[Wikimedia-l] Re: We need more video: doing it right

2024-01-30 Thread Erik Moeller
Thanks Brion for the detailed breakdown re: video issues. Replying
under the changed subject line :)

Re: transcoding video, Brion wrote:

> Allowing *ingestion* of MP4 h.264/AAC would allow uploading camera
> originals from most consumer gear -- a major democratizing feature.
> Ingestion of MP4 HEVC/AAC would give more compatibility.
>
> In both cases we have all the software we need, we already use the
> Debian ffmpeg package which includes code supporting both formats;
> we just don't allow uploading the files, reading them to convert for playback,
> or downloading the originals from our web site.
>
> Do we need a MPEG-LA patent license for that? Nobody seemed to think so
> in 2014 but nobody could tell me for sure either, then or now.

IMO it would be useful to commission a renewed legal/policy assessment
of those questions. Similarly, it would be good to know if any
expiring patents might soon expand the range of options Wikimedia
projects could enable without a patent policy change. At least for
H.264 it seems like a pile of patents are coming up for expiry in 2024
and 2025, but I don't know if they alone help us much. [1]

Regardless of any changes to Wikimedia's hard line policy stance on
patent-encumbered codecs, the industry trend towards more open formats
does make me optimistic about video in the long run.

Warmly,
Erik

[1] Per this community-maintained page:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_H.264_MPEG-4_AVC_expired_yet%3F

On Tue, Jan 30, 2024 at 11:59 AM Samuel Klein  wrote:
>
> [New thread for the discussions started by brion, Ivan, James and others on 
> becoming video-friendly and building a community of video editors and 
> curators. Was "Re: We need more interactive content."]
>
> James Heilman wrote:
>>
>> With VideoWiki we have been able to create some higher quality content with 
>> a partner at MyUpchar. The text was written by us, the individual short 
>> animations were done by them, and then the tool combines it all together 
>> with text to speech. Hope to get the tool working again soon:
>> https://mdwiki.org/wiki/Video:Tuberculosis
>
>
> A nice example of a) creating a space explicitly to develop new tools and 
> encourage one another in using them; b) trialing a workflow that can be 
> automated at need.
>
> Text-to-speech and animation tools have also advanced tremendously since that 
> was produced; this is also becoming an important channel for more mainstream 
> media (I see the spammers taking over mainstream social media with it as 
> well, in how-tos, education, news, sports, and leisure).
>
> SJ
>
> On Tue, Jan 30, 2024 at 2:25 AM Ivan Martínez  wrote:
>>
>> It is not difficult to do something that is already happening. By referring 
>> to encyclopedic videos I am talking about multimedia that can enrich 
>> existing content. I understand your point, it's a bit like what happened 
>> with the project of reading recorded Wikipedia articles that after years 
>> seem obsolete.
>>
>> What I am referring to is all that multimedia material that is visual, that 
>> can be made into video to complement articles. The process you mention is 
>> complicated, but not impossible, in fact, there are many of us editors who 
>> have all those skills already implemented in the projects.
>>>
>>>
>>> > By not having a Youtube 2.0 we are avoiding a Wikipedia 2.0 with pure 
>>> > encyclopaedic videos. I see a false dilemma there.
>
>
>
> brion wrote:
>>
>> My recommendations for Wikimedia Foundation on this subject:
>> 1) Overturn the requirement to avoid handling h.264 files on Wikimedia 
>> servers or accept them from users or serve them to users. Allow importing 
>> h.264 uploads and creating h.264 transcodes for playback compatibility.
>> 2) Create an interactive media team with at least two engineers, a designer, 
>> and a project manager
>> 3) Give this team a remit to rebuild *and maintain in an ongoing fashion* 
>> the existing TimedMediaHandler, Graphs, Score, 3D, etc extensions
>> 4) Integrate those tools cleanly with mobile apps and social media embedding 
>> tools managed by other teams
>
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: We need more interactive content: we are doing it wrong

2024-01-27 Thread Erik Moeller
On Tue, Jan 23, 2024 at 11:44 AM Brion Vibber  wrote:
> 1) Overturn the requirement to avoid handling h.264 files on Wikimedia 
> servers or
> accept them from users or serve them to users. Allow importing h.264 uploads
> and creating h.264 transcodes for playback compatibility.

The last RFC [1] will reach its 10 year anniversary in February, so I
think it would be reasonable to re-engage with the (Wikimedia-wide)
community if anything about the current policy should change.
Personally, I continue to be in favor of Wikimedia transcoding
uploads, as long as WMF doesn't end up paying licensing fees to the
video patent monopolists.

What's changed over the last 10 years? Looking at Commons:Video, it
currently says:

> The preferred video format is VP9 video in the WebM container, but Theora
> video in the ogv container and VP8 or AV1 video in the WebM container are
> also allowed.

So at least it looks like there are now new royalty-free formats that
are widely supported in browsers, right?

Is there anything that can be done to expand the server-side format
support further without changing Wikimedia's stance on patents? For
example, should Wikimedia Commons support additional container formats
or codecs that are royalty-free or whose patents have expired?

Warmly,
Erik

[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Requests_for_comment/MP4_Video
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Sharing an update on the Wikimedia Foundation Knowledge Equity Fund’s grantees

2023-08-17 Thread Erik Moeller
On Wed, Aug 16, 2023 at 10:23 PM Steven Walling
 wrote:

> With the money allocated to Knowledge Equity in the last couple years, we 
> could have hired
> at least a couple more software engineers to do work like fulfill community 
> wishlist requests.

I disagree with that framing. Wikimedia Foundation, even with reduced
fundraising goals, is a very well-endowed organization that can easily
shift more of its existing effort towards community wishlist requests.
_All_ areas in which it spends money are deserving of healthy
scrutiny, not just this new program. I feel it's best to evaluate this
program on its own merits -- and to make a separate argument regarding
the community wishlist & prioritization of software engineering
ventures.

To me, the question with these grants is whether there's a plausible
theory of change that ties them back to the Wikimedia mission and
movement. I share some skepticism about broad objectives around
"improving quality of sources about X" without any _obvious and
direct_ connection to the movement's work (i.e. concrete commitments
about licensing and availability of information, or collaboration with
Wikimedians). The Borealis Journalism Fund grant report [1] explicitly
states:

# of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages: 0
# of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects: 0
Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects: 0

(There are qualifiers in the report, but frankly, they're not very
plausible ones.)

I see a lot of value in WMF having new connections with these grantees
-- these are organizations Wikimedia _should_ have a relationship
with. But do we best accomplish that by directly funding their
operations? This statement from the latest announcement stands out to
me:

> The Equity Fund Committee [...] have also connected each of these grantees 
> with regional
> and relevant partners in the Wikimedia movement, including local and 
> established
> movement affiliates who can support knowledge equity work and help grantees 
> learn about
> how to connect back to the work of free knowledge on the Wikimedia projects.

That's great, and I look forward to hearing what comes from these
connections. I do worry a bit about slipping into a transactional
framework -- "we give you support for your core mission, and to
maintain good relations with us, you have some meetings with friendly
Wikimedians in your area". Many grant-giving organizations tend to
adopt transactional frameworks, sometimes overtly, sometimes without
even realizing it. In the worst case, the grantee experiences it as a
chore -- a checklist item to complete to apply for the next round of
funding. Not saying that's where this program is at, just that it's
something I would suggest watching out for.

Personally, I see potential in the direction of well-scoped
fellowships/residencies/internships paid by WMF, where both parties
understand fully that engagement with the Wikimedia movement is part
of what they're signing up for. There are pitfalls here as well:
avoiding paid editing; making sure that the fellows themselves are
diverse, etc. But these issues seem "closer to the metal" of
Wikimedia's work, i.e. "the right kinds of of problems".

There's a lot of institutional history to look back on & learn from,
from GLAM residencies to WMF's internal fellowship program which you,
Steven, went through so many years ago. I'd also encourage a close
look at Outreachy, who have done amazing work getting diverse new
contributors to join open source & open science projects. And that may
be what you mean with "try less controversial methods to improve
knowledge equity", but I feel this should be entirely about
effectiveness and mission alignment, not about avoiding controversy.

In general, I'd love to hear more from both the staff and community
members on the committee how they came to their funding decisions
(i.e. what set the successful grantees apart from the unsuccessful
ones, and what theory of change animated the decisions), and where
they'd like to see the program go in future.

Warmly,
Erik

[1] 
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Knowledge_Equity_Fund_%28Round_1%29_-_Borealis_philanthropy_report.pdf
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[Wikimedia-l] 10*100K grant funding for AI oversight (OpenAI)

2023-05-25 Thread Erik Moeller
FYI, OpenAI's nonprofit parent has launched a new grant program for
responsible AI:

https://openai.com/blog/democratic-inputs-to-ai

This is not concerned with the problem that's probably of highest
concern to Wikimedians (AI as bullshit generators) but with the longer
term steering of AI as it becomes more capable. I expect critics will
see it as more evidence that OpenAI is deflecting from the harm their
systems are doing today by focusing attention on long-term
hypotheticals. In typical OpenAI fashion, they speak of AGI
(human-level intelligence) and superintelligence.

Wikipedia is the very first example they cite for "creative approaches
that inspire us". The example in their mockup, of deciding on whether
an AI should provide advice on recreational drug use, is also the kind
of thing that should be familiar to folks who've been part of content
policy discussions. Their mockup also reminded me a bit of NPOV in its
attempt to arrive at a formulation that is widely agreeable.

Individuals and orgs can apply; I did not see any country exclusions
but I didn't see a way to get to the fineprint without applying.
Deadline is June 24.

I don't intend to apply but if there are any applicants from
Wikimedia-land, I'd be happy to help with suggestions/input/review, if
wanted :).

Warmly,
Erik
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: 23 March: Invitation to Open Community Call on ChatGPT, generative AI, and Wikimedia

2023-04-01 Thread Erik Moeller
Lauren:

> Erik, I see your point now and agree with you. But doesn't it seem
> like obtaining a perfect license is at present the enemy of the urgent
> good of bringing a concerted effort to bear on problems that are
> clearly detrimental to project integrity?

I don't think the licensing question matters for purposes of
evaluation of third party APIs (including providing access to
Wikimedia volunteers to participate in such evaluations), but I would
personally draw the line when it comes to something like a Wikimedia
Cloud Infrastructure installation. Spending a lot of money on compute
infrastructure to run a proprietary model strikes me as clearly out of
scope for the Wikimedia mission.

Openly licensed models for machine translation like Facebook's M2M
(https://huggingface.co/facebook/m2m100_418M) or text generation like
Cerebras-GPT-13B (https://huggingface.co/cerebras/Cerebras-GPT-13B)
and GPT-NeoX-20B (https://huggingface.co/EleutherAI/gpt-neox-20b) seem
like better targets for running on Wikimedia infrastructure, if
there's any merit to be found in running them at this stage.

Note that Facebook's proprietary but widely circulated LLaMA model has
triggered a lot of work on dramatically improving performance of LLMs
through more efficient implementations, to the point that you can run
a decent quality LLM (and combine it with OpenAI's freely licensed
voice detection model) on a consumer grade laptop:

https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp

While I'm not sure if the "hallucination" problem is tractable when
all you have is an LLM, I am confident (based on, e.g., the recent
results with Alpaca: https://crfm.stanford.edu/2023/03/13/alpaca.html)
that the performance of smaller models will continue to increase as we
find better ways to train, steer, align, modularize and extend them.

Chris:

> there is probably an implicit licence granted by whoever publishes
> the work for whoever views it to use it.

Here's a link to the Stable Diffusion (image generation) model weights
from their official repository. Note the lack of any licensing
statement or clickthrough agreement when directly downloading the
weights.

https://huggingface.co/stabilityai/stable-diffusion-2-base/resolve/main/512-base-ema.ckpt

Are you infringing Stability AI's copyright by clicking this link? If
not, are you infringing Stability AI's copyright by then writing a
Python script that uses this file to generate images, if you only run
it locally on your GPU?

Even if a court answers either question with "yes", it still does not
follow that you are bound by any other licensing terms Stability AI is
attaching to those files, a license which you never agreed to when
clicking the link.

But this discussion highlights the fundamental difference between free
licenses like CC-BY-SA/GPL and nonfree "ethical use" licenses like
OpenRail-M. If you want to enforce your ethical use restrictions
without a clickthrough agreement, you have no choice but to adopt an
expansive definition of copyright infringement. This is somewhat
ironic, given that the models themselves are trained on vast amounts
of copyrighted data without permission.

Warmly,
Erik
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: 23 March: Invitation to Open Community Call on ChatGPT, generative AI, and Wikimedia

2023-03-31 Thread Erik Moeller
On Fri, Mar 31, 2023 at 8:38 AM  wrote:

> Downloading computer programs and electronic databases (and downloading for 
> purposes outside
> the listed exception) requires an express consent of the copyright holder, 
> i.e. a license.
> In other words, you _cannot_ download a GPL program without agreeing to the 
> GPL

The act of downloading a copyrighted work is, of course, covered by
copyright. But it does not follow that by downloading a work, you
agree to whatever terms the person offering it imagines you agreed to.

If you want them to agree to those terms, you have to obtain that
agreement. Otherwise, if you publish your work freely (i.e. with
obvious intent to publish, not in some hidden directory on your
webserver), the permission to download the work is implied by you
publishing it. Or to put it another way, you can't publish and
advertise a website and then make a credible demand for 500 dollars
from anyone who clicks the link. Want 500 dollars? Ask for it on a
clickthrough form that makes it obvious what the buyer pays for. Want
people to agree to your ethical AI use restrictions? Ask for it before
you give them your model weights.

Website terms of use are a gray area, but their enforceability is
limited (beyond defending your right to refuse service by blocking a
person from visiting your site) if you've not made their acceptance
sufficiently explicit.

IANAL, so ask a lawyer if you don't believe me. :)

Warmly,
Erik
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: 23 March: Invitation to Open Community Call on ChatGPT, generative AI, and Wikimedia

2023-03-31 Thread Erik Moeller
On Thu, Mar 30, 2023 at 12:25 PM Lauren Worden  wrote:
> > If you don't obtain this agreement, you cannot meaningfully enforce
> > the "license" because the downloader never agreed to it in the first
> > place. Moreover, you'll have to make sure that _everyone else making
> > copies of the file_ also obtains agreement from people getting those
> > copies, or your whole house of cards falls down.

> Isn't that exactly how we impose attribution and share-alike
> requirements of CC-BY-SA content?

Not exactly. CC-BY-SA gives Wikimedia readers permissions they would
not otherwise have (e.g., to distribute copies), and it ties those
permissions to certain obligations (e.g., attribution). Readers who do
not wish to exercise those additional permissions are not required to
adhere to the obligations. They'd just be limited to what copyright
law lets you do with content you download from a public website.
Nobody can stop you from making your own offline version of Wikipedia,
calling it "Bobbypedia", and removing all other attribution -- as long
as you keep it to yourself.

To be sure, you can put restrictions in an AI model license that kick
in for folks distributing the model, which is something they wouldn't
legally be able to do without consulting and agreeing to the licensing
terms. But, crucially, you don't have to distribute an AI model to run
it. Most of the unethical uses folks tend to worry about (e.g., bulk
generation of misinformation) do not involve distributing copies of
the model, only of its output.

If you want to impose ethical use restrictions on people running your
AI models, you have two choices: You can require everyone getting a
copy of the model by any means to explicitly agree to those
restrictions (presumably Facebook does this when distributing LLaMA to
researchers), or you can make your model freely available and protest
ineffectually when a downloader ignores the restrictions you've
spelled out in a textfile in your repository. Neither approach is
compatible with open source.

> I have no particular affinity to BLOOM, but I have been able to
> personally test that it is capable of at least a dozen different use
> cases that people have shown GPT-3 and ChatGPT can be used for on
> enwiki.

I think it's fine to explore all sorts of models, free and nonfree,
for the purpose of assessing capabilities and mitigating risks. When
it comes to deployment of models in a production context, IMO
Wikimedia should exclude from consideration any models under
ill-conceived "ethical use" licenses.

Warmly,
Erik
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: 23 March: Invitation to Open Community Call on ChatGPT, generative AI, and Wikimedia

2023-03-30 Thread Erik Moeller
On Wed, Mar 29, 2023 at 1:49 PM Jan Ainali  wrote:

> On the contrary, I think it is important to, as early as possible, deter all 
> these attempts
> to weaken the concept of "open" and that we as a movement need to take a hard 
> stance
> against them.

I agree with Jan on this. Licenses are the wrong tool for the job for
which they're being used for here (regulating use of AI models).

One core principle in open source licenses is that you are not
required to agree to the license in order to download or run copies.
The GPL makes this explicit: "You are not required to accept this
License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program." This is
really important. I can download and run every bit of open source
software in existence without ever agreeing to a single license.

Downloading a thing you make available doesn't give me the right to
distribute it -- copyright law itself is sufficient to limit that. If
you want to impose _additional restrictions_ on a person for stuff
they download from you, that actually requires proactive agreement
from the user to those restrictions at the time they download the
thing.

If you don't obtain this agreement, you cannot meaningfully enforce
the "license" because the downloader never agreed to it in the first
place. Moreover, you'll have to make sure that _everyone else making
copies of the file_ also obtains agreement from people getting those
copies, or your whole house of cards falls down. Needless to say, this
is totally incompatible with the way we distribute open source
software.

To pick a concrete example, you can download the Stable Diffusion Weights here:
https://huggingface.co/CompVis/stable-diffusion-v-1-4-original/resolve/main/sd-v1-4.ckpt

Did you agree to the Open Rail-M license? Nope, but you visited a
public URL to download some model weights you can do stuff with. I
cannot see any reasonable argument that you would be subject to the
provision of the license when _running_ the model locally or on your
own infrastructure.

To illustrate the point further, let's say I make "CoolCalculator.exe"
available to you, you download and run it, and then I demand 500
dollars from you. Why 500 dollars? Well, my license requires that if
you add sums greater than 1000 with my calculator, you owe me money.
You didn't agree to the license? Tough! Shouldn't have downloaded my
calculator!

In short, in my view, these attempts to embed ethical rulesets into
licensing agreements are a "We did a thing" approach to ethics. They
are of highly dubious enforceability and do nothing to deter bad
actors, while making the technology legally incompatible with open
source software.

Warmly,
Erik
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Mozilla's social media pledge

2023-03-27 Thread Erik Moeller
The latest announcement from Twitter is that the site is going fully
pay-to-play -- to be in recommendation feeds or even vote in polls,
you will need to be a subscriber. [1] While it remains to be seen
whether the site will follow through, these plans are consistent with
the relentless promotion of a subscription-based model under the
company's current leadership.

While new alternatives are launching every month, Mastodon remains the
primary place folks are migrating to. This Dewey Square report is a
good read on recent developments, including the Mozilla Mastodon
instance, the Medium.com one (which is rapidly closing in on 10K
users), and the Flipboard one.
https://www.deweysquare.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/DSG-Snapshot-of-the-Twitter-Migration-March-2023.pdf

Being open source and community-based, Mastodon should be a perfect
fit for Wikimedia, and I still very much hope that Wikimedia
Foundation will set up an official presence in the fediverse, much
like many chapters/affiliates already have.

Warmly,
Erik

[1] 
https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/27/23659351/elon-musk-twitter-for-you-verified-accounts-polls
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Bing-ChatGPT

2023-03-23 Thread Erik Moeller
On Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 11:53 AM Lauren Worden  wrote:
> BARD also produces lengthy passages from its training data verbatim
> without elicitation:
> https://old.reddit.com/r/Bard/comments/11xxaxj/bard_copied_user_text_from_a_forum_word_for_word/jd58764/

Very true. I tested the "Mr. Ripley" example with Bard, and it
instantly reproduced the exact language of the Wikipedia article's
lede section; only the remainder of the generation was substantially
different. [1]

Warmly,
Erik

[1] https://social.coop/@eloquence/110071078132245483
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Bing-ChatGPT

2023-03-20 Thread Erik Moeller
On Sun, Mar 19, 2023 at 12:12 PM Lauren Worden  wrote:

> They have, and LLMs absolutely do encode a verbatim copy of their
> training data, which can be produced intact with little effort. See
> https://arxiv.org/pdf/2205.10770.pdf -- in particular the first
> paragraph of the Background and Related Work section on page 2, where
> document extraction is considered an "attack" against such systems,
> which to me implies that the researchers fully realize they are
> involved with copyright issues on an enormous scale. Please see also
> https://bair.berkeley.edu/blog/2020/12/20/lmmem/

Thanks for these links, Lauren. I think it could be a very interesting
research project (for WMF, affiliates or Wikimedia research community
members) to attempt to recall Wikimedia project content such as
Wikipedia articles via the GPT-3.5 or GPT-4 API, to begin quantifying
the degree to which the models produce exact copies (or legally
covered derivative works--as opposed to novel expressions).

> With luck we will all have the chance to discuss these issues in
> detail on the March 23 Zoom discussion of large language models for
> Wikimedia projects:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2023-2024/Draft/External_Trends#Open_call:_Artificial_Intelligence_in_Wikimedia

I won't be able to join but am glad this is happening. I agree that it
would be good for WMF to engage with LLM providers on these questions
of attribution sooner rather than later, if that is not already
underway. WMF is, as I understand it, still not in any privileged
position of asserting or enforcing copyright (because it requires no
copyright assignment from authors) -- but it can certainly make legal
requirements clear, and also develop best practices that go beyond the
legal minimum.

Warmly,
Erik
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Bing-ChatGPT

2023-03-18 Thread Erik Moeller
On Fri, Mar 17, 2023 at 7:05 PM Steven Walling  wrote:

> IANAL of course, but to me this implies that responsibility for the 
> *egregious* lack
> of attribution in models that rely substantially on Wikipedia is violating 
> the Attribution
> requirements of CC licenses.

Morally, I agree that companies like OpenAI would do well to recognize
and nurture the sources they rely upon in training their models.
Especially as the web becomes polluted with low quality AI-generated
content, it would seem in everybody's best interest to sustain the
communities and services that make and keep high quality information
available. Not just Wikimedia, but also the Internet Archive, open
access journals and preprint servers, etc.

Legally, it seems a lot murkier. OpenAI in particular does not
distribute any of its GPT models. You can feed them prompts by various
means, and get responses back. Do those responses plagiarize
Wikipedia?

With image-generating models like Stable Diffusion, it's been found
that the models sometimes generate output nearly indistinguishable
from source material [1]. I don't know if similar studies have been
undertaken for text-generating models yet. You can certainly ask GPT-4
to generate something that looks like a Wikipedia article -- here are
example results for generating a random Wikipedia article:

Article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Talented_Mr._Ripley_(film)
GPT-4 run 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Eloquence/GPT4_Example/1
(cut off at the ChatGPT generation limit)
GPT-4 run 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Eloquence/GPT4_Example/2
GPT-4 run 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Eloquence/GPT4_Example/3

It imitates the form of a Wikipedia article & mixes up / makes up
assertions, but I don't know that any of its generations would meet
the standard of infringing on the Wikipedia article's copyright. IANAL
either, and as you say, the legal landscape is evolving rapidly.

Warmly,
Erik

[1] 
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/02/researchers-extract-training-images-from-stable-diffusion-but-its-difficult/
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Bing-ChatGPT

2023-02-23 Thread Erik Moeller
On Mon, Feb 20, 2023 at 12:33 PM Jimmy Wales  wrote:
> Speaking only for myself, out of curiosity, some real world examples might be 
> helpful here.   I don't have access to Bing's
> version yet, but I do have access to chat.openai.com which is very impressive 
> but deeply flawed.

I've found ChatGPT most useful for small coding tasks (with a lot of
scrutiny). Most of the other practical applications I've heard of have
been of the creative variety, or in writing mundane letters, emails,
proposals, summaries, etc. As an example, please find a
ChatGPT-generated summary of this email at the end.

I think it's best to view ChatGPT (and its like) at this stage at, at
its best, a useful assistive technology and, at its worst, a
distributed denial of service attack on our collective ability to
understand our world.

The attempts to quickly commercially exploit these technologies tend
to push their impact more towards the latter, at least until those
deep flaws you mention are addressed.

It's a technology that requires a high degree of literacy in its
responsible use, while suggesting to the user that it requires none: a
dangerous combination.

The grand vision is to create human-level artificial intelligence.
"AGI" (Artificial General Intelligence) is now an explicit stated goal
of major players in the field. Of course, if AGI is in fact realized,
it _will_ change everything: a dream as big as SETI or limitless
energy generation. But for now we just have sparkling autocomplete.

It's easy to enumerate potential positive applications (assisted
editing, Wikidata query generation via natural language, automatic
summaries of open access citations, ...). For any one of them, I think
the challenge is to figure out a way towards _responsible_
integrations that don't proliferate misinformation and add value.

I do think that it is strategically vital for Wikimedia to understand
and explore this space, to look for low-risk/high-reward applications,
and to be dispassionate and objective in the face of both AI hype and
anti-AI backlash.

Erik

---

ChatGPT summary of this email:

The email discusses the practical applications of ChatGPT and warns
about the negative consequences of quickly commercializing AI
technology. The writer suggests responsible integration of AI to avoid
misinformation and add value, and recommends that Wikimedia explore
low-risk/high-reward AI applications while remaining objective in the
face of AI hype and backlash.
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Mozilla's social media pledge

2022-12-30 Thread Erik Moeller
On Fri, Dec 30, 2022 at 2:30 PM Erik Moeller  wrote:
> These are just the nonprofits
> that Wikidata knows about:
>
> https://w.wiki/6Am4

Apologies, that was the wrong URL. Here is the correct one for that
query: https://w.wiki/69V8

And yeah, completely agree re: patience - hope everyone has a nice
start into the new year! :)

Warmly,
Erik
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Mozilla's social media pledge

2022-12-30 Thread Erik Moeller
On Thu, Dec 22, 2022 at 7:46 AM SCP 2000  wrote:

> FYI, I asked WMF Communication Team about any plans of using Mastodon in 
> future.
>
> Here is their response [1] "The Digital Communications team has been 
> researching
> Mastodon and considering our potential involvement with the platform in the 
> future.
> At this time, we have no plans to create an account for the Foundation or 
> Wikipedia.
> This is mainly because our observations show us that Mastodon is not yet 
> reaching
> a large audience, which is one of the key objectives of our communications 
> activity
> on social media. We will continue to monitor the situation and adjust our
> recommendations and practices to keep within our objectives."

This is a disappointing response, especially after the events earlier
this month: the mass suspension of journalist accounts [1], the
continued (!) suspension of left-wing voices on behalf of right-wing
agitators [2], and the bizarre "promotion of alternative social
platforms policy" [3] (which led to many more account suspensions and
has since been rescinded). For more on the goings-on at Twitter, see
https://twitterisgoinggreat.com/ (incidentally, made using a template
built by Wikipedian Molly White).

These events, and Musk's capricious leadership, should be sufficient
to make _any_ civil society organization begin to establish a presence
elsewhere, and many have (primarily on Mastodon [4]). And Wikimedia
Foundation is not any civil society organization; it is deeply
grounded in the open source movement, same as Mastodon & friends.

It's true, Mastodon doesn't have the reach of Twitter and Facebook and
maybe never will. But there are ~2.5M million active accounts now [5],
and that includes many civil society organizations, journalists, news
outlets, and of course Wikimedians.

While one purpose of social media engagement is "maximum reach",
another one should be "be in touch with your own people".
Additionally, organizations that _have_ invested in their presence on
the fediverse have reported continually higher (both quantitative and
qualitative) levels of interaction with their constituents, likely
because promoted tweets and algorithms designed to highlight a few
viral posts aren't getting in their way. Twitter metrics should be
regarded with deep suspicion at this point, as many of your followers
likely have already dramatically reduced their usage.

Here are some of the Wikimedia organizations with fediverse accounts
Wikidata knows about:

https://w.wiki/6Aky (there are probably more - if so, please add them
to Wikidata)

Here are some individual Wikimedians that Wikidata deems notable
enough to have a record there:

https://w.wiki/6Am4 (there are many more, including quite a few
current and former board and staff members of Wikimedia and its
affiliates)

In addition to Wikimedia affiliates, like-minded organizations like
the Internet Achive, Mozilla, EFF, the Tor Project, Fight for the
Future (key allies from the SOPA battle), Global Voices, Open
Knowledge Foundation, Open Rights Group, OpenStreetMap Foundation, and
others have already set up shop there. These are just the nonprofits
that Wikidata knows about:

https://w.wiki/6Am4

There is an ethical imperative to realize this rare opportunity for
civil society to take back control of how it engages with its
constituents. And there are very practical reasons to (also!) be where
many of your friends already are. Please meet the moment.

Warmly,
Erik

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_15,_2022_Twitter_suspensions
[2] https://theintercept.com/2022/11/29/elon-musk-twitter-andy-ngo-antifascist/
[3] 
https://web.archive.org/web/20221218173806/https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/social-platforms-policy
[4] 
https://www.deweysquare.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/DSG-Snapshot-of-the-Twitter-Migration-December-12-2022.pdf
[5] 
https://absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2022/12/05/mastodon-growth-numbers-might-not-mean-what-you-think-they-mean/
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: ChatGPT and Wikipedia

2022-12-25 Thread Erik Moeller
On Sun, Dec 25, 2022 at 1:00 AM Anders Wennersten
 wrote:
> For me the only question is of Google come first (who has better knowledge 
> how to interface
> backend knowledge repositories the Wikipedia will become) or if chatGPT will 
> learn this

No speech interface as far as I can tell, but FYI, there now is at
least one search engine that already integrates a language model based
chatbot into search: https://you.com/, which has the backing from
Salesforce founder & billionaire Marc Benioff (a bit more:
https://www.protocol.com/you-dot-com-benioff). Unlike ChatGPT, it
tries to directly cite web sources. When that source is Wikipedia,
you'll note it's basically rewriting/summarizing the Wikipedia
article. I don't know if it uses GPT underneath or its own language
model; Salesforce has certainly funded the creation of models of its
own.

When I asked You.com if it uses GPT-3, it said yes. When I asked it to
provide a source, it generated a URL that does not exist.

I also observed other failure modes, such as combining multiple
persons with the same name into one, or giving directly contradictory
answers to the same question being asked repeatedly. All of these
failure modes are characteristic of language models, which are a bit
like pinball machines in that they will generate results
nondeterministically from the training data.

Of course, this is the technology as it exists today, and even with
those limitations in mind it can prove useful (though it seems
irresponsible to market it as part of a search engine in its current
form).

Warmly,
Erik
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: ChatGPT and Wikipedia

2022-12-23 Thread Erik Moeller
On Sun, Dec 18, 2022 at 2:01 PM Erik Moeller  wrote:

> Querying Wikidata via SPARQL is currently still a bit of wizardry (and
> the query builder is extremely limited). To pick a completely random
> example not at all inspired by current events, if I wanted to see a
> list of journalists with Mastodon accounts & a picture, I currently
> have to do this:

In case folks find it useful, that same query is now available (along
with other profession-based Wikidata searches) here:
https://eloquence.github.io/fediscope/

To bring it back on-topic, much of the coding and data processing was
aided by ChatGPT ;)

Warmly,
Erik
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[Wikimedia-l] Mozilla's social media pledge

2022-12-20 Thread Erik Moeller
Worth a read:
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-launch-fediverse-instance-social-media-alternative/

"Our intention is to contribute to the healthy and sustainable growth
of a federated social space that doesn’t just operate but thrives on
its own terms, independent of profit- and control-motivated tech
firms.  An open, decentralized, and global social service that puts
the needs of people first is not only possible, but it’s absolutely
necessary."

I don't think Wikimedia Foundation should get into the social media
business, but it should IMO absolutely maintain an organizational
presence on the fediverse (Mastodon & friends). It's a bit sad that
the only social media profiles linked from
https://wikimediafoundation.org/ are corporate ones -- especially as
it's becoming quite clear that the fediverse is emerging as a
singularly credible [1] alternative to Twitter, which is being run
into the ground by its new owner.

In other words, it would be wonderful to see a similar forward-looking
statement & associated actions from Wikimedia Foundation soon :-).

Erik

[1] See, e.g., 
https://www.deweysquare.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/DSG-Snapshot-of-the-Twitter-Migration-December-12-2022.pdf
for some number-crunching on where folks are and aren't going.
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: ChatGPT and Wikipedia

2022-12-18 Thread Erik Moeller
On Sun, Dec 11, 2022 at 5:55 AM Anders Wennersten
 wrote:
> ChatGPT is now making headlines more or less every day  and I perceive
> them to try to position themself  av the "next" google.

I suspect OpenAI will continue to focus on generative applications
(images, code, text for purposes such as copywriting, eventually
music/video) and won't attempt to compete with Google directly, but
we'll see. Currently GPT-3.5 (which ChatGPT is based on) is very prone
to generating nonsensical answers, citations to works that don't
exist, etc. But it is pretty cool if you keep its limitations in
mind--for example, it's quite good at bootstrapping small scripts in
various programming languages (with mistakes and idiosyncrasies).

Google has one of the largest AI research programs on the planet, they
just are extremely conservative about letting anyone try their models
(due to reputational concerns, e.g., that generative AI will spit out
racist output within about 30 seconds of people poking its
guardrails). This blog post from September is instructive about the
direction they're taking with what's called retrieval-augmented
generation; see the paper linked from the post for details:

https://www.deepmind.com/blog/building-safer-dialogue-agents (DeepMind
is part of Google)

That is likely to yield significantly more accurate answers than what
ChatGPT is doing, and is difficult to replicate for folks like OpenAI
without being dependent on the search APIs of big search companies.
It's worth noting that Google has also started to incorporate language
model tooling into how it's presenting search results (e.g.,
summarizing or highlighting different parts of a website to make the
result snippet more useful).

A retrieval-augmented approach that leverages Wikidata could IMO be
quite powerful and could be a useful research program for Wikimedia to
pursue, be it independently or in partnership with others. The
resulting technology should of course be fully open source.

Querying Wikidata via SPARQL is currently still a bit of wizardry (and
the query builder is extremely limited). To pick a completely random
example not at all inspired by current events, if I wanted to see a
list of journalists with Mastodon accounts & a picture, I currently
have to do this:

SELECT DISTINCT ?personLabel ?mastodonName ?pic
WHERE {
  ?person wdt:P4033 ?mastodonName ;
wdt:P106 ?occupation .
  OPTIONAL { ?person wdt:P18 ?pic . }
  ?occupation wdt:P279* wd:Q1930187 .
   SERVICE wikibase:label {
 bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "en"
   }
}

Make a small mistake (a curly brace missing) and you'll get a red
error message. Forgot the * after wdt:P279? A different response set
in ways that are difficult to spot or reason about.

Why can't I type "list of journalists with their picture and Mastodon
account" as a natural language query? (You can try it in ChatGPT and
it'll get you started, but it'll generate nonsense P/Q numbers.) If
such queries could be produced reliably, it could be a very useful
tool for readers as well.

Warmly,
Erik
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Selena Deckelmann joins as Chief Product & Technology Officer

2022-06-14 Thread Erik Moeller
Congrats! An amazing background -- thanks for all your work advancing
the free and open Internet, and welcome! Wishing you all success in
this new role. :-)

Warmly,
Erik
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Simplifying governance processes

2022-05-20 Thread Erik Moeller
On Thu, May 19, 2022 at 5:13 PM Steven Walling  wrote:
> What else?

In my view, User Experience research has a lot to contribute to this
conversation. Every announcement, every banner, every call to action
can be user-tested, including in multiple languages. Put it in front
of people and see how they respond. Do they get what you're trying to
say? Are they turned away? Are they able to follow the call to action?
Do they want to? How do different audiences (experienced
Wiki[mp]edians, new contributors, people in the Global North or Global
South, people with disabilities) respond?

That kind of testing is certainly possible for well-funded
organizations; it's also possible to provide volunteers with the
resources to do it.

All organizations struggle with creeping complexity over time. Hard
evidence that this complexity is stifling can be the necessary
counterweight that motivates action: user research findings,
clickthrough and completion rates for calls to action (aggregate
numbers are fine, no need to track individuals!), time series data to
optimize feedback periods, etc.

With evidence in hand, develop standards. Wording choices carry strong
connotations. Is "team" a better term than "committee"? Is "movement"
a term that fosters in-group/out-group dynamics? Are feedback periods
too long or not long enough? Do participation rates in elections go up
or down?

In short, I believe an evidence-driven approach to reducing complexity
could bear fruit quickly. I still think fondly of the A/B testing work
Maryana P. and you organized for talk page templates. [1] I don't mean
to diminish the extent to which Wikimedia is evidence-driven today!
I'm sure lots of folks are measuring, testing & comparing different
approaches for community engagement, and I'd love to hear about it.
But perhaps a more org-wide evidence-driven campaign to simplify
processes, improve communications & increase their effectiveness is
needed as well.

Warmly,
Erik

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Template_A/B_testing
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Collection / Special:Book usage

2022-04-22 Thread Erik Moeller
For those who haven't tried it out, here's what the PediaPress output
looks like (after it's done compiling the book, it'll give you a
preview):
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Book=order_collection=User:Pmillett/Books/2009%E2%80%9310_PBA_season=pediapress

That specific book is a good example of the problems that we've always
had with PDF generation by way of LaTeX, such as complex tables. Also
note the intermittent appearance of unsupported tags in the output.

As far as I know, the renderer they use is still partially
proprietary. I'm not sure if it would still be seen as valuable to
open source fully, given that LaTeX is indeed probably a technical
dead-end for these kinds of conversions, and given that the codebase
is very old.

If you're mainly using English Wikipedia, you might be under the
mistaken impression that the book creator is hidden from view. But it
is in fact still linked from the sidebar of many of the largest
Wikipedias, including French, Arabic, Spanish, Italian, Dutch,
Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Ukrainian, and
Vietnamese. A link on every page - that's quite a bit of exposure!

I agree it's a fair question what should happen to it: removal,
replacement, or repair. In general, I do think there's a strategic
case to be made for a more user-friendly way to create custom
collections and share/export them in multiple formats (and to point
people towards Kiwix and the ZIM format, which are indeed awesome for
educational and offline use cases), and it'd be great to see direct
collaborations with the OpenZIM/Kiwix community on this as Emmanuel
suggests.

Warmly,
Erik
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: The Wikipedia Library: Accessing free reliable sources is now easier than ever

2022-01-26 Thread Erik Moeller
On Wed, Jan 26, 2022 at 11:25 AM Samuel Klein  wrote:
>  --> collab w/ a free-content annotation + summarization service

Strong +1. Summarization of proprietary sources helps to further
broaden access to the facts stated therein (summarization of free
sources is, of course, useful as well!). I'm not aware of a general
wiki-style effort to summarize All The Things; if none exists, IMO
this could be a great initiative for Wikimedia itself to take up,
especially considering the need for summaries to be available in
multiple languages.

Warmly,
Erik
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Welcoming the new Wikimedia Foundation CEO

2021-09-14 Thread Erik Moeller
Dear Maryana,

Welcome! What a wonderful, varied background in mission-driven work. I
can't wait to read more of your perspective on this list and on the
wikis. Wishing you all success in the role!

Warmly,

Erik
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Welcoming María Sefidari as a Foundation consultant. :)

2021-06-27 Thread Erik Moeller
On Sun, Jun 27, 2021 at 5:03 AM Chris Keating
 wrote:

> My concern over this specific instance is prompted by several things:

Thanks for laying out these concerns very clearly, Chris! I'll
reiterate that, above all, my own biggest concern here is that
governance standards of the movement should evolve together, and it's
highly problematic if WMF is seen as holding itself to a different
standard than the organizations it works with. None of my comments are
intended to diminish that concern.

In terms of the specifics, within the current WMF policy which does
not yet include a waiting period, I feel that Amanda's statement [1]
addressed some of these points reasonably. Taking the statement at
face value, the key points to me are:

- the process began with staff identifying specific needs, not with a
desire to create a role for a trustee;
- everyone involved sought to navigate any real or perceived COI in
line with WMF's policies, and Maria has resigned as trustee before
taking on a paid role;
- the Board discussed the matter both through relevant committees and
in Executive Session without Maria present.

The contract itself is framed as temporary and presumably bound to a
well-defined Statement of Work. The distinction matters because an
organization's hiring processes for temporary contract roles may be
legitimately less involved than for permanent staff hires.

This is _not_ an argument against waiting periods for such contracts.
I can see the merit of pushing an organization to look beyond its
walls for any remunerated role, at least by default, and I can see why
governance experts have recommended as much in discussions with
affiliates. If I was part of an affiliate, I would be pissed if I had
been told to implement such a policy (possibly in a manner tied to
future funding), only to learn that WMF has never done the same.

But I also don't think what happened here should be overstated.
Organizations that want to hand out sinecures don't announce it on
public mailing lists in the form of high-visibility, high-stakes
contracts. I believe that the contract should proceed on its merits,
and the failure by WMF to adhere to standards that affiliates have
implemented is a separate matter.

YMMV. I won't be able to participate much more in this thread, so
please take that for what it's worth from an oldtimer with a single
digit edit count this year. :)

Regardless of whether the contract still proceeds, I would encourage
WMF to share the actual Statement of Work and other non-sensitive
contract parameters (duration; hours if specified). These are the
kinds of parameters that would typically be included in a public RfP.

Warmly,
Erik

[1] 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/message/GOCGXFUNK4AEMD4RBKN3EHUGQXGLJAFA/
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Welcoming María Sefidari as a Foundation consultant. :)

2021-06-26 Thread Erik Moeller
I strongly agree that whatever standards of governance the movement
develops should be adhered to consistently. I think it's entirely
understandable if folks are angry if WMF holds affiliates to a
different standard than itself. A symmetrical waiting period for Board
members seeking paid positions for staff members seeking trusteeship
seems like a reasonable governance standard to apply across the board.

The WMF Board did discuss waiting periods previously, both when I was
a member [1] (I was in support of a symmetrical 6 month waiting
period) and after [2]. WMF ultimately did not implement such a policy,
nor did it adhere to one informally when it hired me after I left the
Board in late 2007. (I've had no involvement with the org since 2015,
nor have I sought it.)

I don't know if the implementation of a waiting period was discussed
again by the Board in subsequent years. It's not surprising to me if
the organization is not adhering to it now, since it appears to still
lack such a policy in 2021.

At least in my understanding, this thread conflates a good practice
(waiting periods) with violations of COI policies. As I understand it,
WMF adhered to its existing COI policy through the usual measures
(recusal & resignation from the Board).

The primary purpose of COI policies is to prevent self-dealing.
Typical scenarios described in COI guidelines written from a US
perspective like [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] focus on Board members hiring
relatives, or securing contracts for their own business. They
generally do not _prohibit_ even such transactions outright but
describe how they must be managed. WMUK's 2012 governance review was,
in part, triggered by a trustee's Wikimedia-related consulting
activities while on the Board.

Waiting periods (symmetrical or in one direction) are sometimes
explicitly included in COI policies, but as far as I can tell, at
least for US 501(c)(3)s, they are far from common, and I did not find
them in COI guidelines for organizations in our space that are
publicly available (Mozilla, OSI, Software Freedom Conservancy, etc.).
They may be more common in specific sectors (e.g., academia) and are
certainly widely used in revolving door provisions in the context of
political lobbying. IANAL (nor are most of the people commenting
here), and corrections and insights and citations from lawyers or
nonprofit governance experts would certainly be helpful.

I will note that, as Chris pointed out, even WMUK's current policies
would permit a transaction like the one we're discussing if approved
by the Board ("no trustee may _without the consent of the board_"
[8]), and Wikimedia Austria's Good Governance Kodex would permit it if
approved by the Gremium ("bedarf diese Anstellung der ausdrücklichen
Genehmigung durch das Good-Governance-Gremium" [9]).

If such transactions are sometimes viewed as permissible, as part of
harmonizing governance standards, it would be good to enumerate
examples: would this transaction qualify? If the emerging consensus is
to enforce waiting periods at all times, clauses which permit Boards
to overrule them should perhaps be revised as part of harmonization
efforts.

Because this is not nearly as bright a line as some commenters are
suggesting, at least in my understanding, there is no compelling
argument for reversing this decision if it is otherwise in the best
interests of the organization. But there is certainly a strong
practical and ethical argument for harmonizing policies and practices
(and for issuing an apology if inconsistent standards have been
applied).

Warmly,
Erik

[1] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Minutes/2007-10-07
[2] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Minutes/2007-12-11
[3] https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/tools-resources/conflicts-of-interest
[4] 
https://www.boardeffect.com/blog/conflict-of-interest-policy-for-nonprofit-boards/
[5] 
https://nonprofitrisk.org/resources/articles/coi-candor-inhibition-managing-conflicts-interest/
[6] https://www.501c3.org/avoiding-conflicts-of-interest/
[7] 
https://boardsource.org/resources/private-benefit-private-inurement-self-dealing/
[8] https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Trustee_Conflict_of_Interest_Policy
[9] https://mitglieder.wikimedia.at/Good_Governance_Kodex
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Resolution about the upcoming Board elections

2021-04-25 Thread Erik Moeller
On Sun, Apr 25, 2021 at 10:35 AM Steven Walling
 wrote:
> So I don’t think your point is the highest priority item compared to deciding 
> the
> election / appointment for all the rest of the seats.

I agree that's the more important question. Regarding the founder
seat, I do think it would be good governance to eventually find a way
to solve the problem it solves (preserving long term institutional
memory & wisdom on the Board) in a manner that generalizes beyond
Jimmy's involvement. Not only because Jimmy won't be around forever,
but also to draw from a more diverse set of voices. That could be done
through non-voting observers (for which there is precedent), advisors,
the council, or some other mechanism.

Warmly,
Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Logo of MediaWiki has changed

2021-04-01 Thread Erik Moeller
On Wed, Mar 31, 2021 at 4:28 PM Amir Sarabadani  wrote:

> After more than one year of design, discussion, vote, iteration, and
> months of legal work, I’m happy to announce that the logo of MediaWiki
> has been officially changed.

It looks beautiful and professional. Excellent work by Serhio, the
organizers & everyone else who made this change happen. The installer
variant [1] is also very clever.

The sunflower logo (which I quickly put together many years ago based
on a lovely photograph by Florence) has certainly had a good run, but
it was well past time for a fresh look, IMO. As you pointed out, it
violates basically all rules of good logo design. >:-)

Fun fact: It was originally a submission to the Wikipedia logo
contest, where it came in third and the current Wikimedia logo came in
second. [2]  It was pretty close - in some parallel universe, the
internationally recognized symbol of Wikipedia may not be the puzzle
globe, but a sunflower surrounded by square brackets. Make of that
what you will. ;-)

Warmly,
Erik

[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/File:MediaWiki-2020-installer-large-icon.svg
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/International_logo_contest/Results

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Test Mailman3 in production

2021-03-26 Thread Erik Moeller
On Thu, Mar 25, 2021 at 12:59 AM Amir Sarabadani  wrote:
> tl;dr: https://lists-next.wikimedia.org is running mailman3.
> Please help us test the software before we upgrade the real mailing list 
> server.

Thank you so much for your hard work on this. For better or for worse,
mailing lists are still essential to the wikiverse, and this is a big
step towards making them more approachable (for one thing, by letting
folks post through the web interface).

Warmly,
Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Surveys using third party tools on Wikimedia projects

2021-02-28 Thread Erik Moeller
On Sun, Feb 28, 2021 at 2:11 AM Mathieu Lovato Stumpf Guntz
 wrote:

> Now, the WMF by its own word aims to "provide the essential infrastructure 
> for free knowledge".
> Should this statement be taken seriously, the foundation can not be light on 
> the tools it chooses
> to communicate with the community, and what tools it provides to addresses 
> the community
> needs.

Thank you for this excellent reframing, Mathieu. Put in strategic
terms, should the Wikimedia movement invest in independent FLOSS
projects that meaningfully support and enable its mission?

There are many ways Wikimedia could make such an investment. The Open
Technology Fund, for example, operates a program called OTF Red which
funds security audits for open source projects with a network of
service partners. [1] Its focus is different than Wikimedia's (and it
therefore would likely not invest in many projects of concern to
Wikimedians), but there's no reason why Wikimedia could not operate a
similar program for upstream software relevant to its mission, either
because it currently relies on it, or would like to be able to do so
in future.

An investment could also be made in managing relationships with
maintainers of these projects, to help make them aware of funding
opportunities, and to organize the continuous re-evaluation of free
and open source software projects for the purpose of adoption. A
clearly articulated budget for investment in upstream FLOSS projects
-- e.g., USD $1M/year -- would force careful prioritization of
concerns.

In my view, it's important to understand free and open source software
as emancipatory. It enables the movement to liberate itself from a
dependency on Big Tech, and allows movement members everywhere to
adapt software to their needs. This is crucial to address the
inequities the free market unavoidably produces. In concrete terms, to
run surveys in the Global South, it seems incongruous to use
technology developed by Global North software vendors destined to be
forever under their control, impossible to independently localize,
translate, or customize.

In addition to tools like LimeSurvey, I believe that a strategic view
should encompass projects that are used for authorship -- applications
like Krita, Blender, and Inkscape -- as evidenced by metrics on tool
use. [2] Similarly, event management applications like Mobilizon [3]
show great potential to offer a real alternative to Facebook Events.
But that's just my opinion, and I'm curious if the strategic planning
process has yielded an answer to this question that may inform future
investment decisions by WMF and affiliates. It's also possible that
such funding activities are already ongoing, in which case I'd love to
learn more about them.

Warmly,
Erik

[1] https://www.opentech.fund/labs/red-team-lab/
[2] It may be possible to derive such metrics from categories like
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Created_with_Inkscape
[3] https://joinmobilizon.org/

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Thanks for all the fish! / Stepping down April 15

2021-02-04 Thread Erik Moeller
On Thu, Feb 4, 2021 at 9:48 AM Katherine Maher  wrote:
> Earlier today, I announced to my colleagues at the Wikimedia Foundation
> my intention to step down as CEO later this spring.

You did amazing work for the movement. Like others who have moved on
from WMF, it has felt great knowing that the organization is in great
hands under your leadership, and has accomplished major new
milestones. Congratulations as well on the UCoC, which I also agree is
incredibly important for the reasons that have been well-articulated
by others in the related thread. Getting Wikipedia unblocked in Turkey
was huge, and I was thrilled to read about the UN partnership. There's
too much other stuff to list, but exciting projects kicked off under
your leadership include your support for Wikidata and Abstract
Wikipedia -- as will be no surprise, I'm especially excited about
following those developments. :)

You took the helm at a time when WMF was going through a rocky period
(to say the least), and these and other achievements are especially
remarkable in light of how far the organization had to come to make
them possible. I'm genuinely excited about what's next for you, and
know that you'll bring your passion for Wikimedia's values with you.
Thank you, Katherine, for your service.

Warmly,

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Moving the technical infrastructure out of the US

2020-09-30 Thread Erik Moeller
On Tue, Sep 29, 2020 at 3:36 PM Joseph Seddon  wrote:

> I believe options are going to be explored for sustainability but right now
> legally speaking the US is the best jurisdiction for hosting us now

Certainly.

> and the foreseeable future.

I can't foresee the future. But Trump's first term in office is very
troubling. Relentless attacks on journalists, escalation of political
violence, attempts to undermine Section 230 protections, attempts to
remove apps from app stores by Executive Order, etc.  -- checked by a
judiciary that's increasingly aligned with the Trump agenda. That's
the United States today. From this we can extrapolate plausible
scenarios in which the question where to locate Wikimedia's core
assets could become the single most urgent strategic question the
movement faces.

I hope that some preliminary contingency plans exist or are being
developed, and I'm sure that the movement-wide debate will widen if
the US continues its downward slide into authoritarianism.

Erik

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

2020-08-13 Thread Erik Moeller
On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 2:51 PM Samuel Klein  wrote:
> There should be no 'collaborative and transformative work' done on this
> archive

Bulk uploads often entail collaboration or transformation as the
uploads are organized, and as format issues and other considerations
are worked through. If you want to enable uploads in a wiki context, I
don't think you'll be able to (or want to!) get around that. :) That's
part of the reason why I think the upload stage should be reserved for
the point when licensing issues have in fact been resolved.

> Erik, to your point — yes, this should also include old books that are in
> the process of relicensing, if those books have been uploaded to us by or
> on behalf of a license holder, and we are confirming that and working
> through related steps.

Is your assumption that the set of works that would be so archived is
closer to being usable in Wikimedia projects (i.e. freely licensed)
than any other set of works? If so, I still don't see how this is
true. The decision to apply a license like NC is often a very
intentional one, difficult to reverse, as the many discussions about
this license have shown. In contrast, the decision to just use
conventional copyright is often not a decision at all. In many cases,
a copyrighted work may be "free for the asking".

> It helps our work to have a persistent public place (not randomly deleted
> from time to time!) to discuss determining their license status, getting
> formal and informal license clearance, discussions with the contributors to
> refine their understanding of options, debates among ourselves about
> whether a license grant was sufficient and how to obtain more clarity, 

I agree with that! I think it could be done e.g. in a WikiBase
instance which focuses on tracking URLs of valuable educational
content rather than files. This would have some advantages:

- it is inclusive of material under all licensing terms, in any repository
- it is inclusive of material that is not trivially downloadable or
that is in formats that require conversion or transformation
- it can hold URLs to collections alongside URLs to single files

It could be scoped to track material that is associated with plausible
efforts to liberate it for use in Wikimedia, e.g., organized under
WikiProjects.

And what of archiving? As I said before, a partner like the Internet
Archive would IMO be well-suited to help archive URLs that permit it,
without requiring the manual labor of managing copies in some kind of
pseudo-wiki.

Fundamentally I just don't buy the apparent premise that amassing NC
type content, or content under your "any legal way but not yet free"
formulation, actually helps in the goal of content liberation. Is that
stuff worth archiving? Sure, but Wikimedia is not the IA.

I do appreciate the discussion, and the WikiNotYetFree proposal (even
if I disagree with its premise for the same reasons).  If there's
interest in the idea formulated above, of a wiki that truly is a
clearinghouse and not an archive of nonfree content, I would be happy
to try to help articulate it further.

Warmly,
Erik

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

2020-08-07 Thread Erik Moeller
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

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

2020-07-14 Thread Erik Moeller
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 agree that a nonfree wiki that does not alter existing policies
(i.e. is not intended to open the door to NC) is a reasonable thing to
consider for practical reasons; however, I personally oppose these
proposals on practical grounds. While the opposition to the main
proposal is currently a minority, I suspect the ratio would change
rather quickly if the proposals were more widely announced.

I see two primary scenarios for how a nonfree wiki could play out:

- scenario A: a nonfree wiki is successful at policing uploads and
usage consistent with the policies across wikis. Uploaders from those
communities are frequently frustrated and confused by deletions,
discussion, and policies of the nonfree wiki, just as they are
frustrated by deletions, discussions, and policies on Wikimedia
Commons today. With one more wiki in the mix, the process of uploading
files is increasingly seen to be akin to a Klingon Pain Stick Ritual.

- scenario B: a nonfree wiki is unsuccessful at policing uploads, and
becomes a DMCA magnet or worse. Communities are frustrated because
their own rules for limiting nonfree uploads are frequently violated
through the transclusion of files from the nonfree repository.

In fact, a combination of those two scenarios -- where there's deep
frustration about both enforcement and lack thereof -- seems most
likely to me.

It's worth asking whether there are good ways to improve the handling
and patrolling of nonfree files. I suspect there are many, but I'm
pretty sure the creation of a separate repository for this stuff is an
idea that doesn't withstand scrutiny. Exemptions must be considered in
a project-local context, both in terms of policy and concrete use, by
a community in its own language, and any improvements to efficiency
must start from this central premise.

Warmly,
Erik

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

2020-07-11 Thread Erik Moeller
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

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

2020-07-11 Thread Erik Moeller
On Sat, Jul 11, 2020 at 3:10 PM Michael Peel  wrote:

> I remember reading Erik’s blog post a decade or so ago, which convinced me 
> that -NC was useless due to its ambiguity - where exactly is the line drawn 
> between what is commercial and what is not? I can’t find it now

https://freedomdefined.org/Licenses/NC is the canonical location of
that essay. I and others have updated it a bit since it was first
written, but it could definitely use some love :)

> Is there any way we could convince CC to deprecate the useless -NC licenses?

I doubt it given how pervasive it is. Back when those discussion were
hot, we were able to convince CC to add the "Approved for Free
Cultural Works" stamp you see on license pages like this one, to set
them apart more clearly:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

It would be nice to see CC take a more active stance in at least
discouraging the use of NC in circumstances where it's not appropriate
(it's possible I've missed some work by CC to that effect).

Warmly,
Erik

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

2020-07-11 Thread Erik Moeller
Hi folks,

Pete Forsyth wrote a new essay on the ambiguities of the NonCommercial
("non-commercial use only") provision in Creative Commons licenses,
which I wanted to share in case it's helpful for folks making the case
against using NC to cultural institutions or others (or in the
occasionally resurgent debate to permit NC within Wikimedia):

https://freedomdefined.org/The_non-commercial_provision_obfuscates_intent

It argues that NC is so ambiguous in its defining restriction that it
almost defeats the point of attaching a CC license at all. I feel this
complements the longer (dated!) essay at
https://freedomdefined.org/Licenses/NC nicely.

Warmly,

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Announcing a new Wikimedia project: Abstract Wikipedia

2020-07-02 Thread Erik Moeller
This is wonderful news. :)

Thank you for the foresight to support this important initiative, and
huge thanks to Denny for continuing to tirelessly explore new ways to
make knowledge truly universally accessible! This project has the
potential to become a new foundation for learning about our world in
any language. I look forward to seeing this idea come to its fullest
fruition.

Warmly,

Erik

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

2020-05-23 Thread Erik Moeller
On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 4:20 PM Florence Devouard  wrote:

> For some reasons, it is true for "kitimaguru", but if I search for
> "lamp" (EN) versus "lampe" (FR), or "key" (English) versus "clé"
> (French), I really do not get the same results at all

I noticed that Hay just added a locale switcher, which as of this
writing allows you to switch into Dutch. As the list of locales
expands, you should get better results in each of those languages.

https://tools.wmflabs.org/hay/sdsearch/

When the language is set to English, it will match against
labels/aliases in other languages, but will privilege matches against
English labels/aliases, and show the English description. It's
basically the equivalent of typing into the Wikidata search box, with
the Wikidata language set to English. Because there is no English
match for the Swahili word, that one works well even when the language
is set to English -- it'll rank the Swahili match as the first result.
But if you type "clé" into the Wikidata search box in English, the
first result is "Cleveland".

Warmly,

Erik

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

2020-05-23 Thread Erik Moeller
On Fri, May 22, 2020 at 10:10 AM Gerard Meijssen
 wrote:

> Hay Kranen created a proof of concept where Commons is searched for
> pictures that (per standard) use a "depicts" statement.

This is a beautiful proof of concept; thank you for sharing it,
Gerard, and thank you, Hay, for developing it. It really illustrates
the power and importance of the Structured Data efforts.

To pick a different example, imagine that you want to illustrate an
article about the importance of wheelchair accessibility at your
university. You might try a major search engine like Google Images.
Try replacing the word "wheelchair" with translations in other
languages. Note how the result sets are different, and how you may get
a much smaller set of results in languages with a smaller Internet
presence.

https://www.google.com/search?q=wheelchair=isch (English)
https://www.google.com/search?q=kitimaguru=isch (Swahili, far less
relevant and smaller set)

In contrast, the use of Wikidata items means that, as long as a label
exists for a given language, you can search in _any_ language and get
the same images:

https://tools.wmflabs.org/hay/sdsearch/#q=haswbstatement:P180=Q191931

The fact that the UI of this tool is currently English is an
implementation detail; even with Hay's implementation, you can type in
"kitimaguru" and get the same results as in English.

It would be wonderful to see this functionality developed further, and
to ultimately make this kind of search functionality central to the
user experience for Wikimedia Commons, so that speakers of any
language are  given _meaningful_ access to freely reusable media.

Warmly,

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] .org TLD for sale?

2020-01-10 Thread Erik Moeller
On Wed, Jan 8, 2020 at 5:23 PM Katherine Maher  wrote:
> Quick update here. You may have seen some press coverage already, but this
> week, a group of technologists, non-profits, policymakers, and internet
> governance folks filed in California to create a cooperative membership
> corporation, whose purpose would be to administer the .ORG domain and its
> revenues on behalf of global non-profits and in support of the open,
> multistakeholder internet.

Truly brilliant nonprofit diplomacy -- thanks much for the update, and
huge thanks to everyone who's worked on this! :) Here's hoping that
the enclosure of .org can still be averted.

Warmly,

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] .org TLD for sale?

2019-11-23 Thread Erik Moeller
Thanks for sharing this, Andy. This appears to be a major governance
failure on the part of ICANN (sadly, not for the first time). I'm glad
Wikimedia is among the first orgs on this list.

I don't think it's too late to stop this, especially as all evidence
points to corrupt inside wheeling-and-dealing. I would normally not
link to El Reg, but the connections Kieren has dug up deserve further
investigation by more reputable outlets.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/20/org_registry_sale_shambles/

Utterly unacceptable attempt to enclose the commons. Please do help
continue direct attention to this.

https://savedotorg.org/

Warmly,

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Supporting Wikinews [was: Reviewing our brand system for our 2030 goals]

2019-05-13 Thread Erik Moeller
On Fri, May 10, 2019 at 5:54 AM Фархад Фаткуллин / Farhad Fatkullin
 wrote:

> I feel I can give a relatively neutral comment on the part quoted below.

Dear Farhad,

Thanks so much for sharing your observations re:
https://ru.wikinews.org/ . I'm glad to hear that the project is
publishing on a diverse range of topics, and that it includes original
reporting. It's also really good to learn that it's a place where
smaller language can publish stories before they're formally approved.

What really sets Russian Wikinews apart from the other Wikinews
language editions is that it's consistently been publishing stories
pretty much every day for quite some time now. I'd still love to know
if there's anything in particular that has made this possible, but
perhaps it's just "the right people at the right time", as is often
the case with smaller online communities. I very much hope that the
project will be able to keep it up.

In contrast, compare, for example, the month of April in the English
Wikinews edition:

https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:2019/April

Warmly,

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Farewell, Erik!

2019-02-07 Thread Erik Moeller
Thank you, Erik, for helping Wikimedia to know itself! I've always
appreciated the incredibly rich detail in your reports, your
willingness to unpack the awesome complexity of the wiki-verse, and
your insistence that this knowledge should be as free and open as the
Wikimedia projects are. I've learned a ton from you, and I am looking
forward to reading more about your new adventures as a volunteer. :)

From one Erik to another - my best wishes!

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[Wikimedia-l] Jamal Khashoggi's call to action

2018-10-17 Thread Erik Moeller
Up until recently, Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi worked for
the Washington Post. What happened to him? I couldn't say it better
than Wikipedia: [1]

(begin quote)

  On 2 October 2018, Khashoggi entered the Saudi Arabian consulate in
  Istanbul to obtain documents related to his marriage; he never left the
  building and was subsequently declared a missing person.
  Anonymous Turkish police sources have alleged that he was murdered
  and dismembered inside the consulate.

(end quote)

The Washington Post has now published Khashoggi's last column, titled
appropriately, "What the Arab world needs most is free expression".
[2] In it, he writes of the need for translation efforts and platforms
for free expression:

(begin quote)

  Arabs need to read in their own language so they can understand
  and discuss the various aspects and complications of democracy
  in the United States and the West. If an Egyptian reads an article
  exposing the actual cost of a construction project in Washington,
  then he or she would be able to better understand the implications
  of similar projects in his or her community.

  The Arab world needs a modern version of the old transnational
  media so citizens can be informed about global events. More
  important, we need to provide a platform for Arab voices. We
  suffer from poverty, mismanagement and poor education.
  Through the creation of an independent international forum,
  isolated from the influence of nationalist governments
  spreading hate through propaganda, ordinary people in the
  Arab world would be able to address the structural problems
  their societies face.

(end quote)

I'm wondering what folks in the Wikimedia community and movement make
of this call to action. Is there more that Wikimedia can do, for
example, to support translation of news articles into many languages?

There is nothing in Jamal's own op-ed that indicates that it would be
legally permissible to translate it. This is, unfortunately, the norm
for news; there are few outlets that use a Creative Commons license,
and those that do, typically tend to choose the most restrictive
variants.

Perhaps there would be value in an organized community effort that
would pick up news articles [3] that _are_ licensed under free
licenses, and translate them into as many languages as possible. If
launched under a prominent umbrella -- e.g., Wikimedia --, this might
then also help incentivize more outlets to selectively license content
openly, permitting translation. Beyond its intrinsic value, such an
effort would also help the Wikimedia projects by expanding the reach
of impacted citations into more languages.

Thoughts? Does Jamal's call to action resonate in other ways with
Wikimedia's mission?

Sincerely,

Erik

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamal_Khashoggi -- written by
multiple authors and distributed under Creative Commons Attribution
ShareAlike-License 3.0 Unported

[2] 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/jamal-khashoggi-what-the-arab-world-needs-most-is-free-expression/2018/10/17/adfc8c44-d21d-11e8-8c22-fa2ef74bd6d6_story.html
-- quoted as fair use

[3] Likely restricted to some subset of outlets, e.g., sources most
Wikipedia editions would accept as citations

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Social: non-profit social networking service ?

2018-04-09 Thread Erik Moeller
On Mon, Apr 9, 2018 at 12:46 AM, Leinonen Teemu  wrote:
> I have been looking for social networking service that would be fair: not 
> abusing
> personal data, funded by community, respecting privacy, accepting anonymity,
> free/libre/ open source etc. Haven’t found many. The Diaspora* Project[1] is 
> not
> moving forward very fast and the Mastodon[2] is more a microblogging service
> rather than a social network service.

Wikimedia projects are social networks, but they are purpose-driven
social networks [1] where participants are more strongly connected
through their overlapping interests than through pre-existing social
connections. To the extent that Wikimedia should develop better social
networking tools, they should IMO be along the lines of the ideas
being prototyped by WikiProject X [2][3]. Improving other social tools
routinely used in connection with Wikimedia work, such as IRC and
mailing lists, likely would also have near term benefit.

I don't think that you can make a compelling argument that building
general purpose social networking software (as in, share cat+baby
pictures with friends) is in scope of Wikimedia's mission. But
Wikimedia organizations do use general purpose social networks like
Twitter and Facebook for outreach. I do think, given the Wikimedia's
strong orientation towards open source and open standards,
that_participating_ in open, decentralized communities like Mastodon
would be an appropriate way to extend that presence on existing
platforms. I personally think Diaspora can be safely ignored at this
point, and am hoping a better open FB alternative will emerge.

Erik

[1] 
https://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/The_purpose-driven_social_network:_Supporting_WikiProjects_with_technology
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_X
[3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CollaborationKit

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] About Facebook Linked in some of Wikimedia projects

2018-03-01 Thread Erik Moeller
On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 11:32 AM, Strainu  wrote:

>> Personally, I'd love to see WMF or a chapter set up a public Mastodon
>> instance; the project has matured significantly since its first
>> release and is at least a viable free/open alternative to the
>> Twitter-ish forms of social networking. FB still has event management
>> functions that are difficult to substitute, however.

> Even if there would be an open-source alternative with all the
> Facebook functionality, installing, maintaining and promoting it would
> be a huge waste of money.

I would agree if we compared centralized service to centralized
service (e.g. Ello vs. Facebook), but the premise of services like
Mastodon is federation between servers (instances) using open
protocols like ActivityPub. This means that even small organizations
can credibly host "instances" of a social network like Mastodon while
participating in the larger federation of users (you can follow users
from other instances, reply to their statuses, etc.). Mastodon is the
first IMO fairly successful implementation of this approach; it has
more than 1M accounts of which about 10% show recent activity, and it
already is reaching subcultures beyond the usual suspects.

To give you an idea of the cost, you can run a mid-size instance with
a few thousand users, automated backups and monitoring for tens of
dollars a month (the main cost is in person-time, but most instances
like this are run by volunteers and supported by donations). So I do
think it would be very possible even for an interested volunteer to
set up an instance with reasonable uptime, backup and monitoring
characteristics for exploratory use. Certainly it would be possible at
reasonable cost for WMF or a chapter to do so, possibly with some
"active contributor on Wikimedia projects" requirement for creating an
account.

Once again, the crucial point here is that instances communicate with
each other, so even though your own instance may only have a few
thousand users, you are part of the larger "fediverse" which includes
software with completely different UIs implementing the same protocol.

A nice intro for the unfamiliar:
https://blog.rowan.website/2018/01/08/yet-another-explanation-of-mastodon/

Incidentally, the protocol used by Mastodon, ActivityPub, recently
became a W3C recommendation:
https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/

Of course, I'm not opposed to people using FB for organizing -- I
think it's a totally reasonable choice, for the reasons you say -- but
I do think it's worth keeping an eye on federated social networks in
general, and Mastodon in particular, as a potential alternative space
for Wikimedia to engage in, _including_ for outreach. The numbers are
obviously still a drop in the bucket compared with the mega-networks,
so pragmatic considerations may reasonably prevail in many
circumstances.

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] About Facebook Linked in some of Wikimedia projects

2018-02-28 Thread Erik Moeller
On Wed, Feb 28, 2018 at 5:31 PM, James Heilman  wrote:
> I am not seeing any link to Facebook here?
>
> https://az.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeniyetm%C9%99_(roman)

It's part of a banner, not sure the banner is set to 100%. It says:

"Azərbaycanca Vikipediya ilə daim əlaqədə olmaq üçün bizi "Facebook"da izləyin!"

in small font at the top, with a link to:

https://www.facebook.com/azvikipediya

Personally, I'd love to see WMF or a chapter set up a public Mastodon
instance; the project has matured significantly since its first
release and is at least a viable free/open alternative to the
Twitter-ish forms of social networking. FB still has event management
functions that are difficult to substitute, however.

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25)

2017-10-22 Thread Erik Moeller
On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 5:56 PM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> I think it would be good to do some legal work to gain that clarity. The
> Amazon Echo issue, with the Echo potentially using millions of words from
> Wikipedia without any kind of attribution and indication of provenance at
> all, was raised on this list in July for example.

There is some basic attribution in the Alexa app (which keeps a log of
all transactions). As I said, I don't see a reason not to include
basic attribution in the voice response as well, but it still seems
worth pointing out. Here's what it looks like in the app (yup, it
really does say "Image: Wikipedia", which is all too typical):

https://imgur.com/a/vchAl

I'm all in favor of a legal opinion on bulk use of introductory
snippets from Wikimedia articles without attribution/license
statement. While I'm obviously not a lawyer, I do, however, sincerely
doubt that it would give you the clarity you seek, given the extremely
unusual nature of authorship of Wikipedia, and the unusual nature of
the re-use. I suspect that such clarity would result only from legal
action, which I would consider to be extremely ill-advised, and which
WMF almost certainly lacks standing to pursue on its own.

> If CC-BY-SA is not enforced, Wikipedia will stealthily
> shift to CC-0 in practice. I don't think that's desirable.

Regardless of the legal issue, I agree that nudging re-users to
attribute content is useful to reinforce the concept that such
attribution goes with re-use. Even with CC-0, showing
providence/citations is a good idea.

> An interesting question to me is whether, with the explosion of information
> available, people will spend so much time with transactional queries across
> a large number of diverse topics that there is little time left for
> immersive, in-depth learning of any one of them, and how that might
> gradually change the type of knowledge people possess (information
> overload).

It's a fair question; the Internet has certainly pushed our ability to
externalize knowledge into overdrive. Perhaps we've already passed the
point where this is a difference in kind, rather than a difference in
degree, compared with how we've shared knowledge in the past; if
[[Neuralink]] doesn't turn out to be vaporware, it may push us over
that edge. :P

That said, people have to acquire specialized domain knowledge to make
a living, and the explosive growth of many immersive learning
platforms (course platforms like edX, Coursera, Udacity; language
learning tools like Duolingo; the vast educational YouTube community,
etc.) suggests that there is a very large demand. While I share some
of your concerns about the role of for-profit gatekeepers to
knowledge, I am not genuinely worried that the availability of
transactional "instant answers" will quench our innate thirst for
knowledge or our need to develop new skills.

I'm most concerned about information systems that deliver highly
effective emotional "hits" and are therefore more habit-forming and
appealing than Wikipedia, Google, or a good book. The negative effect
of high early childhood TV use on attention is well-documented, and
excessive use of social media (which are continuously optimized to be
habit-forming) may have similar effects. Alarmist "Facebook is more
addictive than crack" headlines aside, the reality is that social
media are great delivery vehicles for the kinds of little rewards that
keep you coming back.

In this competition for attention, Wikipedia articles, especially in
STEM topics, have a well-deserved reputation of often being nearly
impenetrable for people not already familiar with a given domain.
While we will never be able to reach everyone, we should be able to
reach people who _want_ to learn but have a hard time staying focused
enough to do so, due to a very low frustration tolerance.

I think one way to bottom line any Wikimedia strategy is to ask
whether it results in people getting better learning experiences,
through WMF's sites or through affiliates and partners. Personally, I
think the long term focus on "knowledge as a service" and "knowledge
equity" is right on target, but it's also useful to explicitly think
about good old Wikipedia and how it might benefit directly. Here are
some things that I think might help develop better learning
experiences on Wikipedia:

- a next generation templating system optimized for data exploration,
timelines, etc., with greater separation of design, code, data and
text
- better support for writing/finding articles that target different
audiences (beginners/experts)
- tech standards and requirements for embedding rich, interactive
"explorable explanations" beyond what any template system can do
- commissioned illustrations or animations for highly complex topics
(possibly organized through another nonprofit)
- assessment partnerships with external groups to verify that learners
get what they need from a given resource

In practice, this could translate 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25)

2017-10-20 Thread Erik Moeller
On Fri, Oct 20, 2017 at 12:51 AM, James Salsman  wrote:
> Erik,
>
> Should interactive web, internet of things, or offline services
> relying on Foundation encyclopedia CC-BY-SA content be required to
> attribute authorship by specifying the revision date from which the
> transluded content is derived?

James -

I don't think there's a sufficiently strong justification for
modifying the manner of attribution specified in the "Terms of Use",
which in any case would only apply to re-use of future revisions of
CC-BY-SA/CC-BY content that's not also exempted by "fair use".

As a best practice, I do believe including timestamp or version
information is helpful both for re-users themselves and for end users.
[[Progressive disclosure]] keeps such information manageable. In my
own re-use of CC-0 data from Wikidata, Open Library and similar
sources, I do include timestamp information along with the source.
Example re-use from Wikidata:
https://lib.reviews/static/uploads/last-sync.png

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25)

2017-10-12 Thread Erik Moeller
On Tue, Oct 10, 2017 at 7:31 AM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> Wikidata has its own problems in that regard that have triggered ongoing
> discussions and concerns on the English Wikipedia.[1]

Tensions between different communities with overlapping but
non-identical objectives are unavoidable. Repository projects like
Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons provide huge payoff: they dramatically
reduce duplication of effort, enable small language communities to
benefit from the work done internationally, and can tackle a more
expansive scope than the immediate needs of existing projects. A few
examples include:

- Wiki Loves Monuments, recognized as the world's largest photo competition
- Partnerships with countless galleries, libraries, archives, and museums
- Wikidata initiatives like mySociety's "Everypolitician" project or Gene Wiki

This is not without its costs, however. Differing policies, levels of
maturity, and social expectations will always fuel some level of
conflict, and the repository approach creates huge usability
challenges. The latter is also true for internal wiki features like
templates, which shift information out of the article space,
disempowering users who no longer understand how the whole is
constructed from its parts.

I would call these usability and "legibility" issues the single
biggest challenge in the development of Wikidata, Structured Data for
Commons, and other repository functionality. Much related work has
already been done or is ticketed in Phabricator, such as the effective
propagation of changes into watchlists, article histories, and
notifications. Much more will need to follow.

With regard to the issue of citations, it's worth noting that it's
already possible to _conditionally_ load data from Wikidata, excluding
information that is unsourced or only sourced circularly (i.e. to
Wikipedia itself). [1] Template invocations can also override values
provided by Wikidata, for example, if there is a source, but it is not
considered reliable by the standards of a specific project.

> If a digital voice assistant propagates a Wikimedia mistake without telling
> users where it got its information from, then there is not even a feedback
> form. Editability is of no help at all if people can't find the source.

I'm in favor of always indicating at least provenance (something like
"Here's a quote from Wikipedia:"), even for short excerpts, and I
certainly think WMF and chapters can advocate for this practice.
However, where short excerpts are concerned, it's not at all clear
that there is a _legal_ issue here, and that full compliance with all
requirements of the license is a reasonable "ask".

Bing's search result page manages a decent compromise, I think: it
shows excerpts from Wikipedia clearly labeled as such, and it links to
the CC-BY-SA license if you expand the excerpt, e.g.:
https://www.bing.com/search?q=france

I know that over the years, many efforts have been undertaken to
document best practices for re-use, ranging from local
community-created pages to chapter guides and tools like the
"Lizenzhinweisgenerator". I don't know what the best-available of
these is nowadays, but if none exists, it might be a good idea to
develop a new, comprehensive guide that takes into account voice
applications, tabular data, and so on.

Such a guide would ideally not just be written from a license
compliance perspective, but also include recommendations, e.g., on how
to best indicate provenance, distinguishing "here's what you must do"
from "here's what we recommend".

>> Wikidata will often provide a shallow first level of information about
>> a subject, while other linked sources provide deeper information. The
>> more structured the information, the easier it becomes to validate in
>> an automatic fashion that, for example, the subset of country
>> population time series data represented in Wikidata is an accurate
>> representation of the source material. Even when a large source
>> dataset is mirrored by Wikimedia (for low-latency visualization, say),
>> you can hash it, digitally sign it, and restrict modifiability of
>> copies.

> Interesting, though I'm not aware of that being done at present.

At present, Wikidata allows users to model constraints on internal
data validity. These constraints are used for regularly generated
database reports as well as on-demand lookup via
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:ConstraintReport . This kicks
in, for example, if you put in an insane number in a population field,
or mark a country as female.

There is a project underway to also validate against external sources; see:

  
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikibase_Quality_Extensions#Special_Page_Cross-Check_with_external_databases

Wikidata still tends to deal with relatively small amounts of data; a
highly annotated item like Germany (Q183), for example, comes in at
under 1MB in uncompressed JSON form. Time series data like GDP is
often included only for a single point in 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25)

2017-10-09 Thread Erik Moeller
On Sat, Oct 7, 2017 at 1:00 PM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> ... and it will all become one free mush everyone copies to make a buck. We
> are already in a situation today where anyone asking Siri, the Amazon Echo,
> Google or Bing about a topic is likely to get the same answer from all of
> them, because they all import Wikimedia content, which comes free of
> charge.

I wouldn't call information from Wikimedia projects a "mush", but I
think it's a good term for the proprietary amalgamation of information
and data from many sources, often without any regard for the
reliability of the source. Google is the king of such gooey
amalgamation. Its home assistant has been known to give answers like
this, sourced to "secretsofthefed.com":

 "According to details exposed in Western Center for Journalism's
  exclusive video, not only could Obama be in be in bed with the
  communist Chinese, but Obama may in fact be planning a
  communist coup d'état at the end of his term in 2016."

See, e.g., this article

  
https://theoutline.com/post/1192/google-s-featured-snippets-are-worse-than-fake-news

for other egregious examples specifically from Google's featured responses.

It's certainly true that Wikipedia is an easy target for ingestion,
not just because of its copyright status, but also because it is
comprehensive, multilingual, unrestricted (as in, not behind a paywall
or rate limit), and even fully available for download. But copyright
status is not really a major barrier once you are talking about fact
extraction and "fair use" snippets.

For Google, I suggest a query like "when was slavery abolished?"
followed by exploring the auto-suggested questions. In my case, the
first 10 questions point to snippets from:

- pbs.org (twice)
- USA Today
- Reuters
- archives.gov
- Wikipedia (twice)
- infoplease.com
- ourdocuments.gov
- nationalarchives.gov.uk

Even for its fact boxes, where Wikipedia excerpts often feature
prominently, Google does not exclusively rely on it; the tabular data
contains information not found in any Wikimedia project. Even the
textual blurbs often come from sources of unclear provenance; for
example, country blurb text (try googling "France" or "Russia") is not
from WP.

This amalgamation will get ever more sophisticated and more
proprietary (specific to each of these corporations) as AI improves.
That's because it lets companies pry apart "facts" and "expression":
the former are uncopyrightable. As textual understanding of AIs
improves, more information can be summarized and presented without
even invoking "fair use", much in the same way as Wikipedia itself
summarizes sources.

It's the universe of linked open data (Wikipedia/Wikidata,
OpenStreetMap, and other open datasets) that keeps the space at least
somewhat competitive, by giving players without much of a foothold a
starting point from which to build. If Wikimedia did not exist, a
smaller number of commercial players would wield greater power, due to
the higher relative payoff of large investments in data mining and AI.

> I find that worrying, because as an information delivery system,
> it’s not robust. You change one source, and all the other sources
> change as well.

As noted above, this is not actually what is happening. Commercial
players don't want to limit themselves to free/open data; they want to
use AI to extract as much information about the world as possible so
they can answer as many queries as possible.

And for most of the sources amalgamated in this manner, if provenance
is indicated at all, we don't find any of the safeguards we have for
Wikimedia content (revisioning, participatory decision-making,
transparent policies, etc.). Editability, while opening the floodgate
to a category of problems other sources don't have, is in fact also a
safeguard: making it possible to fix mistakes instead of going through
a "feedback" form that ends up who knows where.

With an eye to 2030 and WMF's long-term direction, I do think it's
worth thinking about Wikidata's centrality, and I would agree with you
at least that the phrase "the essential infrastructure of the
ecosystem" does overstate what I think WMF should aspire to (the
"essential infrastructure" should consist of many open components
maintained by different groups). But beyond that I think you're
reading stuff into the statement that isn't there.

Wikidata in particular is best seen not as the singular source of
truth, but as an important hub in a network of open data providers --
primarily governments, public institutions, nonprofits. This is
consistent with recent developments around Wikidata such as query
federation.

Wikidata will often provide a shallow first level of information about
a subject, while other linked sources provide deeper information. The
more structured the information, the easier it becomes to validate in
an automatic fashion that, for example, the subset of country
population time series data represented in 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] September 28: Strategy update - Final draft of movement direction and endorsement process (#25)

2017-10-03 Thread Erik Moeller
On Tue, Oct 3, 2017 at 4:10 AM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> Reading between the lines of statements like "Knowledge as a service",
> "essential infrastructure", "tools for allies and partners to organize and
> exchange free knowledge beyond Wikimedia", etc., my sense is that the
> document, without saying so explicitly, is very much written from the
> perspective that the likes of Google, Amazon, Apple, Bing (and anyone else
> developing digital assistants and other types of knowledge delivery
> platforms) should be viewed as key partners in the exchange of free
> knowledge, and served accordingly, through the development of interfaces
> that enable them to deliver Wikimedia content to the end user.
>
> My problem with that is that those are all for-profit companies, while the
> volunteers that contribute the free content on which these companies'
> profit-making services are based are not only unpaid, but actually incur
> expenses in contributing (mostly related to source access).

This seems to be a somewhat prejudiced "reading between the lines".
For-profits like Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft will extract as much
information as they can from as many sources as they can giving back
as little as they have to (which includes some activity designed to
maintain and increase goodwill, which itself has value), _regardless
of what Wikimedia does or doesn't do_. They have built knowledge
graphs without the use of Wikidata and without significant assistance
from WMF, incorporating information from countless proprietary sources
alongside free sources.

The power of an open, nonprofit approach to "knowledge as a service"
is precisely to democratize access to knowledge graph information: to
make it available to nonprofits, public institutions, communities,
individuals. This includes projects like the "Structured Data for
Wikimedia Commons" effort, which is a potential game-changer for
institutions like galleries, libraries, archives and museums.

Nor is such an approach inherently monopolistic: quite the opposite.
Wikidata is well-suited for a certain class of data-related problems
but not so much for others. Everything around Wikidata is evolving in
the direction of federation: federated queries across multiple open
datasets, federated installations of the Wikibase software, and so on.
If anything, it seems likely that a greater emphasis on "knowledge as
a service" will unavoidably decentralize influence and control, and
bring knowledge from other knowledge providers into the Wikimedia
context.

I had no involvement with this document and don't know what focusing
on "knowledge of a service" really will mean in practice. But if it
means things like improving Wikidata, building better APIs and content
formats, building better Labs^WCloud infrastructure, then the crucial
point is not that companies may benefit from such work, but that
_everybody else does, too_. And that is what distinguishes it from the
prevailing extract-and-monetize paradigm. For-profits exploting free
knowledge projects for commercial gain? That's the _current state_. To
change it, we have to make it easier to replicate what they are doing:
through open data, open APIs, open code.

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Mailing list usability: Observations about Mailman 3

2017-08-17 Thread Erik Moeller
On Thu, Aug 17, 2017 at 7:59 AM, rupert THURNER
 wrote:
>> A somewhat related ticket about trying to unify our discussion platforms
>> was discussed in a session at Wikimania:
>> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T155678

> Interesting thanks for the pointer. Compared to the options listed there a
> mailman upgrade looks rather straight forward and, personally I d really
> appreciate if it could be done, for the benefits Eric listed.

To be clear, I don't think an upgrade to MM3 would be straightforward;
it would be quite a hairball keeping multiple people busy and should
only be done incrementally. I say this only to avoid feeding a "Why
haven't we done this simple thing yet" narrative that sometimes
develops around software updates/upgrades, not in order to
specifically criticize your statement. This isn't a simple update by
any means.

I think the Q/A site vs. mailing list are very complementary
approaches. A StackExchange style knowledge platform certainly may
serve certain use cases identified in the ticket Niharika linked to,
and some experimentation with different approaches seems wise.

One word of caution -- open source clones are often poor carbon copies
that lack important functionality and algorithmic sophistication that
made the platforms they are cloning successful. This may include even
wiki-style functionality (for example, Quora has an "Answer Wiki"
feature sometimes used to highlight the salient aspects of the best
answers).

Without such correctives, you may replicate certain well-known
problems with upvote/downvote systems, such as a bias towards old
answers that received lots of votes early on but have been superseded
by much better responses.

The upvote/downvote feature in the Mailman 3  UI [*] that I mentioned
is so minimal that I think it can be ignored for all intents and
purposes, and would probably best be removed or disabled to minimize
confusion and clutter.

Erik

[*] to be precise, it is a feature of Hyperkitty, the archive frontend
that also allows posting through the web

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[Wikimedia-l] Mailing list usability: Observations about Mailman 3

2017-08-14 Thread Erik Moeller
Hi folks,

The topic of list usability has come up here a few times in the past,
and efforts have been made over the years to pilot alternative forum
systems like Discourse, or to redirect more conversations to talk
pages.  Yet the mailing lists continue to be used for a significant
share of long-form Wikimedia discussions and announcements (see stats
at [1]).

There's a Phabricator ticket [2], currently marked as stalled, for
upgrading Wikimedia's mailing list software, Mailman, to the newest
version. Mailman 3 is a complete rewrite, and this upgrade would
unquestionably be a major team-level effort. I've recently set up a
Mailman 3 install [3] (without archive migration) and wanted to share
some observations that may help with a decision to stay on the Mailman
2 line or attempt an upgrade. Sent to wikimedia-l because I think this
discussion deserves a bit more mind-share beyond the developer
community.

To see an active Mailman 3 community, check out the Fedora project's:

https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/

== The good ==

You can make a user account (including with third party providers,
opening the door for Wikimedia account integration), which makes
managing your subscriptions a bit easier. You don't have to sign up to
subscribe.

You can post through the web. This is a pretty big deal, as it opens
up list participation to folks who don't want to use email for this
purpose. It makes the whole experience more forum-like for those who
prefer that.

The interface is responsive and mobile-friendly. It uses the
widespread "Bootstrap" theme which is a bit generic but pleasing
enough.

You can search the archives.

There are some nice forum-like activity indicators in the web
interface and (sure to be controversial) upvote/downvote buttons for
posts, though the latter seem to largely be ignored in real-world
installations.

While setting the software up was difficult (easier if you have prior
familiarity with Django), I did not encounter any showstopper bugs.

== The bad ==

The web interface does not degrade gracefully to users without
JavaScript: important features just stop working.

The list administration tool has some new features, but it has also
lost old features. For example, while Mailman 2 lets you easily change
per-user moderation from the the "held messages" interface, this is
still an open task in Mailman 3. [4]

The more modular approach in Mailman 3 means that features don't
always play together. For example, you can delete a list, but deleting
the archives requires manual execution of an un-official Python code
snippet. [5]

This modularity also means some defaults are unhelpful. For example,
the default emails generated by the software do not link to the web
interface, because the web interface is a separate module that may not
be installed.

== The ugly ==

The platform is not yet ready for translation, and the interface is in
English only. Quoth the project leader in response to whether it is
possible to change the UI language: [6]

> Unfortunately no. We've never gotten much traction for fully
> translating Mailman 3. We've had some interest but what we really
> need is a champion to drive the initiative. One of our biggest blockers
> is choosing a translation platform that's compatible with our free software
> constraints, but also requiring a minimal amount of ongoing infrastructure
> support from us.

(Hey, I think I know such a platform.)

Faithful migration will likely also require some level of custom
development. Quoth the docs: [7]

> The short version is that as of now, upgrading from Mailman 2.1
> to Mailman 3.1 is buggy.
>
> Now the long version. Because of the changes in Database Schema,
> migrating from Mailman 2.1 to Mailman 3.1 is not very easy, though it
> can be done with some scripting. We are working on it and it should be
> working soon, we don’t have an exact timeline on it though.
>
> Archives however can be imported into Hyperkitty easily, however URLs
> to attachments are going to break because the URL paths are different
> in Hyperkitty. Although, You might be able to retain your HTML archives
> from Mailman 2.1 and continue archiving newer emails in Hyperkitty.

== What to do? ==

It's doubtful that Mailman 3 will magically advance in leaps and
bounds over the coming years. Adoption generally tends to drive
interest and development, and a WMF decision to upgrade may motivate
others to work towards solving longstanding problems like the i18n
issue. The Fedora installation appears to show that it's possible to
run Mailman 3 at scale already, though I haven't spoken to them about
their experiences.

I don't believe that the usability advantage Discourse currently
enjoys is inherent to web forums -- Mailman 3 shows that there is a
development path to make mailing lists more accessible and friendly,
as well, even if there is still a lot of work to be done.

My main recommendation would be to evaluate the state of play towards
a more explicit choice between 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikitribune!

2017-04-28 Thread Erik Moeller
Jimmy-

I think it's a great initiative! First, kudos for using the CC-BY
license. I have reviewed a large number of nonprofit journalism
outlets over the last few months [1], and this decision alone would
set the project apart from even the public interest media sphere.
There are only a few nonprofit news/journalism projects using a free
or semi-free license, e.g.:

- Common Dreams (lefty/progressive site) uses CC-BY-SA
- Mosaic (science publication) uses CC-BY
- The Conversation (sort of a nonprofit/academic Vox.com) uses CC-BY-ND
- ProPublica uses CC-BY-NC-ND
- Aeon (science/philosophy) uses CC-BY-ND for some content

But for the most part, even nonprofit publications tend to use
conventional copyright, making it difficult for Wikimedia and other
free culture projects to collaborate with them (and of course the more
restrictive CC licenses above are not Wikimedia-compatible either).

I hope the license will apply to photographs/videos as well as text,
since a lot of media files will be of immediate value to the free
culture world.

Second, kudos for not paywalling the content. A lot of people seem to
re-discover the idea of paywalls in 100 different forms and sell it as
innovative. Again, it prevents collaboration with other communities.

There's no mention in the FAQ as to whether WikiTribune will be
nonprofit or not, or whether that's even on the table. I am guessing
the answer is no, but it would be good to clarify that. Similarly, it
would be good to make any commitment to the development/use of open
source software beyond WordPress explicit.

Good luck raising the $/supporter goal and hopefully launching the
site, will definitely be keeping an eye on it. :)

Warmly,
Erik

[1] https://lib.reviews/team/nonprofit-media/feed

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] More politics: "WMF Annual Report"

2017-03-02 Thread Erik Moeller
On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 12:26 PM, Stuart Prior
 wrote:

> As an example, anthropogenic climate change is a politically sensitive
> issue, but how can a consensus-driven movement not take into account that
> 97% of climate scientists acknowledge its existence
> ?
> [1] 
> Accepting a scientific consensus just isn’t a political position.

It isn't, but I think it's still worth thinking about context and
presentation. There are organizations whose job it is to directly
communicate facts, both journalistic orgs like ProPublica and
fact-checkers like Snopes/Politifact. In contrast, WMF's job is to
enable many communities to collect and develop educational content.

If the scientific consensus on climate change suddenly starts to
shift, we expect our projects to reflect that, and we expect that the
organization doesn't get involved in those community processes to
promote a specific outcome. The more WMF directly communicates facts
about the world (especially politicized ones), rather than
communicating _about_ facts, the more people (editors and readers
alike) may question whether the organization is appropriately
conservative about its own role.

I haven't done an extensive survey, but I suspect all the major
Wikipedia languages largely agree in their presentation on climate
change. If so, that is itself a notable fact, given the amount of
politicization of the topic. Many readers/donors may be curious how
such agreement comes about in the absence of top-down editorial
control. Speaking about the remarkable process by which Wikipedia
tackles contentious topics may be a less potentially divisive way for
WMF to speak about what's happening in the real world.

I do think stories like the refugee phrasebook and Andreas' arctic
photography are amazing and worth telling. I'm curious whether folks
like Risker, George, Pine, Chris, and others who've expressed concern
about the report agree with that. If so, how would you tell those
stories in the context of, e.g., an Annual Report?

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] More politics: "WMF Annual Report"

2017-03-01 Thread Erik Moeller
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 3:44 PM, Florence Devouard  wrote:
> For example... the message "one in six people visited another country in
> 2016"... illustrated by "SeaTac Airport protest against immigration ban.
> Sit-in blocking arrival gates until 12 detainees at Sea-Tac are released.
> Photo by Dennis Bratland.CC BY-SA 4.0"
>
> Really... "visiting a country" is a quite different thing from
> "immigrating".

The caption is in fact misleading because it uses the phrase
"immigration ban", which is a mischaracterization of the ban. The
Executive Order was not an immigration ban; it (temporarily) banned
people from those countries from entering the United States, even for
visits, with some exceptions. See:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/31/us/politics/trump-immigration-ban-groups.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13769#Visitors.2C_immigrants_and_refugees

If the photo remains, I recommend changing this caption to use either
"travel ban" or "entry ban"; both phrases are used in the Wikipedia
article.

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Politics

2017-02-04 Thread Erik Moeller
On Sat, Feb 4, 2017 at 6:58 AM, Mike Godwin  wrote:
> (2) As I put it many times many years ago in the years before and
> after the SOPA/PIPA blackout, there are few POVs *less* neutral than
> the commitment to give all the information in the world to everyone
> for free. We are not a neutral enterprise, and we never have been.

Indeed not. I agree with Mike's entire post. WMF must speak out
against threats that directly impact its ability to serve its mission.
Sometimes it will be able to do so in concert with community action
(as in the case of SOPA/PIPA), sometimes it will be acting on its own
behalf. The WMF blog is exactly the right place for the latter type of
expression.

The revocation of some 60,000 visas [1] and implementation of a travel
ban targeting a religious group is precisely the type of action that
directly impacts WMF's ability to do its work. To frame this simply as
a matter of refugee policy misunderstands the nature of the executive
order [2], which also bars other visa holders from targeted countries.

The WMF is committed to internationalism and diversity through its
policies [3], through its long-standing participation in international
outreach programs like Google Summer of Code, through hosting,
supporting and participating in events all around the world, and --
most importantly -- through its mission and vision statement which are
global in scope and aspiration.

To make clear that it is opposed to this obvious violation of human
rights with all the consequences it has already entailed (regardless
of the possibly temporary suspension of the ban) is _precisely_ what
we should expect from WMF. We should object if it had _not_ issued a
statement. To frame this within the terms of the neutrality of the
encyclopedia is a mistake. The encyclopedia is neutral; the WMF most
definitely cannot be when its ability to do its work is threatened,
_especially_ in the jurisdiction within which it operates.

While I agree that it's important to define the boundaries of WMF's
political expression, I see its statement on EO 13769 as clearly
within any rational such definition that is consistent with its
mission and vision.

Erik

[1] 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/government-reveals-over-10-visas-revoked-due-to-travel-ban/2017/02/03/7d529eec-ea2c-11e6-b82f-687d6e6a3e7c_story.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13769

[3] 
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Pluralism,_internationalism,_and_diversity_policy

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] With my thanks to everyone ...

2016-07-13 Thread Erik Moeller
Geoff --

Many thanks for all you've done for the movement! You helped take the
WMF to a new level of professionalism, built a fantastic team, and led
it during some of the most pivotal moments in the organization's
history. During our years of working together, I deeply admired your
dedication to continuously making things better, providing mentorship
to your team and across the org, and deftly navigating the complexity
of the wiki world.

Above all, you embodied the organization's mission and values every
day, whether it was about free speech, transparency and inclusiveness,
free culture, the threat of global surveillance, or any other issue.

YouTube is lucky to bring you on board, and WMF is lucky you've built
such a great team to take things from here. Congrats and best of luck!
:)

Warmly,
Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [recent changes]

2016-04-08 Thread Erik Moeller
Hey Denny --

Kudos for your well-reasoned decision, and for your service on the
Board during a very challenging time. One of the beautiful things
about Wikimedia is how much scope you can have to move things forward
without any special roles or affiliation. I very much look forward to
reading your crazy-or-maybe-not-so-crazy ideas!

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The Case for Federation: Should Parts of WMF Be Spun Off?

2016-03-24 Thread Erik Moeller
2016-03-21 13:53 GMT-07:00 Mark A. Hershberger :
> We've since held three meetings[3][4][5] and have planned two more.
> During the meeting planned for about six weeks from now[6], we intend
> to have a format that allows us to respond to questions or concerns from
> the larger community.

This is very encouraging, Mark, thanks for the summary! It sounds like
there's already quite a bit of traction for creating a MediaWiki
focused organization. I'll try to join the upcoming meetings and
provide input/help where I can. Is there an active asynchronous
conversation space about this somewhere (talk page, listserv, forum,
whatever)? If not, should we use
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:MediaWiki_Stakeholders%27_Group
for ongoing conversation about this?

Thanks,
Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The Case for Federation: Should Parts of WMF Be Spun Off?

2016-03-24 Thread Erik Moeller
2016-03-24 3:35 GMT-07:00 Andre Engels :

>> Since the "Mediawiki" trademark was lost to WMF the day you and
>> Anthere placed the logo into public domain [1], how can the WMF now
>> spin-off this new organization ?.

> That's incorrect, putting something in the public domain does not
> remove trademark rights.

Indeed, acknowledging that it did not need to enforce strong
copyrights on the logos to protect the trademarks, WMF released all
its remaining non-free logos under CC-BY-SA in October 2014:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/10/24/wikimedia-logos-have-been-freed/

"MediaWiki" is an internationally registered trademark, as you can
verify e.g., through http://www.wipo.int/branddb/en/

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The Case for Federation: Should Parts of WMF Be Spun Off?

2016-03-19 Thread Erik Moeller
2016-03-17 22:54 GMT-07:00 Pine W :
> I agree that these options should be explored. I'm wondering what the best
> way would be to facilitate this conversation.
>
> Perhaps, Erik, would you be willing to set up a page on Meta for discussion?

Hi Pine,

Thanks for the comments! I wanted to start here to get a sense if
people are supportive of the idea(s) in general. In my experience a
listserv is good for kicking things around a bit before getting too
emotionally invested. ;-) And this list has a good cross-set of folks
with different backgrounds including WMF and affiliates. If there's a
general sense that this is worth exploring further, then I'd be more
than happy to help organize pages on Meta, e.g. to think about
specific spin-offs like the MediaWiki Foundation (if there isn't
already an extant proposal for it).

> On the WMF side, I'm wondering how this would fit into their annual
> planning. Their plan is supposed to be published on April 1. This
> discussion will need resources from WMF's end in the form of staff time,
> including Katherine's, as well as Board time. The required investment in
> the short term will be modest, but cumulatively through the year it may be
> significant, particularly if the discussions get momentum. So I'm wondering
> how, at this point, it would be possible to take these discussions into
> account in the WMF AP.

Unless WMF plans to dramatically expand in the next fiscal (which I
doubt), I think this discussion can and needs to happen on its own
timeline. I expect that if WMF suggests to depart a bit from what's
written into a one-year plan, with good reasons, the institutions of
the movement will have the flexibility to accommodate that.

I also understand WMF folks are very busy with the plan right now, and
I don't think there's special urgency to this conversation, which is
one with lots of long term implications. I do hope folks have a chance
to weigh in, but if that happens over the course of few weeks/months
in different venues, I personally think that's fine.

> This series of operations, while complicated, may yield a more resilient
> movement in the end, possibly with more combined funding, more
> accountability and transparency, and more credibility.

Yes, I hope so. :) But let's take it slowly and poke at this from
different angles to see if it makes sense.

Warmly,

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The Case for Federation: Should Parts of WMF Be Spun Off?

2016-03-19 Thread Erik Moeller
2016-03-18 9:01 GMT-07:00 Sydney Poore :

Hi Sydney!

> Right now the central hub of the global movement is WMF. Despite other
> recent problems. The WMF is doing a great job of regularly communicating
> about the world wide movement.
>
> There needs to be a successful transfer of the global mission to another
> body/bodies or there is the risk that local growth will be even more uneven
> than today.

Yes, I agree with that, and I think it's generally what characterizes
successful federate models. A "Wikimedia Movement Association" with
global membership could address this. Let's say as a hypothetical that
grantmaking and evaluation responsibilities ultimately become part of
such a WMA's scope. That would naturally give it a lot of
responsibility for sharing practices, bringing attention to things
that work, and helping to organize postmortems or governance reviews
where appropriate.

Not being itself responsible for a large body of programs, and being
accountable to its members, it could be in a better position to foster
a global sense of belonging and accountability. I suspect a lot of us
would become dues-paying members of such an organization, and proudly
so.

To the extent that it would do programmatic work, like organizing
conferences or developing tools for evaluation, it would likely do so
by contracting that work out to affiliates within the movement, or
externally if necessary. That would enable it to remain lean,
staffing-wise. And incidentally, it could enable organizations like
WMDE to bid for contracts alongside WMF, yielding the benefits of
light competition and greater geographic diversity.

What would a WMA _not_ do? It would not host servers, or deal with
trust and safety issues on the websites, or respond to DMCA notices,
or develop MediaWiki improvements.  It _might_ have a stewardship role
for movement resources, like the movement blog and potentially even
the brand assets, as an ultimate safety valve.

In short, a movement association would act as a direct proxy for the
movement, maintaining a network of clearly scoped short term and long
term relationships to advance the Wikimedia mission. It would not
replace the WMF, but it would give it a more clearly defined scope of
responsibilities and a more equal footing within the movement.

Erik

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[Wikimedia-l] The Case for Federation: Should Parts of WMF Be Spun Off?

2016-03-19 Thread Erik Moeller
Hi folks,

Now that the dust has settled a bit, I would like to expand on an idea
that’s been touched on a few times (most recently, in an editorial by
William Beutler [1]): the notion that WMF might be a more effective
organization if it limited its own size in favor of focused spin-off
organizations and affiliates.

I was very much part of building the current WMF in terms of both size
and structure, but I also think recent events underscore the fragility
of the current model. WMF is still tiny compared with other tech
companies that operate popular websites, but it’s a vast organization
by Wikimedia movement standards. With nearly 300 staff [2] (beyond
even our ambitious 2015 strategic plan staffing numbers), it dwarfs
any other movement org.

I can see three potential benefits from a more federated model:

1) Resilience. If any one organization experiences a crisis, other
independent organizations suffer to a lesser degree than departments
within that organization.

2) Focus. Wikimedia’s mission is very broad, and an organization with
a clearly defined mandate is less likely to be pulled in many
different directions -- at every level.

3) Accountability. Within a less centralized federation, it is easier
to ensure that funding flows to those who do work the movement wants
them to do.

My experience is that growth tends to be self-reinforcing in budgetary
processes if there are now clear ceilings established. I think that’s
true in almost any organization. There’s always lots of work to do,
and new teams will discover new gaps and areas into which they would
like to expand. Hence, I would argue for the following:

a) To establish 150 as the provisional ceiling for Wikimedia movement
organizations. This is Dunbar’s number, and it has been used
(sometimes intentionally, sometimes organically) as a limiting number
for religious groups, military companies, corporate divisions, tax
offices, and other human endeavors.  [3][4] This is very specifically
because it makes organizational units more manageable and
understandable for those who work there.

b) To slowly, gradually identify parts of the WMF which would benefit
from being spun off into independent organizations, and to launch such
spin-offs, narrowing WMF's focus in the process.

c) To aim to more clearly separate funding and evaluation
responsibilities from programmatic work within the movement -- whether
that work is keeping websites running, building software, or doing
GLAM work.

Note that I'm not proposing a quick splintering, but rather a slow and
gradual process with lots of opportunity to course-correct.

More on these points below.

== Potential test case: MediaWiki Foundation ==

A "MediaWiki Foundation" [5] has been proposed a few times and I
suspect continues to have some currency within WMF. This org would not
be focused on all WMF-related development work, but specifically on
MediaWiki as software that has value to third parties. Its mission
could include hosting services as earned income (and potentially as an
extension of the Wikimedia movement’s mission).

MediaWiki is used today by numerous nonprofit and educational projects
that are aligned even with a narrow view on Wikimedia’s mission.
Examples include Appropedia, OpenWetWare, WikiEducator, W3C’s
WebPlatform, Hesperian Health Guides, and too many notable open source
projects to list.

Among commercial users, it has lost much ground to other software like
Confluence, but it remains, in my view, the most viable platform for
large, open, collaborative communities. Yet it’s a poorly supported
option: many of the above wikis are outdated, and maintaining a
MediaWiki install is generally more work than it needs to be.

Building a healthy third party ecosystem will have obvious benefits
for the world, and for existing Wikimedia work as well. It may also
create a proving ground for experimental technology.

Which work that WMF is currently doing would be part of an MWF’s
mandate? I don’t know; I could imagine that it could include aspects
like Vagrant, or even shared responsibility for MediaWiki core and
MW’s architecture.

== The Wiki Education Foundation precedent ==

It’s worth noting that this spin-off model has been tried once before.
The Wiki Education Foundation is an example of an organization that
was created by volunteers doing work in this programmatic space in
partnership with staff of the Education Program at WMF, who left to
join the new org. It is now financially independent, building its own
relationships with funders that WMF has never worked with, and
achieving impact at unprecedented scale.

LiAnna Davis, who is today the Director of Program Support at Wiki Ed,
wrote a detailed response to William’s blog post, which I think is
worth quoting in full [1]:

begin quote
I worked for the WMF for nearly four years and have worked for the
spun-off Wiki Education Foundation for the last two, and I strongly
support the idea of spinning off more parts of WMF into 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] any open search engine for web project starting

2016-03-19 Thread Erik Moeller
2016-03-18 21:44 GMT-07:00 SarahSV :
> On Fri, Mar 18, 2016 at 5:17 PM, carl hansen 
> wrote:
>
>> https://about.commonsearch.org/
>>
>> "We are building a nonprofit search engine for the Web"
>>
>> Sounds alot like Knowledge Engine, if there were such a thing.
>> Any overlap with wikimedia projects?

> Thanks for the link, Carl. Erik and Lydia are advisors, so perhaps they
> could say a bit more about it.

Sylvain has been working on this stuff for a while, blissfully
ignorant of Wikimedia's discussions of search engines, rocketships and
so on. He reached out to me shortly before the public announcement and
we've talked a bit about governance, community & funding models. I've
agreed to provide some continued advice along the way but have not
otherwise been involved.

He recently posted on wikitech-l asking for suggestions how
Wikipedia/Wikidata could be integrated:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2016-March/084984.html

There's a lot of heavy lifting still until Common Search can become a
viable project even for narrowly defined purposes but I think it's a
very worthwhile effort. It also is -- I think correctly -- based on
the largest pre-existing open effort to index the web, the Common
Crawl. This could lead to a mutually beneficial relationship between
Common Search and Common Crawl. From a Wikimedia perspective, it might
develop into an opportunity to jointly showcase some of the amazing
stuff that Wikidata can already do.

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation executive transition update

2016-03-10 Thread Erik Moeller
Congratulations to the Board and to Katherine!

It is good to see the organization led by a person with such a strong
and proven commitment to human rights, access to knowledge, and
transparency. I've also been deeply impressed by all the work
Katherine has done in her previous role at WMF.

Best of luck in facing the challenges ahead. :)

Warmly,
Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: A conversation?

2016-03-10 Thread Erik Moeller
2016-03-09 23:21 GMT-08:00 SarahSV :

>> And no, I'm not a fan how things have played out so far, and I'm not
>> arguing for just moving on without addressing remaining grievances.
>> But this isn't how we should move forward.

> Erik, what do you see as the alternative?

To clarify, I was specifically objecting to the leaked private email,
not to addressing the issues with James' ejection from the Board. I
know James and worked with him especially on the Wikivoyage migration;
I understand well why he is so widely trusted and why this matter has
cut deep wounds.

I would suggest the following.

* I would still ask to give the Board a little time to finalize their
decision regarding the interim ED, which seems imminent. That means
not just announcing, but also some time to provide support and
orientation in that person's first weeks. (E.g., the interim ED will
need to build a relationship with the Board itself.)

* Until then, I suggest focusing on documenting rather than debating.
What Molly did with the timeline is a fine example of "collaborative
journalism" and the Wikimedia community is at its best when it
collects the facts in an NPOV manner. Coordinating this on a single
page can reduce the forest fire nature of this conflict. I strongly
recommend avoiding one-sided leaks of private emails and such for the
reasons I gave.

* Once the Board has a bit of bandwidth, the Chair of the Board
(Patricio) really is the primary person to look to for bringing
closure to this matter. Dealing with issues with current and former
Board members is _precisely_ the kind of thing a Board Chair needs to
demonstrate leadership on, because it can't be done by committee.

* To do this in a manner that's both transparent and consistent with
community norms, I've suggested engaging a professional facilitator.
(I believe Pete has also said so several times.) There could be a
private/public meeting, where there's a private discussion with James
and the facilitator, and a public joint statement that comes out of
this, even if it ends up being "agree to disagree". It's the
facilitator's job that this comes to pass.

* That public bit could lead into a general public discussion with the
Board. I would recommend a metrics meeting style format (video + IRC
backchannel) with a wiki page to submit questions beforehand, and +1
them.

If that plan seems sensible, I would also suggest Jimmy disengage on
the James Heilman matter from here on and leave this issue to the
Board Chair to bring closure to.

Hope that helps. I know this has all been exhausting for lots of
folks, so please take it in the spirit in which it is intended, i.e.
to help bring closure to it in a step-by-step way.

Warmly,
Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: A conversation?

2016-03-09 Thread Erik Moeller
2016-03-09 16:56 GMT-08:00 Pete Forsyth :

> I feel this message can provide important insight into the dynamics
> surrounding James H.'s dismissal, and various people have expressed
> interest in seeing it, so I'm forwarding it to the list. (For what it's
> worth, I did check with James H.; he had no objection to my sharing it.)

Pete, regardless of Jimmy's words in this email, like others, I fail
to see how it's okay to share a private email to this list. I can
think of a few instances where this might be ethically defensible --
like actual fraud being committed -- but this is not one of them. It's
totally fair for people to ask Jimmy to clear the air on stuff
himself, but this crosses the line, at least from my point of view.

This comes down to giving a person you're corresponding with an
honest, open channel by which they can apologize, clarify, and make
things right. By violating that private channel you're making it
implicitly impossible to have that kind of conversation.

Meatball Wiki, as you know, has some wise words on this kind of stuff.
http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/ForgiveAndForget is a good page to
remember.

And no, I'm not a fan how things have played out so far, and I'm not
arguing for just moving on without addressing remaining grievances.
But this isn't how we should move forward. Criticizing people's
actions is fair game, even calling for resignation or other types of
structural and organizational change. This kind of picking out of
lines from private emails ought _not_ to be, in my view.

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open and recorded WMF Board meetings

2016-03-02 Thread Erik Moeller
2016-03-02 23:22 GMT-08:00 Erik Moeller <eloque...@gmail.com>:
> Jimmy made a couple of suggestions earlier [1], including to publish
> all presentations given to the Board and to have a trusted community
> observer.

"Nearly all", to paraphrase accurately, and on re-reading the email
I'm not sure I understand the "observer" idea ("a program of invited
board observers from people who are well known and well trusted by the
community"). Personally, I do find it intriguing but I'm not sure it
would add much value transparency-wise, unless these observers play
some kind of role in the discussion of what gets published, i.e. they
effectively act as advocates for transparency.

> When it comes to presentations, the manual primarily refers to
> exceptions such as Legal presentations and documents "intended for
> presentation".

That should read: "intended for publication".

Erik (and now I'm really over my quota)

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open and recorded WMF Board meetings

2016-03-02 Thread Erik Moeller
2016-03-02 22:56 GMT-08:00 Chris Sherlock :

> Let’s have the Board meetings be recorded. If they cannot be recorded,
> then I’d like the WMF to improve their meeting minutes.

Jimmy made a couple of suggestions earlier [1], including to publish
all presentations given to the Board and to have a trusted community
observer.

To discuss which practices to adopt, it's worth first looking at the
existing Board manual, which is a remarkably detailed document that
goes into many of these issues including the exact process for minutes
publication, what types of information is captured in minutes, and so
on. [2]

When it comes to presentations, the manual primarily refers to
exceptions such as Legal presentations and documents "intended for
presentation".

I would recommend clarifying the standards under which such decisions
are made, perhaps in the manual itself, and indeed publishing
presentations going forward. For instance, I think one can make
reasonable arguments either way when it comes to revenue related
presentations, but there should be a general approach.

Personally I would recommend transparency for those, as well, with
confidential business income and similar data being omitted if
necessary. "Competitive analysis" and the like is generally not the
kind of thing that WMF is good at doing secretly, and indeed many of
its risk analyses have been made public. Certainly all strategy
presentations should be public.

As for minutes, again, it seems to me a matter of first clarifying,
possibly in the Board manual, what level of detail is appropriate. It
seems to me that the Board is adhering to a relatively risk-averse,
conservative approach right now, whereas WMF staff (which make many
risky and potentially sensitive decisions on a day-to-day basis)
capture significantly more individual-level detail in quarterly review
minutes without apparent ill effect. I understand the concern about
"speaking freely", but I personally think this is overstated in many
cases.

The Board, being a governance body, _will_ often talk about sensitive
issues that cannot be captured in detail, such as personnel,
management and legal matters. But that doesn't mean it cannot adhere
to a greater level of detail in capturing strategy conversations, for
example.

Erik

[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082719.html
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_Handbook

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] I am going to San Francisco

2016-03-01 Thread Erik Moeller
2016-03-01 21:32 GMT-08:00 Andreas Kolbe :

> The gift from the Brin Wojcicki Foundation is of a little bit of interest,
> because its public announcement[3][5] came a mere three days after the
> Wikimedia Foundation said[9]

I see we're moving the goalposts back to an earlier conspiracy theory,
I guess that's success. The Brin Wojcicki Foundation actually made
their first gift to WMF in the 2010-11 fiscal year, just at a lower
level. [1] I was in the first meeting with them back in 2010, as well.
From everything I recall, they were a wonderful partner, and were
simply interested in supporting Wikimedia's existing activities and
plans.

Erik

[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Benefactors/2010–2011

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter: Issues needing addressing by the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees

2016-03-01 Thread Erik Moeller
2016-02-29 23:19 GMT-08:00 David Emrany :

> so reading your email, we also recall these quotes from the time of the
> Stanton Foundation fiasco ? [1]
>
> "The Executive Director and Chief Revenue Officer agree that in the
> future, any grants that are not unrestricted will receive a special
> high level of scrutiny before being accepted."
> ..
> "The ED plans, with the C-level team, to develop a better process for
> staff to escalate and express concerns about any WMF activities that
> staff think may in tension with, or in violation of, community
> policies or best practices. It will take some time to develop a
> simple, robust process: we aim to have it done by 1 May 2014."

I'm not sure if there's a question for me here? I wasn't involved in
the Belfer project until the postmortem. The ED transition happened
shortly thereafter. Regardless of whether it came up in that context
(I don't know for sure, but I doubt it), the follow-up was lost in the
shuffle. Nemo pointed that out a few months later, and Lila's final
response on the issue is here:

https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-March/077339.html

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] I am going to San Francisco

2016-02-29 Thread Erik Moeller
> Anne, I have mentioned several times in the past few days here on this list
> Sue Gardner's 2008 email suggesting that the WMF enter into an "umbrella
> relationship/agreement" or "business deal" with Google. In case you missed
> it, here is the link again:
>
> http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/sandberg.pdf
>
> Scroll to the very end of the document to see the email in question. I am
> still interested in learning what the results of that effort were.

Nothing other than establishing some mutual points of contact, as far
as I know. Back in 2008, Sue and I reached out -- as WMF just had
relocated to the Bay Area -- to major tech companies to introduce
ourselves, with the help of Jimmy and some of our early supporters. We
made a pitch for donations, and in-kind hardware support where
appropriate. By and large corporate support didn't go very far,
because usually folks wanted PR benefits at a level we couldn't give
them. Some individual major donors did give their support, as noted on
the benefactors page.

Incidentally, this was also the year in which Google launched Knol,
which was sort of their version of the Knowledge Engine (official
line: "We have no intent of competing with Wikipedia" -> media
reports: "Google launches Wikipedia killer"). It was later converted
to a WordPress blog.

We did continue to cultivate the relationship with Google and
continued to ask for support, and eventually Google made a one-time
$2M donation. [1] As you know, Google also was one of the early
supporters of Wikidata [2], and Sergey Brin's family foundation has
also given to WMF in the past. [3] This was all unambiguously good for
Wikimedia, and is all public knowledge.

Beyond those donations, we've generally had an informal relationship
with changing points of contact over the years. WMF has given tech
talks at Google, for example, or our point of contact might help us
get some passes for the I/O conference. Part of the mandate of the
partnerships hire WMF made last year was to bring more of a systematic
approach to these relationships, and as the org stabilizes it might be
good to seek a broad conversation as to what that ideally should look
like in terms of transparency, lines we shall not cross, etc.

Generally speaking, when WMF did enter into significant business
relationships, these are a matter of the public record in press
releases and such: Yahoo back in 2005, Kaltura, PediaPress, Orange,
the various WP Zero operators, some data center partners, etc. The
Apple dictionary integration Brion mentions in [4] is an exception to
the rule; contrary to Brion's recollection it actually predates even
Sue Gardner and, as far as I know, was not announced at the time.

Erik

[1] 
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Wikimedia_Foundation_announces_$2_million_grant_from_Google
[2] https://www.wikimedia.de/wiki/Pressemitteilungen/PM_3_12_Wikidata_EN
[3] 
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Brin_Wojcicki_Foundation_Announces_$500,000_Grant_to_Wikimedia
[4] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082741.html

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter: Issues needing addressing by the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees

2016-02-29 Thread Erik Moeller
2016-02-29 19:24 GMT-08:00 Chris Sherlock :

> With the greatest of respect, I'm not sure how could come to the conclusion 
> that general
> Internet search was not a core component of the Knowledge Engine.

It's important to remember that this is a $250K grant, with a grant
period that ends later this year. It's clear that this was done
because everyone involved realized that the plans are likely to
change. Knight has given grants to WMF in the past, including a $600K
one with a longer grant period [1], so this isn't a particularly bold
step for them or for WMF. Within the scope of a grant with these
parameters, it's completely reasonable for WMF, at the end of the
grant period, to go back to Knight and say: "We've done everything we
committed to for the grant period [improve internal search etc.], but
we won't be doing anything beyond that."

That is not to say that this process was managed well -- obviously it
wasn't. But at least there are no catastrophic long term consequences
for the organization or for the movement, as far as I can tell. That
is, unless Larry Page read one of the early news stories and decided
to send a DESTROY WIKIMEDIA memo to all Alphabet companies, in which
case I expect Boston Dynamics robots to show up at New Montgomery
Street any day now. [2]

Erik

[1] http://knightfoundation.org/grants/20123673/
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVlhMGQgDkY

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter: Issues needing addressing by the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees

2016-02-27 Thread Erik Moeller
Chris,

It's good to read you here and on WW. I think you're raising
legitimate points that others have also sought progress on. I would
just suggest one thing. Right now the Wikimedia Foundation is going
through an ED transition, impacting nearly 300 staff members most
immediately. The Board's primary responsibility at this point is to
identify interim leadership, set that person up for success, and renew
the Board's bridge to the staff. Painful as the situation with James
Heilman is, it is legitimate to address it later, in a professional
and civil manner.

I would encourage James, Jimmy, Denny and others similarly to not
shoot from the hip at this time. I know something about shooting from
the hip, and it rarely moves things forward positively. ;-) This
dispute may need a facilitator and a quiet, generous conversation to
be settled amicably. Given that Dariusz voted to retain James, I trust
James hasn't done anything so dastardly that this cannot be done.

Everyone has had an incredibly long week. I am sure
everyone--including Board members, who are all volunteers with other
obligations--is still stressed right now about what's to come. People
don't make the best decisions when they are too stressed, too tired,
too busy. It's important that the Board is given some space to focus,
to move forward one step at a time.

I concur with your call for greater transparency and involvement of
the Board in meaningful conversations with staff and volunteers. I
also think other steps of Board reform, including better training for
Board members, ought to be considered. I would love to hear more from
recently appointed Board members like Guy and Kelly, to understand
their perspective on the last few months. But all in due time.

Warmly,

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Executive transition planning

2016-02-25 Thread Erik Moeller
2016-02-25 12:19 GMT-08:00 Gayle Karen Young :
> I know this isn't easy - not on the Board, not on the senior staff, not on
> the staff, and not on Lila.
> I'm so sorry and sad for all of us where this has come to, and there is an
> enormous amount of goodwill and skill in supporting the board in moving
> forward and doing the thorough planning it needs to do from this point
> onward.

Well said, Gayle, and best wishes in the journey ahead, both for WMF
and the movement, and for Lila. I'll go back to lurking for a bit, but
may chime in on some of the topics that have been raised in some of
the very constructive side conversations.

Warmly,

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why we changed

2016-02-22 Thread Erik Moeller
2016-02-22 1:26 GMT-08:00 Tim Starling :
> I don't think it is plausible, given the data collected at:
>
> 
>
> 25,000 new users were put into an HHVM bucket, so the whole site was
> twice as fast for them. Then they were tracked for a week. There was
> no improvement in engagement or productivity.
>
> I'm sure the performance improvements we did in 2004-2005 had a big
> impact, especially initial batch of 9 Tampa servers in February 2004.
> There must be a scale effect: going from 20s to 10s is much more
> important than going from 2s to 1s.

I'm familiar with that research. I suggested at the time (see talk) to
specifically also evaluate impact on existing users. My reasoning was
that a new editor faces many barriers and high cognitive load, and as
you say, performance improvements at the level realized here are
probably not going to be the thing that helps you in making those
first edits. But if you're a power user who, say, performs a ton of
category edits with low cognitive load, reducing the amount of time
spent waiting ought to increase productivity.

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Post mortems (second attempt)

2016-02-22 Thread Erik Moeller
2016-02-22 1:14 GMT-08:00 Yaroslav M. Blanter :
> Absolutely. This is absolutely what happened. At some point I had to state
> that if FLOW gets introduced on all talk pages I would stop using talk
> pages. I was replied that they are sorry but this is my choice.

Our early communications approach about Flow was terrible, it is true,
and I take responsibility for not handling it better. I saw some
messages that made me cringe, but I didn't step in to say "This is not
how we want to do things". I'm sorry. As for my own comms style when I
was around the wikis, I think people have often found it arrogant and
thereby offputting. I've learned over the years that folks who are
external to the community are often naturally better at this. It's
tempting as a (formerly very active) community member to draw on your
own expertise and hopes to the point that you're no longer listening,
or seen to be listening.

I believe Flow-related communications improved significantly later on,
but by that time a lot of bridges had already been burned^Wnuked from
orbit. I think this early history significantly impacted perception
especially in the English Wikipedia community, to the point that
raising the name of the project immediately triggers lots of people in
that community. At the same time, the more proactive and careful
approach later fostered some use cases, like the Catalan Wikipedia
converting its entire Village Pump over:

https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viquip%C3%A8dia:La_taverna/Novetats
https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viquip%C3%A8dia:La_taverna/Multim%C3%A8dia
https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viquip%C3%A8dia:La_taverna/Propostes
https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viquip%C3%A8dia:La_taverna/Tecnicismes
https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viquip%C3%A8dia:La_taverna/Ajuda

I think a fair evaluation of the project's merits will need to look at
what actually happened in those communities that adopted it, whether
it's for wholesale usage on pages like this, or on user talk pages.
And if the numbers look positive and there's something that can be
done to heal the hurt that was caused in how the project was handled
early on, I'm happy to help if I can, even just by saying "Sorry".

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why we changed

2016-02-22 Thread Erik Moeller
Hi Lila,

Thanks for the message. I won't go into this and the other aspects of
the current situation in detail -- I think this is an important
conversation primarily with current staff and active community members
--, but I'll respond to a couple points that I think are important,
and for which I can provide some historical perspective.

> In the past year we managed -- for the first time since 2007 -- to finally
> stem the editor decline.

This is a pretty powerful statement! As many folks know, "stemming the
editor decline" was long a top organizational priority, due to
research that showed an increasing tendency for new editors to
encounter barriers, such as the Editor Trends Study, summarized here:

https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Editor_Trends_Study

Many will remember the graph illustrating this study, which
specifically underscores that new editors' 1-year retention decreasing
dramatically during Wikipedia's most rapid growth, and remained low
since then.

https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Enwp_retention_vs_active_editors.png

As a consequence, an important number to pay attention to when
characterizing the editor decline is the number of new editors who
successfully join the project. Has that number increased or
stabilized?

It has not, as far as I can tell:
https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaZZ.htm

Note in interpreting all data that January is a seasonal recovery
month in editor statistics.

One number to look at here is "New editors", which is the number of
editors who have crossed the threshold of 10 edits in a given month.
For all Wikipedias combined, this number has been in the 12000-13000s
for the last 6 months. Near as I can tell, the last time it has
hovered around or below those levels for this long was a decade ago,
in December 2005. The more modern metric of "new editor activation"
(which does not seem to have the same level of data-completeness)
appears to show similar troubling signs:

https://vital-signs.wmflabs.org/#projects=all,ruwiki,itwiki,dewiki,frwiki,enwiki,eswiki,jawiki/metrics=RollingNewActiveEditor

Another key metric we paid attention to is the "Active Editors"
number, which has stagnated for a long time; it appears to continue to
do so with no recovery. The most complete visualization I was able to
find is still the one we created years ago, here:

https://reportcard.wmflabs.org/graphs/active_editors

Finally, there's the measure of "very active editors". These are folks
who make 100 edits/month, and one could also call this the "core
community". It's a measure less affected by new user barriers, and
more by the effectiveness of existing editing/curation tools. This is
one metric which does indeed show a positive trend, as was noted here:

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/09/25/wikipedia-editor-numbers/

This graph focuses on English Wikipedia; this table contains the
numbers for all languages combined, in the "Very active editors"
column:

https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaZZ.htm

The numbers for "very active editors" appear to have stabilized at a
slightly higher level than previously. I can't find any firm
conclusion on what has caused this in Wikimedia's public
communications, but the HHVM rollout, long-planned and implemented in
December 2014 under Ori Livneh's leadership seems like a plausible
hypothesis:

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/12/29/how-we-made-editing-wikipedia-twice-as-fast/

It seems reasonable to assume that very active editors would most
benefit from performance improvements.

One very positive trend is the Content Translation tool, and its
impact on new article creation, especially in combination with
targeted calls to action, as detailed here:

https://cs.stanford.edu/people/jure/pubs/growing-www16.pdf

But overall, it seems premature of speaking of "stemming the decline",
unless I'm missing something (entirely possible). I don't mean to be
negative about it -- I do think it's a super-important problem, and
hence important to be clear and precise about where we are in
addressing it.

> In practice this means I demanded that we set standards for staff
> communication with our community to be professional and respectful. It
> meant transitioning people, shutting down pet projects

Like Brion, I'm also curious what this ("pet projects") refers to.
With regard to tech, I'm not aware of any major projects that were
shut down. I read that major feature development on Flow was
suspended, but active maintenance work to support an active trial
(launched after said announcement) on user talk pages is ongoing, as
far as I can tell:

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/q/Flow+status:merged,n,z

To be clear, the course of action taken here -- to evaluate a
controversial tool for a specific use case, and see how it fares --
seems completely reasonable to me. I'm just curious if that's what
you're referring to, though, or if there are other examples, perhaps
outside engineering, you have in mind?

Erik


Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Foundation-l] Single login - decision 2004

2015-04-22 Thread Erik Moeller
On Tue, Apr 21, 2015 at 11:34 PM, Keegan Peterzell
kpeterz...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 This is now complete [2]. That wasn't too bad.

Nicely done. :-) Kudos to you, Kunal  everyone else involved in
finally bringing this one home.

Eloquence~metawiki

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] A transition and a new chapter.

2015-04-13 Thread Erik Moeller
Hi all --

As Lila noted, since January 2008 I've worn many hats at the Wikimedia
Foundation, and in the six years before that I was a Wikipedian,
MediaWiki developer, and member of the WMF board of trustees. I became
involved in Wikipedia when I was 22 years old. :) The Wikimedia
movement has accomplished amazing things, but I believe it's time now
for me to do something different and new.

It's been a long and incredible journey, and one I am privileged to
have helped to shape. When I joined the Foundation in December 2007 we
were a staff of a dozen people, with barely enough funds to keep the
lights on. Since then, we've tackled challenges of a complexity and
scale faced by few other organisations. In doing so, we’ve been
generously supported by people all over the world who are grateful for
the gift of free knowledge.

I’m proud of and happy with what we've achieved. Reaching people on
mobile. Pioneering new approaches working with universities.
Painstakingly building a visual editing experience on top of wikitext.
:) I’m glad we’ve taken a stand when it matters (SOPA blackout, NSA
lawsuit) and that we don’t shy away from complex issues such as
community health and diversity.

I’m excited that Wikidata is growing in leaps and bounds with the help
of Wikimedia Germany, and that more and more powerful tools and
services are being built on the basis of Wikimedia APIs and data. I’ve
always believed that Wikimedia chapter and affiliate organizations are
key to the success of the movement, and I hope they are going to truly
thrive in years to come.

But it's time. As the leadership team begins to coalesce under Lila, I
want to open up space for the organization to learn and explore anew
-- and I’d like to rediscover for myself what it means to tackle
challenges outside of my areas of comfort and familiarity.

I’m very interested in the technical challenges of federated
collaboration, and am looking forward to getting my hands dirty in
that domain. I also want to explore how to make patterns of ethics,
policy, and self-governance more accessible and re-usable for
communities. In short, I’m itching to immerse myself in new problem
spaces and new ideas.

Lila, Damon, Terry, myself and others in the org have been discussing
how to organize product going forward to set the org up for success in
the years to come, and we’ll have an update on that very soon. This is
a very natural point for me to pursue something new.

What Wikimedia does in the world is wonderful  important. I’m sure I
will continue to cross paths with many of you in future as I continue
to move in free culture circles, and I very much look forward to it.

I’ll continue to be @ WMF full-time through April, and will make
myself available as necessary afterwards, for when the org needs human
institutional memory that surpasses digital archives. I wish you all
success and joy :-)

Love,

Erik
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VP of Product  Strategy, Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Deutschland's new Executive Director will be Christian Rickerts

2015-03-02 Thread Erik Moeller
Thanks for the update, Tim Moritz, and congratulations on a successful
search. Christian -- willkommen in der Wikimedia-Bewegung und viel
Erfolg! :-)

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VP of Product  Strategy, Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia OTRS Annual Report

2015-02-25 Thread Erik Moeller
Patrik and everyone else involved in this -- this is pretty amazing work.
Thanks for everything you do, and thank you for documenting it so clearly.
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VP of Product  Strategy, Wikimedia Foundation
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-l] Types of allowed projects for grant funding (renamed)

2015-02-21 Thread Erik Moeller
On Sat, Feb 21, 2015 at 4:19 PM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote:

 Erik seems to be pushing toward a model that favors using OAuth and the
 MediaWiki API over deep integration that comes with a MediaWiki
 extension. He recently mentioned this here:
 https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/glamtools/2015-February/000343.html

 He may be right that development for deployment to the Wikimedia
 Foundation cluster may not be the best approach for every project, but I
 think this view overlooks all the very real benefits that extension
 deployment includes.

I don't think one size fits all -- every case needs to be judged on
its merits, though in the case of GLAMWikiToolset I am definitely
arguing for considering separation from the MediaWiki codebase because
it is so highly specialized. I also think we sometimes still have a
tendency to underestimate the value of non-MediaWiki tools and apps,
even though they've contributed millions of edits to Wikimedia wikis
already (though to be fair, without Magnus Manske the tally would not
be nearly as awesome).

Regarding the criteria for grantmaking, I think this initial blanket
prohibition against all MediaWiki extension development is indeed
something we ought to revisit. These grants can cover tens of
thousands of dollars of paid work, so we shouldn't treat the review
and integration burden lightly, and avoiding stalled projects that are
going nowhere was a reason I advocated for this restriction to begin
with. But as long as there is a good plan in place -- either not
significantly dependent on WMF or with clear commitments negotiated
upfront -- I do agree that the risks can be significantly mitigated.

Damon, Luis and members of their teams will need to weigh in on this,
and will want to think through the implications for their respective
areas, but it's a good conversation to have -- keeping in mind that
Luis is just starting in his new role, so please give him at least a
few days to get up to speed. ;-)

Erik
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VP of Product  Strategy, Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimania-l] Announcement regarding Host for Wikimania 2016

2015-01-20 Thread Erik Moeller
Kudos to the team and to the jury for daring to try something totally
new  exciting for Wikimania 2016 that sounds just a little bit crazy.
:D I am hugely looking forward to being part of this -- and I think
everyone who signs up to come will do so in the spirit of exploration
 adventure in which this bid is undertaken.

I've been to many conferences, offsites, retreats and what have you.
The ones that stick most in my mind are the ones that combined an
interesting environment, challenges to overcome, and lots of rich,
intimate conversations, woven together into an unforgettable
experience. It sounds like Wikimania 2016 will have plenty of all of
the above. :)

Erik

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[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Fwd: Tilman Bayer joins Product Strategy Department

2015-01-07 Thread Erik Moeller
FYI :)

-- Forwarded message --
From: Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org
Date: Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 1:50 PM
Subject: Tilman Bayer joins Product  Strategy Department
To: Staff All wmf...@lists.wikimedia.org


Hi all,

It’s my pleasure to announce that Tilman Bayer is joining the Foundation’s
Product  Strategy department as Senior Analyst. I would like to thank
Katherine Maher for supporting and helping to prepare this move from the
Communications department.

Tilman has been working with us since July 2011, and has been a Wikipedian
since 2003. He is leading the development of the organization’s new
quarterly report, and its integration with the quarterly review process. In
his role in Communications, he has already coordinated our reports in their
previous monthly format, and has kept detailed public minutes for the
majority of quarterly reviews at WMF. He will continue to do so.

He will ensure we not only continually refine and improve the quarterly
goalsetting, review and reporting processes, but can also look for
opportunities to highlight lessons learned - successes and failures -
across the organization and the Wikimedia communities, so these can
meaningfully inform our strategy.

In addition, Tilman will bring his many years of experience as a volunteer
and his insight into the many complexities and intricacies of the Wikimedia
universe to bear with product-related research and analysis questions,
supporting Product Managers and other team members as we dig into hard
problems that benefit from his expertise, e.g. simplification of templates,
translation tools, cross-wiki messaging tools, mathematics editing, etc.

Tilman was previously responsible for many day-to-day communications
responsibilities and supported or led key communications initiatives. These
responsibilities will be transitioned to other Communications team members,
including Fabrice Florin who is joining the team for 6 months (separate
announcement to follow).

Please join me in congratulating Tilman to this new role. Tilman - thank
you for taking this on; I look forward to continuing our work together!

Sincerely,

Erik
--
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VP of Product  Strategy, Wikimedia Foundation



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VP of Product  Strategy, Wikimedia Foundation
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WaPo Wikipedia's 'complicated; relationship with net neutrality

2014-12-08 Thread Erik Moeller
On Mon, Dec 8, 2014 at 8:35 PM, Jens Best jens.b...@wikimedia.de wrote:

 Wikipedia Zero should be newly framed as a leading example of Public
 Free Knowledge.

Hey Jens,

I think your line of argument here is reasonable, and we are generally
thinking in the direction of how Wikipedia can be part of a broader
coalition dedicated to free access to knowledge. Wikipedia Zero
started off as an experiment to bring Wikipedia to millions of people
who could otherwise not afford it. But now we should think (and are
thinking) about the kind of coalition we want to create to bring free
knowledge to every person on the planet, rather than primarily
advocating for free access to Wikipedia.

I'd be indeed curious about your thoughts on how to define Public Free
Knowledge. IMO the licensing status of the material ought to play some
role in defining what kinds of resources should be made freely
available in this manner. I don't know that this should be an
absolutely non-negotiable criterion (even Wikimedia makes exceptions),
but it should count for something.

Freely licensed material (in a manner compatible with the Definition
of Free Cultural Works or the Open Knowledge Definition) is not tied
to a specific website and host; the ability to fork free knowledge is
a fundamental protection against the misuse of power. Moreover, if
society creates a social contract that freely licensed and public
domain information should be available free of charge, this creates
further incentives to contribute to a true commons. It protects our
heritage and reminds us to expand it. This is a position entirely
consistent with our mission, as well.

I agree with Mike that WMF needs to take a practical stance to bring
free knowledge to the largest number of people, and we need not
apologize for Wikipedia Zero -- it's a program that serves the
organization's mission well. But entirely practically speaking,
building a greater coalition in support of access to knowledge could
serve the mission to an even greater extent, if we manage to pull it
off.

Imagine a world where you can take a smartphone or tablet without a
contract and immediately connect to an ever-growing library of free
knowledge, without charge. I couldn't think of a better 21st century
equivalent to the foundation of public libraries, and frankly of a
better way to even the odds for the survival of our species.

Erik

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VP of Product  Strategy, Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fundraising banner interfering with Google results

2014-12-07 Thread Erik Moeller
Hi all,

For the record, we've been able to confirm that our fixes, which were
already deployed Thursday, immediately addressed the issue on our end.
Google also picked up the updated robots.txt already on December 4,
according to Google Webmaster Tools. GoogleBot, for better or for
worse, nowadays executes JavaScript, which caused it to index the
banner text since the JS was not blacklisted prior to December 4.
We've pinged our Google contacts about faster re-crawling of impacted
pages; will follow up further on that front.

Erik
-- 
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VP of Product  Strategy, Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fundraising banner interfering with Google results

2014-12-07 Thread Erik Moeller
On Sun, Dec 7, 2014 at 2:10 PM, Russavia russavia.wikipe...@gmail.com wrote:

 I can confirm that my edit to
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ushuaia_%E2%80%93_Malvinas_Argentinas_International_Airport
 has now fixed the issue in Google search as it relates to that article, but
 the issue still remains on 8,600,000 articles (up from 8,540,000 articles
 yesterday).

site:wikipedia.org Dear Wikipedia readers produces 936,000 results
for me. Please note that Google uses a distributed index, and
depending where you are geographically, and where Google sends you
based on server load, you will get inconsistent results from query to
query. See this paper for a bit more detail on how these index
inconsistencies manifest:

http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~snoeren/papers/bobble-pam14.pdf

Pages we know to have been re-crawled don't exhibit the issue, so it
should be only a matter of time for the index to catch up. Please also
note that the text being in the index does not automatically mean that
it will show up in a typical search. Any search for the phrase itself
will highlight it in the snippet (extract) shown in the search result
page as a match, while a typical search will not include the phrase
and will much less frequently identify the text to be a good match for
the user's search query, mitigating global user impact significantly.
We'd still like to resolve this completely as quickly as possible, of
course.

Erik
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fundraising banners (again)

2014-12-05 Thread Erik Moeller
On Fri, Dec 5, 2014 at 12:29 AM, Michel Vuijlsteke wikipe...@zog.org wrote:
 I think it's more than worrying that many of the results have the
 fundraising message as a summary.

Yep, this is very problematic. Even though the content is
JavaScript-generated, Google crawls it unless it's explicitly
excluded. This came to our attention this morning SF time, and we
quickly deployed fixes on our end:

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/177598/
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/177611/

This should fix the issue, but Google will need to recrawl the
affected pages. We've already reached out to our contacts there to see
if this can be done more quickly. Further background and analysis
here:

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T76743

Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Au Revoir from WMUK CEO

2014-11-12 Thread Erik Moeller
Jon --

Thank you all the hard work for the movement, and for building a great team
and great foundations!  Hope to see you in different corners of the
movement  globe.

Warmly,
Erik
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Chapters and GLAM tooling

2014-11-10 Thread Erik Moeller
On Sat, Oct 25, 2014 at 5:58 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote:
 Indeed, highly specialized tools for the cultural and education sector
 _are_ being developed and hosted inside Tool Labs or externally.
 Looking at the current OAuth consumer requests [5], there are
 submissions for a metadata editor developed by librarians at the
 University of Miami Libraries in Coral Gables, Florida, and an
 assignment creation wizard developed by the Wiki Education Foundation.

The Wiki Education Foundation just introduced its Assignment Wizard,
which is being developed with the help of an outside agency. As this
tool develops, there may be opportunities for sharing experiences with
other Wikimedia organizations:

http://wikiedu.org/blog/2014/11/07/user-testing-assignment-design-wizard/

Erik

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[Wikimedia-l] Update regarding WMF's reporting practices

2014-11-05 Thread Erik Moeller
Hi all --

Starting this month, WMF will be shifting its organization-wide
reports from a monthly to a quarterly cadence. This reflects our
growth as an organization, and is intended to make important
developments more visible internally and externally.

== Background ==

Shortly after Sue became WMF’s Executive Director, she started giving
updates to the Board of Trustees about her work. These reports were
compiled for accountability purposes, and not without some
trepidation, Sue started sharing them publicly in January 2008. [1]
The reports have grown in scope and depth alongside the organization.

Where we think we can do better is in the following areas:

- We've not defined the threshold for report-worthy work clearly
enough, so work that represents a few person hours’ effort could get
more space than a whole team’s work over the course of the quarter;

- We've not consistently mapped reporting against organizational priorities;

- We’re not presenting a strategic view on what we’re learning, where
we’re changing direction and why;

- We’re not helping users of the reports consistently discover
quarterly review minutes, slides and other materials related to a
specific area, in part due to the reports not being aligned with the
quarterly rhythm.

In addition, given the dependency on an increasing multitude of inputs
(from across an organization that had fewer than 20 staff when these
monthly reports were launched, and now has more than 200), the reports
have increasingly gotten backlogged, to the point that we’re just now
releasing the August report.

At the same time, under Lila the organization has shifted into a
recognizable quarterly rhythm. Priorities are defined quarterly, and
reviews are being introduced following the end of each quarter for all
significantly staffed projects.

== A New Reporting Process ==

It’s come time for us to revisit the model we use for reporting, to
clearly define the purpose/audience for these report, and to iterate
on the monthly format.

Purpose: The purpose of this report is accountability and learning
within the movement. The report is not a storytelling tool. Any
evaluation will be done with these objectives in mind.

Audience: Its audience is chiefly internal, including community
members, WMF staff, and interested donors/funders.

Format: Effective immediately, we are shifting to a quarterly
reporting format. This will impact our reporting, and the October
through December reporting period, in the following ways:

- Instead of three monthly reports for October, November, and
December, we will publish our first quarterly report in February 2015.

- We are reviewing the key organization-wide metrics and will improve
the selection and presentation of numbers at the top level of the
quarterly report.

- We will closely align quarterly reports with quarterly reviews, and
re-use high level findings from the quarterly reviews, while referring
to the slide decks and minutes from the reviews for details.

- We will aim to provide high-level synthesis and lessons learned, as
well as strategy updates, through this format as well.

Many of the more granular updates in the monthly report will no longer
be reported.

As above, the deadline for publication of the first report, covering
October 1 - December 31, is February 15. For this first report, we are
being conservative with regard to the deadline, as we will have our
resources directed at our staff all-hands and developer summit in
January.

Tilman and I will begin creating a draft structure for this new report
in coming weeks, and will do so in public from the get-go. We will
also rethink the “Wikimedia Highlights” alongside other multilingual
movements news formats, likely detaching them from reporting
functions.

Out of scope of this effort for now:

- Providing more timely updates on initiatives with high user impact.
We’re continuing to provide updates to Tech News [2] and similar
newsletters, but we’re not currently doing a major overhaul here.

- Replacing the monthly engineering report and its inputs, which also
serve as a project status dashboard. [3]

We are of course discussing how to improve on those mechanisms, and
feedback is welcome.

Let me know if you have any immediate questions or thoughts.

Thanks,

Erik

[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2008-January/084883.html
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News
[3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/Dashboard
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Chapters and GLAM tooling

2014-10-25 Thread Erik Moeller
On Sat, Oct 25, 2014 at 7:16 AM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote:

 Labs is a playground and Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums are
 serious enough to warrant a proper investment of resources, in my view.
 Magnus and many others develop magnificent tools, but my sense is that
 they're largely proofs of concept, not final implementations.

Far from being treated as mere proofs of concept, Magnus' GLAM tools
[1] have been used to measure and report success in the context of
project grant and annual plan proposals and reports, ongoing project
performance measurements, blog posts and press releases, etc. Daniel
Mietchen has, to my knowledge, been the main person doing any
systematic auditing or verification of the reports generated by these
tools, and results can be found in his tool testing reports, the last
one of which is unfortunately more than a year old. [2]

Integration with MediaWiki should IMO not be viewed as a runway that
all useful developments must be pushed towards. Rather, we should seek
to establish clearer criteria by which to decide that functionality
benefits from this level of integration, to such an extent that it
justifies the cost. Functionality that is not integrated in this
manner should, then, not be dismissed as proofs of concept but
rather judged on its own merits.

GWToolset [3] is a good example. It was built as a MediaWiki extension
to manage GLAM batch uploads, but we should not regard this decision
as sacrosanct, or the only correct way to develop this kind of
functionality. The functionality it provides is of highly specialized
interest, and indeed, the number of potential users to-date is 47
according to [4], most of whom have not performed significant uploads
yet.  Its user interface is highly specialized and special permissions
+ detailed instructions are required to use it. At the same time, it
has been used to upload 322,911 files overall, an amazing number even
without going into the quality and value of the individual
collections.

So, why does it need to be a MediaWiki extension at all? When
development began in 2012, OAuth support in MediaWiki did not exist,
so it was impossible for an external tool (then running on toolserver)
to manage an upload on the user's behalf without asking for the user's
password, which would have been in violation of policy. But today, we
have other options. It's possible that storage requirements or other
specific desired integration points would make it impossible to create
this as a Tool Labs tool -- but if we created the same tool today, we
should carefully consider that.

Indeed, highly specialized tools for the cultural and education sector
_are_ being developed and hosted inside Tool Labs or externally.
Looking at the current OAuth consumer requests [5], there are
submissions for a metadata editor developed by librarians at the
University of Miami Libraries in Coral Gables, Florida, and an
assignment creation wizard developed by the Wiki Education Foundation.
There's nothing improper about that, as Marc-André pointed out.

As noted before, for tools like the ones used for GLAM reporting to
get better, WMF has its role to play in providing more datasets and
improved infrastructure. But there's nothing inherent in the
development of those tools that forces them to live in production
land, or that requires large development teams to move them forward.
Auditing of numbers, improved scheduling/queuing of database requests,
optimization of API calls and DB queries; all of this can be done by
individual contributors, making this suitable work for even chapters
with limited experience managing technical projects to take on.

On the analytics side, we're well aware that many users have asked for
better access to the pageview data, either through MariaDB, or through
a dedicated API. We have now said for some time that our focus is on
modernizing the infrastructure for log analysis and collection,
because the numbers collected by the old webstatscollector code were
incomplete, and the infrastructure subject to frequent packet loss
issues. In addition, our ability to meet additional requirements on
the basis of simple pageview aggregation code was inherently
constrained.

To this end, we have put into production use infrastructure to collect
and analyze site traffic using Kafka/Hadoop/Hive. At our scale, this
has been a tremendously complex infrastructure project which has
included custom development such as varnishkafka [6]. While it's taken
longer than we've wanted, this new infrastructure is being used to
generate a public page count dataset as of this month, including
article-level mobile traffic for the first time [7]. Using
Hadoop/Hive, we'll be able to compile many more specialized reports,
and this is only just beginning.

Giving community developers better access to this data needs to be
prioritized relative to other ongoing analytics work, including but
not limited to:

- Continued development and maintenance of the above 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Chapters and GLAM tooling

2014-10-24 Thread Erik Moeller
Just pinging this thread -- looking through all the proposals for
annual plan grants:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015_round1/Wikimedia_%C3%96sterreich/Proposal_form
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015_round1/Wikimedia_UK/Proposal_form
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015_round1/Wikimedia_Sverige/Proposal_form
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015_round1/Wikimedia_Serbia/Proposal_form
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015_round1/Wikimedia_Nederland/Proposal_form
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015_round1/Wikimedia_Israel/Proposal_form
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015_round1/Wikimedia_Eesti/Proposal_form
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015_round1/Wikimedia_Deutschland_e.V./Proposal_form
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015_round1/Wikimedia_CH/Proposal_form

I'm not seeing any developer contract time allocated to GLAM tooling
work yet. At the same time I'm seeing reports of breakage and missing
functionality in important tools running in Labs. To the extent that
this breakage is due to Labs infrastructure or access to data, it's
our job (WMF) to fix it and you should (continue to) poke us to do so
-- but to the extent that it can be addressed in the tools themselves,
I'd love to see chapters take this on directly. It's possible that I'm
missing something. Are there more concrete plans at this point in time
to help support the tools developed by Magnus and others, and create
new reports on an as-needed basis? Having a dedicated staff person in
chapters or an affilicate like Europeana who WMF analytics can partner
with would be really helpful for keeping this moving, in my view.

Thanks,
Erik

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Android Nearby Feature (was: Re: Community RfCs about MediaViewer)

2014-10-14 Thread Erik Moeller
On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 7:28 PM, Andy Mabbett a...@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:
 An answer would be appreciated...

I know you've been in touch w/ the mobile web team since this thread,
but just to close the loop for the record: Nearby (now
re-implemented in native code and with a new UI) is part of today's
stable release of the Android app.

https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mobile-l/2014-October/008144.html

Please join the mobile list for feedback, questions  suggestions.

https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l

Cheers,
Erik
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[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Announcing Guillaume Paumier as Senior Analyst / SF relo

2014-10-07 Thread Erik Moeller
FYI - belatedly forwarding after internal announcement:

- - -

Hi folks,

Guillaume Paumier has been Technical Communications Manager in the
Engineering Community Team since early 2011. In this role, he's been
instrumental in developing the monthly engineering reports (including
all the underlying infrastructure on mediawiki.org), vetting and
writing technical blog posts and social media updates, and most
recently, co-launching the weekly tech newsletter and keeping it
running.

Guillaume's role is changing, and he will shift to my department as
part of the Engineering/Product department division. He will report
directly to me as Senior Analyst, and I will deploy him to projects of
strategic importance that require his expertise (any Guillaume
deployments will not be noted on the deployments calendar). Guillaume
will continue to put some of his time towards the tech newsletters and
reports for the time being (though we're considering to merge the
two), but other communications responsibilities will be handled by
Katherine's team.

What does it mean to be a Senior Analyst? As a long-time Wikimedian
(since 2005), Guillaume understands many of Wikimedia's workflows
deeply. As a self-confessed OCD introvert, he loves documenting,
analyzing; breaking apart things and putting them back together in
novel ways. He's awesome at information architecture, and at really
thinking through all the options to solve a complex product problem.

In other words, when I see a product that benefits from deep community
expertise, I can throw Guillaume at it and he'll help. :)

The first project Guillaume is taking on in this new role is the file
metadata cleanup drive, preparatory to the Structured Data work the
multimedia team will focus on in coming months. You can read more
about it here:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File_metadata_cleanup_drive

Finally, it's my pleasure to announce that Guillaume is also
relocating (back!) to the San Francisco Bay Area.  Please join me in
congratulating Guillaume in this new role and wishing him a
stress-free move to San Francisco.

Warmly,

Erik
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