a crowded ballot is just chaotic. For n places to be selected, you
should not give more than 2n-3n candidates on a final ballot, IMHO. Especially
if you want to use certain electoral methods.
I tried to revise all 70 profiles and it was really boring. So after a while, I
just put 10 names I kinda liked and that's it, I probably missed some of them.
I also had negative feedback... which went wasted but could have also helped.
Maybe in this scenario, the old method of "positive-neutral-negative" tipping
box per each candidate could have also worked better than a STV ranking.
In any case with the other election I could more or less predict the probable
final output (gender balanced, with actual limited chance for so-called GS),
here it's almost impossible, the vote will be diluted so much and I really
cannot focus on all the candidates. This ould probably mean that bugs of UI
(fixed display of candidates, problem of selecting from menu if initial letter
has an unusual accent...) might influence the outcome more than usual.

Alessandro

Il martedì 19 ottobre 2021, 06:41:56 CEST, Anupam Dutta
ha scritto:

Hi all,
To me, a slightly better approach would have been to divide the 70 candidates
into 7 blocks of 10 each, chosen in a random way, but the block remaining
fixed. Then force the voter to visit each block and view the candidates ( so
that nobody has any undue advantage). After that, the voter will have the
choice to choose any or all or none..
(Disclaimer : I am one of the candidates).
Anupamdutta73
On Tue, Oct 19, 2021, 08:55 effe iets anders wrote:

Just for quick context: I was mostly trying to say that any *simple* system may
have benefits in the scenario when you don't have the resources to make a
complex system work properly (read: userfriendly). A 7-member district was
intended as shorthand for "out of these 70 people, pick 7 favorites". That does
not allow as much nuance as ranking, but it also has much less mental load.
There are more systems that would have been easier on the voter, most likely. I
fear that with the 'rank these 70 people into an order of 70' will scare away
too many participants.
Lodewijk
On Mon, Oct 18, 2021 at 7:40 PM Risker wrote:

I am curious what is meant by a "7-member district". Lodewijk, could you
explain in more detail?

Risker/Anne

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/W3XYWFSUTJ2XSFIUHZAPNMOQPECZTOTV/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/CV3LSFVZT3GBUTV7CC752BYHFPGQFRZS/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org ___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/M32MI4FY6EK6MGMJA52NPWBNMYT3WT5L/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org

[Wikimedia-l] Re: calculating autoconfirmed age and edit count

2021-10-04 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 As a long-time cross-platform user, I have been checking user rights for 
years. These flag systems have strong differences among platforms. 

They originate from lack of perspective, sometimes.. some long-time users have 
no interest in analyzing them, there is a lack of literacy about flag systems 
that is quite critical due to language barrier or limited interest in metrics. 
Such users often do not grasp differences of similar names in different 
scenarios. I have witnessed long-time users who "dominate" many of these local 
discussions mixing up concepts... when you have no strong clue how validation 
of whole page version, single edit or users' edit actually work, or can work... 
and how different or specific namespaces can also exist with different 
protection rights, you just follow some long-term local "prejudice" that are 
more or less different among platforms. Or simply, that some very active users 
like or dislike.

Personally, I am in favor of a standard universal autoconfirmed flag and more 
flexible project-oriented autopatrolled flag (that is, mostly  manually given) 
or "extended autoconfirmed" flag (that is, mostly based on automatic metrics) 
adapted to a specific platform. Please notice how I am trying to use reasonable 
definitions from different local scenarios, but they are not really defined 
anywhere IMHO.

For the universal autoconfirmed flag, the 4 days and 10 edits threshold are 
IMHO correct for a "limbo" before getting some basic user right. it's practical 
to have them always like that by default. I enter with the SUL system with my 
account on a new platform, and by default I know to get that metric for some 
basic functionalities. 4 days is "a little bit more than a week end" or "half a 
week" for example, not too long or not too short.
A.
Il lunedì 4 ottobre 2021, 18:11:03 CEST, Risker  ha 
scritto:  
 
 There's no evidence behind the majority of policies of any Wikimedia project, 
so I don't think that's really an expectation. 

As to enwiki, it appears that the 4-day threshold was in place well before 
2008, but the 10-edit threshold was added in 2008:  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed_Proposal/Poll 

The related "bugzilla" (now phabricator) ticket is here:  
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T16191 

It was pretty clearly the position of Brion, the lead developer at the time, 
that even making the change from 0 to 10 edits would be essentially 
inconsequential; however, he did make that change.  (Most of that ticket is an 
argument that the Enwiki community wanted a 7 day/20 edit threshold, and 
complaining that it wasn't applied.)  My sense is that adding the edit 
requirements actually did make a difference, although not really because it 
resulted in vandalism/trolling accounts being left unused.  It made them easier 
to spot.  I believe they also reduced the move vandalism that we were 
experiencing at a ridiculous rate at the time.  

I'm sure you'd be able to find similar discussions at other projects; I just 
remember this one because I participated in it.
Risker/Anne

On Mon, 4 Oct 2021 at 06:19, Amir E. Aharoni  
wrote:

I've been involved in this lengthy circular debate: What should be the 
autoconfirmed age and article count in the Hebrew Wikipedia? See 
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T243076 if you curious about this particular 
one, but I'd love to ask a more global question:
How were these numbers calculated originally?
For the account age, the default is four days, or five or seven days for a few 
wikis.

For the edit count, the default is zero, but several wikis have 5, 10, 25, or 
50.

(See https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=InitialiseSettings.php 
and search for "wgAutoConfirmAge" and "wgAutoConfirmCount".)
Some wikis have groups, usually called "extended confirmed", and with higher 
counts; for example, 500 edits in English and some other languages (search for 
wmgAutopromoteOnceonEdit on the same page).
So, how did the people arrive at these numbers? Why is it four days by default? 
Is it all just intuition and guesses, or was there any research behind it?
Is it *good* that four days is the default for everyone, until someone bothers 
to update it (most wikis don't)? Or is it just a coincidence that was defined 
for a certain wiki and applied elsewhere? And when it's updated, why is it 
updated to one number and not some other?

While I am an ardent supporter of the "anyone can edit" principle, it makes 
general sense to have some restrictions based on edit count, account age, and 
perhaps other parameters. But HOW are they calculated? Would it make sense to 
anyone to start making some calculations around it and optimize the number for 
wikis of different sizes?
I'd imagine that there could be a calculation that says "in a given wiki, the 
chance of being reverted or blocked goes down after X days and X edits", and 
this number is probably different for every wiki (maybe there already is such a

[Wikimedia-l] 2020 Annual report - WikiClassics User Group

2021-08-20 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

Dear all

I'm glad to share the 2020 Annual Report of our User Group

Here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiClassics_User_Group/Reports/2020
Greetings,
Alessandro Marchetti

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
Public archives at 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/DIDW7XDG3M7QSFODZOM47YPLTDYRYVSG/
To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-le...@lists.wikimedia.org

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Is it time for a Global Username Policy that is similar to Global Rename Policy?

2021-03-26 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 It's an old topic. I tried to discuss it in 2015 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Alexmar983/sandbox#SUL_issues and also 
again at an informal after-meeting weeks ago.
First of all, there is no strong global management of username blacklist as 
people might imagine. Beyond the cases of username that might be offensive and 
blocked in one language, some platforms for example do not accept 
"institutional accounts" that are accepted on other ones, ad this is a big one. 
They should be probably unblocked on the log term

Also, dead users are handled differently.
Blocking policy for proxy are also different. 

I could go on and on but most of the problems are still there. 

Whatever, soon or later we will fix them. I suppose some people need their 
time... in some cases it does not matter anymore, you just select tolerant 
platforms and ignore the ones with more rigid or dysfunctional policies. 

It would be nice to accept that there is some work to do.

Alessandro
Il venerdì 26 marzo 2021, 10:35:09 CET, Vi to  ha 
scritto:  
 
 Username blacklist has already been global since 2015, see 
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T38939
Vito

Il giorno ven 26 mar 2021 alle ore 10:06 William Chan  ha 
scritto:

Hi,
I have observed that there is a global renaming policy but a global username 
policy is absent? As we all know that usernames are global following SUL, and 
literally the same username will be used across multiple wikis.
So, a very simple question is raised: shall there be a draft of the global 
username policies, considering usernames are now global?
Also, also due to SUL, it seems that username blacklists should be put at a 
global scale, or it may just be not logical as one may just escape one wiki's 
username blacklist through creating it at another project, and use SUL to 
circumvent such block.
I hope for broad input, considering this may mean a broad policy change, and 
what I have in my mind is just a very primary idea to install a Global Username 
Policy that acts similar to the current Global Rename Policy that is in 
enforcement.
P.S. I put it here before placing it on meta RFC is not to avoid circumvention 
but hope to seek more input instead of just bumping a very large policy change 
without any external input.
Regards,WilliamUser:1233___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 


___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

  ___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] New essay on the ambiguity of NC licenses

2020-08-08 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 WikiNotYetFree is ok, structured search for locally hosted files is ok...  I 
think that there are many different pathways that will lead to more or less a 
certain scenario. 

What should be clear, IMHO, is that some process will occur in any case even if 
somebody stands on the soapbox declaring a general principle about NC. It would 
be hidden in some other aspects here and there, some of the issue raised are 
already in nuce on our platforms.
The more you standardize the process (it does not matter whence you start) the 
more the scaffolding for some well-structured unified repository will be just 
few hours away. What we should avoid is that its creation is done by few 
people, more vertically without a bottom-up process, or even outside our 
wiki-ecosystem, which will make it less efficient for the volunteers.

Small communities with limited human resources and people dedicated to outreach 
need "something". As long as we go in that direction, I am in.
A.M.

   Il sabato 8 agosto 2020, 15:09:14 CEST, WereSpielChequers 
 ha scritto:  

 I can see a problem in making a site that contains non free information
freely available to the public. Even if you restricted it to NC and ND
licenses, you risk getting flak from both the reusers and the uploaders
when there are disputes as to whether a particular use is commercial, or
such a poor copy of a work that it counts as derivative. And anything less
free than NC or ND licensed material would be a copyright violation to post
on the internet.

But there is I think a project sized niche that would be a good fit with
the community. A not yet free project.

-
WikiNotYetFree would hold but not make available, works that are not yet
free, list them, categorise them even build metadata for them, and every
year a new tranche of them would be migrated to WikiSource or Wikimedia
Commons as appropriate. You could even have planned uses or deferred edits
"when this image becomes public domain, use it with this caption to replace
this image on Wikidata or Wikipedia".  One of the key bits of data with
each item would be the date or criteria when its copyright lapses and it
becomes public domain.

OK those who cherish the instant gratification of your edit immediately
going live to humanity will probably not be tempted to work on a project
where some of the material will be marked "migrate to Commons in 2090". But
some of us rather like the idea of leaving a digital legacy that will
persist for generations after we have been composted.

A commercial organisation could not take on such a project where most of
the benefit won't be seen for decades to come. But a charity can think long
term. Of course some of these materials will be available in decades to
come and could be loaded to Commons as and when they come out of copyright,
but just because we can get a digital copy of something now we cannot be
certain that digital copies will be available in decades to come - unless
of course we have archived them into a repository such as  WikiNotYetFree

Deletion processes on Wikimedia Commons and elsewhere would be radically
changed if one of the options was now "move to WikiNotYetFree until it
comes out of copyright".

Anyone could access the metadata, but only admins and the individual
uploader would be able to access the files that someone had actually
uploaded.

It also raises the possibility of an outreach campaign to creatives such as
photographers, asking them to preserve their legacy by  putting a clause in
their wills to release their intellectual property under CC-BY-SA once
they've died. "You can't take it with you, but you can make sure your work
is not forgotten"

Now that Wikipedia is almost twenty years old, and the WMF has an endowment
fund, we can start to plan and talk long term with a credibility that
younger organisations and those that lack an endowment fund lack.

I have started a project request at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiNotYetFree

WSC

>
> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Re: New essay on the ambiguity of NC licenses (Erik Moeller)
>
>
> --
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2020 23:50:57 -0700
> From: Erik Moeller 
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] New essay on the ambiguity of NC licenses
> Message-ID:
>         zvr...@mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
>
> On Sun, Aug 2, 2020 at 3:52 PM Samuel Klein  wrote:
>
> > I don't think we should mix NC with free-knowledge licenses .
> > I do absolutely think we should maintain an archive, visible to the
> public
> > with at most a simple hoop to jump through, of material that is offered
> to
> > us in any legal way but not yet free.
>
> Such an archive would _unavoidably_ "mix NC with free-knowledge
> licenses" -- because all collaborative and transformative work
> happening in the archive itself would be released under free knowledge
> licenses. Worse, any meaningful transformations of

Re: [Wikimedia-l] New essay on the ambiguity of NC licenses

2020-08-07 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 We have an archive mixing different licenses now, one is Commons ranging from 
CC-0 to CC BY SA, and other ones are local Wikis sometimes including in their 
spectrum of situations many non-free files in fair use. this is proof that an 
archive hosting non-free files with other free-licensed information has nothing 
special per se. A new archive might simply be more clear and linear than those, 
since it would be designed specifically to handle the matter.

I work in outreach the whole time, you can give me all the money you want to 
improve my productivity, but I would still use it more efficiently if I could 
have a more integrated infrastructure specifically for this issue.
A.

Il venerdì 7 agosto 2020, 08:52:31 CEST, Erik Moeller  
ha scritto:  

 On Sun, Aug 2, 2020 at 3:52 PM Samuel Klein  wrote:

> I don't think we should mix NC with free-knowledge licenses .
> I do absolutely think we should maintain an archive, visible to the public
> with at most a simple hoop to jump through, of material that is offered to
> us in any legal way but not yet free.

Such an archive would _unavoidably_ "mix NC with free-knowledge
licenses" -- because all collaborative and transformative work
happening in the archive itself would be released under free knowledge
licenses. Worse, any meaningful transformations of the archived works
would result in derivative works that remain nonfree, directly
enlisting volunteers in the creation of nonfree knowledge.

In any event, why create an archive for works under borderline terms,
while ignoring more restricted works that could be plausibly released
under a free license tomorrow? Works that are nonfree for simple
economic reasons (e.g., some old but useful textbook) may often be
easier to "set free" than those which are nonfree for reasons of
longstanding policy (e.g, the WHO example). Why amass the latter and
ignore the former? I don't see how this would strengthen Wikimedia's
free knowledge commitment, but I can easily see how it could weaken it
considerably and very quickly, whether or not that's the intent.

To be clear, I think creating free summaries and descriptions of
nonfree works (from traditional textbooks and scientific papers to
Khan Academy videos) is very much in line with the Wikimedia mission.
I don't think it requires hosting the works. To the extent that there
is concern about losing access to works that are currently available
via public URLs, the use of Internet Archive enabled citation URLs
provides a great example for how to avoid such link rot.

I'm sure there are also plenty of tech and non-tech ways Wikimedia
could support volunteers and chapters that work on outreach to set
more educational works free, none of which require the creation of a
nonfree archive.

Warmly,
Erik

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] New essay on the ambiguity of NC licenses

2020-08-02 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 Most of the proposal for NC usually pushed for a separate infrastructure, as 
far as I know. I'm not a fan of a unified archive, for example I am fine with a 
separate one. 

As I said, I also see it as a great way to experiment many features we can't 
have on Commons, maybe even a truly multimedia archive with both files and 
texts in a distant future, but I digress here.

Since there are hints in this discussion, I also hoped such infrastructure to 
act as a "preparation" environment of legal transition of copyright works into 
the public domain, where it is possible to prepare files with metadata and so 
on, so they can be moved on January, 1st with a click. it's a good compromise, 
you can keep maybe non-fully free files on Wikipedia for strict educational 
purpose as long as you provide a high quality description on such archive. it 
catalyzes content and quality.

For example, I handle a dozen of potentially ambiguous files every month, i 
would love to have a platform designed to host those, where I can put all the 
useful information I have discovered in any case (date, author, etc) without 
losing them because I cannot be sure 100% the files are free or some user will 
not ask me later to prove they are as ancient as they claim to be. With a good 
Wikidata-centric structure, it can really work. 

If we really want to go in that direction, we can handle it with clear rules 
for the upload, the access or the download.

This reminds me of a similar discussion about hidden copyright violations. if 
100s sysops can still see them, why not 500s patrollers or 5000s certified 
long-term autopatrolled users? Where is the difference? They are still not 
public in any case, I simply have to ask a sysop to tell what's there, using 
minutes I could use to create content. If you are fine with this access by some 
users, or with the limited views of versions to be validated on some wikis, you 
can understand a restricted access in general, you just need to establish its 
role. It simply needs a functional role to be declared in the infrastructure, 
and we have some ideas. We can debate later how much such files can be seen by 
the general public or by only registered users. For example you can declare 
that the logos of a company can be seen by all Wikipedias in ns0 (but non 
Wikisource or Wikiquote or Wikivoyage, for example), or that the access is 
totally restricted for the general public, or that the link it's in the 
articles like what you can find for Commons categories but the download is 
limited, o the resolution is.

Also,if you just put a limit of files per person or a threshold of cross-wiki 
edit to or a special flag for the upload, it can grow naturally for many years 
without exploding, more in agreement with a functional growth of the content 
that we are hosting.
Alessandro

Il lunedì 3 agosto 2020, 00:53:11 CEST, Samuel Klein  ha 
scritto:  

 I don't think we should mix NC with free-knowledge licenses .
I do absolutely think we should maintain an archive, visible to the public
with at most a simple hoop to jump through, of material that is offered to
us in any legal way but not yet free.
This would include: material currently under a CC or other non-fd license,
material that can be reasonably assumed to belong to the uploader but has
not yet been so demonstrated and (c) cleared by our various processes, free
material whose use and classification is otherwise under debate.

Primary uses of such an archive:
~ Capturing the first step of any freely-licensed sharing: having a
persistent copy of the work, with initial license + uploader information,
and a nominal contact to pursue
~ Centralizing subsequent public discussions about how to make interesting
materials free : by relicensing, recreation, or other method
~ Preserving work done to annotate/classify works where license turns out
to be ambiguous
~ Simplifying other deletion and license discussions that are inefficient
and confusing now

If there are motivational reasons to make the result of such archiving "not
as visible online" or "not as convenient as Commons", that's easily done
without restricting public access or {item name resolution}.

S



On Mon., Jul. 13, 2020, 2:24 a.m. Pete Forsyth, 
wrote:

> Erik, thanks for posting the essay here. Glad to see the interest in this
> topic.
>
> I wrote this because I have found that when somebody asks me about the NC
> provision, I often want to point them to a simple webpage (rather than
> "reinventing the wheel" every time it comes up). There are some pages out
> there (I listed some in the "See also" section), but I have yet to find
> somewhere this particular point -- the need of a general license to issue
> clear guidance -- articulated anywhere in a concise, accessible way.
>
> I'm surprised (and a little disappointed) to see that the possibility of
> Wikimedia generally accepting NC-licensed work is being discussed. But
> apart from that discussion, I think many of you in

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Operation and oversight of OTRS system

2020-07-22 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 I still think that more transparency is possible here and there on this issue. 
Of course, we could have started a long process to get there by now but time is 
limited and precisely because we should provide a "healthy image of the 
movement" my goal so far has been to avoid using OTRS with third parties as 
much as possible.
In other words, I have realized it's just easier to find ways to avoid OTRS. 
For example I prefer to encourage the presence of public copyright information 
when privacy is not an option and I point out that this is actually on the long 
term less time-consuming than dealing with the OTRS interface.

 I hope that this will reduce the workload on the OTRS system ,so more people 
can try to improve it, it's the best compromise I could provide. I was asked to 
be a OTRS agent at a certain point, but I think I can be more productive at the 
moment creating such alternative pathways than entering the system. I wish all 
the best to those who want to do something.
Alex   Il mercoledì 22 luglio 2020, 14:16:04 CEST, Amaroon 
 ha scritto:  

 On Tue, 21 Jul 2020 at 11:05, Peter Southwood 
wrote:

> That is what I thought, so referring someone to ANI is not helpful, or is
> there an ANI for OTRS specifically?
> Cheers,
> Peter
>

To clarify: the OTRS agent referred to ANI as the place where an issue
should be resolved. Indeed it was not helpful, as the issue has already
passed that stage.
However, the part of the correspondence relevant to this discussion about
the accountability of OTRS is the second part of the sentence:
"hope you're not hit in the face with a boomerang."

I think it needs no explanation how inappropriate and hostile that sentence
is. As OTRS is a primary point of contact, somewhat equivalent to customer
service at for-profit companies, this kind of communication is not painting
a healthy image of the movement.

Aron

On Sat, 11 Jul 2020 at 10:48, Peter Southwood 
wrote:

> Context is necessary to understand this.
> If OTRS part of Wikipedia? If not, Which ANI?
> Cheers,
> Peter
>
> > -Original Message-
> > From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On
> > Behalf Of Aron Manning
> > Sent: 11 July 2020 09:23
> > To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> > Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Operation and oversight of OTRS system
> >
> > I recall one experience with OTRS in which I've received this brief
> answer:
> >
> > > Report them to ANI and hope you're not *hit in the face with a
> > boomerang*.
> > >
> > > Yours sincerely, ...
> >
> > The individual did not apologize in further correspondence and I haven't
> > thought about contacting OTRS since then.
> >
> >
> > Aron
>
>
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Operation and oversight of OTRS system

2020-07-19 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 I am now quite confused. Are we supposed to ask very specific questions about 
OTRS hoping to get an answer because if the questions are too generic for sure 
we will never get a lot of answers? is that the general idea?

ok if it helps, here are some of them
1. are OTRS policies categorized somehow? is there a page with instruction with 
how to handle mails from private companies, from people, mails of legal issues, 
mail about copyright etc2. how are OTRS agents reviewed? is it a peer-review 
process? is it regularly done?3. do we have a policy that impose a minimal 
constant activity on content-reòated platform to keep OTRS flag? 
4. how can a normal user file a request to deflag another operator?5. is there 
a open log of OTRS requests, some place where minimal information related to a 
ticket can be disclosed (for example the date of arrival and maybe if it is 
regarding some content or some other topic?)6. is there a open log of OTRS 
operators, where we can see when they got the flag, a link to the request and 
how many queue they are handling?
I think it's enough for now.

Alex
   Il lunedì 20 luglio 2020, 00:01:56 CEST, effe iets anders 
 ha scritto:  
 
 On Sun, Jul 19, 2020 at 7:55 AM Andy Mabbett 
wrote:

> On Sun, 19 Jul 2020 at 09:03, effe iets anders 
> wrote:
> >
> > I rather have
> > that people make their assumptions explicit so that you have an
> opportunity
> > to clarify, and use that as the basis for further conversation.
>
> You seem to be assuming - wrongly - that I have made assumptions which
> I have not made explicit.
>
> Ironically, you have not explicitly stated your assumption.
>
> > My reading of this discussion is that there is a lot of 'secrecy' assumed
>
> No secrecy is being assumed. Too much secrecy is being observed.
>
> > where it is probably more a lack of existence of policies in the way Andy
> > would like them to exist. This is a known problem with OTRS.
>
> It may well be that some policies that should exist, do not, or are
> ''de facto'' without being written down. But until we see a
> comprehensive list of those that do exist and are written, how can we
> know?
>
> > I feel comfortable sharing that the set of OTRS-wide 'policies' that is
> on
> > the wiki, is probably of little interest to this matter.
>
> I am very interested in seeing all those 'policies'; as others have
> said they are.
>
> As noted earlier in this thread, I do not see how I could be any more
> clear about my wish to see them.
>
> > This is why I
> > noted that Jonatan's response could be misleading, because it implies all
> > kind of secrecy that doesn't exist.
>
> It stated, not implied, that "the Confidentiality Agreement all OTRS
> agents sign" prevented him from answering some of the questions asked
> on-wiki in February, and quoted at the start of this thread.
>
> > There are actually a few policies
> > linked at [[m:OTRS ]], that are
> > simply copied there (Access, Activity policies).
>
> That page, and those linked from it, do not answer the questions to
> which I have already referred.
>
> > There is some stuff about
> > privacy, confidentiality and how to deal with mailing lists. Imho nothing
> > that exciting.
>
> Perhaps not exciting to you; but I and others argue that such content
> should nonetheless be public. We have been told that OTRS agents are
> discussing the matter on their private email and IRC channels, but
> then... Nothing.
>
> > OTRS is an immensely diverse system, and I don't think it's helpful to
> try
> > to analyze that with overly broad questions.
>
> I do not accept that questions such as, for example:
>
>    5 how is OTRS overseen, and who by?
>
>    7 what is the process for the community to remove an
>      individual's OTRS permissions, if they fail to uphold
>      or abide by policy?
>
>    9 which individuals can make someone an OTRS agent,
>      or remove their permissions?
>
>    10 how are the individuals in #9 appointed and overseen?
>
> are "overly broad"; but if you think they are, how would you narrow their
> focus?
>
>
First of all: you're framing my words and taking them out of context. I'm
not going to waste further energy on that.

Answering that would require me to actually understand what the underlying
issue is that you want to solve. I've given up on that.

Lodewijk


> --
> Andy Mabbett
> @pigsonthewing
> http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
>
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and

Re: [Wikimedia-l] New essay on the ambiguity of NC licenses

2020-07-14 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 Centralized Wiki for NC files will work. It's the same debate when we started 
to put metadata on Commons, it did not stop the process, it just made it slower 
and less efficient, but it remained kinda inevitable.
It's the same background, the frustration and confusion of the current 
situation is projected to the future one, it's mostly a "passive" resistance 
with a little bit of patronizing attitude toward other communities. It happens 
also because the more some users assume this future scenario is inevitable, the 
easier it is for them to consider the present situation as inevitable as well 
and skip any responsibility, it's a little bit an identity element.

Local users are not confused or irritated in general because they are moody, 
it's mostly because the Commons community is moody. Local communities are not 
three or four isolated users, they are structured, with a spectrum of 
established competences. The mass of users involved will come from that pool. I 
am pretty sure that if you build a repository without all the users who 
encouraged most of the dysfunctional attitude we have now on Commons, it's 
going to be better, if not fine. For some of us in the end the local user 
repeating a wrong concept to get a file kept is very similar to the Commons 
user doing the same to make it deleted, the same stubborn attitude with limited 
overall perspective that few people really wanted in the first place. These two 
profiles find a balance but it's not the best balance for the general workflow, 
it's a "social thing". Whatever disrupt the situation, give us some chance to 
improve that.

Of course many users will show there to oppose. And if approved, for the first 
two or three years at every single minor misstep of the process they will jump 
there foretelling disasters: They usually find the time to oppose to this sort 
of requests, more than doing a lot of other tasks probably, and the concepts 
are usually the same. That's why its getting more and more difficult to give to 
it a big weigh.
In any case, some way to centralize existing NC will be found. For example, 
think about Wikidata item for logos and connect them to local files. It will be 
more tortuous, in a way it's not noticed immediately, probably. Until we get 
there somehow, personally I skip many activities regarding NC including their 
conversion, and focus on something else. I am probably not the only one 
adopting more or less this attitude. 

Good outreach for me is not about a single aspect, is a method, and will always 
include a spectrum of results. The statement "no Wikipedia if you don't remove 
NC" is not really so effective, it sounds cheap especially after many years 
Wiki exists and people know what they want. For the high-quality material we 
miss, I think it's more about proposing a good project, a structured project 
and in that framework I can suggest to update some NC. I have refused to trick 
people to give files with no NC, I clearly tell them to understand the license. 
There are many files which were not uploaded initially, but those users ended 
up giving more new files later. If I could be a user with a flag for NC upload, 
I will put a very limited amount of files per year, but the process behind such 
files will be very valuable. 

A.

   Il martedì 14 luglio 2020, 09:41:05 CEST, Erik Moeller  
ha scritto:  

 James wrote:

> I simply wish that such a position would convince more
> organizations. WHO has repeatedly told me that we, as a non-profit, are
> already free to use their work and if we chose not to, that is on us.

I agree of course that this sort of institutional inertia can be
incredibly frustrating, especially in cases like WHO -- a publicly
funded international institution which should be putting its work in
the public domain. For all its own institutional failings (and there
are many, past and present), the US was at least able to get that much
right in its copyright laws more than 100 years ago. I don't believe
we should let publicly funded institutions that use restrictive
licensing terms off the hook, and there's a degree to which positive
persuasion needs to be coupled with public pressure here.

Like Pete, I'm curious about resources & practices folks have found
useful in persuading individuals or institutions to release materials
under free licenses. I'll reiterate that my sense is that _new_
partnerships that focus on material yet to be created may be a good
way to get a foot in the door, so to speak.

Alessandro wrote:

> At least, we should start centralizing that non-free material locally uploaded
> since it's already there. I would like logos of Universities and coat of arms
> of public administration and doubtful old images that according to some
> platforms are free but for Commons are not (gray areas), to be on a NC
> part of Commons, or a dedicated platform (i always link
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/NonFreeWiki and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/NonFreeWiki_(2).

I

Re: [Wikimedia-l] New essay on the ambiguity of NC licenses

2020-07-13 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 I would probably never try to convince somebody about NC license. It sounds 
pushy and almost never works, it's like optimizing a process that has a 0.1% 
output. of course I can spend less time to do so, and maybe double the effect, 
but it's still a limited output. 

I prefer to agree with them, build a trust, produce other content with such 
trust (that is not related to files of their production) and than, maybe, we 
face the issue of images.
For example I almost convinced an artist to give me in free license 
reproductions of his public artworks that are already destroyed, until a person 
close to him stopped him (and he agreed with me prgamatically, I think that he 
stopped only for sentimental reason)
There are other way to get free files ad they have nothing to do about "being 
used on Wikipedia". if you want to be used on Wikipedia, you put it there, in 
my experience this is not a critical factor in changing the opinion. For 
example Wiki Science Competition gets files also from scientists that would 
normally use NC, but it's not really about explaining the license, it's about 
getting a prize, a visibility and being part of a network, a strat a discussion 
about outreach. 

Alessandro

Il lunedì 13 luglio 2020, 08:25:39 CEST, Pete Forsyth 
 ha scritto:  

 Erik, thanks for posting the essay here. Glad to see the interest in this
topic.

I wrote this because I have found that when somebody asks me about the NC
provision, I often want to point them to a simple webpage (rather than
"reinventing the wheel" every time it comes up). There are some pages out
there (I listed some in the "See also" section), but I have yet to find
somewhere this particular point -- the need of a general license to issue
clear guidance -- articulated anywhere in a concise, accessible way.

I'm surprised (and a little disappointed) to see that the possibility of
Wikimedia generally accepting NC-licensed work is being discussed. But
apart from that discussion, I think many of you in this discussion have, at
one time or another, wanted to help guide someone toward using a more
permissive license, rather than a NC license.

For those who have, do you have favorite webpages you find helpful to
share? Does this one seem like a useful addition? I'd appreciate any
feedback or constructive edits to this essay; I also think it would be
useful to have some of the other arguments, currently collected in longer
documents, expressed in more "bite-sized" pieces like this, which could be
linked together. Do others agree, and if so, are you inclined to help draft
some complementary pages?

-Pete
[[User:Peteforsyth]]

On Sun, Jul 12, 2020 at 3:23 PM effe iets anders 
wrote:

> The question is however as well: how many open licensed content creators
> would switch to NC if they were aware that this would be 'good enough' for
> Wikipedia - even if that means in reality only English Wikipedia (but who
> cares about other languages) and without actually allowing to build on top
> of it?
>
> I have found the argument 'don't use NC because then it can't be used on
> Wikipedia' rather convincing in the past. It will not always work, and I
> also wish it would convince /more/ organizations. But then, I would also
> wish that enwiki wouldn't use fair use exceptions - so maybe I'm not the
> benchmark you'd be looking at anyway.
>
> Lodewijk
>
> On Sat, Jul 11, 2020 at 5:32 PM James Heilman  wrote:
>
> > Yes one of the stronger reasons to reject all use of the NC license is
> that
> > it increases incentives for other organizations to actually adopt open
> > licenses. I simply wish that such a position would convince more
> > organizations. WHO has repeatedly told me that we, as a non-profit, are
> > already free to use their work and if we chose not to, that is on us.
> >
> > James
> >
> > On Sat, Jul 11, 2020 at 6:19 PM Erik Moeller 
> wrote:
> >
> > > Hi James :)
> > >
> > > (This is my last reply for today, given the recommended posting limit
> > > on this list.)
> > >
> > > > We all agree that NC licenses are exceedingly poor due to the reasons
> > > > listed, yet we leave a lot of useful content (such as Khan academy
> > > videos)
> > > > less accessible to our readers because we disallow any such use.
> > >
> > > I completely agree. I'm wondering if efforts have been made at the WMF
> > > or chapter level to partner with these organizations on new
> > > initiatives, where a more permissive license could be used? This could
> > > perhaps help to introduce CC-BY-SA/CC-BY to orgs like Khan Academy,
> > > and help lay the groundwork for potentially changing their default
> > > license.
> > >
> > > > This is a balance between pragmatism and idealism.
> > >
> > > I disagree with your framing here. There are many pragmatic reasons to
> > > want to build a knowledge commons with uniform expectations for how it
> > > can be built upon and re-used. It's also pragmatic to be careful about
> > > altering the incentive structure for contributors.

Re: [Wikimedia-l] New essay on the ambiguity of NC licenses

2020-07-12 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 People are not conscious of NC module also because we don't take a clear 
approach about it. Centralizing the storage of NC files is probably one of the 
clear step to make the community and third parties more conscious. 

One of the causes of the current confusion is precisely because we treat them 
is as something marginal while they are already structural in our ecosystem.
Alessandro
Il domenica 12 luglio 2020, 10:52:04 CEST, Ziko van Dijk 
 ha scritto:  

 Hello,
Thank you for the link, Erik, I am going to read Pete Forsyth‘s text
carefully. My thinking about the module was influenced by some WMD
publications, by Till Kreutzer and also this one:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Free_Knowledge_thanks_to_Creative_Commons_Licenses.pdf
So I learned about the problems of the module. In general I find it most
unfortunate when a reuser has to evaluate a larger work for its elements
and its different licenses - often you do not only reuse one monolithic
piece but something consisting of smaller elements, or a larger group of
elements (e.g. dozens of pictures about a topic).
The more I was surprised when in the Strategy 2030 discussions and then
recommendations the modules ND and NC were called necessary for the needs
of the Global South. Though I am not a absolute or ideological opponent of
any module, I wondered about the reasons and I never got an answer. In the
meanwhile, the modules disappeared from the recommendations, and that is
just good so.
So the problem of the NC module remains that many who apply it are not
always conscious about undesired consequences,  while some who apply it use
the module very consciously for a specific reason - e.g. in a hybrid model,
to distribute content but not to share it, to reserve commercial use
exclusively for oneself. I do not want to judge about this intention, but I
imagine that it can become problematic when your goal is to build a
knowledge *commons*.
Kind regards
Ziko

Benjamin Lees  schrieb am So. 12. Juli 2020 um 09:31:

> On Sat, Jul 11, 2020 at 9:20 PM Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l <
> wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> > Are we really sure he would have done something in any case if we did not
> > provide such options?
> >
>
> It's pretty hard to be sure about the hypothetical behavior of
> individuals.  Undoubtedly, as you say, there are some people who are *only*
> willing to submit material to us if it is NC, and thus we currently lose
> out on material from them.  Undoubtedly, as Erik says, there are also some
> people who submit material to us under a free license but would choose an
> NC license if it were available, and thus we currently gain the benefit of
> their work being freely licensed, rather than NC.  I suspect the latter
> pool is far larger than the former.
>
> When the choice is truly between a particular non-free image and not having
> any image, fair use (for projects with fair use policies) already allows us
> to use that image.  In other cases, it may be that no free image is
> available right now, but someone can go out and take one.  There would be
> much less incentive to do so if we were already using an NC image, so such
> stopgaps would likely become permanent.
>
> Of course, there will be attractive edge cases where we can fairly
> confidently say "the choice is NC or nothing".  But we cannot be ruled by
> edge cases; we must weigh them against the costs of complexity, confusion,
> and unfairness that we would be creating for ourselves (to say nothing of
> the additional headache we would create for reusers).
>
> Emufarmers
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
<mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>  
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
<mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

Re: [Wikimedia-l] New essay on the ambiguity of NC licenses

2020-07-12 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 look, I have spoken with dozen of artists so far, the missing opportunity in 
almost zero. The cost of the confusion and the waste of time is still a lot. I 
have stopped even trying, I simply say immediately "of course you would like to 
give NC, you can't, because there are strong ideological positions. Plus OTRS 
is far from efficient, so let's just focus on something else". They appreciate 
my pragmatism and I use the credit to upload more content on other issues. Fine 
with me, I like to have good credit with competent people. Sorry for Wiki.
   Il domenica 12 luglio 2020, 09:31:12 CEST, Benjamin Lees 
 ha scritto:  
 
 On Sat, Jul 11, 2020 at 9:20 PM Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l 
 wrote:

Are we really sure he would have done something in any case if we did not 
provide such options?


It's pretty hard to be sure about the hypothetical behavior of individuals.  
Undoubtedly, as you say, there are some people who are only willing to submit 
material to us if it is NC, and thus we currently lose out on material from 
them.  Undoubtedly, as Erik says, there are also some people who submit 
material to us under a free license but would choose an NC license if it were 
available, and thus we currently gain the benefit of their work being freely 
licensed, rather than NC.  I suspect the latter pool is far larger than the 
former.
When the choice is truly between a particular non-free image and not having any 
image, fair use (for projects with fair use policies) already allows us to use 
that image.  In other cases, it may be that no free image is available right 
now, but someone can go out and take one.  There would be much less incentive 
to do so if we were already using an NC image, so such stopgaps would likely 
become permanent.
Of course, there will be attractive edge cases where we can fairly confidently 
say "the choice is NC or nothing".  But we cannot be ruled by edge cases; we 
must weigh them against the costs of complexity, confusion, and unfairness that 
we would be creating for ourselves (to say nothing of the additional headache 
we would create for reusers).
Emufarmers
  
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
<mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

Re: [Wikimedia-l] New essay on the ambiguity of NC licenses

2020-07-11 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 I always supported a more effective centralized policy for NC. I don't think 
that will discourage organizations from adopting more free license per se, the 
same way that adopting certain NC material on local Wikis did not so far. it's 
not an absolute consequence, it's how you do it.

At least, we should start centralizing that non-free material locally uploaded 
since it's already there. I would like logos of Universities and coat of arms 
of public administration and doubtful old images that according to some 
platforms are free but for Commons are not (gray areas), to be on a NC part of 
Commons, or a dedicated platform (i always link 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/NonFreeWiki and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/NonFreeWiki_(2). it's just more rational. 

If we did so, we could start from there and see where it goes. We will have a 
list of established exceptions (that we accept already, just locally), we can 
add few more ones. it's not a definitive solution, it's a process that we 
should face together.

I think specifically we should accept NC if it's better than what it is 
currently available from the uploader. For example if an artist give us a 
reproduction of its artwork in NC for Wikipedia, is it still better than 
nothing? Are we really sure he would have done something in any case if we did 
not provide such options? We probbaly all suspect it's the max we can can get 
to the world in that scenario. This approach for example will not apply to the 
case of WHO, in their case is not a clear improvement, so no upload. 

If you put a limited group of users in charge of that process, or some funnel 
step in the procedure, it will never be massive, but it might be targeted and 
useful, IMHO.
Alex

Il domenica 12 luglio 2020, 02:33:04 CEST, James Heilman  
ha scritto:  

 Yes one of the stronger reasons to reject all use of the NC license is that
it increases incentives for other organizations to actually adopt open
licenses. I simply wish that such a position would convince more
organizations. WHO has repeatedly told me that we, as a non-profit, are
already free to use their work and if we chose not to, that is on us.

James

On Sat, Jul 11, 2020 at 6:19 PM Erik Moeller  wrote:

> Hi James :)
>
> (This is my last reply for today, given the recommended posting limit
> on this list.)
>
> > We all agree that NC licenses are exceedingly poor due to the reasons
> > listed, yet we leave a lot of useful content (such as Khan academy
> videos)
> > less accessible to our readers because we disallow any such use.
>
> I completely agree. I'm wondering if efforts have been made at the WMF
> or chapter level to partner with these organizations on new
> initiatives, where a more permissive license could be used? This could
> perhaps help to introduce CC-BY-SA/CC-BY to orgs like Khan Academy,
> and help lay the groundwork for potentially changing their default
> license.
>
> > This is a balance between pragmatism and idealism.
>
> I disagree with your framing here. There are many pragmatic reasons to
> want to build a knowledge commons with uniform expectations for how it
> can be built upon and re-used. It's also pragmatic to be careful about
> altering the incentive structure for contributors. Right now,
> Wikimedia Commons hosts millions of contributions under permissive
> licenses. How many of those folks would have chosen an "exceedingly
> poor" (your words) option like NC, if that was available? And if a
> nonfree carve-out is limited to organizations like Khan Academy, how
> is such a carve-out fair and equitable to contributors who have, in
> some cases, given up potential commercial revenue to contribute to
> Wikimedia projects?
>
> If a license is "exceedingly poor" and harmful to the goals of the
> free culture movement, incorporating more information under such terms
> strikes me as neither idealistic nor pragmatic -- it would just be
> short-sighted.
>
> Warmly,
> Erik
>
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 

-- 
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Giving Commons a bigger public

2020-05-24 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 First of all, good job. I appreciate that.

To be honest, however, some of us did not need a "proof of concept" to know 
that this was possible, we would have helped to build it years ago if the 
situation allowed it. it did not, the "social" environment was against it. We 
could not de facto support the metadata architecture with a bottom-up approach 
and a top-down strategy was necessary to go forward and, as a result, their 
quality is limited... so any service based on them will be limited as well for 
a while. It's a step in the right direction and I wish you all the best... you 
need me to translate in Italian, fine, I am here. 

The problem is however that it took more time than necessary to get there and 
it would be useful to face that. You don't have to explain to many of us what 
metadata were for in the end and what long-term change they can introduce, we 
knew that because you can see their use in many other platforms an get an idea 
how they are supposed to work...even newbies with professional experience got 
the concept that Wikidata could help Commons, by themselves. So the question is 
IMHO how this changes the minds of active users who did and do not care even 
now. 

Something of course changed over the years... nothing is static. When the 
Wikidata infobox arrived the comments of distrust of Wikidata drastically 
reduced, but it was not long time before this introduction that some Commons 
users were still insulting you for leaving a welcome template on their Wikidata 
talk page.
Is their attitude the core reason why these efforts are late? IMHO it is. Is it 
going to be solved? Because if it's not, this introduction wlll be in any case 
very slow. A bumpy road. We will have two mentalities coexisting at the same 
time, as we have for example with metadata.

Also, what does it mean for us who are active also in the real world? Not a 
greta change yet if the timeline is slow. When I went to a third party I had to 
say Commons was late on many issues (categorization, metadata, search engine, 
metrics, copyright guidelines, lack of analytical instrument for the backlog, 
workflow of NC files...) and no doubt such gaps were going to be filled one day 
but not soon (definitely much slower than many other issues on other 
platforms). Now I can say it's still late and is (as expected) catching up on 
this issue. Still, the third party won't be impressed, the reply will be "good. 
call me when it's ready". Which is fair, they are doing their job.
I can't change that yet. I don't know how my attitude can change it. I still 
think that this relies on the attitude of the bulk of users that even now are 
not interested in dealing with such long-term issues of Commons and any effort 
will wait a lot to get a clear feedback.

Il domenica 24 maggio 2020, 15:38:36 CEST, Gerard Meijssen 
 ha scritto:  

 Hoi,
Mike you are absolutely right but you are missing the point that I am
trying to make. Yes, what is exposed by Hay's SDSEARCH tool is based on all
the work that was done before and as such it relies absolutely on the work
that has been done before. Without it, this tool would not be possible.
This work is key for us to move forward.

What is so vitally important about this proof of concept is that it readily
opens up Commons depending on a localised user interface. Even when that is
not available search, it is possible based to search based on the
availability of labels in a language. This proof of concept dramatically
shows that nothing more is needed to open up Commons to a multilingual
public.

This proof of concept is an invitation to adopt this approach and make it
available in properly internationalised code as part of a multilingual
Commons user interface. It invites people to participate and with some
social engineering it the shore that turns the ship in making Commons a
much more positive place. Why, because making Commons usable even useful is
what we have not done for all the languages but English. When people are
happy to use Commons, they are more likely to participate and join its
community.

So far we could not care less as long as it was used in our own projects.
The challenge that I present to you is to make Commons *my goto place* for
illustrations for my blog. When you can convince me, you convince the world.

Remember our approach is that of a wiki. It does not have to be perfect, it
has to empower us to move forward.
Thanks,
      GerardM

On Sun, 24 May 2020 at 15:12, Michael Peel  wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> It’s worth remembering that this functionality is built in to Commons,
> it’s just not as user-friendly. From the example below, if you put
> "haswbstatement:P180=Q191931” into the Commons searchbox, you will get the
> same results. Thanks to the structured data on commons project+team!
>
> Also, around half of the Commons categories now have multilingual labels
> embedded in them through the Wikidata Infobox, which means that if you do
> an ordinary search for a

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons

2020-05-20 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 To be honest, I actively discourage newbies to edit but also to upload on 
Commons when they start. I prefer it when they focus on something else. If 
needed, I can find enough files because of my expertise and that's a decent 
starting point. Of course, I am active and soon or later uploading is a 
necessary step during many partnerships or classes, but I always assume and 
show the worst-case scenarios. You might think that such "cautious" attitude is 
not the wiki spirit, and I agree, but I know also that these users are not 
going to be helped, so it's mostly up to me to provide such support and I (like 
many other ones) have limited time. I also would like to offer to those 
potential long-term users a social ecosystem where they can grow and I am quite 
sure that at the moment Commons is not the best platform to do so.

it's a little bit more subtle than being "toxic"... it's dysfunctional, 
superficial, sloppy and unwarm. We have/had similar problems with other 
platforms... it's just human nature. There are groups of "active" users 
creating "bubbles" of realty where critical inputs from outside are dismissed 
as annoying or unworth. What is unique with Commons is that on other platforms 
this situation reduces/reduced contributions and, because of this reason, it 
does/did not create a huge backlog. Less involved people, less work induced by 
them. You get stagnation or hibernation if the situation is critical... but 
that's it. However, Commons just cannot end that way. On Commons the missing 
metadata, the generic categorizations, the partial descriptions, the necessary 
updates of copyright guidelines are just there, and similarly is the ongoing 
upload flow from other databases or initiatives because it is a nodal space. If 
people are more active on Wikivoyage, Wikisource or organizing Wiki Loves 
Monuments... this soon or later shows an effect and a backlog on this archive. 

The community of Commons really needs a network of constantly involved users, 
but such users can always end up being motivated somewhere else where they feel 
that their needs are better understood. 
A.M.


Il mercoledì 20 maggio 2020, 18:49:06 CEST, Strainu  
ha scritto:  
 
 My2c on the original question: Commons does a lot to discourage people from
uploading to Commons. Everything from not allowing non-free formats (even
automatically converted to free equivalents) to asking for cross-wiki
uploads to be disabled and repeatedly proposing the same file for deletion
is discouraging uploaders.

That's still anecdotical evidence I guess, but when one sees established
users deliberately avoiding Commons because of these shortfalls one should
probably take them  seriously.

Pe duminică, 17 mai 2020, Benjamin Ikuta  a scris:

>
>
> Anecdotally, it seems people sometimes don't upload their photos to
> Commons because they don't realize that the scope of Commons is much
> broader than that of Wikipedia.
>
> Has there been, or should there be, any research into this, or why people
> don't contribute more broadly?
>
> ~Benjamin
>
>
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
  
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons

2020-05-18 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 I remind you all the https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/NonFreeWiki proposal of a 
Non-Free Wiki. I supported that.

If we finally create it, maybe we can organize it since the beginning in a way 
closer to how users active on Wikiprojects nowadays might like such repository 
to work. With better language integration, cross-wiki metrics, efficient 
structured metadata, automated categorization, transparent OTRS, a flag system 
that allow users to start deletion procedure only when they have a standardized 
and balanced degree of activity, and so on. 

Once we show it works there, it would be much easier to import innovations on 
Commons... I am already stressed at the idea of discussing these things on 
Commons, but I would find interesting to set them up in a new system.

A.

Il martedì 19 maggio 2020, 03:20:37 CEST, George Herbert 
 ha scritto:  

We have two or three competing reasons to have commons like repositories:

1. Truly fully open content repository for Wikimedia projects and the world as 
a whole. (Commons now)

2. Truly fully open content repository in general of things which are worthy 
but not used in projects/articles now. (Some of Commons)

3. Commonly available repository for sufficiently free (fair use, other 
existing allowed cases like irreplaceable or so forth) use in at least one 
project so that other projects could also share the media efficiently if local 
content rules allow it. (Nowhere now, I’ve described as “uncommons” somewhat 
for its humor value as a name)

I have previously pointed out that ideally we’d have a way to unify those for 
easy other projects reference, but there were wailing and gnashing of teeth 
from developers and I list energy.

I also have pointed out that the “helpful” process of copying a non-fully-free 
image to Commons, local deletion due to overlap, then commons deletion removing 
*all* copies is pathological inter-project process behavior and we really 
needed to end that somehow.  Also ran into much wailing and gnashing of teeth 
from commons people not entirely wanting to be blamed and others out of 
patience trying to deal with commons people, and everyone loses interest.

Perhaps we would do better off to create an uncommons and change all the 
for-wider-use upload tools to deposit it there, point the internal image auto 
linking there, and have commons out on the side as not the direct Wiki project 
source but a specific curated open content source.  Everything in commons would 
be in uncommons and linked for articles etc, new fair use or irreplaceable 
content goes to uncommons only, and curators with open license intellectual 
property expertise could curate upselection of the approved bits to commons.

That should make everyone happy and be practical and implementable without 
horrible massive architecture changes.

-george

Sent from my iPhone

> On May 18, 2020, at 5:04 PM, Gnangarra  wrote:
> 
> it all comes back to "Who is our audience" and "How do we need/want to
> engage with them"
> 
> If you start on the mainpage, follow the about link, then follow to scope
> there is no clear just a vague anyone...
> 
> I think we need to be honest in the assessment of our true audience, thats
> basically the WMF projects therefore our purpose is "to make freely
> licensed media accessible across all movement projects"
> 
> Like the movement strategy process we need to dissect what we are trying to
> achieve and how we can get there, and then come up with a solution to
> address what we already have so its all consistent. At the moment we are
> developing differing concepts, tools, policies in isolation .
> 
>> On Mon, 18 May 2020 at 23:34, Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l <
>> wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Yes, structured data are far from perfect. I am sorry about it because I
>> know their potential but they need to grow on a difficult soil and this
>> slows down. We expected that, unfortunately. You can't just use them
>> top-down, they need a bottom-up approach but we lack the right mentality of
>> engaged users to make it grow.
>> 
>> If you want to change and improve something right now with metadata, try
>> galleries before categories. They are quite useless at the moment, I see
>> some users are updating them but they are really poor. It was very frequent
>> to finf low resolution files still there, they are not standardized as
>> well. Since they have limited structural role, working on that should be
>> easier.
>> 
>>    Il lunedì 18 maggio 2020, 17:20:31 CEST, Phil Nash via Wikimedia-l <
>> wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> ha scritto:
>> 
>> The search has to be done before the category structure is addressed,
>> even if that needs to be done. How else would you compartmentalise, what 3

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons

2020-05-18 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 Yes, structured data are far from perfect. I am sorry about it because I know 
their potential but they need to grow on a difficult soil and this slows down. 
We expected that, unfortunately. You can't just use them top-down, they need a 
bottom-up approach but we lack the right mentality of engaged users to make it 
grow.

If you want to change and improve something right now with metadata, try 
galleries before categories. They are quite useless at the moment, I see some 
users are updating them but they are really poor. It was very frequent to finf 
low resolution files still there, they are not standardized as well. Since they 
have limited structural role, working on that should be easier.

Il lunedì 18 maggio 2020, 17:20:31 CEST, Phil Nash via Wikimedia-l 
 ha scritto:  

 The search has to be done before the category structure is addressed, even if 
that needs to be done. How else would you compartmentalise, what 32 million 
images?
And structured data has to be fixed before either. The reason is that 
structured data does not have unique names, and I don't think people relate to 
the Q numbers as well as names of things they know already. It's actually very 
much worse than that because these automated "Depicts" suggestions do not 
appear to know about Commons categories such that they suggest an obvious 
statement.

We all know it's maybe broken, but I don't see this as a fix, even if we run 
two systems in parallel until the structured data is (a) mature (b) sensible 
and (c) throughly reliable.

---
New Outlook Express and Windows Live Mail replacement - get it here:
https://www.oeclassic.com/

- Original Message -
From: Gnangarra 
Reply-To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
Sent: 18/05/2020 15:53:35
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons

I think we could start to make the category structure obsolete  and focus
on structured data, there's already bots running basic structured data that
could be ramped up. and Having Wikidata game(
https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-game/) thats instead focused on whats in
a file & its description, that would capture more structured data including
licensing. It'd help teach people more about including structured data
62million files is a lot to process so it'll take time but we can run
competitions like 1lib1ref, encourage affiliates to focus on doing Commons
structured data game as outreach events, this will teach people about
licensing, and about what makes a good photograph because everyone knows a
30px by 30px photo is crap we can have structured data items less than
100,200,500px on the long edge.

Next step would be to look at the search function, add in an advance option
with a few optional fields to fill in that searches the structured data.
The advance search option could then sort by pixel size giving the biggest
images first.

On Mon, 18 May 2020 at 22:28, Samuel Klein  wrote:

> Commons needs iterative workflows that tag problems and modify what reuses
> / transfusions are supported, rather than making everything a crude
> delete/keep decision.  Else it will always struggle w scaling to these
> uses.
>
> 
>
> On Mon., May 18, 2020, 9:48 a.m. Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l, <
> wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> >  in the past "99% unproblematic" was true, because most of the things
> were
> > obvious and standard (panorama of towns, ancient portraits), it's not
> > nowadays.
> > You can upload tons of unproblematic pictures because they are easy to
> > find, but you don't need them really. So they mostly clutter the
> workflow.
> > There are a lot of images of kittens that we can upload, good luck
> > categorizing them. Of course, you can switch to very specific projects
> like
> > "documenting all small rivers" but the core issue are also high-quality
> > upload. And everything is potentially problematic there: the right of an
> > important person to privacy, the right of the manufacturer of an
> > instruments, how creative is the lighting of an object? if I upload an
> > image of a town it's probably a very nice one, taken by a competent
> > photographer who clearly show them on line as well. You are in a
> dimension
> > where you need to study, learn, ask around, find a balance. Instead we
> have
> > people acting randomly and superficially, because they do not care about
> > the long-term effect of their actions.
> >
> > This impacts the maintenance of course, because very specific issues
> > requires sophisticated categories, processes and metadata. The effort
> there
> > is quite high, you are always the first one to arrive. the first one to
> > clean up,the first one to explain to a third party. If yo

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons

2020-05-18 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 To be fair, lack of iterative processes can happen on other platforms as well: 
think about the role of portals on some Wikipedias, or some notability 
guidelines that are far from defined and groups of users claim opposite 
concepts. Even Wikidata has these issues (surprisingly mostly ignored by some 
actve users there) but in that case they rarely define the platform as a 
general perception. Plus, soon or later, they have to focus on them somehow. 
The problem with Commons is that it gets easier to just ignore them and try 
somewhere else, instead of centralizing issues and solve them there, it acts 
the opposite way when real problems emerge from real life. 

When I noticed that we could refine categorization of images from books I did 
not open the discussion on Commons, but on Wikisource. When I want to chat 
about how metadata can help I do with mostly Wikidata users, not Commons users, 
and so on. It should be mutlilingual but meta and Wikidata clearly do this 
better.
What also is a problem is that copyright just... change... and again it's 
easier to handle it at level of national chapters than on Commons. So a 
platform that should be designed to handle a clearly iterative issue basically 
underperforms on that. 

As the first truly multilingual content-related active platform, Commons was 
probably not designed efficiently to handle its role and over the years we 
could not fix it. It should be the one to do a lot of things instead it just 
handle badly sometimes what other platforms or affiliates cannot handle in the 
first place. You can't handle metadata? let's start from Wikidata. You can't 
handle copyright issue? national chapters. OTRS? Language-based channels also 
from affiliates and meta. GLAM? Affiliates. Ancient documents and epigraphs? 
Maybe Wkisource, sometimes. Problem with some NC files? Local Wikipedias.

is it just me or it is too big to fails, so we keep it because it has a 
strucutral role, but it basically just cannot catalyze efficiently new things.






   Il lunedì 18 maggio 2020, 16:28:00 CEST, Samuel Klein  ha 
scritto:  
 
 Commons needs iterative workflows that tag problems and modify what reuses / 
transfusions are supported, rather than making everything a crude delete/keep 
decision.  Else it will always struggle w scaling to these uses.


On Mon., May 18, 2020, 9:48 a.m. Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l, 
 wrote:

 in the past "99% unproblematic" was true, because most of the things were 
obvious and standard (panorama of towns, ancient portraits), it's not nowadays.
You can upload tons of unproblematic pictures because they are easy to find, 
but you don't need them really. So they mostly clutter the workflow. There are 
a lot of images of kittens that we can upload, good luck categorizing them. Of 
course, you can switch to very specific projects like "documenting all small 
rivers" but the core issue are also high-quality upload. And everything is 
potentially problematic there: the right of an important person to privacy, the 
right of the manufacturer of an instruments, how creative is the lighting of an 
object? if I upload an image of a town it's probably a very nice one, taken by 
a competent photographer who clearly show them on line as well. You are in a 
dimension where you need to study, learn, ask around, find a balance. Instead 
we have people acting randomly and superficially, because they do not care 
about the long-term effect of their actions.

This impacts the maintenance of course, because very specific issues requires 
sophisticated categories, processes and metadata. The effort there is quite 
high, you are always the first one to arrive. the first one to clean up,the 
first one to explain to a third party. If you add on that more unnecessary 
stress than required, people reduce this job as much as they can as a necessary 
balance. But that job has an important effect in the overall maintenance, so at 
a certain point you start to see the effect when it is not there. 

It's not a big surprise, we tried to explain this fact for years, but the 
community is designed to ignore these aspects and encourage other work 
attitudes. It's just like that.


    Il lunedì 18 maggio 2020, 15:28:51 CEST, Yaroslav Blanter 
 ha scritto:  

 To be fair, in most cases to use Commons for uploading files is totally 
unproblematic as soon as one has basic understanding of copyright. I am pretty 
sure 99% of my uploads can not be deleted (I had my files mass-nominated for 
deletion, once with the claim they are not mine, and once with the claim they 
are holiday photos and out of scope, but both cases admins were reasonably 
enough to speedy close the nominations). Of course there are always potentially 
problematic cases, for example I can imagine for one could start requiring 
"publication" dates for painting, which is copyright paranoia but some people 
take it seriously etc. But if one uploads something suffic

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons

2020-05-18 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 in the past "99% unproblematic" was true, because most of the things were 
obvious and standard (panorama of towns, ancient portraits), it's not nowadays.
You can upload tons of unproblematic pictures because they are easy to find, 
but you don't need them really. So they mostly clutter the workflow. There are 
a lot of images of kittens that we can upload, good luck categorizing them. Of 
course, you can switch to very specific projects like "documenting all small 
rivers" but the core issue are also high-quality upload. And everything is 
potentially problematic there: the right of an important person to privacy, the 
right of the manufacturer of an instruments, how creative is the lighting of an 
object? if I upload an image of a town it's probably a very nice one, taken by 
a competent photographer who clearly show them on line as well. You are in a 
dimension where you need to study, learn, ask around, find a balance. Instead 
we have people acting randomly and superficially, because they do not care 
about the long-term effect of their actions.

This impacts the maintenance of course, because very specific issues requires 
sophisticated categories, processes and metadata. The effort there is quite 
high, you are always the first one to arrive. the first one to clean up,the 
first one to explain to a third party. If you add on that more unnecessary 
stress than required, people reduce this job as much as they can as a necessary 
balance. But that job has an important effect in the overall maintenance, so at 
a certain point you start to see the effect when it is not there. 

It's not a big surprise, we tried to explain this fact for years, but the 
community is designed to ignore these aspects and encourage other work 
attitudes. It's just like that.

Il lunedì 18 maggio 2020, 15:28:51 CEST, Yaroslav Blanter 
 ha scritto:  

 To be fair, in most cases to use Commons for uploading files is totally 
unproblematic as soon as one has basic understanding of copyright. I am pretty 
sure 99% of my uploads can not be deleted (I had my files mass-nominated for 
deletion, once with the claim they are not mine, and once with the claim they 
are holiday photos and out of scope, but both cases admins were reasonably 
enough to speedy close the nominations). Of course there are always potentially 
problematic cases, for example I can imagine for one could start requiring 
"publication" dates for painting, which is copyright paranoia but some people 
take it seriously etc. But if one uploads something sufficiently far from the 
grey area it normally should be ok.

(I am still a Commons admin, but I reduced my admin activity to a minimum and I 
am not planning to increase the activity level).

Best
Yaroslav

On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 3:12 PM Ziko van Dijk  wrote:

Hello Alessandro,
Thank you for your post and its insight. I recognized the same with me: I
only make use of Wikimedia Commons in lessons if I have enough time. Also I
would introduce it only to students with a solid knowledge of English.

Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l 
schrieb am Mo. 18. Mai 2020 um 13:08:

> In the end, it's more like inducing order from other projects than caring
> about the order on Commons because there clearly can't be with people
> acting the way they do.

This is a great observation! And this phenomenon contributes to the
on-going chaos, to the work-around-culture you need to adapt to if you want
to make use of Wikimedia Commons. :-(

Kind regards
Ziko

They are also not caring for it: if you spend your time starting
> unnecessary deletion procedures instead of cleaning up categories or
> description, you obviously have your priority, so we also have ours.
>

> About the main page, we need to focus more on media files IMHO, and of
> course search is complicated but I am sure metadata can improve it.
>
> A.
>     Il lunedì 18 maggio 2020, 11:33:46 CEST, Robert Myers <
> robert.my...@wikimedia.org.au> ha scritto:
>
>  Well some people do, but it is when they get trolled by other contributors
> and/or overzealous Admin comes along and deletes the file. They quickly
> lose interest, in turn telling other people not to bother.
>
> I just had another lot of photographs tagged by a troll, in which an Admin
> deletes (
>
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log=File:Rachel_Priest_after_the_Sydney_Thunder_vs_Adelaide_Strikers_WBBL_game_at_Robertson_Oval.jpg
>
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log=File:Abandoned_farm_house_in_Hillgrove_01.jpg
> ).
> These have been on Commons for two + years, using the same camera gear I
> have used over the years. If it is enough for me to give up on the project,
> it would be the same for any other user but for a newbie it is something
> that would make me run for the hills (depart quickly as possible)!
>
> On Sun, M

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons

2020-05-18 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 I keep using Commons/OTRS with newbies, but I warned them how dysfunctional it 
can be. it's not really about doing things properly but how they look a certain 
way to people with a certain mindset. Addressing issues of copyright has 
limited correlation with what people who know superficially the summary of a 
guideline think copyright is.

Years ago I used to teach newbies how to create Commons categories as well. 
unfortunately I had to teach them also Wikidata until they asked me why better 
categorization using structured data were not possible. it was already 2016 and 
teaching manual categorization was starting to sound ridiculous, so was also 
showing the "controlled" chaos of confusing standard about used languages and 
pattern in the category tree.

I tried to explain these facts to some established Commons users but you know 
how they behave... at that point  I realized that when they were talking about 
"complication for newbies" they were mostly talking about themselves and their 
rigid vision. So, like many people, I gave up.

Nowadays if I can spend part of a class to teach how to create Commons 
categories I mostly ignore that option. I teach how to create rich WIkidata 
items, and when they upload an image I tell them to put a nice description, 
coordinates or a generic category of the administrative entity and use the 
image with P18. You have all you need from Wikidata to quickly set up a solid 
categorization if you really want to do so, it's just overall attitude. Slowly, 
some form of automation has started to appear, so fine with that so far,

Of course we do a lot of work in any case, for example I pushed for better 
categorization from Wikisource upload, and when Wiki Loves Monuments arrives in 
my area we are very accurate, despite 5000-1 new images we provide a lot of 
commons categories through Wikidata. But even in that case, we do it at our own 
risk. We create empty categories where we known they will be filled soon 
because photographers tell us so, but we risk them to be deleted.
 In the end, it's more like inducing order from other projects than caring 
about the order on Commons because there clearly can't be with people acting 
the way they do. They are also not caring for it: if you spend your time 
starting unnecessary deletion procedures instead of cleaning up categories or 
description, you obviously have your priority, so we also have ours.

About the main page, we need to focus more on media files IMHO, and of course 
search is complicated but I am sure metadata can improve it.

A.
Il lunedì 18 maggio 2020, 11:33:46 CEST, Robert Myers 
 ha scritto:  

 Well some people do, but it is when they get trolled by other contributors
and/or overzealous Admin comes along and deletes the file. They quickly
lose interest, in turn telling other people not to bother.

I just had another lot of photographs tagged by a troll, in which an Admin
deletes (
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log=File:Rachel_Priest_after_the_Sydney_Thunder_vs_Adelaide_Strikers_WBBL_game_at_Robertson_Oval.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log=File:Abandoned_farm_house_in_Hillgrove_01.jpg).
These have been on Commons for two + years, using the same camera gear I
have used over the years. If it is enough for me to give up on the project,
it would be the same for any other user but for a newbie it is something
that would make me run for the hills (depart quickly as possible)!

On Sun, May 17, 2020 at 1:07 PM Benjamin Ikuta 
wrote:

>
>
> Anecdotally, it seems people sometimes don't upload their photos to
> Commons because they don't realize that the scope of Commons is much
> broader than that of Wikipedia.
>
> Has there been, or should there be, any research into this, or why people
> don't contribute more broadly?
>
> ~Benjamin
>
>
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 

-- 

Robert Myers
Secretary - Wikimedia Australia
M: +61 400 670 288
robert.my...@wikimedia.org.au
http://www.wikimedia.org.au

Wikimedia Australia Inc. is an independent charitable organisation which
supports the efforts of the Wikimedia Foundation in Australia. We welcome
your support by membership or donations to keep the Wikimedia mission alive.
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons

2020-05-17 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 I have no doubt that on the long-term solutions will be found. Even if 
structural data were IMHO presented and used poorly, the catalyzing effect of 
them and Wikidata will be there. I am also in full support for the creation of 
a parallel Commons for NC files as well, which will also speed up many 
processes. I am not interested in some ideological stance about the matter, if 
we can keep NC files locally, we can also on a general platforms, or we don't 
keep them at all.

The point is that such solutions will never really originate from a big part of 
the community of Commons (including part of OTRS), they simply cannot stem from 
a community structured the way some users actively shaped it over the years, 
encouraging a self-referential "righteous" vision. Think about what occurred 
with Wikidata, I saw users being trolled for discussing about its future role 
the beginning, but they were mostly right, I don't see the Commons users who 
invented paranoid scenarios to justify their behavior even thinking about that 
now.

I don't have time to protect the social roles of users who behave in such a 
poor way. If I can solve things just going around them, I do so. It is a 
failure, but it's not the fault of many among us. After I have to fix problems 
from actions that could have simply being avoided with just a tiny amount of 
good sense, I don't have time to discuss that there might be  a better way of 
doing thing to users who will just ignore that and go to the first occasion to 
reproduce the same behavior again, because they are even rewarded for that. It 
takes me hours and I don't have any energy left, certainly not even to rename a 
file, create a category or verify a license. I don't have even energy to 
present it nicely to a third part who is witnessing that. I don't care how 
certain users look, because they are the first ones who don't care about the 
consequence of their actions.
Over the years, I am more convinced that the best solution is to let them go. 
It does not matter if the backlog obviously increases. When we will be free to 
set up more functional solutions, the backlog can be reduced quite easily. I 
have therefore stopped many years ago to perform any actions outside my 
projects and I am happy that way. I am sure I am not the only one. I am slways 
happy to create tool outside of such bubble, of course, but not a lot inside it.

   Il domenica 17 maggio 2020, 20:14:49 CEST, Gerard Meijssen 
 ha scritto:  
 
 Hoi,Just consider this, there are still many pictures in the English Wikipedia 
that could be in Commons because of its license and regularly there are 
pictures in Commons that are deleted because there license is not compatible 
with Commons. At Commons a revolution is taking place because the basic 
building blocks for it to become truly useful are in place. We are all invited 
to include "depicts" statements effectively linking them to Wikidata, to 
multilinguality, and make images findable. 
It is relatively straightforward to replace license information with  wikidata 
and use it for a purpose. There is one tiny proviso; it means that English 
Wikipedia material has to be dealt with in the same way. Preferably in the same 
database. It then follows that all the true freely licensed material is part of 
Commons and its policies, for the rest there are the exemptions, the material 
that is allowed for use in English Wikipedia is part of English Wikipedia and 
its policies. When you then look for material to use in whatever project, the 
license limits what you can use, what you find. For material that we want to 
include that has an incompatible license, we find that we cannot use it in our 
projects and we may choose if and how we expose it to the world.
Effectively what fits the Commons policies is usable at all our projects, the 
other stuff relies on the license involved. An example, an original that is 
reduced in size to fit the "fair use" criteria has a place but is not 
available. Obvious exceptions the care takers of our material. 
The biggest benefit I see is that we bring together what is divided and bring 
options to the pruning process of Commons that enable it to recognise stuff 
that has a place in "fair use" situations. It opens up our content 
linguistically and it will definitely make us more inclusively for a world 
beyond the two U-s.Thanks,      GerardM
On Sun, 17 May 2020 at 17:25, Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l 
 wrote:

 "there are way less people maintaining it than it is needed" is naif summary 
of what is going on. IMHO. There are people maintaining it in a way that is 
counterproductive. You can always create an efficient workflow, if you want it.

We don't need people that delete an image of a statue in the USA because of 
no:fop even if it is a small size in a big composition and than keep the other 
ones in the category that are in any case used on enwikipedia. We don't need 
peop

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons

2020-05-17 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 "there are way less people maintaining it than it is needed" is naif summary 
of what is going on. IMHO. There are people maintaining it in a way that is 
counterproductive. You can always create an efficient workflow, if you want it.

We don't need people that delete an image of a statue in the USA because of 
no:fop even if it is a small size in a big composition and than keep the other 
ones in the category that are in any case used on enwikipedia. We don't need 
people copying and pasting quickly motivations without even reading them 
confusing countries or scenarios, as it happened (they almost never apologize, 
of course, because they are so busy). We don't need people that when a deletion 
procedure is rejected keep insisting looking at the contribution of an user 
stressing them until they find something. We don't need people deleting 
low-resolution files that were few months short form entering the public 
domain, when in the same time they could have deleted 100 times more of useless 
images. We don't need people arguing to delete ancient images that couldn't be 
proved "not to be recent" against good faith.  We don't need people starting 
deletion procedure if an image is on line instead of simply asking the 
uploader.  

However, it's a fact that some active members of the community created over the 
years a system where such people are encouraged to act in such a rigid way and 
probably even believe that their behaviour is necessary. Given these 
circumstances, it is not the moral duty of the silent majority of users to deal 
with the consequences of such behaviour. They can go on and try to delete 
everything the way they do and they will also deal with the huge amount of 
backlog they create wasting the time of users. It's only fair to me that 
whoever keep encouraging such unefficient workflow should be the one to clean 
the mess.
A.

   Il domenica 17 maggio 2020, 12:15:30 CEST, Yaroslav Blanter 
 ha scritto:  

 Concerning using Commons as a photo hosting, I have written a blog post
earlier this year:

https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/wikimedia-commons-as-private-photo-hosting/2866

However, I can not see how it can become anything close to social media,
nor do I think it should be. It already has a lot of garbage, and there are
way less people maintaining it than it is needed. That it is one of the
nastiest communities among all Wikimedia projects, with people being
allowed to do things for which they would become instantly long-term
blocked on other projects, does not help either

Best
Yaroslav

On Sun, May 17, 2020 at 10:32 AM Tito Dutta  wrote:

> This discussion, although started with a question "why don't people
> contribute to Wikimedia Commons, now after actually the discussion above,
> covers more topics. A few notes, observations and comments:
> 1) I remember a major discussion took place somewhere on Wikimedia Commons
> when one of the strategy2030 draft recommendations suggested uploading
> non-free images on Wikimedia Commons. That discussion was also on the scope
> of Wikimedia Commons. I wish I could recall where exactly it took place.
> However, I am pretty sure that many of you have read or participated there.
> Most probably there I first read the idea of "uncommon/uncommons" (or an
> alternative version of Commons).
> 2) Wikimedia Commons is most possibly/definitely less popular than
> Wikipedia. I believe many editors start from Wikipedia and then move to
> Wikimedia Commons. There is, of course, another reason, when someone
> gradually becomes more experienced on Wikipedia, they learn they need to
> spend some time on Wikimedia Commons for the article–photos they are
> working on. I "personally" do "not" feel the solution of this "popularity"
> problem is rebranding. We need more Wikimedia Commons-focused plans,
> initiatives, and strategies (I find this is true for all other projects).
> 3) Yes, the difficulty of using the app/web interface might be an issue of
> seeing less contribution as well. You have different photo-sharing
> platforms which uploads photos in 1-click. Commons upload process is
> longer. (I am not saying the process is bad, of course, we need all the
> steps, and there is not an unnecessary step there.)
> 4) The human emotion and interaction part is kind of missing: On Facebook,
> Instagram the likes, comments etc one gets, work as a motivation. This is a
> major issue. On FB, or Instagram an uploader can connect with people
> instantly, and their responses/reactions are quick as well. (Here also, I
> am not really suggesting anything, just keeping it as an observation)
> Let's talk about Google Photos, their badges, photo views analytics, and
> email time to time (eg: Your photo is making a difference, or You are a
> star) is good for motivation as well.
>
> Thanks
> User:Titodutta
>
>
>
> On Sun, 17 May 2020 at 13:03, Fæ  wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 17 May 2020 at 07:20, Roland Unger
> >  wrote:
> > >
> > > There are several causes why

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Meet

2020-04-25 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 I told so many times WMF should support infrastructure for the volunteers, so 
thank you very much for this step in that direction.
A.M.

Il domenica 26 aprile 2020, 01:08:01 CEST, Tito Dutta  
ha scritto:  
 
 Hello,
That's super great news. I definitely want to try it. Thanks a lot for
working on this.

Thanks
Tito Dutta
Note: If I don't reply to your email in 2 days, please feel free to remind
me over email or phone call.


On Sun, 26 Apr 2020 at 01:57, Amir Sarabadani  wrote:

> Hey,
> "Wikimedia Meet" [0] (https://meet.wmcloud.org), is a project in Wikimedia
> CloudVPS for Wikimedians to meet virtually instead of using commercial
> services like Zoom which might have security and privacy implications
> [1][2]. Currently it's a jitsi (jitsi.org) installation.
>
> If you want to just use/test it, let me know and I create you a user and
> password. You can share the username and password with anyone you want to
> meet but please do not post it publicly. In your email you can also give me
> your desired user and password. **Do not reuse any password**. You can also
> contact any of the ticketmasters instead of me:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Meet#List_of_ticketmasters
>
> In order to make this project more robust, I'm looking for Ticketmasters
> too, Ticketmasters create accounts for others (It doesn't require any
> technical knowledge, you fill a form in web for others)
>
> If you want to help maintaining it (which would be greatly appreciated) let
> me know and I give you the needed access. I put the technical documentation
> in mediawiki.org [3]. There are several bits you can help with, like
> puppetizing it, scalability, observability, improving authentication,
> trying to see if BBB can be used as well, and so much more. You can find
> the tickets in the phabricator board and assign a ticket to yourself if you
> feel like helping out.
>
> [0] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Meet
> [1] https://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/2020/03/27/zoom/
> [2]
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/02/zoom-technology-security-coronavirus-video-conferencing
> [3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Meet
>
> Hope that would be useful for our users :)
> Best
> --
> Amir (he/him)
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
  
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WikiProject COVID-19 (English Wikipedia) is started

2020-03-15 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 I took images of an almost empty Milan Central train station even before i 
think there were any specific social distancing rule 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Milano_Centrale_train_station_during_2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Italy
... and created few days later  
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Social_distancing
but overall I think the topic will be covered, on line there are always many 
images with the right licenses. 

I am more interested in people taking nice images of empty towns now that it's 
possible. For example when you walk for basic chores, stop for few minutes.

Alessandro




Il domenica 15 marzo 2020, 22:53:59 CET, Paulo Santos Perneta 
 ha scritto:  
 
 I photographed the COVID-19 isolation room at our local university (it's
precisely in front of the cabinet I usually work in), and created the
category for COVID-19 isolations:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:COVID-19_isolations

Best,
Paulo

Yaroslav Blanter  escreveu no dia domingo, 15/03/2020
à(s) 21:46:

> Just to remark that I went today to a supermarket to take a picture of
> empty shelves and eventually to upload it to Commons. Which I did (and
> eventually I added one of the photographs to an English Wikipedia article),
> just to discover that several people had the same idea before me, including
> one in my city. Still, the number of relevant pictures is laughably small,
> and now it is good time to take pictures for example of places which are
> normally overcrowded by tourists and now are empty. Or queues at the
> airports due to cancellations, We need to document the event (obviously not
> compromising on the safety), and anybody with a cell phone can easily
> contribute.
>
> Best
> Yaroslav
>
>
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Empty_chips_shelves_in_AH_Delft_02.jpg
>
>
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Empty_butter_shelves_in_AH_Delft_01.jpg
>
> On Sun, Mar 15, 2020 at 10:12 PM Pine W  wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > May I suggest that the discussion regarding the name take place
> > somewhere other than Wikimedia-l? I think that a talk page of one of
> > the relevant articles on English Wikipedia, a WikiProject Medicine
> > talk page, or the WikiProject Medicine Mailing List, would all be
> > reasonable venues.
> >
> > Pine
> > ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
> >
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
  
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] World Health Organization licences & COVID-19

2020-03-12 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

Besides CC for content, I was guidelines to get some guideline for
communication. That is something agencies can do.
In general we are here posting or twitting or creating article or advocating
for media files to be uploaded, or sharing public data on social media when
they are under acceptable licenses... some communities think about informative
sitenotices, I even saw Wikipedia logos with masks suggested for the situation.

I am collecting these situations while I discover them and I wonder, is it
possible to discuss them with WHO and now if they are good or bad, just get a
third-party feedback? We are often improvising in good faith.

Otherwise, we will simply ask at the national level, I guess.
It's not that I cannot for example ask an Italian doctor for, let's say, a
useful image right now, I just would like to avoid doing that because they have
more important battles to fight.

A.M.

Il giovedì 12 marzo 2020, 20:56:02 CET, Jorge Vargas
ha scritto:

Hi all,
Jorge Vargas, WMF's Sr. Manager for Regional Partnerships here. Wanted to
quickly chime in to mention that as several folks on this list know, WMF has
been more proactive in the past year or so to build bridges with UN agencies to
see how they can better support our movement and have a more
coordinated/holistic approach, in addition, and in collaboration with all the
amazing local and regional efforts already taking place and being led by
affiliates worldwide.
One immediate result (and thanks to work supported by John Cummings and
Wikimedia Argentina) we have been working closely with UN Human Rights [1] to
support ongoing and future efforts to distribute and create content related to
human rights (#WikiForHumanRights, with more info on this post [2] and meta
[3]), and now their support to gender-related initiatives like the
WIkiGapChallenge [4]). All of this to say that part of that agreement was
starting to navigate how to get more UN-copyrighted content on a free license
(starting with content from UN Human Rights, but broadening the scope to other
agencies).
Part of this work has been understanding the complexity to navigate
decision-making within the UN system for things like copyright ownership and
licensing of content. From our understanding so far, even if a UN agency (like
UN Human Rights or UNICEF) wants to free up content, a decision needs to happen
from the UN Publications Office in NY (an exception to this are decentralized
agencies, like UNESCO, who can make that call themselves). We have been
lobbying with UN Publications Office to better understand where they stand, but
as mentioned, when they do use a free license, they include an NC clause by
default.
I want to take this opportunity to rally ongoing efforts, approaches, etc being
done by folks reading this. Ping me here or off-thread if you'd like to share
more of what you've done so far (I'll follow up with you James! Thanks for
already taking the lead in contacting WHO before). Ideally, mapping what
stakeholders are on the table right now and what past conversations have
happened will help us make progress in getting traction as we and the movement
at large continue the conversation.
Feel free to reach out anytime if you have any comments or questions.
Thanks!Jorge
[1]
https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2019/08/16/wikimedia-and-un-human-rights-partner-to-expand-wikipedias-knowledge/[2]
https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2019/12/10/wikimedia-foundation-and-un-human-rights-launch-wikiforhumanrights-campaign/[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiForHumanRights[4]
https://standup4humanrights.org/en/2020/highlights_04.html
On Thu, Mar 12, 2020 at 11:44 AM Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l
wrote:

Well, we did our share. For both medical and social aspects, we were there.

I was hoping at least to get some guidelines for our affiliates' social media...

Alessandro
Il giovedì 12 marzo 2020, 19:35:56 CET, Damon Sicore ha
scritto:

Not to mention a lost opportunity for the world.
On Thu, Mar 12, 2020 at 1:30 PM James Heilman wrote:

I have been asking WHO to release COVID19 content (specially videos) under
open licenses since since Feb 2020.

I have spoke with Aleksandra Kuzmanovic who has been involved in their
collaboration with Facebook and Twitter etc.

They say maybe. But despite a bunch of follow up emails have not seemed too
keen. It is really a lost opportunity for both of us :-(

James

On Thu, Mar 12, 2020 at 9:47 AM Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l <
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Some of us sent an email when it was (only apparently) less serious but
> we got no reply, as far as I know. It was sent by the UG of Washington DC
> and I contacted WMCH doing that, because they might reach their central
> office quickly in Geneva if necessary.
> Changing some licenses was one of the things I hoped to discuss, but in
> general we knew it was already se

Re: [Wikimedia-l] World Health Organization licences & COVID-19

2020-03-12 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 Well, we did our share. For both medical and social aspects, we were there. 

I was hoping at least to get some guidelines for our affiliates' social media...

Alessandro
Il giovedì 12 marzo 2020, 19:35:56 CET, Damon Sicore  ha 
scritto:  
 
 Not to mention a lost opportunity for the world.
On Thu, Mar 12, 2020 at 1:30 PM James Heilman  wrote:

I have been asking WHO to release COVID19 content (specially videos) under
open licenses since since Feb 2020.

I have spoke with Aleksandra Kuzmanovic who has been involved in their
collaboration with Facebook and Twitter etc.

They say maybe. But despite a bunch of follow up emails have not seemed too
keen. It is really a lost opportunity for both of us :-(

James

On Thu, Mar 12, 2020 at 9:47 AM Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l <
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:

>  Some of us sent an email when it was (only apparently) less serious but
> we got no reply, as far as I know. It was sent by the UG of Washington DC
> and I contacted WMCH doing that, because they might reach their central
> office quickly in Geneva if necessary.
> Changing some licenses was one of the things I hoped to discuss, but in
> general we knew it was already serious and we were trying to gain some time.
>
> In the end, WHO changed their attitude only after the last week-end,
> probably because people started finally to be worried in the USA, but the
> pandemia should have been declared weeks ago or at least last week, IMHO,
> when also the data of another "not small" country, that is Spain, started
> to be quite out of control (if Italy was already not enough after China,
> Iran and South Korea).
>
> They seem to have taken more slowly than necessary. Let's hope they
> finally reach out.
>
> Regards.
> Alessandro
>
>     Il giovedì 12 marzo 2020, 16:29:34 CET, Andy Mabbett <
> a...@pigsonthewing.org.uk> ha scritto:
>
>  WHO have a great video on COVID-19 ("Coronavius"):
>
>   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1APwq1df6Mw
>
> Now would be a good time for the WMF, local chapters, other
> affiliates, and individual, to publicly call on them to open licence
> such material, as I have done, here:
>
>   https://twitter.com/pigsonthewing/status/1238124060145483777
>
> [much of their published material is under NC restrictions -
> https://www.who.int/publishing/copyright/en/ ]
>
> --
> Andy Mabbett
> @pigsonthewing
> http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
>
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>



-- 
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
<mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
  
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
<mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

Re: [Wikimedia-l] World Health Organization licences & COVID-19

2020-03-12 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 Some of us sent an email when it was (only apparently) less serious but we got 
no reply, as far as I know. It was sent by the UG of Washington DC and I 
contacted WMCH doing that, because they might reach their central office 
quickly in Geneva if necessary.
Changing some licenses was one of the things I hoped to discuss, but in general 
we knew it was already serious and we were trying to gain some time.

In the end, WHO changed their attitude only after the last week-end, probably 
because people started finally to be worried in the USA, but the pandemia 
should have been declared weeks ago or at least last week, IMHO, when also the 
data of another "not small" country, that is Spain, started to be quite out of 
control (if Italy was already not enough after China, Iran and South Korea). 

They seem to have taken more slowly than necessary. Let's hope they finally 
reach out.

Regards.
Alessandro

Il giovedì 12 marzo 2020, 16:29:34 CET, Andy Mabbett 
 ha scritto:  
 
 WHO have a great video on COVID-19 ("Coronavius"):

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1APwq1df6Mw

Now would be a good time for the WMF, local chapters, other
affiliates, and individual, to publicly call on them to open licence
such material, as I have done, here:

  https://twitter.com/pigsonthewing/status/1238124060145483777

[much of their published material is under NC restrictions -
https://www.who.int/publishing/copyright/en/ ]

-- 
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
  
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why renaming to Wikipedia will wreak havoc on other projects

2020-02-25 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

I see. If I am reading it right I think that in that case I would never tried
a direct OTRS , mostly because I know how the system is designed and its
possible rigid reaction. IMHO it's not designed to minimize these points of
stress but to encourage them. It looks more like a play when some people are
confortable with a certain role. I am not interested in that play, so I try to
skip it as much as possible.
I have noticed for example people like these discussions about notability on
Wikidata, but not the solution. In practice I see millions of items with
acceptable IDs which will be completed by images and these discussions are
already old. Just to be clear... I hate poorly created items, since I mostly
teach who to manually improve them and even I don't care so much, so why people
from other projects should bother inventing apocalyptic scenarios just makes me
smile. They will stop when they will find something else to complain. Still, I
don't know you but to me It looks more of a social thing than a fucntional one.
There is really nothing more to discuss if you look into that, we need
bibliometric items for precise application within the scope of Wikidata, and
they require images.
I am not going to write the more time-consuming steps I would have used to
prepare or encourage or process that import, I simply would have assumed that
the most direct way for that situation was just pointless to try. There is
always some issues with one file in a batch or the phrasing of a sentence,
there is always a confusion between notability guidelines... there is always a
person who would precisely do what will escalate the situation. So, if the
chance are more than 50% to go bad... why bother?

I prefer to find ways to make the longer road more time efficient and
meaningful. Of course if you don't go that way you are not presenting things in
a nice clear single passage so you cannot often take the spotlight... but I am
not committed to that aspect, so It's not an issue for me. I still meet a lot
of very interesting people on the way.
Still, you have my support to remove that rigidi interpretation of notability
on OTRS. If I can help to more people sapre time, I totally support it.

Alessadro

Il martedì 25 febbraio 2020, 18:21:18 CET, Gerard Meijssen
ha scritto:

Hoi,This is the chat (too long) at Wikidata
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Project_chat#Images_for_Wikidata_-_%22Global_Young_Academy%22This
is the chat at Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:OTRS/Noticeboard#OTRS_&_WikidataThanks,
GerardM
On Tue, 25 Feb 2020 at 17:45, Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l
wrote:

Can you provide some links?
I keep asking images for Wikidata items since years and I do not recall any
issue at all. I have the feeling that as long everything is formally correct
(all categories prepared and linked via wikidata infobox) nobody digs into that
very much.
It's true however that I have a cynical approach. In general, I think that
whoever spends his/her time on this and not on deleting unused low resolution
old images or cropping files or improving categorization is probably more
focused on chasing users than actually cleaning up. As soon as you assume that
this is the core source of the behavior, you can teach newbies quite well how
to avoid it. It's not "good faith" but... it kinda works.
Alessandro

Il martedì 25 febbraio 2020, 17:11:44 CET, Gerard Meijssen
ha scritto:

Hoi,
Apparantly at Commons they have standardised themselves to only support
Wikipedia.

At Wikidata we have people who are notable according to our standards. We
are actively asking them for images to illustrate our information. The best
suggestion we get is: do not ask for images because they are deleted at
Commons.

When this is what awaits us when we standardise on one label Wikipedia, it
is obvious that this is the worst scenario for the "other" projects. The
projects who operate to different standards who have notability criteria
different from English Wikipedia.
Thanks,
GerardM
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
<mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
<mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines

Re: [Wikimedia-l] AffCom - Candidates for new mandate

2020-01-22 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 They made a tweet 
https://twitter.com/WikimediaAffCom/status/1206831003140005888
Alex


Il giovedì 23 gennaio 2020, 01:32:40 CET, Paulo Santos Perneta 
 ha scritto:  
 
 It should also be here in the "News" section: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_CommitteeAnd visible elsewhere in 
that page, probably close to where the "voting members" list is. But it's 
nowhere to seen in that page, as far as I know. 
I already knew that selection process should be going on since December, or 
else I would have missed it entirely.
There's a lot to improve in AffCom concerning communication with the 
communities, for sure... :P
Best,Paulo

Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l  escreveu 
no dia quinta, 23/01/2020 à(s) 00:23:

 On January the 10th I put it in the home page of meta 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Main_Page/WM_News=prev=19695407
 , I think I did the same last year but I was considering obvious we had 
received some mails and I did not pay attention.
I am surprised there are so many candidates considering the limited publicity 
the page gets in the month of December. 

Next year I will try to put it on the news section of the meta home page sooner.
Alessandro



    Il giovedì 23 gennaio 2020, 01:14:00 CET, Paulo Santos Perneta 
 ha scritto:  

 Not sure this made it to the Wikimedia-L - I couldn't find it easily, at
least. But the candidates for the new mandate in AffCom are under
discussion now (and have been for some time already.

Interested ppl, please follow the link and comment/endorse/ask questions to
them there:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Candidates/December_2019

Best,
Paulo - DarwIn
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
<mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>  
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
<mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
  
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
<mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>

Re: [Wikimedia-l] AffCom - Candidates for new mandate

2020-01-22 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 On January the 10th I put it in the home page of meta 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Main_Page/WM_News=prev=19695407
 , I think I did the same last year but I was considering obvious we had 
received some mails and I did not pay attention.
I am surprised there are so many candidates considering the limited publicity 
the page gets in the month of December. 

Next year I will try to put it on the news section of the meta home page sooner.
Alessandro



Il giovedì 23 gennaio 2020, 01:14:00 CET, Paulo Santos Perneta 
 ha scritto:  
 
 Not sure this made it to the Wikimedia-L - I couldn't find it easily, at
least. But the candidates for the new mandate in AffCom are under
discussion now (and have been for some time already.

Interested ppl, please follow the link and comment/endorse/ask questions to
them there:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Candidates/December_2019

Best,
Paulo - DarwIn
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
  
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Astrophoto Contest

2019-10-25 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 Great news. Wish you all the luck!

Il giovedì 24 ottobre 2019, 11:22:42 CEST, Toni Ristovski 
 ha scritto:  
 
 Hi Aron,

Thank you for your interest in this contest.

Yes, of course, you can upload non-professional photos.
No, photo should not be taken only from 15.10.2019 to 15.11.2019, so please
upload your photos taken in summer.
Submitting photos is simply uploading on Commons, adding category
"Category:Astrophoto Contest" and just fill details on application form:
here


If you have any other questions, please ask me :)

Best,
Toni

On Thu, Oct 24, 2019 at 10:27 AM Aron Manning 
wrote:

> Hello Toni!
>
> There are some beautiful, professional photos in the commons category...
> - Is it possible to submit non-professional photos?
> - The photo I would submit was made in the summer, is that ok, or the photo
> has to be made between 15 October - 15 November?
> - How to submit the photo?
>
> Kind regards,
> Aron
>
>
> On Tue, 22 Oct 2019 at 20:18, Toni Ristovski 
> wrote:
>
> > Dear All,
> >
> > I`m Toni Ristovski, Wikipedian from Macedonian Wikipedian and Board
> Member
> > of user group Shared Knowledge (Macedonia).
> >
> > From 15th October 2019, Shared Knowledge started Astrophoto Contest,
> which
> > is unique photographic competition. This contest is realized along with
> > Skopje Astronomical Society and it is first event that we planned to
> > conduct with them.
> >
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
  
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Introducing our newest chapter, Wikimedia Colombia

2019-07-31 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 Good luck!

Il mercoledì 31 luglio 2019, 20:11:39 CEST, Asaf Bartov 
 ha scritto:  
 
 Congratulations!

  A.

On Wed, Jul 31, 2019 at 7:02 PM Kirill Lokshin 
wrote:

> Hi everyone!
>
> I'm very happy to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
> has approved the recognition of Wikimedia Colombia [1] as a Wikimedia
> chapter.
>
> Over the past five years, Wikimedia Colombia has successfully planned and
> executed a significant portfolio of innovative and effective programs,
> attracting new contributors, forming partnerships with local institutions,
> promoting the Wikimedia movement throughout the Republic of Colombia, and
> demonstrating a substantial record of programmatic impact.
>
> It is our hope that recognition as a Wikimedia chapter will empower the
> Wikimedia Colombia community to continue fostering the Wikimedia movement
> in Colombia and enable them to more effectively engage with government
> entities and other partners.  We additionally hope that Wikimedia Colombia
> will prove to be a source of inspiration and support for emerging Wikimedia
> communities in the surrounding geographic areas, furthering affiliate
> development across northern South America and Central America.
>
> I want to thank everyone who has been involved with setting up the new
> chapter, and recognize their commitment and patience over the past two
> years as we've worked through the chapter recognition process.  Please join
> me in congratulating the entire Wikimedia Colombia team for their
> accomplishment!
>
> Regards,
> Kirill Lokshin
> Chair, Affiliations Committee
>
> [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Colombia
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 



-- 
    Asaf Bartov
    Wikimedia Foundation 

Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
https://donate.wikimedia.org
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
  
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Recognition of the Wikipedians of Goa User Group

2019-07-31 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 congratulations!

Il mercoledì 31 luglio 2019, 20:08:32 CEST, camelia boban 
 ha scritto:  
 
 Wonderful news, congrats to the new UG .

Camelia, WikiDonne UG


--
*Camelia Boban*

*| Java EE Developer |*

*Affiliations Committee - **Wikimedia *Foundation
Coordinator - Diversity Working Group for Wikimedia Strategy 2030
Chair & co-founder - WikiDonne User Group *| WikiDonne Project ideator*

*Diversity Space @ Wikimania 2019 Co-Lead*
WMIT - WMSE - WMCH - WMAR Member

M. +39 3383385545
camelia.bo...@gmail.com
*Aissa Technologies* * | *Twitter
 *|* *LinkedIn
*
*Wikipedia  **| **WikiDonne
UG * | *WikiDonne Project
 *











Il giorno mer 31 lug 2019 alle ore 17:55 Rajeeb Dutta 
ha scritto:

> Great news and many many congratulations to all the members involved in
> making this happen.
> Thanks Kirill for the update.
>
> Best Regards,
> Rajeeb Dutta.
> (U: Marajozkee)
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On 31-Jul-2019, at 9:11 PM, Kirill Lokshin 
> wrote:
> >
> > Hi everyone!
> >
> > I'm very happy to announce that the Affiliations Committee has recognized
> > [1] the Wikipedians of Goa User Group [2] as a Wikimedia User Group. The
> > group aims to build content related to Goa in all possible languages, to
> > conduct Wikipedia-related training in Goa, and to help build and sustain
> > the Konkani Wikipedia.
> >
> > Please join me in congratulating the members of this new user group!
> >
> > Regards,
> > Kirill Lokshin
> > Chair, Affiliations Committee
> >
> > [1]
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Recognition_of_Wikipedians_of_Goa_User_Group
> >
> > [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedians_of_Goa_User_Group
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
>
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
  
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Recognition of the WikiClassics User Group

2019-05-15 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 Thank you all for your replies. Congratulation also to Wikimédiens du Bénin 
User Group, for being recognized with us.

FYI, it seems that WikiClassics abbreviation will be WCS 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reports=revision=19091680=19086803
Alessandro


Il lunedì 13 maggio 2019, 21:42:33 CEST, Ανώνυμος Βικιπαιδιστής 
 ha scritto:  
 
 Congratulations!

Στις Κυρ, 12 Μαΐ 2019 - 8:11 μ.μ. ο χρήστης Shlomi Fish <
shlo...@shlomifish.org> έγραψε:

> On Sun, 12 May 2019 11:43:22 -0400
> Kirill Lokshin  wrote:
>
> > Hi everyone!
> >
> > I'm very happy to announce that the Affiliations Committee has recognized
> > [1] the WikiClassics User Group [2] as a Wikimedia User Group. The group
> > aims to improve the quantity and quality of information about classical
> > antiquity on the Wikimedia projects.
> >
> > Please join me in congratulating the members of this new user group!
> >
>
> Congratulations!
>
> > Regards,
> > Kirill Lokshin
> > Chair, Affiliations Committee
> >
> > [1]
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Resolutions/Recognition_of_WikiClassics_User_Group
> > [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiClassics_User_Group
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to:
> > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
>
>
> --
> -
> Shlomi Fish      http://www.shlomifish.org/
> List of Portability Libraries - http://shlom.in/port-libs
>
> Shlomi: if you read my stories, I’ll give you 1,000,000 virtual dollars.
> Sjors: causing me to have a lot of extra virtual time!
>
> Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .
>
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
  
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dispute between Common and Outreach

2019-05-13 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

m more neutral (what to focus 
on), and how to find material that could be reused.
Fourth, I went again with them to a four hour class where we revised all the 
materials, we certified that all the music was free, we checked all the 
illustrations and we asked not to upload those that were of poor value or had 
any doubt about their copyright status.
Fifth, we helped students to find suitable songs for their videos, how to tag 
that the files were derivative works if applicable using Commons uploading 
system, how to fill everything if they were using video2commons and how to use 
the materials on wikipedia. It was my fourth morning with the students, and the 
third one dedicated to Commons. We also explained again what was the difference 
between free access and free license, because some of the students didn't get 
why we were not allowing them to upload some content.
Sixth, yes, there is a sixth, I spent another morning with the professors 
evaluating all the materials from a wikimedian point of view, talking about 
their quality and designing improvements for next year. Students then presented 
their works to a broader audience at the University.
Seventh, students went on vacations. At this moment an admin decided that all 
the previous work was not valid and claimed that it should be DW. Period. And 
then I noticed that some stuff was missing when I started to write a report 
about the experience for the Outreach Newsletter. And as I have followed all 
the steps, I have a dedicated place at the Outreach Dashboard where I can track 
everything this students created, uploaded or 
edited:https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/HUHEZI/Ikus-entzunezko_komunikazioa_(2019)/home
 . This content is public and can be easily reached in our dedicated education 
programme portal:https://eu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari:Hezkuntza

It should be maybe few days spent with them explaining how Commons work, what 
licenses are suitable and why free content matters. If you feel so, then I 
should explain that we have created two videotutorials, a leaflet and a small 
book explaining everything we were explaining direcdtly to them, so if they had 
any doubt they could read them. And we gave a copy to each student, so they 
could have a guidance. And we also gave them a direct e-mail so they could ask 
for copyrights issues: two of them did it and we gave them some answers.
Cheers
Galder
From: Wikimedia-l  on behalf of 
Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l 
Sent: Monday, May 13, 2019 5:30 PM
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dispute between Common and Outreach We have dozens 
of cross project brainstorming off-wiki. But the general feeling is often that 
if you encourage the social dynamics of a platform in a way that people who 
like to "play cops" are a key actor... when this is established there is no 
point in creating sophisticated or efficient tools, because as long as they 
force such people to work in a different way they will kinda oppose them.
For example, many time I find a deleted file  I could spot dozens of similar in 
the very same category and the few times I have asked the user who deleted it 
or ask the deletion, I could feel he had no real interested in completing the 
job. The fight for copyright is not a goal, it's a just a mean for him. He 
probably has fun cherry-picking one random file, with no consistent approach. 
So how many times for example I found files from the USA where there is no FOP 
for statues deleted maybe if uploaded by the European users but not by the 
American ones. Because of course if you did delete them all (as you should),  
enwikipedia community will notice and it will be a bigger deal.. it's a problem 
when all images of a monument disappear, right? So let's delete some random 
files, and vanish when somebody point out the other ones, just to repeat the 
same pattern somewhere else after a while. That's why it's so easy to find en-N 
users from the USA who have limited clue with rule of FOP. Now, the users who 
perform this type of deletion pattern will dislike any tools or preference who 
simply encourage to do it in a consistent way... they are expert and they know 
how categories work, if they don't complete the job is probably because they 
don't want to. If we get close to the issue, we manage to get around some "the 
newbes will misuse it" or "its a delicate matter", I guess the "good faith " 
clause will appear.

So, we keep a random patrolling and retropatrolling on this issue, which means 
poor overall copyright literacy, angry users because of the procedural 
incoherence and in the end a huge backlog (since the bulk of the files remain 
there). Take this dynamics, in other fields, with different nuances, multiplied 
by a dozens of different legal and workload scenarios and voilà. You have one 
of the reason of our current situation.

I guess there is no tool which can fix that, it's just the way a commu

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dispute between Common and Outreach

2019-05-13 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 We have dozens of cross project brainstorming off-wiki. But the general 
feeling is often that if you encourage the social dynamics of a platform in a 
way that people who like to "play cops" are a key actor... when this is 
established there is no point in creating sophisticated or efficient tools, 
because as long as they force such people to work in a different way they will 
kinda oppose them.
For example, many time I find a deleted file  I could spot dozens of similar in 
the very same category and the few times I have asked the user who deleted it 
or ask the deletion, I could feel he had no real interested in completing the 
job. The fight for copyright is not a goal, it's a just a mean for him. He 
probably has fun cherry-picking one random file, with no consistent approach. 
So how many times for example I found files from the USA where there is no FOP 
for statues deleted maybe if uploaded by the European users but not by the 
American ones. Because of course if you did delete them all (as you should),  
enwikipedia community will notice and it will be a bigger deal.. it's a problem 
when all images of a monument disappear, right? So let's delete some random 
files, and vanish when somebody point out the other ones, just to repeat the 
same pattern somewhere else after a while. That's why it's so easy to find en-N 
users from the USA who have limited clue with rule of FOP. Now, the users who 
perform this type of deletion pattern will dislike any tools or preference who 
simply encourage to do it in a consistent way... they are expert and they know 
how categories work, if they don't complete the job is probably because they 
don't want to. If we get close to the issue, we manage to get around some "the 
newbes will misuse it" or "its a delicate matter", I guess the "good faith " 
clause will appear. 

So, we keep a random patrolling and retropatrolling on this issue, which means 
poor overall copyright literacy, angry users because of the procedural 
incoherence and in the end a huge backlog (since the bulk of the files remain 
there). Take this dynamics, in other fields, with different nuances, multiplied 
by a dozens of different legal and workload scenarios and voilà. You have one 
of the reason of our current situation.

I guess there is no tool which can fix that, it's just the way a community 
really wants to be. Tools can help to encourage people to think differently of 
course, but I fear that would be a strong resistance.

A. M:

Il lunedì 13 maggio 2019, 16:56:49 CEST, Samuel Klein  
ha scritto:  

 Ditto.  But did not have the impression that this was {a, the} pressing
need.
Perhaps we also need better ways to highlight workload overloads (and
continue conversations about them through time, rather than sporadic
proposals of specific implementations that can easily fail) to stimulate
cross-project brainstorming to solve the most pressing problems of scale

On Mon, May 13, 2019 at 6:02 AM James Heilman  wrote:

> I have a fairly good understanding of copyright. Deal with a fair bit of
> copyright issues occurring via paid editing and flicker washing of images
> and would be happy to do admin work around that if the Commons community
> was interested.
>
> James
>
> On Mon, May 13, 2019 at 4:00 AM Paulo Santos Perneta <
> paulospern...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Wikimedia project communities in general seem to be quite stagnant, if
> not
> > declining, apart from Wikidata, which is and always will be a whole
> > different case. In the case of Commons it was already very much as it is
> > now when I joined in 2009. I always found it a very pleasant place, but
> > overtime I understood I was the exception there, and most people had bad
> > experiences. And it is as Yann has shown there, it's a few sysops running
> > the entire show almost alone, not because they want that, but because
> > nobody else helps with that.
> >
> > IMO the problem is not with the existing sysops, but because people in
> > general do not feel attracted to copyright and other similar minucious
> > stuff which marks everyday life in Commons. And, without that knowledge
> it
> > is pointless, if not counterproductive, to place a candidacy to sysop. No
> > idea what the solution could be, but it certainly is not blaming Commons
> > and the existing sysops. If more people was interested in copyright, less
> > mistakes would be happening in Commons as well. Whatever the solution is,
> > it probably passes by that.
> >
> > Best,
> > Paulo
> >
> > Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga  escreveu no dia
> segunda,
> > 13/05/2019 à(s) 07:09:
> >
> > > A good question to ask would be why the admin group is not growing. And
> > > maybe (maybe) we can find a common answer to both problems pointed
> here.
> > > ___
> > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > > New

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dispute between Common and Outreach

2019-05-13 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 If I could share my vision, I am not part of the group of "expert flagged 
users"(I have some flags here and there, I was asked to get more but I have no 
rush) and I am not part of the group of "expert outreach users" (I make events 
but change them so often I do not play any specific role). Surprisingly, I 
never had any problem so far with Commons. Some unnecessary excess, but limited 
and mostly immediately showed to newbies as an example. Obviously, there is no 
way I sugar coat them, it's part of being a honest teacher to show these 
aspects and they are not cow to milk. I guess it works probably because my 
approach is far from those that I see here on both side.

The people who patrol (or have similar functions) show often limited interested 
in a functional working environment. Their approach is in my opinion one of the 
cause of the backlog, not a consequence. I could make you a long detailed list 
right now about that. 

On the other side, people who do outreach push too much for results with lmited 
understanding of the ecosystem they ask students to interact. I have met people 
who ask for "button men" at their initiatives with poor regard for the real 
expertise, often overselling what they do. it's not nice to be treated 
superficially when you try to explain why a certain topic is not relevant or 
why sending a ticket is appropriate for a certain image. If you are too focused 
on "your stuff", I wouldn't be surprised if you don't care for a functional 
working environment as well. You just expect someone else to build it for you.

That being said, that there are many small ways to improve the situation, not 
even complicated ones, and they can act as a catalysts on the long term but 
they don't come for free or because "WMF does stuff" or because there are 
patient users who build them step by step in the dark. They could, if you are 
lucky, but probably in this scenario they will also start from from your 
self-criticism. 

if you can spot such attitude in these mails, there's hope. Otherwise, it's 
probably going to be the same for some time.
BTW, glad to be proven wrong.
have a nice wiki
A.M.

Il lunedì 13 maggio 2019, 14:27:01 CEST, John Erling Blad 
 ha scritto:  

 Some years ago I did a quite simplified analysis of the number of
active contributors, and normalized the number against the number of
people wit internet connections for the respective language groups.
The relative number was pretty similar for all languages from similar
cultural groups. I suspect that for a given group, or project, there
is a limit on the relative number of contributors and we can't get
above it without changing the project somehow. Another indication that
there is a "crowdsource constant" is the trend themselves on
contributors at the individual projects, they have been stable (or
near stable) for a very long time. (Yes they drop somewhat, I know
that!)

On Mon, May 13, 2019 at 8:09 AM Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga
 wrote:
>
> A good question to ask would be why the admin group is not growing. And maybe 
> (maybe) we can find a common answer to both problems pointed here.
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
> 

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] ASBS2019 voter selection from UG-GE

2019-04-15 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 Hi all. Thanks to UG Georgia for their effort.
if any UGs or chapter would like to publish a meta page about the choice of the 
voter, in order to maximize transparency, that's a good idea. My only request 
is to try to follow a similar naming scheme "Name of the affiliate/ASBS2019 
Voter" (also take a look at the categorization)

With so many affiliates, we need to minimize the propagation of differences or 
keeping order is much more difficult. Thank you for your effort.
Alessandro






Il lunedì 15 aprile 2019, 22:09:55 CEST, Mehman Ibragimov 
 ha scritto:  
 
 Hi to all!

These days we (Wikimedia UG 
Georgia) have increased 
internal consultations on ASBS and agreed our positions on key issues.

After consultation and discussion, we selected a representative from Wikimedia 
UG Georgia, who will vote in the election Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia 
Foundation.

You can see selection process on this 
page.


Best,
__
Mehman Ibragimov
UG-GE Board 
Member
User:Mehman97

+995 598 42 86 03

mehman.ibragi...@outlook.com


Meta-Wiki | 
Twitter | 
Facebook

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
  
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Picture of the Year 2018: The results are in!

2019-03-25 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 I am happy to notice that, if I recall correctly, two of these finalists were 
runner-ups of Wiki Science Competition 2017 (the tornado, Commons:Wiki Science 
Competition 2017/Winners - Wikimedia Commons "image sets" category) and of 
European Science Photo Competition 2015 (the frozen bubble, Commons:European 
Science Photo Competition 2015/Winners - Wikimedia Commons "general" category). 


| 
| 
| 
|  |  |

 |

 |
| 
|  | 
Commons:Wiki Science Competition 2017/Winners - Wikimedia Commons


 |

 |

 |





| 
| 
| 
|  |  |

 |

 |
| 
|  | 
Commons:European Science Photo Competition 2015/Winners - Wikimedia Commons


 |

 |

 |


This IMHO proves how important is to focus also on technical and scientific 
fields in order to get multimedia of high quality. Specifically, these images 
were not considered of similar scientific relevance compared to the final 
winners, but they are wonderful pictures and they are valuable to illustrate 
scientific articles.

Alessandro

Il lunedì 25 marzo 2019, 19:08:19 CET, Steinsplitter Wiki 
 ha scritto:  
 
 Dear Wikimedians,


The 2018 Picture of the Year competition has ended and we are pleased to 
announce the results:

In both rounds, people voted for their favorite media files.

  *  In the first round, there were 963 candidate images.
  *  In the second round, people voted for the 57 finalists (the R1 top 30 
overall and top 2 in each category).

In the second round – the “three votes” was used – eligible users could vote 
for up to 3 finalists – each of these 3 votes counted equal. There were 2983 
people who voted in R1 and 3496 who voted in round R2.

We congratulate the winners of the contest and thank them for creating these 
beautiful media files and sharing them as freely licensed content:

  1.  439 people voted for the winner, File:Evolution of a 
Tornado.jpg.
  2.  In second place, 361 people voted for File:FCAB EMD GT22CU-3 San Pedro - 
Ascotan.jpg.
  3.  In third place, 356 people voted for 
File:Frostedbubble2.jpg.

Click here to view the top images 
»


We also sincerely thank to all voters for participating. We invite you to 
continue to participate in the Wikimedia Commons community by sharing your 
work.

Thanks,
the Picture of the Year 
committee


-
Read E-Mail as HTML: 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_Year/2018/Results/R2/msg

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
  
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] How diverse are your readers?

2019-03-13 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 I think, Benjamin, that sometimes some users don't get the experience of other 
people. I met so many smart men and women with very trivial hobbies that the 
idea of such separation sounds simply wrong or odd.  I have never edited on 
"pop" topic on purpose, I have no interest for cartoons or TV series, mostly 
"serious" stuff, still I don't see the issue here.

Maybe on some local communities this will remain accepted as general truth, 
that "opposing" focus or research on "pop" topics is good for the image or the 
balance of energies of the Wikimedia projects but when you move on the global 
scale I don't think it holds very well. 

It sounds simple to say so, but based on my experience I don't think it's 
actually correct. Again, I am willing to read any peer-reviewed publication 
where something related to the opposite is stated, but so far if these are just 
opinions, than I stick to my perception, and I remain generally favorable 
toward this sort of interest.
   Il giovedì 14 marzo 2019, 01:08:57 CET, Benjamin Ikuta 
 ha scritto:  

I also don't see why it would be such a problem to have more articles about 
Pokemon. 

Volunteer effort is certainly not zero sum. 

Contributing to one area doesn't necessarily mean contributing less to another. 

Speaking from personal experience now, one of my earliest Wikipedia edits was 
about Pokemon. 

It was reverted. 

Luckily, I was not discouraged, but I know that many people would be, and that 
is a real problem. 

I think there's a bias on Wikipedia when weighing the pros and cons of policy, 
because it's easy to overlook the absence of something that never was there to 
begin with. 

On Mar 13, 2019, at 5:01 PM, Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l 
 wrote:

> We certainly could do editatons about Naruto and Pokemon and it would 
> actually be quite useful. As Paulo said, a well written "pop" page has a good 
> influence. People can understand easily how a complex and multifaceted 
> article with appropriate navboxes, infoboxed, is structured for a trivial 
> topic, and think how they can help for other topics.
> I repeat the concept: I have friends who work at the top of their fields, 
> some of them have also their own wikipedia article (I am not telling which 
> one because of respect of their privacy) and they leave edits on complex 
> topic sometimes but it's their everyday job so they are bored to do even on 
> wiki in their free time. Still, they do a little bit and they learned how to 
> do it visiting other pages about the most trivial topics you can imagine. 
> They showed me their first edits as IPs sometimes and they are as diverse as 
> you can imagine. Obscure dialects, silly TV series, things like that.
> 
> Also, since we are talking about PokemonI can show something directly 
> like Paulo did.This is the history of the article Cronologia delle modifiche 
> di "Ulva lactuca" - Wikipedia Ulva Lactuca. HisuiSama and Adriana Hariuc who 
> added more text on January the 20th are the same students who are comparing 
> the very same morning a plant at the botanical garden to a Pokemon in this 
> gallery: https://twitter.com/Alexmar983/status/1087119134058516480
> So, Go Pokemon... I know about the "pokemon test" but in the end I actually 
> wish we had more Pokemon pages, it would probably be fine.
> Alex
> 
> 
> | 
> | 
> | 
> |  |  |
> 
> |
> 
> |
> | 
> |  | 
> Cronologia delle modifiche di "Ulva lactuca" - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> |
> 
> |
> 
> |
> 
> 
> 
> 
>    Il giovedì 14 marzo 2019, 00:14:57 CET, Benjamin Ikuta 
> ha scritto:  
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I, for one, would indeed go so far as to say we should be doing editatons 
> about Naruto and Pokemon. 
> 
> 
> 
> On Mar 12, 2019, at 10:10 AM, Paulo Santos Perneta  
> wrote:
> 
>> I would not go as far as saying we should be doing edithatons about Naruto
>> and Pokemons,
> 
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
> <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>  
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
> <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=

Re: [Wikimedia-l] How diverse are your readers?

2019-03-11 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

Reminding is easy, it's analyzing that it's complex. 

I suspect that editors and readers are probably a little bit smarter than 
generally assumed. It's quite "obvious" that editors understand what is an 
encyclopedia, after years. When I make an informal survey, statistically the 
"smarter" students in the class or in the group of people in front of me at an 
event are those who already edited something or who want to know more or are 
willing to compile a form to state their opinion or similar. 

Plus, every topic is multifaceted somehow, it's the same for the most popular 
ones. It's strange when long-time editors seem to miss this aspect. There is 
always a specific disease, an historical event, a place or a person in a family 
history linked to a most searched topic. You can detect many missing specific 
things just focusing on a core topic and starting from there. Again, maybe it's 
worth reminding also how our editors are quite good at doing this, and this 
type of information is therefore a starting point. In some of this comments, it 
always look like an end per se. 

Seriously, if someone is so superficial to just edit something with no depth 
because it's on a list, (s)he will just do something equally superficial 
somewhere else. Clinically, I might state that it's probably a good thing if 
this occur in an area with huge focus, it actually lowers the possible 
long-term disfunctionalities induced by a rigid approach, something that it's 
more subtle to detect in less supervised areas.

in any case, these lists can change a lot from area to area so it is not even 
driven by the "mass", if you give a country in South America or Asia the same 
focus on a western country you end up with very unusual guideline. it's nice to 
know that you expertise in an area even if less taken into account in the 
average community around you, it's useful in a different part of the word. 



Il lunedì 11 marzo 2019, 13:32:12 CET, Amir E. Aharoni 
 ha scritto:  
 
 ‬

> The idea of a popularity-driven encyclopaedia scares 
>
>
I agree, although I'd make it a bit more focused: an encyclopedia that is
*only* popularity-driven is indeed scary. It's good to mention this, and
not once, but repeatedly.

However, providing Wikipedia editors with information about what *is* in
demand is useful, as long as the editors clearly know that they have the
choice to write what is *important* and that "important" is not equal to
"popular".

While I haven't ran a proper survey about this, conversations that with
Wikipedia editors from various "big" and "small" languages tell me that
most of them already understand it, and this is good. Nevertheless,
reminding people that Wikipedia is not supposed to be just about covering
popular topics won't hurt.

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
  
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] How diverse are your readers?

2019-03-11 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 I know people in many fields with great technical expertise. people who 
published articles on Science and Nature basically, and in the end I think they 
are probably qualified to have an idea of what a good encyclopedia should be. 
The point is that these people open wiki for topics far away from their area, 
most of the time they look also for "pop" topics. Finding pop culture is what 
makes them stay and grow interest as much as everything else. It's when they 
find a deleted ye useful page of something of interest for some internal reason 
they think wikipedia it's not worth spending time on. 

Based on that experience, in all the discussions when people who claim that 
this focus on such pop information lower our image or damage our workflow, I 
always question where these opinions come from and if they are peer-reviewed. I 
am a scientist, I look at data. it has been years people are claiming the 
"popmaggedon" of wikipedia is soon, and in the meantime its overall quality on 
very specific topic is still increasing.

A balanced encyclopedia comes from trying to fill the gaps, all information are 
useful in that direction. As long as someone else is studying missing links, 
pages existing in other languages, encouraging what editors want and so on, 
your idea is just part of patchwork. I cannot peer-review such statement, but 
at least i can tell you it is said by someone who never edited a "pop" article 
in all his wikipedia life and manage projects of outreach in organic chemistry 
or biophysics, to name the last ones. So I hope that it gives a hint that is 
probably fine.
Go on and explore.

Il lunedì 11 marzo 2019, 10:08:23 CET, Vi to  ha 
scritto:  

 That's an unstable process on a long-term, with popular topics
cannibalizing resources. Top read articles are already about two or three
sports, some TV series and three or four music topics.
These are also the most popular topics among editors but if you'll start
focusing energies on these already popular topics you'll end up having no
resources to be spent on "female combatants during Russian civil war",
"near to extinction languages in Brazil", "computational chemestry in late
XX century".

The way we self-identify as a project  deeply affects our results:
promoting the idea of Wikipedia as "the pop encyclopedia" (instead of "the
free encyclopedia embedding pop topics") will weaken our commitment to
diversity and quality.

Also, topic popularity is mutable on a daily basis and it's driven by a
very narrow number of media (basically Google/YouTube and Facebook) which
will gain a complete influence over us.

To me the mission of an encyclopedia is providing the *knowledge* (not
*information*) which is worth collecting and preserving. The information
people need/want is likely to be a subset of this.

If Wikipedia is also an educational medium we should find a way to ask the
ordes of people looking for new mr. Trump's bizarreness "hey, do you know
the background of India-Pakistan conflicts?"

Vito

Il giorno lun 11 mar 2019 alle ore 06:19 David Goodman 
ha scritto:

> The idea of an encyclopedia is to provide the information people need or
> want  that's appropriate to the format. It would be useful to see what they
> want that is appropriate but we do not have -- and also useful to see what
> they look for that isn't appropriate for us. Within what's appropriate, I
> see no reason why selection of topics should not be driven by reader
> interests as much as by editor interests. Our purpose is not to practice
> our writing skills for our own benefit.
>
> On Sun, Mar 10, 2019 at 6:58 PM Vi to  wrote:
>
> > The idea of a popularity-driven encyclopaedia scares 
> >
> > Vito
> >
> > Il giorno dom 10 mar 2019 alle ore 22:26 Gerard Meijssen <
> > gerard.meijs...@gmail.com> ha scritto:
> >
> > > Hoi,
> > > I have been thinking about it.. There is a place for research but
> really
> > > why can we not have the data that allows us to seek out what people are
> > > actually looking for and do not find.. Why can we not promote what
> proves
> > > to be of interest [1] ?
> > > Thanks,
> > >      GerardM
> > >
> > > [1]
> > >
> > >
> >
> https://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2019/03/a-marketing-approach-to-what-it-is-that.html
> > >
> > > On Wed, 6 Mar 2019 at 22:13, Leila Zia  wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hi all,
> > > >
> > > > As I mentioned in an earlier thread [1], we will be running reader
> > > > surveys across a number of Wikipedia languages to learn about the
> > > > reader needs and motivations in these languages as well as some of
> > > > their demographic information (and perhaps the correlations between
> > > > demographics and user motivations and characteristics).
> > > >
> > > > If your language community is interested to have statistics on the
> > > > distribution of reader gender, age, education, native language, and
> > > > geographic region (rural/urban) in your language (and depending on
> how
> > > > much data we collect in your language,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Affiliates] Recognition of Wikimedia Community User Group Albania

2019-02-06 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 I guess... probably one include also the majority of Kosovo, Albanian-speaking 
regions of Greece, P.Y.R.O.M./North Macedonia and maybe even Southern Italy and 
the other one is just centered on Albania as a state. This is not the same 
scenario as Brazil (not sure if, partially, also Greece) since in that case we 
had two group precisely centered on one country. 

It's not totally practical but the geopolitical situation is not practical in 
the end by itself...  You cannot force people to get rid of a group that might 
become a future national chapter because their language is spoken by many other 
people in neighboring countries who already clustered in a  previous UG. So it 
should not be considered a critical situation per se, although the interaction 
of the two UGs should be closely monitored and addressed since the beginning. 

What is missing is a precise guideline or attention to UG related to languages 
(of minorities or globally spoken). You could have the same problem with a 
future Italian minor languages UG active in Corsica or Croatia, with a 
Retho-romance Alpine language user group, with a gender gap UG active in a 
language distributed along various borders... and so on. They don't seem to 
show huge problems when similar situation exist in reality but they could 
degenerate, stop cooperation, or never start it with other UGs or national 
chapters.
I value plurality, I want UG to be created and catalyze activities, and I think 
that the problem is mostly the character of people. However, I strongly 
advocate a more structured architecture of language-based UG to be implemented. 
Basically what I suppose was done with Catalan Wikimedia Thematic Organization, 
although in that case there is no main entity competing on the area of a 
sovereign country where Catalan is spoken (which is not necessarily a better 
scenario, just complex in a different way). We call them almost all "User 
groups" but they are sometimes local geographical unions of users and 
volunteers (embryonic future national chapters or just regional associations), 
language-oriented associations created to involve minorities or cross-projects 
of interested users unified by a topic. They all have different purpose and 
should be rationalized somehow. I think I pushed a little bit in that direction 
on the application to WikiSummit, stressing the importance to make order in the 
field.
IMHO, we should have single-language thematic organizations (specifically for a 
language), cross-language thematic organization or local UG centered on a vague 
historic geographical area or a very precise administrative one. And think 
carefully about their status. This is however just a vague idea.

Alessandro
   Il mercoledì 6 febbraio 2019, 18:11:57 CET, Philip Kopetzky 
 ha scritto:  

 Just to close off this thread, there seemingly is no plan and others are
left to deal with the fallout of this decision.

On Tue, 12 Jun 2018 at 08:23, Paulo Santos Perneta 
wrote:

> Hi Kirill,
>
> I join Philip and Mardetanha on their concerns and questions. Having
> followed closely the Brazil situation - which ended up in the worst
> possible way, IMO - I'm very interested in your answer.
>
> Best,
>
> Paulo
>
> 2018-06-11 13:07 GMT+01:00 Mardetanha :
>
>>  Hi Kirill
>>
>>  Philip's concerns were not answered, would you please respond, I had the
>> very same question.
>>
>>
>>
>> Mardetanha
>>
>> On Wed, May 23, 2018 at 3:12 PM, Philip Kopetzky <
>> philip.kopet...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > Hi Kirill,
>> >
>> > what's the difference/relationship between this group and the
>> Wikimedians
>> > of Albanian Language User Group, which is currently applying for a
>> > simpleAPG grant? How do we avoid creating more Brazilian scenarios by
>> > reconising even more user groups from the same area?
>> >
>> > Best,
>> > Philip
>> >
>> > On 22 May 2018 at 22:07, Kirill Lokshin 
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > > Hi everyone!
>> > >
>> > > I'm very happy to announce that the Affiliations Committee has
>> recognized
>> > > [1] Wikimedia Community User Group Albania [2] as a Wikimedia User
>> Group.
>> > > The group aims to improve content about Albania across the Wikimedia
>> > > projects, including Commons and Wikidata, and to collaborate with
>> other
>> > > Wikimedia user groups, chapters, and other free culture groups in
>> Albania
>> > > and across the region.
>> > >
>> > > Please join me in congratulating the members of this new user group!
>> > >
>> > > Regards,
>> > > Kirill Lokshin
>> > > Chair, Affiliations Committee
>> > >
>> > > [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/
>> > > Resolutions/Recognition_Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Albania
>> > > [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_User_
>> > Group_Albania
>> > >
>> > > ___
>> > > Affiliates mailing list
>> > > affilia...@lists.wikimedia.org
>> > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/affiliates
>> > >
>> > >
>> >

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Hiding versions because of copyright violation

2019-01-14 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 privacy violations is not standard at all. For example some wikis hide 
personal details that people put on purpose, while other ones see no point 
since it's their will to show them. 

Also, even if it is not strictly related to private information, blocking 
deceased users is not standardized among platforms.

Il lunedì 14 gennaio 2019, 18:29:36 CET, effe iets anders 
 ha scritto:  
 
 Hi all,

This is one of these things that seems particularly hard to find, so I'd
like to pick your collective brains on this:

What are the various policies across our little universe on using the 'hide
version' functionality to hide historical versions of articles? I would
especially appreciate it if you could elaborate a bit on how it's used in
practice with regards to privacy violations (what is the threshold of
private information that would justify hiding versions) and copyright
violations (when do you actually hide the versions, rather than just remove
it from the current version and leave it in the history).

Are there any global policies on this? I think not, but always better to
double check :).

Best,
Lodewijk
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
  
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Plea from Wikimedia Portugal

2018-10-11 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 The pro forma statement bout what a chapter is is valuable, but I think many 
of us kinda got the idea that the problem was not the starting point (otherwise 
why electing him?) but came later. It's possible that someone else with more 
community experience would have never behaved such way, but that's speculation. 

Statistically, in this scenario this lack of community view probably did not 
help. Whatever his skills in "management and conflict resolution" were, even 
assuming they were correctly stated based on previous expertise in other 
fields, they were not the best ones to handle the conflicts that later emerged. 
Also, considering the resolution we see now, which is not a great resolution.
The point is that in all these disputes (I think about Brazil few months ago) 
it looks like the AffCom position sounds like "you are both wrong". Now, this 
is never a healthy long-term strategy. If it occurs again, it gives more and 
more the idea that whoever is in the less correct position can hold still 
because if the matter arrives to the AffCom everybody pays equally. I am sure 
the situation is more multifaceted, but let's try to grasp the general vibe 
here.

 This is not wise. King Solomon solved the issue bluffing and spotting the real 
mother, he never actually cut the baby in two halves ... But wisdom comes also 
with experience.
   Il giovedì 11 ottobre 2018, 15:43:01 CEST, GoEthe.wiki 
 ha scritto:  
 
 Hi Illario,

Apologies, I probably explained myself poorly. I never said that a chapter
is a representative of the Wikimedia community, rather I was trying to
explain that João’s claimed experience (emphasis on claimed) in management
and conflict resolution was a major factor in him being elected to the
Board. At the time, WMPT thought that that could be very valuable to the
chapter. So, we agree, a heterogeneous board is absolutely an advantage,
but in this case the issue was not one of diversity, but rather of
competence and alignment to the movement goals and principles.

In practice, he did not contribute to the management of the chapter, and he
was not prepared to an increase of the chapter activities. He very quickly
started demonstrating uneasiness with any procedural decision he did not
personally vet (which are imperative in volunteer-based, collaborative
projects), and soon after, without any previous warning, started sending
legal threats going as far as using a lawyer to intimidate one of our most
active members on behalf of WMPT (without discussing it with anyone
beforehand), and resigned.

We have no intention to expose João even more in this public mailing list,
so we will not provide a comprehensive list of the problems we found with
his term on the board. But to make it clear, when this whole issue began to
be addressed, even though we did not ask him to stay on the Board, we did
invite him to continue on the chapter, working with us, as AffCom can
confirm. Just not in any role with legal responsibilities.


Cheers,
Gonçalo Themudo

*Presidente*
*Wikimedia Portugal*
*Email: *goethe.w...@gmail.com
*Website: *http://pt.wikimedia.org 
*Imagine um mundo onde cada ser humano pode partilhar livremente a soma de
todo o conhecimento, na sua própria língua.*
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
  
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Plea from Wikimedia Portugal

2018-10-10 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

 When I read such mails, I think there is something that it's not 100% working 
in the workflow of AffCom. If i might say how i feel it, I would say that it is 
not perceived like a "catalyst" of good practices, but more like a bottleneck 
of processes.

Maybe more transparency could help. UG and chapters are an important part of 
our ecosystem and the interaction with communities should be put at the core of 
the process. Maybe there is some overflow, and they need more support and 
resources. Or we need a better system to minimize problems before they become 
so large.
In any case, I feel the current situation is not optimal. Many things aren't of 
course, so it's probably not critical. It's a delicate topic of course but 
that's also why it should need more long-term discussion. Soon or later, 
someone should gather the feedback produced by these occurrences and start a 
discussion about possible improvement. 




Il mercoledì 10 ottobre 2018, 22:54:30 CEST, Pine W  
ha scritto:  
 
 SJ, maybe I should explain my comments about involvement of legal counsel
in more detail. My understanding of the situation, which is far from
complete and may be wrong, is that AffCom decided to intervene in this
situation (1) before they had undertaken an effort to gather facts "on the
ground", and (2) with disregard for local laws that could apply to the
situation. (I wouldn't accept an excuse that AffCom lacked the time to do
legal research. It is my opinion that AffCom and WMF both should know
better, and that WMF should ensure that AffCom has access to knowledgeable
legal counsel when needed). If AffCom had taken the time to first gather
the facts of the situation from someone who could investigate it "on the
ground", and had taken the time to obtain knowledgeable legal counsel about
local laws, I wonder whether a significant amount of volunteer time and
stress could have been saved both for AffCom members and for WMPT members.

I don't mean to suggest that nothing is wrong at WMPT or that AffCom should
have remained uninvolved, but my impression is that there are changes that
should be made in AffCom regardless of whether there are problems with
WMPT, starting with AffCom's lack of transparency in general.

It's possible that what we're hearing from WMPT is entirely wrong and that
AffCom did everything well, but even if that is true, I think that AffCom
should be much more transparent.

Pine
( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
  
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Curating YOUR Wikipedia

2018-07-16 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

uffers. When for a subject the error rate is 
more than 6%, the error rate is more than can be expected of human adding good 
faith information to a project. The data I am adding at this time supports 
Wikipedia best practices. It is particularly intended for the "minority 
languages" [2] but the quality of all our data will be improved when we are 
aware of the differences and curate them everywhere.
This is distinctly different from the issue with Commons; its data is good 
enough for its current use case but is what holds it back from becoming the 
resource you goto because you can "find" what you are seeking. 
In a nutshell our problem is that we work in an insular fashion. We do not have 
ways to find the differences, the errors, the bias between our projects. We 
could do, suggestions for a basic mechanism have been made. Our quality suffers 
and it does not need to [3].Thanks,       GerardM
[1] https://ultimategerardm. blogspot.com/2018/07/ africagap-where-wikipedias- 
collide.html[2] https://ultimategerardm. blogspot.com/2018/07/ 
africagap-support-for- minority-languages.html[3] https://ultimategerardm. 
blogspot.com/2016/01/ wikipedia-lowest-hanging- fruit-from.html
On 16 July 2018 at 05:41, Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l 
 wrote:

yes, it is an old issue, what you say it's right but I would be more optimistic.
To summarize my view (I couls send you more information privately)

1. Wikidata largely reflected what Wikipedia indicated, and that was not the 
right way to make it grow, but that was also the past. At the moment, the 
reference of the content is increasing, the clean-up too. In some areas, 
wikidata items are also created before the wikipedia articles nowadays. 

2. new tools are great and will do a lot, but it's users who do the real 
tricks. You have to start to bring local users to wikidata, show them how it 
can be used (automatic infoboxes, fast creation of stubs, automatic lists, 
detecing missing images). They will start to fix the issues, curating their 
wikipedia, wikidata and also indirectly influence the other ones. 

3. IMHO, the wikidata ecosystem is not so bad, it could have more expert users 
with real knowledge of topics, but  commons with millions of automatically 
imported files, and tons of poorly described and uncategorized images faces a 
much worse perspective. You need more tools there than on wikidata, at the 
moment, if you want to keep some balanced workflow. What is really missing on 
wikidata are mostly active projects to coordinate and catalyze the ongoing 
efforts. This one https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/ Wikidata:WikiProject_Ancient_ 
Greece made miracles, for example. But I couldn't find one about peer-reviewed 
researchers or photographers to name a few, at least in the past months. 
Investing on this aspect would not change the final situation on wikidata (that 
will be positive for me), but it would speed up the process. it will also 
influence much more the content on local wikis because it will bring 
content-related users closer together and increase their wikidata literacy with 
lower effort.
4. In the end, even with a good high quality wikidata platform, there will 
always be communities that will not integrated in wikidata massively... but 
that's also a good thing for pluralism. You can't assume that a discrepancy is 
always a clue for a mistake (I am sure the examples of your experience are, of 
course), on the long term some of them are simply effects of gray areas that 
need to wait to be resolved even at the level of the sources. Insome fields, 
such as taxonomy, there is some confusion and asymmetric organization of the 
content and will never be solved easily. But in the other areas they probably 
will. 
Alex






    Il Domenica 15 Luglio 2018 22:37, Gerard Meijssen 
 ha scritto:


 Hoi,
Wikidata is a reflection of all the Wikimedia projects, particularly the
Wikipedias. Both Wikidata and Wikipedia are secondary sources and when two
Wikipedias have opposing information on singular information, it is a cop
out to state both "opinions" on Wikidata and leave it at that.

Given that Wikidata largely reflects what a Wikipedia indicates, it is
important to curate such differences. The first thing to consider is are we
interested at all in knowing about "false facts" and then how we can
indicate differences to our editing and reading community.

I have been editing about Africa for a long time now and I find that the
content about Africa is woefully underdeveloped. Best Wikipedia practice
has it that cities and villages are linked to "administrative territorial
entities" like provinces and districts and I have added such relations from
primary to secondary entities. Adding such information to villages and
cities as well is too much for me. The basic principle is that I am being
bold in doing so. I do relate to existing items and I have curated a lot of
crap data so far. The result is that Wik

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Curating YOUR Wikipedia

2018-07-15 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

yes, it is an old issue, what you say it's right but I would be more optimistic.
To summarize my view (I couls send you more information privately)

1. Wikidata largely reflected what Wikipedia indicated, and that was not the 
right way to make it grow, but that was also the past. At the moment, the 
reference of the content is increasing, the clean-up too. In some areas, 
wikidata items are also created before the wikipedia articles nowadays. 

2. new tools are great and will do a lot, but it's users who do the real 
tricks. You have to start to bring local users to wikidata, show them how it 
can be used (automatic infoboxes, fast creation of stubs, automatic lists, 
detecing missing images). They will start to fix the issues, curating their 
wikipedia, wikidata and also indirectly influence the other ones. 

3. IMHO, the wikidata ecosystem is not so bad, it could have more expert users 
with real knowledge of topics, but  commons with millions of automatically 
imported files, and tons of poorly described and uncategorized images faces a 
much worse perspective. You need more tools there than on wikidata, at the 
moment, if you want to keep some balanced workflow. What is really missing on 
wikidata are mostly active projects to coordinate and catalyze the ongoing 
efforts. This one 
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Ancient_Greece made 
miracles, for example. But I couldn't find one about peer-reviewed researchers 
or photographers to name a few, at least in the past months. Investing on this 
aspect would not change the final situation on wikidata (that will be positive 
for me), but it would speed up the process. it will also influence much more 
the content on local wikis because it will bring content-related users closer 
together and increase their wikidata literacy with lower effort.
4. In the end, even with a good high quality wikidata platform, there will 
always be communities that will not integrated in wikidata massively... but 
that's also a good thing for pluralism. You can't assume that a discrepancy is 
always a clue for a mistake (I am sure the examples of your experience are, of 
course), on the long term some of them are simply effects of gray areas that 
need to wait to be resolved even at the level of the sources. Insome fields, 
such as taxonomy, there is some confusion and asymmetric organization of the 
content and will never be solved easily. But in the other areas they probably 
will. 
Alex






Il Domenica 15 Luglio 2018 22:37, Gerard Meijssen 
 ha scritto:
 

 Hoi,
Wikidata is a reflection of all the Wikimedia projects, particularly the
Wikipedias. Both Wikidata and Wikipedia are secondary sources and when two
Wikipedias have opposing information on singular information, it is a cop
out to state both "opinions" on Wikidata and leave it at that.

Given that Wikidata largely reflects what a Wikipedia indicates, it is
important to curate such differences. The first thing to consider is are we
interested at all in knowing about "false facts" and then how we can
indicate differences to our editing and reading community.

I have been editing about Africa for a long time now and I find that the
content about Africa is woefully underdeveloped. Best Wikipedia practice
has it that cities and villages are linked to "administrative territorial
entities" like provinces and districts and I have added such relations from
primary to secondary entities. Adding such information to villages and
cities as well is too much for me. The basic principle is that I am being
bold in doing so. I do relate to existing items and I have curated a lot of
crap data so far. The result is that Wikidata in places differs
considerably from Wikipedias, particularly the English Wikipedia.

As topics like the ones about Africa are severely underdeveloped, just
adding new data is a 100% improvement even when arguably adding sources is
a good thing. By being bold, by starting from a Wikipedia as a base line,
it is important to note that not adding sources is established practice in
Wikidata.

The issue I raise is that when "another" Wikipedia considers its
information superior, it is all too easy to make accusations of adding
"fake facts" particularly when it is not obvious that the "other" Wikipedia
provides better information. To counter such insular behaviour, it becomes
relevant to consider how we can indicate discrepancies between stated facts
in any Wikimedia project vis a vis Wikidata. Obviously it would be
wonderful when the total of all our projects are considered in a
visualisation.

Particularly when a subject is of little interest to our current editor
community, the data in the Wikipedias and by inference in Wikidata is weak.
Many of the subjects, Africa just as one example, are relevant to a public,
both a reading and editing public, that we want to develop. Without tools
that help us curate our differences we will rely on insular opinions and
every project is only a part of what

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Gendergap approach causing problems

2018-05-07 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

Hi,
I usually push diversity in any situation but only after I got a core quality 
group of volunteer. the first degree of diversity is the diversity based on 
wiki activity, IMHO.. I care about the rest and I try to be honest if I go in 
that direction and why I do that. If anyone is offended for something, that 
happens even if you do your best, in my experience being clear helps on the 
long term.
This a real documented example, if you want to read: 
http://www.wikisciencecompetition.org/people/ . For WSC2017 it was mostly my 
job to find these profiles, 90% of them. I did my best to find motivated jury 
members and, as a first step, I searched for expert wikimedians based on their 
CV on the profiles and their activities. My goal was to be balanced per topic, 
than per geographical area (language mostly, some description in English are 
poor), than maybe per gender, in that order. The evaluation of scientific 
images require expertise, that's the core business. I shared my experience 
here: 
http://www.wikisciencecompetition.org/2017/11/16/how-was-the-jury-for-wiki-science-competition-2017-formed/
In any case, I couldn't know who these people really were sometimes, I didn't 
care at the first step. You know where they work, but they could be foreigners. 
You know their enwikipedia activity (I need people with some decent English 
fluency, so I started there and in any case I found what I needed) but 
sometimes that does not reveal a lot, and English descriptions are 
gender-neutral. So even if it wasn't planned I got some unbalance, and I only 
discovered during the set up of the page that a certain nickname was a blond 
guy and not a Arab or Chinese girl. I did my best to "fix it" at that point but 
mostly because when you miss some positions and you look for additional 3-4 
names it's no big difference to look here or there. But still, the first search 
was based on their expertise. And they all kew that. 

I think it was quite balanced in the end, taking care of the issue but not 
ranking it more critical than the scientific quality of the profiles. Plus. I 
told some of the female jurors that they could be "promoted" to the main jury 
for next edition but that's because they deserve it.
So, in the end  I look also for "girls" and "exotic profiles", I admit that, 
but this was not my main goal, and it was never more important that the 
quality. So at least these people knew that they were part of a team, that they 
were there to share their expertise, not being displayed as a "token".
I think it's more easy and relaxed if you always stick to the content and the 
quality as a first step, IMHO. if you want the movement to grow roots you need 
real people, motivated people, and real sharing. I really hope they will set up 
real national challenges next time, thanks to the expertise we shared.
Alessandro

Il Lunedì 7 Maggio 2018 14:33, Andy Mabbett  ha 
scritto:

 On 7 May 2018 at 05:10, Romaine Wiki  wrote:

> I recently received an e-mail
> from a user in the Wikimedia movement who has (temporarily?) stopped
> contributing as she is not happy with a specific aspect of the atmosphere
> in Wikimedia.

> She was invited to participate in a Wikimedia activity, because:
> 1. she is a woman
> 2. she is from a minority
> 3. she is from an area in the world with much less editors (compared to
> Europe/US)
>
> and perhaps also because her colour of her skin is a bit different then
> mine (Caucasian).

I'm sorry to hear that a contributor feels unable to continue because of this.

In order to examine what improvements we can make, can you tell us -
without breeching confidentiality - how this approach was made, and
what exactly was said?

-- 
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] YouTube shooting and risk assessment

2018-04-05 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

Safety of attendees has for a long time been a criteria ... agree, but the risk 
assesement we are discussing here is not about safety, but security. I am sure 
we might not use them all properly, I am also not a native English speaker, but 
they are not the same concept, right?

Now, there were examples where looking at a dossier where the information was 
about only the first one... that's the point here. I am talking about events, 
the first email was about the place of the office... but the motivation of a 
criminal act in both case can be overlapping, so they are an unicum in a proper 
evaluation, IMHO. I am not expert in the field, but if you start to assess the 
risk of someone harming you in SFO, that could happen also in another place 
where many of the same people gather annually, and that you also inform 
millions of people with sitenotices about it.

Now, I don't say that you must inform a lot. But if you are not the police you 
are also not the fire brigade, but you wouldn't write in a candidature nothing 
or simply "if there is a fire someone is paid to extinguish it"... you would 
make more effort, and we do. If you don't want to add another paragraph in the 
final document, rename it "safety and security" but start to think organically 
about it. 

Alex

 

Il Venerdì 6 Aprile 2018 1:59, Gnangarra <gnanga...@gmail.com> ha scritto:
 

 Safety of attendees has for a long time been a criteria that needs to be 
addressed when bidding for any WMF event, the people bidding are the better 
placed to assess the reality of the local situation.  Open bidding processes 
enable others to also critically look at the options,  ultimately we are more 
at risk at home where feel comfortable then when travelling.   Every location 
has its risks, its undesirables, and crime, just getting a taxi to and from the 
airport is a risk reality is its also more likely than a terrorist event
On 6 April 2018 at 03:24, Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l 
<wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:

That's why people offwiki say they don't discuss this thing on meta or here, 
because you always have an "answer" like this... this sarcasm. in it's way, an 
example of an unhealthy community.
 
 Look at what I wrote:

"Even if it is not nice to think about it, and of course you try to do it 
mostly in private, you should clearly write down at least at a certain point 
that you are preparing to all scenario, contacting the police and so on. it 
should be a paragraph in a candidature for an event, IMHO. but it should be 
done."
that's it. it's not complicated... I know because of partially direct 
experience... it's part of the world, when you are professional. You can't 
prepare an event of certain scale and in a certain areas and ignore it in the 
final dossier. There will be someone who take a look at that. So, who talked 
about "solving terrorism"? just the one who wanted to make a joke.

Maybe people are not big babies and even without constant reminder they don't 
exaggerate. You have no idea with whom I discuss this aspect so far, what such 
wikimedians do in their real life.  They are able to focus on the point... the 
point is security and if you replied this way to this question in many 
situations, you will be considered unprepared.

Alex


    Il Giovedì 5 Aprile 2018 20:29, Alphos OGame <alphos.og...@gmail.com> ha 
scritto:


 I heartily agree : build that firewall, and let Cisco pay for it !
Wait, what were you suggesting in your incipit ? Oh, right, "a way that's 
rational, avoiding to create unnecessary panic of course".
I'd rather not ask of people organizing conventions (which is already 
time-consuming by itself) that they solve terrorism in their town, which is 
what the police are probably more suited for, if you don't mind ; as a matter 
of fact, it is not one of their duties as convention holders, plain and simple, 
and neither are they doctors, police officers, judges, jesters, masseuses, 
nannies, yoga instructors, cooks, indentured servants, etc (except of course if 
they are, which may happen).

So let's please not overreact, and stick to the current discussion instead of 
having the next WikiConvention in a flying fortress with armed guards, sniffing 
dogs, and metal detectors at every door…

Roger / Alphos



2018-04-05 18:40 GMT+02:00 Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l 
<wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia. org>:

I remember we discussed 2 or 3 years about this scenario with some wikimedians 
off wiki. I strongly support to discuss at least once openly about that. In a 
way that it's rational, avoiding to create unnecessary panic... of course.


Despite the claimed neutrality of the communities, reality always bites. Now, a 
terrorist can imagine that we will not put a black banner if someone kill a lot 
of people somewhere... but if same amount of wikimedians are killed at a 
international rally the probability

Re: [Wikimedia-l] YouTube shooting and risk assessment

2018-04-05 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

That's why people offwiki say they don't discuss this thing on meta or here, 
because you always have an "answer" like this... this sarcasm. in it's way, an 
example of an unhealthy community.

 Look at what I wrote:

"Even if it is not nice to think about it, and of course you try to do it 
mostly in private, you should clearly write down at least at a certain point 
that you are preparing to all scenario, contacting the police and so on. it 
should be a paragraph in a candidature for an event, IMHO. but it should be 
done."
that's it. it's not complicated... I know because of partially direct 
experience... it's part of the world, when you are professional. You can't 
prepare an event of certain scale and in a certain areas and ignore it in the 
final dossier. There will be someone who take a look at that. So, who talked 
about "solving terrorism"? just the one who wanted to make a joke. 

Maybe people are not big babies and even without constant reminder they don't 
exaggerate. You have no idea with whom I discuss this aspect so far, what such 
wikimedians do in their real life.  They are able to focus on the point... the 
point is security and if you replied this way to this question in many 
situations, you will be considered unprepared.

Alex

Il Giovedì 5 Aprile 2018 20:29, Alphos OGame <alphos.og...@gmail.com> ha 
scritto:

 I heartily agree : build that firewall, and let Cisco pay for it !
Wait, what were you suggesting in your incipit ? Oh, right, "a way that's 
rational, avoiding to create unnecessary panic of course".
I'd rather not ask of people organizing conventions (which is already 
time-consuming by itself) that they solve terrorism in their town, which is 
what the police are probably more suited for, if you don't mind ; as a matter 
of fact, it is not one of their duties as convention holders, plain and simple, 
and neither are they doctors, police officers, judges, jesters, masseuses, 
nannies, yoga instructors, cooks, indentured servants, etc (except of course if 
they are, which may happen).

So let's please not overreact, and stick to the current discussion instead of 
having the next WikiConvention in a flying fortress with armed guards, sniffing 
dogs, and metal detectors at every door…

Roger / Alphos

2018-04-05 18:40 GMT+02:00 Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l 
<wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>:

I remember we discussed 2 or 3 years about this scenario with some wikimedians 
off wiki. I strongly support to discuss at least once openly about that. In a 
way that it's rational, avoiding to create unnecessary panic... of course.

Despite the claimed neutrality of the communities, reality always bites. Now, a 
terrorist can imagine that we will not put a black banner if someone kill a lot 
of people somewhere... but if same amount of wikimedians are killed at a 
international rally the probability that a block ribbon, an editnotice with a 
statement appear on many language edition is higher. it's an attack at the 
community like it is a proposal of a law somewhere, and we naturally react 
stronger.

It would be a bigger impact, if you think about it. You can get the attention 
of billions of people every time they connect to the 5th or 6th largest website 
in the world. Cynically speaking, if you also consider the facts that it's 
about free knowledge and volunteers, than a mass murder at at a wikimedian 
event might be more "effective" than at a discotheque or the seat of a 
multinational conglomerate.

If i remember correctly. in the months before a certain wiki-event, many people 
linked to radical activities were arrested in the area, in the same country. 
So, when you organize an event, it's not just about safety but also security. 
Even if it is not nice to think about it, and of course you try to do it mostly 
in private, you should clearly write down at least at a certain point that you 
are preparing to all scenario, contacting the police and so on. it should be a 
paragraph in a candidature for an event, IMHO. but it should be done.

A.M.

    Il Giovedì 5 Aprile 2018 18:09, Vi to <vituzzu.w...@gmail.com> ha scritto:

 I read/receive related craps
<https://en.wikipedia.org/w/ index.php?title=User_talk: 
Vituzzu=prev= 831949995>
on
a daily basis but it's hard to tell an idiot from a psychopath, so it may
become a risk for WMF offices.

Vito

2018-04-05 17:33 GMT+02:00 Andy Mabbett <a...@pigsonthewing.org.uk>:

> I'm sure most of you will be aware of the unfortunate events at
> YouTube's HQ a couple fo days ago:
>
>    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ YouTube_headquarters_shooting
>
> Without giving away anything that might reveal vulnerabilities, does
> the WMF have contingency plans for such an incident? What about at
> community events in the US, and elsewhere?
>
> --
> Andy Mabbett
> @pigsonthewing
> http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
>

Re: [Wikimedia-l] YouTube shooting and risk assessment

2018-04-05 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

I remember we discussed 2 or 3 years about this scenario with some wikimedians 
off wiki. I strongly support to discuss at least once openly about that. In a 
way that it's rational, avoiding to create unnecessary panic... of course. 


Despite the claimed neutrality of the communities, reality always bites. Now, a 
terrorist can imagine that we will not put a black banner if someone kill a lot 
of people somewhere... but if same amount of wikimedians are killed at a 
international rally the probability that a block ribbon, an editnotice with a 
statement appear on many language edition is higher. it's an attack at the 
community like it is a proposal of a law somewhere, and we naturally react 
stronger.


It would be a bigger impact, if you think about it. You can get the attention 
of billions of people every time they connect to the 5th or 6th largest website 
in the world. Cynically speaking, if you also consider the facts that it's 
about free knowledge and volunteers, than a mass murder at at a wikimedian 
event might be more "effective" than at a discotheque or the seat of a 
multinational conglomerate.


If i remember correctly. in the months before a certain wiki-event, many people 
linked to radical activities were arrested in the area, in the same country. 
So, when you organize an event, it's not just about safety but also security. 
Even if it is not nice to think about it, and of course you try to do it mostly 
in private, you should clearly write down at least at a certain point that you 
are preparing to all scenario, contacting the police and so on. it should be a 
paragraph in a candidature for an event, IMHO. but it should be done.

A.M. 

Il Giovedì 5 Aprile 2018 18:09, Vi to  ha scritto:
 

 I read/receive related craps

on
a daily basis but it's hard to tell an idiot from a psychopath, so it may
become a risk for WMF offices.

Vito

2018-04-05 17:33 GMT+02:00 Andy Mabbett :

> I'm sure most of you will be aware of the unfortunate events at
> YouTube's HQ a couple fo days ago:
>
>    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube_headquarters_shooting
>
> Without giving away anything that might reveal vulnerabilities, does
> the WMF have contingency plans for such an incident? What about at
> community events in the US, and elsewhere?
>
> --
> Andy Mabbett
> @pigsonthewing
> http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
>
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 


   
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] New Stewards elected

2018-02-28 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

Compared to the low point of 2016, it is glad that for another year we had 
enough elected candidates. 
Five is a good number. 

Il Giovedì 1 Marzo 2018 1:36, Md. Ibrahim Husain  ha 
scritto:
 

 Congrats to the new stewards.

On Thursday, March 1, 2018, Mardetanha  wrote:

> Hey Wikimedia community
> after a long election we finally have couple new stewards elected
>
>
>    1. علاء 
> (
>    talk  D8%A7%D8%A1>
>    · contribs
>     D8%B9%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%A1>
>    )
>    2. Green Giant  (talk
>     · contribs
>    )
>    3. Rxy  (talk
>     · contribs
>    )
>    4. -revi  (talk
>     · contribs
>    )
>    5. There'sNoTime 
> (
>    talk  ·
>    contribs
>     >)
>
>
> please join me in welcoming them for the new position and congratulating
> them for gaining communities trust.
>
>
>
> Mardetanha
> On behalf of election committee
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 



-- 
Mohammad Ibrahim Husain
Mobile: 01921 584733
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 


   
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Starting School Activity: Possible Support and Tips

2018-02-22 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

Do you need some contacts of local expert wikimedians too? It's a mail from 
Singapore, right?
I can show you how to contact them on their user talk pages if you are a total 
newbie. Some of them you can find listed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedians_in_Singapore
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Singapore

but they might not be updated.
Good luck,A.M. 

Il Giovedì 22 Febbraio 2018 11:08, Srishti Sethi  ha 
scritto:

 Hello Zubin,

Glad to hear your interest in starting an activity around Wikimedia
projects at your high school!

We recommend developers looking to contribute code to our projects to start
with following our New Developers guide [1]. This guide contains
information on how to choose a project, list of beginner-friendly projects
and bugs, additional resources, outreach programs, and how to contribute in
non-technical areas.

We also have documentation of a workshop [2] we ran for high school
students around Wikimedia and Google Code-in, that you might find useful.

If you have a specific request for support from us, feel free to reach out
to me personally or come and chat with our team members on IRC at
#wikimedia-devrel.

Cheers,
Srishti

[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/New_Developers
[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Code-in/Workshop_Materials

On Wed, Feb 21, 2018 at 5:35 AM, Zubin JAIN 
wrote:

> Hi,
> I'm trying to start a new school activity at my high school geared towards
> contributing to Wikimedia projects and was wondering what support is
> available?
> Sincerely,
> Zubin Jain
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 

-- 
Srishti Sethi
Developer Advocate
Technical Collaboration team
Wikimedia Foundation

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:SSethi_(WMF)
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Welcome messages at arwiki

2018-01-25 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

i think many people might not understand what is the real problem here with 
this aspect in the general framework. I might make a brutal simplification, of 
course.
In any case, if you manage to make the moment when a logged-in user is 
connected to a platform for the first time a secret, that basically do not have 
a big impact on anything most of the people do, so I can probably tell you to 
go on. What would be the effect? The info will disappear from the SUL table or 
something like that. Whatever.
But I guess, cynically, that a "non-solution" of "don't use the bot" is much 
more fitting for the "social ecosystem" and the way it evolves on wiki 
platforms. This way you did not address a higher level aspect of the issue, you 
remove the global feeling of alert down a notch and you can act in any case as 
if you did something in that direction. Also, it makes no solid precedent when 
future real privacy problem are discussed. 
That's why asking to remove the info completely, from my point of view, it's 
even slightly better.  At least next time we discuss privacy in other matter I 
have a strong precedent case to cite. I mean... if people make a fuzz about 
this, I expect they really care about other things. I could ping all the 
favorable to such information removal one by one in a future RfC.
Alex 

Il Venerdì 26 Gennaio 2018 3:37, John Erling Blad <jeb...@gmail.com> ha 
scritto:
 

 Fine! If people refuse the easy way out, then create an Rfc, and start the 
process to make creation of new user accounts non-public information.
Den fre. 26. jan. 2018, 03.04 skrev Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l 
<wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>:

you are not "exposing the user unknowingly visiting the site" with the bot 
itself...when you visit the site you are integrated in the SUL, it's public 
information since ages. The fact that a bot takes care of it or a human being 
leaves a message does not tell you a lot more. Sometimes on certain wiki 
welcome messages are delivered sometimes they are not. Sometimes immediately, 
sometimes later. It's a very fragmented situation so the bot tells you 
basically nothing per se, it simple makes some people aware that the 
information of visiting a site exists and it is public. 
So the question is not about the bot, the question is if when you do 
thishttps://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ACentralAuth=Alexmar983
and you can read that it's public that for example I was attached on fawiki on 
21:41, 11 April 2012, which is basically when I visited it the first time. 
Although not strictly, I could have visited it and the system having problem 
and log me out (that also happen) so technically this is not even true 
sometimes... But even if it was precise, is the public knowledge of this 
information really a threat to my privacy? or it is justing many of the things 
I implicitly agree when I make an account?
The "violation of privacy" of such information, it's not even comparable with 
dozen of other things in your life. But seriously if THIS is a problem and had 
to be "put secret" than I'd expect to be informed when a check user look at my 
data. You know a few group of people decide when it's right or wrong to 
look at my personal data and not informing me when they do it probably because 
they found nothing (but they have such information in their hand now, don't 
they? Shouldn't I generic user be informed about it?), that's not very nice for 
the privacy of anyone. So the core point is not that I receive a message once a 
year that makes me aware that the SUL information exist, but that I don't 
receive a lot of other messages that I should receiving about who's looking at 
many others of my personal data.
Privacy is a serious matter. I expect RfC for things that have impact. Now 
imagine that I go to people that are worried and tell them the nobody really 
cares that they are not informed when someone look inside their provider data 
(because put in the end of a small group of people is "enough") or that the 
disaggregated information of CU activity is not public for the majority of 
platforms... but someone cares so much if they receive a welcoming message by 
bot when they visit a platform for the first time. I am quite sure that the 
users I know will not be impressed.

    Il Venerdì 26 Gennaio 2018 0:27, John Erling Blad <jeb...@gmail.com> ha 
scritto:


 I can't see that T42006 is relevant in this case. It is about abusive use
of a bot, not about creation of the central account in itself.

The existence of a central account leads to creation of the local account.
This is probably acceptable. Then this may lead to the abusiv behavior, ie
exposing the user unknowingly visiting the site. This is probably not
intended and not acceptable.

I wonder if the solution is to filter down the new users to real
contributors, that would be pretty simple

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Welcome messages at arwiki

2018-01-25 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

you are not "exposing the user unknowingly visiting the site" with the bot 
itself...when you visit the site you are integrated in the SUL, it's public 
information since ages. The fact that a bot takes care of it or a human being 
leaves a message does not tell you a lot more. Sometimes on certain wiki 
welcome messages are delivered sometimes they are not. Sometimes immediately, 
sometimes later. It's a very fragmented situation so the bot tells you 
basically nothing per se, it simple makes some people aware that the 
information of visiting a site exists and it is public. 
So the question is not about the bot, the question is if when you do 
thishttps://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ACentralAuth=Alexmar983
and you can read that it's public that for example I was attached on fawiki on 
21:41, 11 April 2012, which is basically when I visited it the first time. 
Although not strictly, I could have visited it and the system having problem 
and log me out (that also happen) so technically this is not even true 
sometimes... But even if it was precise, is the public knowledge of this 
information really a threat to my privacy? or it is justing many of the things 
I implicitly agree when I make an account?
The "violation of privacy" of such information, it's not even comparable with 
dozen of other things in your life. But seriously if THIS is a problem and had 
to be "put secret" than I'd expect to be informed when a check user look at my 
data. You know a few group of people decide when it's right or wrong to 
look at my personal data and not informing me when they do it probably because 
they found nothing (but they have such information in their hand now, don't 
they? Shouldn't I generic user be informed about it?), that's not very nice for 
the privacy of anyone. So the core point is not that I receive a message once a 
year that makes me aware that the SUL information exist, but that I don't 
receive a lot of other messages that I should receiving about who's looking at 
many others of my personal data.
Privacy is a serious matter. I expect RfC for things that have impact. Now 
imagine that I go to people that are worried and tell them the nobody really 
cares that they are not informed when someone look inside their provider data 
(because put in the end of a small group of people is "enough") or that the 
disaggregated information of CU activity is not public for the majority of 
platforms... but someone cares so much if they receive a welcoming message by 
bot when they visit a platform for the first time. I am quite sure that the 
users I know will not be impressed. 

Il Venerdì 26 Gennaio 2018 0:27, John Erling Blad  ha 
scritto:
 

 I can't see that T42006 is relevant in this case. It is about abusive use
of a bot, not about creation of the central account in itself.

The existence of a central account leads to creation of the local account.
This is probably acceptable. Then this may lead to the abusiv behavior, ie
exposing the user unknowingly visiting the site. This is probably not
intended and not acceptable.

I wonder if the solution is to filter down the new users to real
contributors, that would be pretty simple

Den tor. 25. jan. 2018, 22.55 skrev Pine W :

> Joe,
>
> I believe that the issue of a potential privacy violation was first raised
> on this list on December 30th, and I first emailed WMF Legal about this
> issue on January 1st. Keeping in mind that the issue involves potential
> privacy violations, I think that it's reasonable to think that this issue
> should have been reviewed within days, not weeks. I disagree with the
> statement that "A subsequent review is clearly going to be a low priority
> task as I am sure you can understand Pine." If anything, I think that the
> situation is clear to the contrary and it should have been reviewed within
> days.
>
> For me, an RfC about this matter would be for the purposes of (1)
> encouraging WMF to give more attention to this matter, (2) attempting to
> establish community consensus about whether the matters being raised here
> involve privacy violations, and (3) what should be done, if anything.
> Personally, I think that the status quo does involve privacy violations and
> that there should be changes. Whether that view is shared by others is
> something that the RfC would attempt to measure.
>
> In this circumstance I consider RfC to be similar to a ballot measure, and
> I think that it's appropriate for me to say that if I think that there are
> problems then I may use tools that are available to me to attempt to
> address them, preferably with WMF's cooperation, but without WMF"s
> cooperation if necessary and if possible.
>
> John,
>
> A previous discussion about the privacy issues occurred in
> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T42006. I received a new email from WMF
> Legal in which they affirmed their department's 2012 view on this matter.
> The most recent

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Welcome messages at arwiki

2018-01-23 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

There are a lot of SUL issues that are waiting to be addressed. One for example 
is the definition of what is not "appropriate" as a name. Another one is a 
centralized interface for preferences, a third one is a centralized management 
of key user information, a forth one is the possibility to disactivate 
crosswiki ping services so you can manage them only when you want to... and so 
on... one reasonable thing you can ask is that the message is not inserted in 
the talk of people with no edits, for example. Or that the welcome messages are 
progressively standardized, with a clear layout for the message that can be 
declined with the users' language preferences when they are declared. Sure, 
there is no point in linking me again to the five pillar, but a link to some 
key pages might still be useful.
In any case I cannot think of it as really important, and it is to me less 
important than other issues related to the SUL interface.
Right in these days one of my friends that I registered years ago or that was 
already registered (in any case a very minor contributor, with only a 
superficial involvement on wiki platforms) received one of this welcome message 
in one "non-western language". He/She found it funny.
I probably have very tolerant friends... good for me! But so far I still feel 
that this is a problem only for a small fraction on  mid-term and long-term 
users than for the rest of the world. I believe that if you make an extensive 
research these messages might have no effect (especially if left by bot), they 
probably have some effect if they are part of a human interaction, and there is 
a minority who will disagree with them strongly. Based on the human 
interactions and experiences in my life at the workplace, I kinda suspect that 
for many of these people this could be also their general attitude in other 
fields.
Don't get me wrong, I am concerned by the abuse of psychometric and personal 
data on modern internet platform, I'll do whatever I could to prevent it that's 
why I really don't understand why these messages given by an open and linear 
process are such a big deal per se. To me it's like overthinking something 
quite superficial and that's unfortunately rarely in the interest of taking 
care of the real big deal, such as e.g. your personal metadata being sold to 
big conglomerates without your "active permission". So are my friends, and, 
surprise surpirse, they don't care about these welcome messages too. 

Il Mercoledì 24 Gennaio 2018 4:41, Pine W  ha scritto:

 FYI for those on WIkimedia-l who may be interested, conversation about this
matter is ongoing. I am waiting a response from WMF Legal, and there may be
others who have opened their own lines of inquiry.

If I don't receive a reply from WMF Legal that I feel is satisfactory, or
if I don't receive one at all, then I plan to set up an RfC about this
matter.

Pine 

On Mon, Jan 1, 2018 at 2:17 PM, Vi to  wrote:

> I'm scared of the solutions that will "fix" this.
> I expect something as dramatically useful as the removal of "unblock this
> IP" button for IPs caught by autoblocks of registered users.
>
> Vito
>
> 2018-01-01 22:46 GMT+01:00 Pine W :
>
> > I have created https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T183876 and am pinging
> > Legal to request a review of this matter.
> >
> > Happy new year,
> >
> > Pine
> > ___
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> > wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> > wiki/Wikimedia-l
> > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
> >
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
>
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe:

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Welcome messages at arwiki

2017-12-30 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

What are the good reason to be poaranoid? The only reason I ever heard is "is 
making me waste time", usually expressed wasting more time.
BTW, after years of SUL most of the old time users have received a lot of 
welcome messages and they receive usually two new ones per year, no more in my 
experience. I made some test with newbies and it does not see more different, 
when they one open some wikis they might receive a message  (and if they are 
not used to other culture, that does not happen a lot of time, I suppose) . 
I can think of dozens of things in my life that spam me more, and make me more 
"paranoid". Yesterday I search a stupid thing and I found a related ad in my 
youtube after 5 minutes, I told on a chat app that I had the flue and I got a 
flu treatment opening a web page... spent more time being irritated by these 
facts, this might have a good impact on everybody's life. 
For wikimedia, just ask to add a link to a meta page where is written down 
which messages are received via bot simply after log in, so it is super 
transparent how it works and you learn how the build up of the SUL log in 
works. Put a link to CentralAuth too.
 

Il Sabato 30 Dicembre 2017 11:28, Peter Southwood 
 ha scritto:
 

 Hi Ting, You make a fair point about culture, but the impression I got is that 
the welcomes were being sent to people who were not intentionally editing the 
arwiki, or aware that they were doing so, which makes this a cultural thing 
imposed on people who were not aware of it or expecting it, and who did not 
have a way to avoid it even if they had known it might happen, which is a bit 
beyond local culture. For myself I am not bothered by messages from other 
Wikis, even if I can't read them. I am used to it, but some people are more 
paranoid than me, sometimes for good reasons. Cheers,
Peter

-Original Message-
From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of 
Ting Chen
Sent: 30 December 2017 11:38
To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Welcome messages at arwiki

Hello Amir,


I think what you are questioning is right. And it is necessary to ask such 
questions. In my day job it is my duty to ask and discuss such questions with 
my customers.


But, with the time I sort of see that these pure utilitarian questions are not 
the only questions that we need to consider. I start to ask questions that are 
beyond or below (according to the perspective) these pure utilitarian 
questions. I find the answer Meno25 gave on Meta a very interesting one in this 
respect. In his answer he was not arguing about if the welcome-bot is useful or 
meaningful. He said it is their custom to do so. What he is pointing to is 
culture. See, why do we hug, shake hands, nod, or rub noses, or kiss? From a 
pure utilitarian point of view these behaviors are not only meaningless, they 
are even potentially dangerous for our health. If we just want to meet other 
people and talk to them why do we not just directly talk about what we want to 
talk about and make it behind us?


And this is why in my opinion it is good that every project has its own way to 
handle welcome message: Because the welcome message is not only a utilitarian 
thing, there is culture beyond or below it. There is culture encompassed from 
the societies where the project community is embedded in and there is culture 
that was created and developed by the project community.


This is why in my opinion as long as the message is not malicious how every 
community handles this is their own thing.


Greetings

Ting



Am 30.12.2017 um 09:29 schrieb Amir E. Aharoni:
> It's a good opportunity to step back and discuss a little something.
>
> The existence of pretty much every bot is a reason to think of a missing
> feature in the site's software. The same goes for templates and gadgets.
>
> Why do many wikis have custom welcome templates and bots that send them?
> The intuitive answer is "to send a personal message to a new user", but if
> it's done by a bot, it's already not personal. What does the bot actually
> automate? The placement of a template? But what is the actual purpose of
> the template?
>
> Is it to say "hello and welcome"? The notifications feature already does it
> nicely.
>
> To send people a list of useful links? I heard many times that new users
> actually do find them useful, and it's a good thing. But it's nevertheless
> an anecdotal claim, and smarter questions should be asked:
> * How many people actually read these messages?
> * Are all the links useful? Do people actually click them?
> * Could some be removed? Could some be added?
> * Why is it different in every project? Could at least some parts be reused
> across languages in a robust and properly localizable manner?
> * Is the talk page really a good place to do this?
> * How useful is it for people for people who come from another language and
> have an account auto-created?
>
>

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Welcome messages at arwiki

2017-12-29 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

Some reactions to welcome bot or welcomes are a little bit "exaggerated" 
sometimes. it's just a small red color spot in a corner. Two seconds to process 
it, more time to complain about it.
I study user activities and sometimes I leave welcome messages here and there. 
99.5% of the time is because they have some sort of activities on the platform. 
it happened to me one or two times per year that some users deleted a welcome 
message I have left here or there. A scenario that occurred more than once is 
wikidata and old-term users that have some issues with the fact that even if 
they don't want to be part to it, they do have edits indirectly on such 
platform. Sometimes they spent more time writing in the object why they are 
deleting it that simply ignoring it. 
I stick to the fact that with "side" platforms 95% of the users don't care, 4% 
reply interested or thank for the welcome or similar, and 1% (or less) have 
issues. Such 1% are mostly long term or established users. In the general 
framework, I think that leaving such templates from real users to people with 
some activities is potentially useful, at least to establish a connection.
I also have no direct experience of anyone complaining about bot messages on 
other "side" platforms, I know about users discovering less "common" wiki such 
as some of the "Asian" ones, but they are kinda amused. Such bot welcome 
message arrives when you do something to log in, such as opening one of their 
articles for example. Or maybe you use a computer when someone else have opened 
them recently.
We can write a meta policy to leave welcome message only with people with 
edits, but in the end someone could point out that informing people before they 
do anything if they actually entered the platform is a good strategy (why wait 
they have to do something? maybe they need help). On some wiki you get the 
message as soon as you log in, for example frwiki if I remember with a test 
from a friend. Why is that different?
The core issue is to be sure that the welcome message has a part in one or two 
main world languages, and a link to the embassy page. That's the occasion to 
make it smarter not to remove it totally, we have the expertise to do that. For 
example you leave the en-N welcome message to people who have edits on 
enwikipedia and so on. 

Alessandro

Il Venerdì 29 Dicembre 2017 10:27, K. Peachey  ha 
scritto:

 Have you asked the user how the finding the users?
Have you considered other steps than just jumping to mailing list?
Where are the complaints from the other users to show this is a long
running issue?

On 29 December 2017 at 19:20, John Erling Blad  wrote:
> Users on other projects are complaining about the welcome messages at
> arwiki. A bot at that project are welcoming people that has no activity at
> that project at all. The bot operator claims the activity is valid, but I
> can't see that this is a well-behaving bot at all.[1]
>
> I suspect the bot is welcoming every user it can find, but using user
> accounts from central login and not users that has local contributions at
> arwiki.
>
> Can someone shut down the bot until the user fix the spam problem.
>
> [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Meno25#Welcome_messages
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 
> 

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 

___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Gathering User Inputs for WikiCV Project

2017-12-17 Thread Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l

I'd like to put a picture of me on such CV but even if this is voluntary that's 
usually the point when 4 or 5 users (mostly old-timers) write something like 
"we are not facebook" (or similar) and say they agree with themselves.
I wish I could do it myself, repeating standardized sentences as a social 
thing, stupid me that I try to do new things... :D But this time I also repeat 
myself, I'd like to put my picture on that. And the infobox of the languages I 
know. And make it available as a transcluded content from my meta user page and 
from there to all the wikipedia I don't have a user page, maybe with key title 
and description translated in their language. Because it would be nice that if 
I want to do something like that I could do it, especially if I am not the only 
one.
I am quite sure that the people who disagree will survive the cultural shock 
and write "we are not facebook"  in another discussion with no loss of their 
perceived social role. 
Alessandr
 

Il Domenica 17 Dicembre 2017 20:12, Megha Sharma 
 ha scritto:
 

 Hi all,

I'm an Outreachy  intern and as a part of
the internship, I'm working on a project - WikiCV
.

Through this project we (my mentors - Gergő Tisza and Stephen LaPorte and
I) want to create a contribution summarizing tool which (unlike the
existing ones that focus on statistics and are hard to interpret for
someone not familiar with Wikipedia editing) highlights contributions in an
easy-to-understand manner.

I'm writing this to gather inputs from prospective users of this tool, that
is all the Wikipedia editors!

Basically I want to understand what all things would you like to see in a
tool like this? Or what all would you write in your Wikipedia CV?

You can give in your inputs through mail (I'd be more than happy to get one
:)) or fill out this form . My work
is largely dependent on your inputs, so please pour in your comments/views.
Your help will be quite appreciated!

Eagerly waiting for your inputs :)
Thanks,
Megha Sharma
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, 


   
___
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,

77 matches

Mail list logo