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

[Luis Villa]

On Thu, Apr 13, 2023 at 12:29 AM Kunal Mehta  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On 4/7/23 18:17, Dan Szymborski wrote:
> > It doesn't make sense to even talk about actually getting
> > involved without discussing *which* of the multitude of Mastodon
> > instances to "join,"  There's a lot of legwork to be
> > done first, as opposed to the simpler task of signing up for, say, an
> > alternative of similar construction, like Spoutible.
>
> To be clear, this discussion started in December, which has been more
> than enough time for our friends and allies at Mozilla, Creative
> Commons, Internet Archive, OpenStreetMap and plenty more to set up their
> Mastodon presences. There's no excuse for the WMF to not have figured
> out which server to sign up on
>

With no offense to any of those groups (almost all of whom I have some past
or present affiliation with), WMF has a professional Twitter presence with
more followers than all of those organizations combined, and with
substantial donor mindshare and revenue attached to that presence (almost
certainly more than all of those orgs combined, though harder to know for
certain). The much better comparison is the large media organizations — who
are also all struggling with this challenge.

[As just one example of the challenge, NPR was (incorrectly) rumored to
have showed up on press.coop last night and... the server has been down or
inaccessibly slow pretty much since then. And it wasn't even true!]

I do think that WMF should have a presence on federated media, and I hope
they're working with Wordpress (who power diff) to implement it. But
Wordpress is still labeling their ActivityPub plugin as beta, so no
surprise that they aren't rolling it out yet to their biggest
customers—like WMF.

There's a case to be made that WMF should not act like a guardian of a
global brand—as Depths of Wikipedia has been reminding us all of late, many
people love Wikipedia's weird, rough edges, so the standard global brand
toolkit may not be a good fit for us. But any discussion of "move fast,
maybe break the brand" has to start from that — what is the brand? what is
the risk of playing fast and loose with it? what are the "right" kids of
risk to take with it? It'd be irresponsible to plunge ahead before having
that discussion.
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[Wikimedia-l] board accountability [was Re: Re: Board statement endorsing community voting on the enforcement guidelines for Universal code of Conduct (UCoC)]

[Luis Villa]

On Sun, Jan 30, 2022 at 6:11 PM Nathan  wrote:

> I had the same reaction! Lots of old memories.
>
> I wonder, did we ever find out if the Lila-era WMF paid lots of
> ex-employees in exchange for non-disparagement?
>

> Reading through the thread, I find it very confusing how hard people
> worked to make sure information like that never got out.
>

I think it’s less interesting how many/how much was spent on
non-disparagements[1], and more interesting what a general post-mortem of
that period would show.

Some questions asked then are still things that would be useful to ask (at
least about the future, it’s been six years so probably not *that* useful
to ask them about 2015-2016 anymore):

(1) What mechanisms was/is the board using to measure ED performance? for
example, at the time, the board did not do executive team exit interviews;
why not? has that changed? A board shouldn’t micromanage an ED of course,
but it also has a responsibility to make sure it has some idea what is
going on.

(2) What mechanisms was/is the board using to measure organizational
health? For example, in 2015 we did an employee engagement survey only when
morale had already plummeted over a cliff; the board never asked for one.
Should it have? If not, what should it have been doing instead? (The way it
did listen to staff—anonymous backchannels available only to certain
staff—was… honestly not ideal. I understand that the HR team now does
regular engagement surveys; no idea if those are reported to the board’s
Talent and Culture Committee[2]?)

(3) Does the board have any bright line tests for new appointed board
members in terms of what positions and past actions are/aren’t acceptable?
How is appointment, more generally, handled? (The board genuinely does
badly need experienced tech company leadership, because for better or for
worse WMF is a tech company. But what lessons could have been learned from
the failed(?) appointments during Lila’s tenure? Would any of them have
been relevant now?)

(4) What has the board done to address the challenge of the lifetime board
seat, and “founder syndrome” more generally? When I posted here about this
question a year ago[3], many employees and long-time editors immediately
**but privately** thanked me for raising the issue. That is, in my
experience, much more telling about the WMF staff experience than anything
to do with board elections.

It’s almost certainly too late to do a proper post-mortem - it’s been
almost six years! - and it’d certainly be a distraction from Maryana’s new
leadership. But perhaps the next generation of community-elected board
members could pick up the forward-looking versions of these questions.

Luis

[1] Non-disparagement clauses might be interesting to understand within
that context, but simply listing who did/didn’t take one, or how much was
spent, *without the broader context *of legitimate exec team turnover,
burnout, disempowerment, low pay for employees expected to live in SF, etc.,
would be unhelpful to the movement and possibly damaging to those
individuals.

[2] membership not updated in 2+ years?
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_Talent_%26_Culture_Committee
; minutes not updated in 7+ years?
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:HR_Committee

[3]
https://www.mail-archive.com/search?l=wikimedia-l%40lists.wikimedia.org=date:20210423=newest=1
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: Board statement endorsing community voting on the enforcement guidelines for Universal code of Conduct (UCoC)

[Luis Villa]

Pretty much everything I know is discussed in my posts in a thread from
six-ish years ago:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/EAGK7LYON3VN7LSHX27C54CEOAR63FCY/#UDZZ6UEH6EIJV4LBOYGCR7RZ3NF4CXTM

On Sun, Jan 30, 2022 at 10:51 AM Philippe Beaudette 
wrote:

> Honestly I don’t remember the NDA, and I don’t even remember if I signed
> one. It was a long time ago.
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 30, 2022 at 11:48 AM Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
>
>> Philippe, Luis,
>>
>> Glad to hear that's never been done – though there is always a first
>> time, and even if there is no compulsion, it's enough for each manager to
>> remind their direct reports, "Oh, and remember to participate in the UCoC
>> vote. Really important." Or are you saying that could not happen either?
>>
>> At any rate it might be good to see a breakdown of participation numbers,
>> so the proportion of staff and community votes for/against is known.
>>
>> While you are here, would either of you care to describe what was covered
>> by non-disclosure agreements in your time?
>>
>> Andreas
>>
>> Andreas
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Jan 30, 2022 at 5:20 PM Philippe Beaudette 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> What Luis said. In my time at the WMF we may have pulled some boneheaded
>>> moves (with the best of intent and luxury of after-analysis) but we never
>>> did that. Nor have I heard of it being done to anyone.
>>>
>>> On Sun, Jan 30, 2022 at 11:12 AM Luis Villa  wrote:
>>>
>>>> There are a *lot *of ex-WMF employees out there, many of whom have
>>>> left the Foundation on very bad terms and talked about it very publicly,
>>>> including me. They tend to be very open about talking about their bad
>>>> experiences *because their loyalty is to the community well above and
>>>> beyond the Foundation*.
>>>>
>>>> To the best of my knowledge, this group of people *who often dislike
>>>> the Foundation and talk about that a lot *have never accused the
>>>> Foundation of pressuring employees to vote a certain way. Maybe, just
>>>> maybe, that’s a sign the Foundation doesn’t do that? [It certainly never
>>>> did while I was there, and I can’t imagine that would have been any
>>>> different under Katherine.]
>>>>
>>>> There are so many very real challenges facing the org and the movement.
>>>> It pains me to see so many bytes wasted on this totally imaginary one.
>>>>
>>>> Luis
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Jan 30, 2022 at 7:20 AM Andreas Kolbe 
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Anne, Alphos,
>>>>>
>>>>> There is no reason to assume that staff must be "craven and
>>>>> ill-informed" for them to be able to be pressured to vote a certain way. 
>>>>> At
>>>>> the end of the day, they are employees. Employees are routinely asked to 
>>>>> do
>>>>> things – and comply so as to keep their jobs.
>>>>>
>>>>> Are you ware of anything in WMF employment contracts that prevents
>>>>> management from asking staffers to participate in a vote, or to vote a
>>>>> certain way? (If not, maybe this would be something worth thinking about?)
>>>>>
>>>>> One thing I *do* recall is that WMF staff have to sign non-disclosure
>>>>> agreements. I asked once what these non-disclosure agreements look like –
>>>>> nobody would say. :) It seems there is a non-disclosure agreement about 
>>>>> the
>>>>> non-disclosure agreements. If I am wrong, someone please post theirs here!
>>>>>
>>>>> As for WMF not being a "puppeteering archvillain", I remember what the
>>>>> mood at WMF was like around the time of the Knowledge Engine and James
>>>>> Heilman's removal from the board. People in charge told pork pies. WMF
>>>>> staffers leaked documents to us at the Signpost, anonymously, because they
>>>>> were scared.
>>>>>
>>>>> Last year, a number of ex-staffers posted at the en:WP village pump
>>>>> about how their dream job at the WMF had turned into a nightmare and how
>>>>> they'd had to quit to keep their sanity.[1] They voiced complaints about a
>>>>> toxic management culture.
>>>>>
>>>>> María Cruz said on Twitter she experienced "gaslighting, lying,
>>>&

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Board statement endorsing community voting on the enforcement guidelines for Universal code of Conduct (UCoC)

[Luis Villa]

There are a *lot *of ex-WMF employees out there, many of whom have left the
Foundation on very bad terms and talked about it very publicly, including
me. They tend to be very open about talking about their bad
experiences *because
their loyalty is to the community well above and beyond the Foundation*.

To the best of my knowledge, this group of people *who often dislike the
Foundation and talk about that a lot *have never accused the Foundation of
pressuring employees to vote a certain way. Maybe, just maybe, that’s a
sign the Foundation doesn’t do that? [It certainly never did while I was
there, and I can’t imagine that would have been any different under
Katherine.]

There are so many very real challenges facing the org and the movement. It
pains me to see so many bytes wasted on this totally imaginary one.

Luis

On Sun, Jan 30, 2022 at 7:20 AM Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> Anne, Alphos,
>
> There is no reason to assume that staff must be "craven and ill-informed"
> for them to be able to be pressured to vote a certain way. At the end of
> the day, they are employees. Employees are routinely asked to do things –
> and comply so as to keep their jobs.
>
> Are you ware of anything in WMF employment contracts that prevents
> management from asking staffers to participate in a vote, or to vote a
> certain way? (If not, maybe this would be something worth thinking about?)
>
> One thing I *do* recall is that WMF staff have to sign non-disclosure
> agreements. I asked once what these non-disclosure agreements look like –
> nobody would say. :) It seems there is a non-disclosure agreement about the
> non-disclosure agreements. If I am wrong, someone please post theirs here!
>
> As for WMF not being a "puppeteering archvillain", I remember what the
> mood at WMF was like around the time of the Knowledge Engine and James
> Heilman's removal from the board. People in charge told pork pies. WMF
> staffers leaked documents to us at the Signpost, anonymously, because they
> were scared.
>
> Last year, a number of ex-staffers posted at the en:WP village pump about
> how their dream job at the WMF had turned into a nightmare and how they'd
> had to quit to keep their sanity.[1] They voiced complaints about a toxic
> management culture.
>
> María Cruz said on Twitter she experienced "gaslighting, lying, neglect of
> misconduct reports, threatening behavior in meetings, lack of inclusion,
> lack of recognition, from mid and upper management".[2]
>
> Does this inspire anyone with confidence?
>
> Official WMF communications meanwhile always sound cheery and upbeat.
>
> Shani's post introducing this thread is a case in point. It leaves me ill
> at ease because of the things it elides, the way it tries to erase
> disputes.
>
> Shani (or whoever else drafted these passages for the board) refers *three
> times* to how the Universal Code of Conduct was "collaboratively
> (co-)created" before it was ratified by the Board.
>
> The text then goes on to say that "The Board strongly supports the
> proposal made by the joint letter of Arbitration Committees for community
> voting on the enforcement guidelines".
>
> A reader could be excused for thinking the Board were in happy agreement
> with the Arbitration Committees.
>
> But one of the key points of the Arbitration Committees' letter[3] was
> precisely their concern about the "lack of formal consultation with
> projects before the board approved the UCoC [which] means it risks being
> seen as imposed by the Wikimedia Foundation from above".
>
> María's term seems apposite here: simply repeating that the Universal Code
> of Conduct was "collaboratively created" when elected community
> representatives have told the WMF the community felt left out is ...
> gaslighting.
>
> Arguably, that is precisely the kind of "psychological manipulation" the
> Universal Code of Conduct seeks to forbid. It is also the kind of
> psychological manipulation beloved of politicians. It is an effort to
> "manage" public opinion, rather than an honest and respectful communication
> made in the spirit of a partnership.
>
> The Arbitration Committees' letter further mentions Superprotect and
> Framgate and that there should be a way to make changes  to the Universal
> Code of Conduct – which the WMF has refused, saying here on this list that
> it will not entertain any discussion of the text until sometime in 2023.[4]
>
> This is "imposing from above", and as long as that isn't acknowledged,
> there is little reason to trust the WMF.
>
> Andreas
>
>
> [1]
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)=1033011093#I_feel_like_shit
> [2] https://twitter.com/marianarra_/status/1410312378068004866?s=19
> [3]
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_from_Arbcoms_to_the_Board_of_Trustees
> [4]
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/AAGTJLSWDFKTQDUG7BHNOQ4ZYMIULYIF/?sort=date
>
> On Sat, Jan 29, 2022 at 11:29 PM Risker  wrote:
>

[Wikimedia-l] Re: What happened to the cc-by-sa-4.0 initiative?

[Luis Villa]

On Thu, Oct 28, 2021 at 10:33 AM Luis Villa  wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 28, 2021 at 10:03 AM Todd Allen  wrote:
>
>> Certainly, any "database rights" should already be considered waived by
>> the CC license ...
>>
>
> No.
>
> All from CC BY-SA 4.0:
>
> 1.d:* "Copyright and Similar Rights* means copyright and/or similar
> rights closely related to copyright including ... Sui Generis Database
> Rights ...
> 1.h: *Licensed Material* means the ... database ... to which the Licensor
> applied this Public License.
> 1.l: *Sui Generis Database Rights* means rights other than copyright
> resulting from Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the
> Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases, as amended
> and/or succeeded, as well as other essentially equivalent rights anywhere
> in the world.
>
> *Section 4 – Sui Generis Database Rights.*
>
> Where the Licensed Rights include Sui Generis Database Rights that apply
> to Your use of the Licensed Material:
>
>1. for the avoidance of doubt, Section 2(a)(1)
><https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode#s2a1> grants
>You the right to extract, reuse, reproduce, and Share all or a substantial
>portion of the contents of the database;
>2. if You include all or a substantial portion of the database
>contents in a database in which You have Sui Generis Database Rights, then
>the database in which You have Sui Generis Database Rights (but not its
>individual contents) is Adapted Material, including for purposes of Section
>3(b) <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode#s3b>;
>and
>3. You must comply with the conditions in Section 3(a)
><https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode#s3a> if You
>Share all or a substantial portion of the contents of the database.
>
> For the avoidance of doubt, this Section 4
> <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode#s4> supplements
> and does not replace Your obligations under this Public License where the
> Licensed Rights include other Copyright and Similar Rights.
>

And to be clear, I think this was a mistake and told CC that at the time;
the basics of why I feel that way I collected a year or so later as
https://lu.is/blog/2016/09/12/copyleft-and-data-database-law-as-poor-platform/
and some subsequent posts. But 4.0 is what it is - an attempt to shoehorn
database rights into a copyright license.

Luis
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: What happened to the cc-by-sa-4.0 initiative?

[Luis Villa]

On Thu, Oct 28, 2021 at 10:03 AM Todd Allen  wrote:

> Certainly, any "database rights" should already be considered waived by
> the CC license ...
>

No.

All from CC BY-SA 4.0:

1.d:* "Copyright and Similar Rights* means copyright and/or similar rights
closely related to copyright including ... Sui Generis Database Rights ...
1.h: *Licensed Material* means the ... database ... to which the Licensor
applied this Public License.
1.l: *Sui Generis Database Rights* means rights other than copyright
resulting from Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the
Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases, as amended
and/or succeeded, as well as other essentially equivalent rights anywhere
in the world.

*Section 4 – Sui Generis Database Rights.*

Where the Licensed Rights include Sui Generis Database Rights that apply to
Your use of the Licensed Material:

   1. for the avoidance of doubt, Section 2(a)(1)
    grants
   You the right to extract, reuse, reproduce, and Share all or a substantial
   portion of the contents of the database;
   2. if You include all or a substantial portion of the database contents
   in a database in which You have Sui Generis Database Rights, then the
   database in which You have Sui Generis Database Rights (but not its
   individual contents) is Adapted Material, including for purposes of Section
   3(b) ; and
   3. You must comply with the conditions in Section 3(a)
    if You
   Share all or a substantial portion of the contents of the database.

For the avoidance of doubt, this Section 4
 supplements
and does not replace Your obligations under this Public License where the
Licensed Rights include other Copyright and Similar Rights.
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: 100$ million dollars and still obsolete

[Luis Villa]

On Fri, Oct 15, 2021 at 3:34 AM Dan Garry (Deskana) 
wrote:

> On Fri, 15 Oct 2021 at 08:47, Galder Gonzalez Larrañaga <
> galder...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>> I don't know if this already has a name, but I'm going to invent one: The
>> Great Circle of Excuse. It works like this: we have all realized that
>> something needs to be improved, let's say the design of our website. Then,
>> WMF gets a group of workers to think about it, and they come up with some
>> changes that neither respond to the needs nor are really a change beyond
>> certain aesthetic resources.
>>
>
> I stopped reading at this point. What you've written here is pretty
> insulting. There's a valid point buried under your rhetoric, but you're
> exacerbating the problem by being so rude and dismissive.
>

You misspelled "exemplifying the problem", Dan! :)

It's exactly this sort of "no, no, everything you've done is wrong" that is
what Jonathan Morgan was talking about. And then a followup *within a
minute* to blame someone, again.

It is worth noting that it's a bunch of *ex-*employees who are piping up
here; current employees know they can't weigh in without their competence,
ethics, integrity, motives, etc. being questioned, which makes it even
harder to do the rest of their already hard jobs, so they have good reason
to mostly stay quiet. Jonathan, Heather, Dan and I are speaking up in part
because we've walked a mile in these shoes and... it sucks. Big hugs to
both the current team and to the diaspora. Miss you all.

(For what it is worth, I think the current mobile app is pretty good and I
regularly finding pleasant surprises, like the iOS picture-of-the-day
widget, which brightens my every day with free content/knowledge. I do have
many nitpicks and wishlist items, and of course always wish things moved
faster, but I think it's pretty unfair to say (*especially* on mobile) that
nothing has improved.)

Luis
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[Wikimedia-l] Re: WMF Product department transition

[Luis Villa]

On Tue, Oct 12, 2021 at 12:54 PM Risker  wrote:

> It has been a pleasure to work with someone from Product who "gets" the
> community and has taken feedback from the community seriously and used that
> feedback to improve the experience for editors and readers. This can be a
> big challenge, because I wouldn't exactly say the community is unified in
> what they consider "improvements".
>

I think it's worth saying here that Toby did not innately "get" the
community (and I suspect the next hire won't either!) Instead, like truly
great product people, he had to spend a *lot* of time listening, and
questioning, and wondering, and yes... picking and choosing his battles :)
This listening and learning was, more than anything else, what I'll
remember about working with Toby - he was *constantly* trying to learn and
understand, both from practice (lots of time talking to Wikipedians and
parsing the data) and from theory (I lost count of the number of times he
said "I've been reading this book on [relevant topic] and it made me
think..."

Which is both to say: to everyone on this list, remember that those "big
shoes to fill" were not initially seen as big shoes. As with all the new
wave of leadership in the foundation, patience both ways is a virtue :) and
to Toby specifically: kudos to you, friend, for doing one of the hardest
jobs in the software industry and doing it well (and being a delightful
human being in the meantime even if you spend too much time thinking about
birds). You've left WMF and our software a much better place than you found
it.

Luis

Luis
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Resolution about the upcoming Board elections

[Luis Villa]

This looks like a very thoughtful start on a very thorny problem, well done.

Given that we’re trying to diversify the board, and that Jimmy has recently
criticized FSF for having lifetime board appointments for founders,* I was
surprised not to see any mention in this document of sunsetting Jimmy’s
founder seat. Making him a peer of the rest of the board, subject to the
same terms, selection process, and requalification standards, rather than a
first-among-equals, would potentially free up an additional seat to improve
global board diversity and definitely be consistent with general best
practices for non-profit governance.

Has the board discussed that?

Thanks-
Luis

P.S. the links on the last page of
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/8/83/BGC_Community_Trustee_Selection_Proposal_April_2021.pdf
are broken.

* well, he criticized them for _secretive_ board appointments, but from a
governance perspective a lifetime founder seat is problematic regardless of
whether it is secret/defacto (FSF) or public/de jure (WMF).

On Wed, Apr 21, 2021 at 1:45 PM Jackie Koerner 
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees met last week to decide on a
> plan for the 2021 Board elections. The Board Governance Committee created
> this proposal, based on the Call for Feedback about Community Board
> Seats.[1] Please check the related announcement for details.[2]
>
> The Board wants to thank the more than 800 volunteers that participated in
> the Call for Feedback in one way or another.[3] There were almost a hundred
> conversations in multiple languages and in multiple regions. There was
> additional discussion on Meta, Telegram, and other channels used by local
> communities. Three new ideas were presented by volunteers during the Call.
> It has been very difficult to decide on every open question considering the
> quantity and diversity of opinions received. We hope this resolution feels
> sensible to everybody.
>
> In the upcoming days, the Board elections facilitation team will share
> their ideas to support candidates and voters. Let's work together on
> elections with high and very diverse participation!
>
> [1] Call for Feedback Community Board Seats
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call_for_feedback:_Community_Board_seats/Main_report
>
> [2] Announcement of Board Governance Committee proposal
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/2021-04-15_Resolution_about_the_upcoming_Board_elections
>
> [3] Call for Feedback Community Board seats metrics
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees/Call_for_feedback:_Community_Board_seats/Main_report#Metrics
>
>
> --
> *Jackie Koerner*
>
> *she/her*
> Board Governance Facilitator
> *English language and Meta-Wiki*
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Test Mailman3 in production

[Luis Villa]

Seemingly small but nevertheless terrific news.

On Thu, Mar 25, 2021 at 4:08 AM Alphos OGame  wrote:

> Hello Amir, hello all,
>
> Fantastic news !
>
> Quick side question : whatever will happen to the passwords that we kept
> on post-it notes sticked to our monitors for lack of frequent use or good
> enough cognitive skills ?
> Joke aside, will there be a site-wide password purge once v3 is deployed,
> or shall we keep on using our old passwords, with the currently plaintext
> passwords stored in files simply hashed and stored in the new database ?
>
> Whatever the case, fantastic news :-)
>
> Roger / Alphos
>
>
> Le 25 mars 2021 à 08:58, Amir Sarabadani  a écrit :
>
> Hello,
>
> tl;dr: https://lists-next.wikimedia.org is running mailman3. Please help
> us test the software before we upgrade the real mailing list server.
>
> Kunal and I have been working on deploying the new mailman (version 3) to
> replace mailman2 serving https://lists.wikimedia.org and powering all of
> our mailing lists.
>
> Mailman2 is a dinosaur that should have gone extinct years ago. Pretty old
> user interface (especially for admins and moderators), storing passwords in
> plain text, lack of any database (everything is file on disk), pretty old
> code, lack of ability to search in archives or send email from web
> interface, running on EOL python (python2), encoding issues with non-Latin
> languages, hard to redact archives, and the list goes on and on.
>
> The new version has been developed/puppetized/tested in the Cloud and is
> now ready for proper testing! Give it a try:
> https://lists-next.wikimedia.org. We have created some mailing lists you
> can join and can test. If you want to test the experience as a list
> administrator/moderator, we can give those permissions out as well.
>
> WARNING: All data on the lists-next server will be deleted after the test
> period is over.
>
> We will also need help updating documentation on wikis and elsewhere.
>
> If you find any bugs/issues (yay!), please file a ticket in the
> “Wikimedia-Mailing-lists” Phabricator project and we’ll check it out.
>
> In the coming days/weeks will also import some public mailing lists from
> the old version to the new version to check archive size, search index
> size, and other aspects. There are other TODOs left as well like
> monitoring, logging, anti-abuse, etc.
>
> Slowly and after testing (hopefully soon), we expect to deploy this on
> lists.wikimedia.org and mailing lists one by one or in batches can be
> upgraded to the 21st century.
>
> The overall task tracking this project is T52864
>  and a big thank you people who
> are helping this move forward.
>
> Regards,
> Kunal and Amir
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community survey to support the WMF ED search starts right now

[Luis Villa]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 4:46 PM Dariusz Jemielniak  wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 5:36 PM, James Salsman  wrote:
>
> >
> > Can we at least get confirmation that her performance working at the
> > Foundation will be appropriately weighted in her favor if we do have
> > another lengthy, expensive, third-party search?
> >
>
> I believe it is always only reasonable to account for someone's intimate
> understanding of organizational culture, as well as to recognize one's good
> performance hands on.
>
> However, I think that the process should be wide and open - whoever becomes
> the permanent ED, should really be the best choice, not just because of the
> incumbent advantage. The solid and rigorous recruitment process will add
> credibility and legitimacy to whoever this person eventually is.
>

I would love to see a solid and rigorous hiring process that lends
credibility to the eventual selection. Has the board done an analysis of
the previous hiring process to help ensure that the new process will be
solid and rigorous?

Luis

[Disclaimer for those who missed it last time I sent email here: I did not
sign a termination or contracting agreement with the organization, so I am
not a contractor with the organization. I do still speak to many friends
within the org, but have not discussed this email with them.]
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[Wikimedia-l] What should the board do *now*? [was Re: Account of the events leading to James Heilman's removal]

[Luis Villa]

tl;dr: the board did not effectively perform one of their most important
roles (managing the ED); the board (and board candidates) should be talking
about how they will fix that.

[Also, see the very bottom for some relevant disclosures, since I've been
asked after previous postings to this list.]

On Tue, May 3, 2016 at 6:02 PM MZMcBride  wrote:

> Tim Starling wrote:
> >Board members have a duty to act in the interests of the WMF as a
> >whole, but it does not follow that denying anonymity to whistleblowers
> >is in the best interests of the WMF. In fact, I think this Lila/KF/KE
> >case demonstrates the opposite.
> >
> >I would encourage the Board to extend the current whistleblower policy
> >to provide protection to employees making anonymous complaints via
> >certain intermediaries (such as active Board members), rather than
> >requiring complaints to be made directly to the Chair of the Board;
> >and to specify that the forwarding of such anonymous reports by Board
> >members to the Chair would be permissible.
> >
> >If we want to avoid a repeat of this affair, then employees should be
> >encouraged to communicate serious concerns to the Board as early as
> >possible.
>
> https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Whistleblower_policy
>
> You mention anonymous complaints and serious concerns, but the current
> whistleblower policy seems to be pretty clear that it only applies to
> laws, rules, and regulations. The text of the policy indicates, to me at
> least, that even alleged violations of other Wikimedia Foundation policies
> would not be covered by the whistleblower policy. Would you extend the
> Wikimedia Foundation whistleblower policy to cover regular (i.e.,
> non-legal and non-regulatory) grievances?
>
> My understanding is that the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees sought
> out and then appointed a tech-minded chief executive, who came from a tech
> organization, in order to "transform" the Wikimedia Foundation from an
> educational non-profit to be more like a traditional tech company. Many
> employees of the Wikimedia Foundation disagreed with this decision and the
> chief executive made a series of poor hires who ran amok (looking at you,
> Damon), but I don't think anything rose to the level of illegal behavior.
>
> From my perspective, whether rightfully or wrongfully, the staff mutinied
> and ultimately successfully deposed the appointed executive director. I
> don't see how this whistleblower policy or most variations of it that a
> typical non-profit would enact would really be applicable here.
>

As MZ says, the problem here is not the whistleblower policy. There should
be other policies and processes to monitor and address non-legal
performance problems with the ED/CEO. Creating and executing on these
policies and processes is one of the key responsibilities of a non-profit
board.

Unfortunately, those policies and processes were not working during my last
six months at the Foundation.

Some things that the board should do to change this situation:

   - *Make the board HR committee effective.* This would involve at least:
   - Simply documenting *who is on the HR committee and how to contact them*.
  Last fall, there was no way for staff to even know who was on the HR
  committee until my repeated questions to *four separate board members*
  led to this edit
  
.
  As of when I left, there was still no way to confidentially email the
  entire committee as a group.
  - Using of one of the board's appointed slots to appoint an *HR
  expert*, as has been done in the past with finance. (I assume Arnon
  was an attempt at this. If so, I'm very sorry it did not work out.)
  - Improving *policies* *on staff-board contact*. The whistleblower
  policy is not the right place for this, but it was all the staff had. And
  for board members, the Handbook
  

  is unfortunately not clear on how to address HR issues. Better policies,
  explaining roles and responsibilities, might have helped both groups.
   - *Monitor organizational health*. This would involve at least:
   - Conducting a *regular engagement survey* with (ideally) a trusted
  neutral reporting results to the board as well as the executive
team. This
  is now in place through HR, but was not done until monitoring of office
  attendance indicated that people hated coming to the office, and tends to
  break down in an executive crisis (since HR may not be trusted).
  - *Exit interviews* with all departing executive staff. To the best
  of my knowledge, the current board did not do this, even after 9-10
  executives departed in the space of a year. This is good
practice even when
  the board has endorsed a "cleaning house" of the executive 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF non-disclosure agreements and non-disparagement clauses

[Luis Villa]

On Sun, Mar 13, 2016 at 5:44 PM Oliver Keyes <ironho...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 13, 2016 at 4:14 PM, Luis Villa <l...@lu.is> wrote:
> > On Sun, Mar 13, 2016 at 1:08 PM Antoine Musso <hashar+...@free.fr>
> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> To the best of my knowledge such agreements are not public, but honestly
> >> there is no conspiracy behind that.  There are public clues though:
> >>
> >>  https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Access_to_nonpublic_information_policy
> >>  https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikitech:Labs_Terms_of_use
> >>  Others at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal#Policies
> >>
> >
> > In mid-2013, the legal team put the standard employee NDA clauses, and a
> > couple others, on-wiki at:
> >
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Non-disclosure_agreements#Wikimedia_Foundation.27s_non-disclosure_agreements
> >
> > Luis
>
> Thanks Luis!
>
> It looks like the non-disparagement clause has now been removed, which
> is nice.
>

There was not one when I joined three years ago. There is still one in the
severance agreement I was offered, which is why I didn't sign it - under
the circumstances, I didn't feel like I could continue to participate in
community processes (strategy, budget, etc.) while signing that clause.

Luis
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF non-disclosure agreements and non-disparagement clauses

[Luis Villa]

On Sun, Mar 13, 2016 at 1:08 PM Antoine Musso  wrote:

>
> To the best of my knowledge such agreements are not public, but honestly
> there is no conspiracy behind that.  There are public clues though:
>
>  https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Access_to_nonpublic_information_policy
>  https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikitech:Labs_Terms_of_use
>  Others at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal#Policies
>

In mid-2013, the legal team put the standard employee NDA clauses, and a
couple others, on-wiki at:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Non-disclosure_agreements#Wikimedia_Foundation.27s_non-disclosure_agreements

Luis
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Upcoming Changes to Community Engagement

[Luis Villa]

Thanks, Katie! I'd definitely love to finally make it to a state of the map
one of these days; I do think database issues will continue to be an issue
for the entire broader movement and I hope Wikimedia will be able to keep
working to integrate maps and other structured data in a healthy way.

(and thanks, of course, to the many, many other people who have been in
touch with kind words. Katie gets an on-list response because this is an
important, topical issue I'd like to remain involved in.)

Luis
On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 9:31 PM, Luis Villa <lvi...@wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Hi, all-
> This is a bittersweet email to send. I still, and will always, love this
> place and this movement, but it was also time for me to go.
>
>
Luis,

:'-(  You will very much missed :(

It has been a huge help to get some clarification on topics like database
rights (even if some part remain unclear).  As well, your understanding of
technical issues has been invaluable.

I hope to still see you around in the broader open source community and
maybe at events like State of the Map.

Cheers,
Katie



> Working with so many awesome Wikimedians (including WMF's staff) has been
> an honor and a privilege, and has given me many great experiences,
> memories, and a long watchlist ;) that I'll treasure for a long time. The
> list of people who I'd like to thank is long, so I won't bore everyone
with
> it. However, I do want to particularly thank Kat, who introduced me to
> Geoff during his first week with WMF. That was ultimately the opportunity
> that led me to this incredible ride - so I quite literally owe it all to
> her. Many, many other people have been welcoming and friendly along the
> way, and I can't ask formore than that.
>
> I'm not going too far! I'll continue to be around the movement, both as a
> contributor, and to support Maggie and the rest of the department during
> the transition. I look forward to seeing where Community Engagement goes
> next - I believe the department will continue to support contributors in a
> healthy way, and I'm sure Maggie and my long-term successor will continue
> to build exciting things on the foundation we laid over the past year.
>
> Professionally, I have no firm plans yet. I plan to to take a few deep
> breaths and then explore some new opportunities in the legal, community,
> and tech spaces, as well as becoming a parent in May.
>
> If you want to be in touch (to talk about interesting opportunities, flame
> me for old time's sake, or just chat) I'm pretty easy to find: lu.is,
> @tieguy on Twitter, LinkedIn, and of course on my enwiki talk page.
>
> See you on the wikis-
> Luis
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 12:16 PM, Lila Tretikov <l...@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> > Dear all,
> >
> >
> > I am sad to let you know that Luis Villa, our lead for the Community
> > Engagement department, will be leaving the Wikimedia Foundation. A year
> > ago, Luis took on a big challenge, transitioning from the Legal
> Department
> > to lead the newly created  Community Engagement organization. In that
> role,
> > Luis and our teams were tasked with many recent community initiatives,
> such
> > as the creation of the Community Tech team, gender-related and
> > anti-harassment programs, and improved alignment of WMF annual planning
> > with the Funds Dissemination Committee. Prior to that, as Deputy General
> > Counsel he was responsible for a number of legal initiatives, including
> > licensing, contracts, and product counseling. I’m grateful for his
> counsel,
> > and his leadership in the WMF movement throughout these years.
> >
> > Later this month, Luis will transition out of his current position with
> the
> > Wikimedia Foundation to pursue other opportunities. He will remain in a
> > consulting role with the Foundation over the next few months, continuing
> to
> > support our ongoing strategy and annual planning processes.
> >
> > I want to thank Luis for his commitment to the WMF mission, and for the
> > inspired energy and contributions he has brought to our movement. I’m
> > looking forward to his future accomplishments and staying in close touch
> as
> > he grows in his career.
> >
> > Maggie Dennis will step in as the interim director for the CE team
> > effective immediately. Her deep community background, passion for our
> > mission, and outstanding teamwork are great assets in this transition.
> She
> > will also continue to serve as Director of Support and Safety. Maggie is
> a
> > respected leader, colleague, and community member. I am confident she
> will
> > bring critical insights, especially now as we plan for our next year.
> >
> > The work of

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Upcoming Changes to Community Engagement

[Luis Villa]

Hi, all-
This is a bittersweet email to send. I still, and will always, love this
place and this movement, but it was also time for me to go.

Working with so many awesome Wikimedians (including WMF's staff) has been
an honor and a privilege, and has given me many great experiences,
memories, and a long watchlist ;) that I'll treasure for a long time. The
list of people who I'd like to thank is long, so I won't bore everyone with
it. However, I do want to particularly thank Kat, who introduced me to
Geoff during his first week with WMF. That was ultimately the opportunity
that led me to this incredible ride - so I quite literally owe it all to
her. Many, many other people have been welcoming and friendly along the
way, and I can't ask formore than that.

I'm not going too far! I'll continue to be around the movement, both as a
contributor, and to support Maggie and the rest of the department during
the transition. I look forward to seeing where Community Engagement goes
next - I believe the department will continue to support contributors in a
healthy way, and I'm sure Maggie and my long-term successor will continue
to build exciting things on the foundation we laid over the past year.

Professionally, I have no firm plans yet. I plan to to take a few deep
breaths and then explore some new opportunities in the legal, community,
and tech spaces, as well as becoming a parent in May.

If you want to be in touch (to talk about interesting opportunities, flame
me for old time's sake, or just chat) I'm pretty easy to find: lu.is,
@tieguy on Twitter, LinkedIn, and of course on my enwiki talk page.

See you on the wikis-
Luis


On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 12:16 PM, Lila Tretikov <l...@wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Dear all,
>
>
> I am sad to let you know that Luis Villa, our lead for the Community
> Engagement department, will be leaving the Wikimedia Foundation. A year
> ago, Luis took on a big challenge, transitioning from the Legal Department
> to lead the newly created  Community Engagement organization. In that role,
> Luis and our teams were tasked with many recent community initiatives, such
> as the creation of the Community Tech team, gender-related and
> anti-harassment programs, and improved alignment of WMF annual planning
> with the Funds Dissemination Committee. Prior to that, as Deputy General
> Counsel he was responsible for a number of legal initiatives, including
> licensing, contracts, and product counseling. I’m grateful for his counsel,
> and his leadership in the WMF movement throughout these years.
>
> Later this month, Luis will transition out of his current position with the
> Wikimedia Foundation to pursue other opportunities. He will remain in a
> consulting role with the Foundation over the next few months, continuing to
> support our ongoing strategy and annual planning processes.
>
> I want to thank Luis for his commitment to the WMF mission, and for the
> inspired energy and contributions he has brought to our movement. I’m
> looking forward to his future accomplishments and staying in close touch as
> he grows in his career.
>
> Maggie Dennis will step in as the interim director for the CE team
> effective immediately. Her deep community background, passion for our
> mission, and outstanding teamwork are great assets in this transition. She
> will also continue to serve as Director of Support and Safety. Maggie is a
> respected leader, colleague, and community member. I am confident she will
> bring critical insights, especially now as we plan for our next year.
>
> The work of of the CE department will continue as planned, and the overall
> structure of the department (including the Community Tech team, which will
> continue to report into the Product organization) will stay on-course. Our
> goal is to ensure a smooth transition as we continue our progress to
> improve the WMF support for our communities.
>
> It is my priority that the WMF continues to build upon the initiatives we
> started in 2015 in support for the global Wikimedia community. Continued
> leadership of the Community Engagement department at executive level in the
> WMF is a part of delivering on those commitments. We will be looking to
> fill the Community Engagement leadership role with someone with a strong
> background in community programs, and an understanding of the Wikimedia
> movement. We will also look to engage with you to find the right person for
> this role. We will send an update on the next steps and the job description
> shortly, which will include a further discussion of the role on-wiki.
>
>
> Lila
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Launch of Community Consultation on strategic approaches

[Luis Villa]

On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 6:23 PM, Pine W <wiki.p...@gmail.com> wrote:

> 2. You wrote, "This is a major step to help us prioritize the work of the
> Foundation beginning in July 2016 and running for the next 12 to 24 months
> thereafter into a strategic plan." It seems that there will be some overlap
> in the development of the 2016-2017 Annual Plan, and that the completion
> of
> the strategic plan process will come too late to significantly influence
> the AP until after the AP is already being executed. Can you share with us
> which principles are being used to guide the development of the 2016-2017
> Annual Plan which this document [1] is scheduled to be published for
> community review on March 31, 2016?
>

We mentioned this briefly in the FAQ
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2016_Strategy/FAQ#Why_this_process.3F>,
but let me elaborate here:

"We also need to finalize the Foundation’s strategy quickly, so that we can
meet our 2016 Annual Plan deadlines and align our team and department
strategies with the overall strategy."


In other words, we really are waiting on the results of the public
discussion before making our biggest annual plan choices. :) This is part
of why the process is somewhat rushed; if we planned to use *other* principles,
we could have had a multi-month process, but we really do want to use the
outcome of this process to help guide the annual plan, so we do have to
make it a bit tighter than we might otherwise have liked.

We're splitting things up into "core" and "strategic" to help make this
process fit together better: that will allow us to do initial planning on
issues we expect will not be affected by strategy (e.g., "keep servers on")
while waiting for the outcome of the public discussion.

(For those who are curious for more details, I also addressed this somewhat
in my metrics meeting talk
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpZOx1Mzmuk=youtu.be=19m34s>
last week, and the question
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpZOx1Mzmuk=youtu.be=58m41s> at
the end of it.)

Hope that helps answer that question-
Luis

-- 
Luis Villa
Sr. Director of Community Engagement
Wikimedia Foundation
*Working towards a world in which every single human being can freely share
in the sum of all knowledge.*
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Better thankspam

[Luis Villa]

Mozilla and OKFN are both using it with solid success.

Anyone have (other, smaller) lists they might volunteer to experiment with 
first, assuming I can convince engineering (or maybe Discourse.com) to host 
an instance?

Luis 

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 9:07 PM, Alice Wiegand <me.ly...@gmail.com> wrote:

> My experiences with discourse in a non-Wikimedia context is great.  Worth 
> a try.
>
> Alice.
>
> - Ursprüngliche Nachricht -
> Von: "Samuel Klein" <meta...@gmail.com>
> Gesendet: ‎15.‎01.‎2016 02:46
> An: "Wikimedia Mailing List" <wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
> Betreff: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Better thankspam
>
> On Jan 14, 2016 8:35 PM, "Luis Villa" <lvi...@wikimedia.org> wrote:
> >
> > I agree that thankspam is somewhat irritating, but it is also a good way
> to
> > make people feel welcome and appreciated. An alternative is to consider
> > moving wikimedia-l to a tool like discourse.org
>
> Thanks for that idea. Discourse looks great.  Maybe worth testing out
> casually for some wiki* discussions before deciding whether or not to try
> replacing a particular list.
>
> Sj
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-- 
Luis Villa
Sr. Director of Community Engagement
Wikimedia Foundation
*Working towards a world in which every single human being can freely share 
in the sum of all knowledge.*
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Better thankspam

[Luis Villa]

I agree that thankspam is somewhat irritating, but it is also a good way to
make people feel welcome and appreciated. An alternative is to consider
moving wikimedia-l to a tool like discourse.org that has (1) built-in
likes, which communicate welcome and appreciation without creating noise
and (2) ability for all users to mute/ignore specific threads. (Also better
moderation tools, and likely somewhat more welcoming to people who don't
use email much, or feel overwhelmed by it - both of whom are large groups!)

Obviously that would be somewhat of a big change, but it's something we can
look into (low priority! no promises!) if people have interest.

Luis

On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 6:17 PM, Gergo Tisza <gti...@wikimedia.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 9:17 AM, Chris Keating <chriskeatingw...@gmail.com
> >
> wrote:
> >
> > To me, "Hello" and "Thank you" are quite under-used words on this list
> (in
> > the movement generally but particularly here) so I would prefer we didn't
> > rule these emails out.
> >
> > After all, if we remove pile-on positive threads that contain little
> > information then pile-on negative threads with equally little information
> > will probably still remain.
>
> +1
> I would much rather filter outrage spam :-) There is more of it, and unlike
> thanks, it tends to have a demoralizing effect.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Appreciation

[Luis Villa]

Thanks for the kind words, Pete.

For what it is worth, other details on our initial proposal to FDC are on
meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_2016-17_Annual_Planning_Recommendation
Note that this was the initial proposal, and we are deliberately trying to
keep it fluid, so some things will inevitably change.

I would urge everyone to keep expectations in check: this process will be a
first at this scale for both us and FDC. As with any good experiment(s),
some will succeed and others will fail; hopefully we'll learn along the
way, of course.

Luis

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 1:36 PM, Pete Forsyth <petefors...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Today in the Metrics & Activities meeting, the WMF took a significant step
> toward improving its transparency and accountability -- something under
> much discussion in recent weeks.
>
> The cause of this was not the recent drama around the Board, but a
> recommendation given by the FDC in November 2015, that the WMF should hold
> its own financial decisions to a standard similar to that expected of the
> organizations it funds.
>
> Kudos to the FDC for taking the initial step, the WMF board for approving
> the recommendation, and Luis Villa (who discussed the issue in some depth
> at the meeting) and everyone at WMF who worked toward implementing the
> recommendation. I'm sure many of us will be looking forward to the results.
>
> I have discussed this in a bit more detail on my blog:
> http://wikistrategies.net/fdc-recommendation/
>
> -Pete
> [[User:Peteforsyth]]
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Strategic plan

[Luis Villa]

On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 12:54 PM, Luis Villa <lvi...@wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Brief preview: the schedule has changed somewhat, because we wanted to
> take some more steps to be inclusive of staff feedback (has been underway
> for a few weeks) and community feedback (starting next week). The timeline
> will be tight, because we're trying to tie this into the annual plan
> process and an FDC submission, but we hope this is the start of a
> healthier, young-term process of annual planning and strategy.
>

I apologize - I misspoke. Things will be ready for translation next week
and published the week after.

Luis


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Strategic plan

[Luis Villa]

Hey, Pete-

We'll be announcing some next steps on strategy next week.

Brief preview: the schedule has changed somewhat, because we wanted to take
some more steps to be inclusive of staff feedback (has been underway for a
few weeks) and community feedback (starting next week). The timeline will
be tight, because we're trying to tie this into the annual plan process and
an FDC submission, but we hope this is the start of a healthier, young-term
process of annual planning and strategy.

Hope that helps?
Luis

On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 2:03 AM, Pete Forsyth <petefors...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I think this is a question for Patricio or Lila:
>
> At the November 2015 Metrics & Activities meeting, Lila presented[1] a
> slide outlining the new Strategic Planning process.[2]
>
> Amid general comments about how inclusive the process would be, that slide
> indicates that the draft briefly introduced at that meeting was to be
> finalized in December 2015, approved by the Board in January 2016, and
> presented publicly in May 2016.
>
> Can you confirm if that is actually the process underway? Are you on
> schedule?
>
> Can you address (in this venue) whether a plan that is developed in
> November and December by (at least some) staff, and presented publicly the
> following May, can truly be more inclusive than the 2010 plan -- which
> engaged 1,000 people, and took a year to complete, on an open wiki?
>
> -Pete
> [[User:Peteforsyth]]
>
> [1] At about 20 minutes in:
>
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Foundation_Metrics_-_November_2015.webm
> [2]
>
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:WMF_Metrics_%26_Activities_Meeting_November_2015_(1).pdf=19
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Israel survey among HEWP editors

[Luis Villa]

Hey, Pine-
As I think you know, I'm a fan of surveys :) And I'm pushing for more use 
of them in Community Engagement. But I'm hesitant to commit the team to any 
one specific survey. Few points about where we are on surveys:

   - 
*Targets: We are doing surveys to English Wikipedia (e.g. comm tech and 
   harassment), but not only English Wikipedia. We are trying to focus surveys 
   to be more topic-specific and audience-specific, rather than for all users 
   broadly. We have a wide spectrum of people and spaces in our movement after 
   all (e.g. donors, readers, editors, core-contributors, affiliates, etc.) *
   - *Survey fatigue:* We know that if we saturate users with surveys, 
   response rate will go down. So we'd like to make sure we're focusing on 
   high-value surveys. 
   - *Accountability:* If we send out a survey, we'd like there to be a 
   very high chance we can take action on the results. That means both good 
   survey design and making sure we're institutionally prepared to act on 
   results.
   - *General state of things: *Edward will be sending more status/news 
   around within the next month. In the meantime, f you have questions or 
   would like help with a survey, email surv...@wikimedia.org

Hope that helps-
Luis

On Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 5:48 PM, Pine W <wiki.p...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Edward and Luis,
>
> Any chance of WMF running a similar survey on ENWP?
>
> Pine
> On Oct 16, 2015 9:31 AM, "Luis Villa" <lvi...@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> > Hi, Michal-
> > Very interesting, thanks for sharing! Some comments in-line:
> >
> > On Sun, Oct 11, 2015 at 2:59 AM, Michal Lester <mles...@wikimedia.org.il
> >
> > wrote:
> >
> > > We are pleased to share with you the initial results of the HEWP 
> editors
> > > survey:
> > >
> > >
> > > Wikimedia Israel conducted an editors’ survey in August among HEWP
> > editors.
> > > The questionnaire was based on the WMNL survey in order to to enable
> > > international learning  in the future.
> > >
> > > The survey had two target audiences: active editors (with voting rights
> > > [1])
> > > and contributors. The questionnaire was the same but distributed
> > > differently. Active editors got an invitation to participate on their
> > talk
> > > page, while contributors were invited through a “Sitenotice”. Some 151
> > > active editors and 171 contributors participated.
> > >
> > > *Gender*: Almost 20% of the respondents were women.
> > >
> > > Among the active editors, only 10% were women whereas 29% of the
> > > contributors were women. The explanations (open answers) for limited
> > > diversity among the editors ranged from a negative work atmosphere to a
> > > conservative point of view about gender roles.
> > >
> > > Editors in general did not find the low participation of women 
> negatively
> > > affects the coverage of topics in Wikipedia.
> >
> >
> > Did this vary by gender? i.e., do both men and women agree that low
> > participation affects coverage?
> >
> >
> > > Answering a question about how
> > > to increase the participation of women, respondents offered workshops,
> > > encouraging high school students to participate, expanding the 
> wiki-women
> > > group and providing general support.
> > >
> > > *New editors*: A large majority of editors acknowledged that new 
> editors
> > > wanted to contribute to HEWP. They recognized the importance of a
> > > continuous arrival of new editors and felt that new editors were 
> welcome.
> > >
> >
> > Did this vary by age of editors? i.e., did new editors agree that new
> > editors were welcome? :)
> >
> >
> > > *Work Atmosphere*: 34% of the respondents reported that they were
> > satisfied
> > > with the work atmosphere on the Hebrew Wikipedia. Only 5.5% of the
> > editors
> > > were not satisfied with it at all. However, 46% noted that there was a
> > > large number of conflicts. Active editors (66%) reported such conflicts
> > > more than contributors (29%). Almost 46% of the active editors stated
> > that
> > > they felt like they were in a conflict in the past six months, while 
> only
> > > 29% of contributors expressed the same. 61% of the editors indicated 
> that
> > > conflicts were either mostly or sometimes resolved in a good way.
> > >
> >
> > Interesting!
> >
> >
> > > Ideology, worldviews and egos were considered to play a major role in 
> the
> > >

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Israel survey among HEWP editors

[Luis Villa]

Hi, Michal-
Very interesting, thanks for sharing! Some comments in-line:

On Sun, Oct 11, 2015 at 2:59 AM, Michal Lester <mles...@wikimedia.org.il>
wrote:

> We are pleased to share with you the initial results of the HEWP editors
> survey:
>
>
> Wikimedia Israel conducted an editors’ survey in August among HEWP editors.
> The questionnaire was based on the WMNL survey in order to to enable
> international learning  in the future.
>
> The survey had two target audiences: active editors (with voting rights
> [1])
> and contributors. The questionnaire was the same but distributed
> differently. Active editors got an invitation to participate on their talk
> page, while contributors were invited through a “Sitenotice”. Some 151
> active editors and 171 contributors participated.
>
> *Gender*: Almost 20% of the respondents were women.
>
> Among the active editors, only 10% were women whereas 29% of the
> contributors were women. The explanations (open answers) for limited
> diversity among the editors ranged from a negative work atmosphere to a
> conservative point of view about gender roles.
>
> Editors in general did not find the low participation of women negatively
> affects the coverage of topics in Wikipedia.


Did this vary by gender? i.e., do both men and women agree that low
participation affects coverage?


> Answering a question about how
> to increase the participation of women, respondents offered workshops,
> encouraging high school students to participate, expanding the wiki-women
> group and providing general support.
>
> *New editors*: A large majority of editors acknowledged that new editors
> wanted to contribute to HEWP. They recognized the importance of a
> continuous arrival of new editors and felt that new editors were welcome.
>

Did this vary by age of editors? i.e., did new editors agree that new
editors were welcome? :)


> *Work Atmosphere*: 34% of the respondents reported that they were satisfied
> with the work atmosphere on the Hebrew Wikipedia. Only 5.5% of the editors
> were not satisfied with it at all. However, 46% noted that there was a
> large number of conflicts. Active editors (66%) reported such conflicts
> more than contributors (29%). Almost 46% of the active editors stated that
> they felt like they were in a conflict in the past six months, while only
> 29% of contributors expressed the same. 61% of the editors indicated that
> conflicts were either mostly or sometimes resolved in a good way.
>

Interesting!


> Ideology, worldviews and egos were considered to play a major role in the
> development of conflicts. Contributors also mentioned lack of patience from
> the active editors.



> *Wikimedia Israel*: 60% of the respondents are familiar with Wikimedia
> Israel. As expected active editors are more acquainted with WMIL than
> contributors. Among them, 78% agree with the statement that WMIL provides
> practical support to editors.
>

That's terrific.


> The survey provides important information for the HEWP editors’ community
> and for Wikimedia Israel.
> Wikimedia Israel will learn the data and use it to develop better support
> for editors, contributors and newbies.
>

Please do keep us up to date on this; it would be very interesting to see a
model for transforming data into action. (My own department has been
thinking about this in light of our recent hire of a survey specialist;
hopefully something for us to keep improving on across the movement.)

Luis


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] I'll be moving on

[Luis Villa]

Sorry to hear this, Jan - I've always enjoyed working with you. Good luck
in whatever comes next, and see you on-wiki :)

Luis

On Thu, Oct 8, 2015 at 1:22 AM, Jan Ainali <jan.ain...@wikimedia.se> wrote:

> All,
>
> For the last three years I have been the Executive Director for Wikimedia
> Sverige. Before that I have been Chairman, Treasurer and Secretary of the
> board (at different times) and have been involved since the founding of the
> chapter in 2007. It is perhaps even an understatement to say that the
> chapter has been a big part of my life. I have had the opportunity to be
> part of a fantastic journey from starting the first chapter’s activities to
> today, with stable strategic activities, seven people in the office, and a
> diversified board. It has been an awesome time in my life and I have met
> and worked with some truly wonderful persons along the way, and I am
> thankful to all of you that have made it so inspiring. But now, as my
> contract is about to come to an end, I feel that it is time for me to move
> on to new endeavours. I am confident that the chapter is already in good
> hands, with a professional board and an office with experienced staff
> members and functional processes, but I’ll be around until at least the
> beginning of January to make it a smooth transition.
>
> I will obviously always be a wikimedian at heart and probably pick up on my
> editing again and I will also stay subscribed to most mailing lists. If not
> earlier, I’ll see you in Esino Lario.
>
> Best regards,
>
> *Jan Ainali*
> Executive director, Wikimedia Sverige <http://wikimedia.se>
>
>
>
> *Tänk dig en värld där varje människa har fri tillgång till mänsklighetens
> samlade kunskap. Det är det vi gör.*
> Bli medlem. <http://blimedlem.wikimedia.se>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement

[Luis Villa]

This is the kind of email you never want to respond to, either as a manager
or as a friend. Philippe will, of course, be missed around here. I spent my
first two years here literally looking him in the eye over a cube wall
every day, and as the office’s most frequent explainer of all things wiki,
the place will not be the same without him. But I am also very glad to know
that he will be taking care of himself so that he can tackle his next
challenge from a healthy place.

While Philippe will be impossible to completely replace, I am excited to
share that Maggie Dennis [[User:Mdennis (WMF)]] has been promoted to
Director of Community Advocacy, effective immediately. I expect Maggie’s
amazing combination of energy, patience, and organization will make her a
great leader for the team, and that the team will continue to be a solid
source of support and communication with contributors.

No transition is perfectly smooth, but I expect this one should be
reasonably transparent for people outside the team: Maggie has already been
managing much of the day-to-day work of the team, and her strong
organizational and communications skills will shine through here. That
said, please have some patience with the team as they adjust to new lines
of communication and organization.

Sadly, but with good memories of the past and optimism about the future-
Luis

On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 12:01 PM, Philippe Beaudette <phili...@wikimedia.org
> wrote:

> Dear friends,
>
> Six years is a long time.  Over the last six years, I've been privileged to
> be a part of so many things with you.  And I'm proud of what we've done
> together.  For the last six years, I've been a part of things that will
> excite me until the day that I die - the things that, together, we did in
> service of that phrase - "the sum of human knowledge" - were magical.  I'll
> never forget them, and I've been honored to be a part of this movement.
>
> But it's time for me to move on.
>
> As many of you know, for the last couple of years, I've struggled with my
> health.  I've come to the unpleasant realization that for my own good, I
> need to step back and focus on healing, and then look around for new and
> exciting opportunities.
>
> When Sue left, she said that her decision process included looking around
> and taking stock of the people and the condition of the Foundation, and
> asking herself "Is it safe? If I leave, is it safe?" and when she knew it
> was, she began to consider the idea.
>
> I've been doing the same, obviously focused on projects and programs that
> are important to me.  And I look around and I know that with the
> contributors that we have - brilliant, dedicated, passionate people and
> the staff that we have - dynamic, talented, devoted, and fearless it's
> safe.  So it's time for me to move on, and to leave it to them.
>
> As a housekeeping note:  I've agreed with Luis that I'll be available until
> 9/15, though I'll be out on medical leave, so may be slow to answer
> questions.  If I owe you something, please remind me so that we can get it
> properly assigned out.
>
> You can all reach out to me at any time... phili...@beaudette.me and
> any time I see you will be a celebration.
>
> With my deepest affection,
>
> Philippe
>
> *Philippe Beaudette * \\  Director, Community Advocacy \\ Wikimedia
> Foundation, Inc.
> T: 1-415-839-6885 x6643 |  phili...@wikimedia.org  |  :  @Philippewiki
> <https://twitter.com/Philippewiki>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wiki Loves Monuments] Wiki Loves Monuments in Italy largely blocked by WMF fundraising

[Luis Villa]

 issue was originally the case in two countries, but somehow it
 was possible to move it for the second country.

 This is really sad for Italy. Extra sad because of the difficult copyright
 situation in Italy, what requires the local team already to do much much
 much more work than in most other countries, just to have a normal contest.
 The Italian team does a great job this year.


 *My conclusion*
 The community is working very hard on improving and expanding the content
 of Wikipedia by organising Wiki Loves Monuments. I always thought that this
 was the number one priority of the whole Wikimedia movement. Did I made a
 wrong assumption somehow?

 But when it actually matters, the community project bears the bunt. This
 is sad, very sad.


 Please all, support the Italian team, they do a great job and deserve a
 successful contest.

 Greetings,

 Romaine



 PS: I am one of the international organisers of Wiki Loves Monuments this
 year, but this e-mail is written on my personal account only.






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 wikilovesmonume...@lists.wikimedia.org
 https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilovesmonuments
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Innovation

[Luis Villa]

On Fri, Jul 10, 2015 at 10:21 AM, Luis Villa lvi...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 On Thu, Jul 9, 2015 at 2:34 PM, Rogol Domedonfors domedonf...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 The 2015 Call to Action identified the need to Support innovation 
 new knowledge
 * Integrate, consolidate, and pause or stop stalled initiatives.
 * Create spaces for future community-led innovations and new
 knowledge creation.
 * Facilitate and support new models and structures for knowledge
 curation.
 * Strengthen partnerships with organizations that use or
 contribute free content, or are aligned with the WMF in the
 free-knowledge movement.

 Yet no-one at WMF seems tasked with driving innovation in the
 community.  I have started a Meta page for Innovation at
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Innovation to stimulate discussions.


 I'm going to respond more on-wiki, but tl;dr: I disagree strongly that no
 one at WMF seems tasked with driving innovation.


https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Innovationtype=revisiondiff=12668489oldid=12623768

Constructive suggestions welcome - no one wants to see innovation more than
me, trust me :)

Luis


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Innovation

[Luis Villa]

On Thu, Jul 9, 2015 at 2:34 PM, Rogol Domedonfors domedonf...@gmail.com
wrote:

 The 2015 Call to Action identified the need to Support innovation 
 new knowledge
 * Integrate, consolidate, and pause or stop stalled initiatives.
 * Create spaces for future community-led innovations and new
 knowledge creation.
 * Facilitate and support new models and structures for knowledge
 curation.
 * Strengthen partnerships with organizations that use or
 contribute free content, or are aligned with the WMF in the
 free-knowledge movement.

 Yet no-one at WMF seems tasked with driving innovation in the
 community.  I have started a Meta page for Innovation at
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Innovation to stimulate discussions.


I'm going to respond more on-wiki, but tl;dr: I disagree strongly that no
one at WMF seems tasked with driving innovation. Several groups are tasked
with supporting community innovation:

- For individual innovation, we've assessed hundreds of projects and funded
dozens through the IEG grants https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG,
and are hiring an additional organizer to help turbocharge this process
even more.
- For more established and successful innovations, we help with evaluation
through L+E, further funding (through PEG), and mature programs support
(both through programs we've brought in-house like Education and Wikipedia
Library, and through FDC grants).

As part of maturing my department, we're still discussing what a formal
innovation pipeline might look like (should there be someone who owns
this in its entirety, for example?) but it's completely wrong to say we're
not already doing this.

[I do think it's true that we're not particularly focused on creating new
forms of things from scratch, as Rogol's talk page suggests, but my
experience is that innovation is more effective when it comes from the
community and is then supported by WMF, rather than the other way around.]

Luis
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Innovation

[Luis Villa]

On Fri, Jul 10, 2015 at 10:21 AM, Luis Villa lvi...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 On Thu, Jul 9, 2015 at 2:34 PM, Rogol Domedonfors domedonf...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 The 2015 Call to Action identified the need to Support innovation 
 new knowledge
 * Integrate, consolidate, and pause or stop stalled initiatives.
 * Create spaces for future community-led innovations and new
 knowledge creation.
 * Facilitate and support new models and structures for knowledge
 curation.
 * Strengthen partnerships with organizations that use or
 contribute free content, or are aligned with the WMF in the
 free-knowledge movement.

 Yet no-one at WMF seems tasked with driving innovation in the
 community.  I have started a Meta page for Innovation at
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Innovation to stimulate discussions.


 I'm going to respond more on-wiki, but tl;dr: I disagree strongly that no
 one at WMF seems tasked with driving innovation. Several groups are tasked
 with supporting community innovation:

 - For individual innovation, we've assessed hundreds of projects and
 funded dozens through the IEG grants
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG, and are hiring an
 additional organizer to help turbocharge this process even more.
 - For more established and successful innovations, we help with evaluation
 through L+E, further funding (through PEG), and mature programs support
 (both through programs we've brought in-house like Education and Wikipedia
 Library, and through FDC grants).

 As part of maturing my department, we're still discussing what a formal
 innovation pipeline might look like (should there be someone who owns
 this in its entirety, for example?) but it's completely wrong to say we're
 not already doing this.

 [I do think it's true that we're not particularly focused on creating new
 forms of things from scratch, as Rogol's talk page


Sorry, Rogol's comments on his meta Innovation page.


 suggests, but my experience is that innovation is more effective when it
 comes from the community and is then supported by WMF, rather than the
 other way around.]


I should also add that Advancement/Partnerships and Engineering also do
innovation-related work - no one in either department has a title like
Director of Innovation but both of them are working on things like
partnerships with third-party data sources.

Luis

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] What's cool?

[Luis Villa]

FWIW, Community Engagement will be doing something similar (mix of 
positive-serious with positive-fun)  in metrics meeting every month. You 
can see the first iteration during last month's metrics meeting: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_Metrics_and_activities_meetings/2015-05

Luis

On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 2:44 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote:

 Ps Fabrice sent the blog roundup while I was writing this! Those are all
 cool things. Would love to learn about more as well.

 Phoebe
 On Jun 4, 2015 2:41 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote:

  I need a break from thinking about things going wrong. And so per Milos'
  observation that discussion here is falling off, I thought I'd start an
  open discussion thread about things going right.
 
  What's a cool thing you just discovered or are involved in that is
  happening in the Wikimedia world?
 
  My contribution: the SF Wikimedia list just had an announcement about an
  edit-a-thon (organized by Jake Orlowitz at the wmf office) that is
  happening during the American Libraries Conference, which is in SF this
  year. 30,000 librarians attend ALA! I'm super pleased we are infiltrating
  library conferences :)
 
  What's happening over in your part of the project?
 
  Phoebe
 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] While Election committee counts the votes...

[Luis Villa]

On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 9:26 AM, Andrew Lih andrew@gmail.com wrote:

 3. Participation in the mailing list may be a misleading indicator of
 activity or interest, as other regional or specialized forums (eg.
 Facebook, GLAM-oriented lists, etc) have emerged in recent years.


Let me second this. My department is thinking about community health
metrics (constructive suggestions welcome!), but I would not personally
propose mailing list participation (especially this list) as a good metric
- decreased participation here may reflect many, many things, only some of
which are actually negative.

Luis


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] While Election committee counts the votes...

[Luis Villa]

On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 10:57 AM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 7:51 PM, Luis Villa lvi...@wikimedia.org wrote:
  On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 9:26 AM, Andrew Lih andrew@gmail.com wrote:
 
  3. Participation in the mailing list may be a misleading indicator of
  activity or interest, as other regional or specialized forums (eg.
  Facebook, GLAM-oriented lists, etc) have emerged in recent years.
 
 
  Let me second this. My department is thinking about community health
  metrics (constructive suggestions welcome!), but I would not personally
  propose mailing list participation (especially this list) as a good
 metric
  - decreased participation here may reflect many, many things, only some
 of
  which are actually negative.

 This is not the only one indicator, but it's pretty consistent since
 2011 (take a look into [1]). In other words, something happened in
 May. Maybe it's actually about the elections because people used other
 means of communication for that.


Looking briefly at some of the highest-traffic months, it could simply be
that people got tired of discussing high-controversy topics here.
(Flamewars are good for traffic volume; not so great for community health.)
I'm sure Facebook's increased acceptance also has a role. I suspect also
that some announcements that used to come here now go to other, more
specialized mailing lists.

That last one points to a key thing: as MZ says, many people are subscribed
to this list, but many don't read and don't participate, because this
mailing list has an *awful* reputation, and people who want to get things
done are going elsewhere. So the decline of wikimedia-l may be a sign of
bad health of the overall community, or it may simply mean that the healthy
and constructive parts of the community has moved elsewhere.

To re-iterate what I said in the last email, I'm all ears for suggestions
on creative community metrics. I'll add here that I'm also very open to
suggestions on what a new wikimedia-l might look like. (I know some FOSS
communities are having good experiences with discourse.org, for example.)
No commitment that WMF can act on either immediately, of course, but I
think it is worth starting both of those discussions.

Luis

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Partnership policy - Wikimédia France

[Luis Villa]

Hi, Anne-Laure-
This is a very thoughtful approach to a complicated and important problem.
Congratulations on creating it, and thanks for sharing it. I look forward
to hearing what you (and prospective partners!) learn from it in coming
years.

Luis

On Mon, Apr 20, 2015 at 7:10 AM, Anne-Laure Prévost 
annelaure.prev...@wikimedia.fr wrote:

 Hi everyone,

 Wikimédia France has recently issued its partnership policy :
 you can find it on Meta both in French [1] and in English [2].

 The objective of such a policy is to help communicate our vision of
 partnerships and share it with future partners and stakeholders. It
 includes our service offering (which is almost finalized) to clarify our
 scope of activity.

 If you have any questions/remarks or your own example of such a policy,
 please feel free to get in touch !

 Regards,
 Anne-Laure

 [1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimédia_France/Démarche_partenariale
 [2]
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimédia_France/Démarche_partenariale/en



 *Anne-Laure Prévost*
 CONSEILLÈRE SPÉCIALE PARTENARIATS ET RELATIONS INSTITUTIONNELLES /
 SPECIAL ADVISOR PARTNERSHIPS  INSTITUTIONAL RELATIONSHIPS

 *Tél  +33 7 62 93 42 02 /* *+33 1 42 36 97 72*
 *www.wikimedia.fr http://www.wikimedia.fr/ *
 *40 rue de Cléry, 75002 Paris* http://osm.org/go/0BPIihnIn?node=691082430
 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] A transition and a new chapter.

[Luis Villa]

 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 Announcements] Ask questions, give feedback on six annual plan grant proposals for the FDC!

[Luis Villa]

On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 11:13 PM, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote:

 Just noting that annual plans can go through APG or PEG, but the
 qualificattions and scope are different. Some chapers choose to continue
 with PEG funding becuase it is more flexible. The main limiter on PEG
 funding is that it  will not pay for full time permanent staff; however
 according to Meta it may pay for part time or temporary staff.

 APGs and PEGs for annual plans are usually recurring, but PEG funds a
 variety of programs in addition to annual plans.

 This is the kind of conversation that I hope Luis and his team will be
 considering holistically in the next several months.


Katy of course is part of my team, so we're here, having a conversation :)
Can you elaborate a bit, Pine? You've done a good job answering MZ's
question, so I'm not clear what conversation you meant to highlight -
simply suggestions on how to improve the pages MZ linked to, or...?

Luis


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] 10th anniversary celebration of Bengali Wikipedia

[Luis Villa]

This is terrific news- congrats!

On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 8:47 AM, Katy Love kl...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 Congratulations to you and the Bengali community on the 10 year
 anniversary!

 Katy

 On Feb 25, 2015, at 7:52 AM, RadhaKrishna Arvapally
 arkris...@wikimedia.in wrote:

  Wow! Fantastic news.
  All the best to Bengali Wikipedians.
 
 
  -RK
 
 
  On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 8:57 PM, Hasive, Nurunnaby 
 nhas...@wikimedia.org.bd
  wrote:
 
  Dear All,
 
  We're happy to share with you that Bengali Wikipedia has completed it's
 10
  year journey a few months back. To celebrate this historic milestone We
 the
  poeple from Bengali Wikimedia Community and Wikimedia Bangladesh is
 going
  to arrange a Gala event on February 26, 2015 at Radisson Blu Water
 Garden
  Hotel in Dhaka. The event is supported by Grameenphone (It is a joint
  venture between Telenor and Grameen Telecom Corporation), is the leading
  telecommunications service provider in Bangladesh.
 
  We are so happy that *Jimmy Wales* is going to join with us as a chief
  guest. We are excited to have him with us and hope to share the program
  details with you soon. BTW, This visit is the first visit of Jimbo in
  Bangladesh.
 
  Note: This event is a part of the series program, we'll arrange another
 two
  days conference probably the last week of March.
 
  Cheers.
 
  --
  *Hasive *
  Global User: Hasive http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Hasive
  ​
  Administrator | Bengali Wikipedia 
  http://bn.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Hasive
  Member | GAC Committee, Wikimedia Foundation
  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/Grant_Advisory_Committee
  Member | IEG Committee, Wikimedia Foundation
  https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/People
  Director | Wikimedia Bangladesh Operations Committee
  http://www.wikimedia.org.bd
  ​
  fb.com/nhasive | @nhasive http://www.twitter.com/nhasive | Skype:
  nhasive
  | www.nhasive.com
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-l] Types of allowed projects for grant funding (renamed)

[Luis Villa]

On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 12:24 PM, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi Luis,

 Thank you for agreeing to consider grant funding for software projects.

 It sounds like you also plan a broader review of funding for community
 needs and growth.


Yes. The timeline is still somewhat up in the air, but soon - likely
sooner than Berlin.


 I have a list of requests for changes, which boil down to
 removing policy barriers and greatly improving communications and workflows
 so that community growth is fostered and volunteer time is used wisely.


I'd be interested to hear those, though probably on meta rather than here.


  I greatly appreciate
 your interest in supporting communities and contributor growth.


Thanks. Of course, the Foundation has long been active on those areas (we
spend millions of dollars a year doing them!) but I think we're always
interested in doing it better.

Luis


 Pine
 On Feb 21, 2015 6:12 PM, Luis Villa lvi...@wikimedia.org wrote:

  On Sat, Feb 21, 2015 at 5:39 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org
 wrote:
 
   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. ;-)
  
 
  Thanks for at least a few hours of cushion, Erik ;)
 
  I'm a big believer in the power of/need for software tools, and at least
  philosophically I'm very open to funding software development outside the
  Foundation (though obviously there are lots of pragmatic difficulties -
  code review, etc.) So, yes, as part of our broader review of how we
 support
  communities and contributor growth, CE will look at funding code very
  seriously.
 
  Luis
 
  --
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 the
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-l] Types of allowed projects for grant funding (renamed)

[Luis Villa]

On Sat, Feb 21, 2015 at 5:39 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 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. ;-)


Thanks for at least a few hours of cushion, Erik ;)

I'm a big believer in the power of/need for software tools, and at least
philosophically I'm very open to funding software development outside the
Foundation (though obviously there are lots of pragmatic difficulties -
code review, etc.) So, yes, as part of our broader review of how we support
communities and contributor growth, CE will look at funding code very
seriously.

Luis

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Announcement: A new structure for WMF Community Engagement

[Luis Villa]

Lila, Anasuya, and everyone else-

Lila, thank you so much for the opportunity, and thank you Anasuya, Geoff,
and Erik for your long-term work with the GLEE, CA, and CL teams — you’ve
laid a strong foundation to build on. I would also like to congratulate
Siko on her expanded role — I am looking forward to working together with
her and the rest of the team on some of our most complex challenges.

I am excited to have the opportunity to work with our current leaders and
teams. We are lucky to have some incredible people on the team, and I look
forward to collaborating, learning, and creating even better engagement and
results together.

As Lila mentioned, I’ve been a contributor to a variety of open
communities, large and small, for over a decade and a half. Since the first
time I hacked on Lego software with someone on another continent, I’ve been
a strong believer that healthy communities and personal relationships are
the core of the special thing that we do. I expect to carry that forward
into the leadership of this team, with a focus on making the Foundation a
strong, supportive partner of growing, diverse, global Wikimedian
communities.

The creation of this new team within the Foundation shows a renewed
dedication by WMF to deepen our relationship to the people who create and
drive the projects. This focus will be critically important as we seek to
support and grow our mission. There are a huge number of opportunities to
get us ever-closer to our goal of a world of free knowledge.

Luis

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Cc-by-sa 4.0, Wikimedia logos

[Luis Villa]

CC 4 is still only in two (three?) languages (Kat may want to weigh in?) so
it is premature for us to move, I think. But I'm optimistic we'll see
traction in that area soon, and then we can have a movement discussion.
Sorry that we can't force that to happen faster :)

[To be clear, as I've said on Commons, CC 4.0 is clearly already
*acceptable* for imported images - obviously free, etc. We just shouldn't
be encouraging it as the *default* anywhere until there are more languages
and a movement-wide discussion.]

Luis

On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 1:13 AM, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi,

 Can we get an update on the transition plan to 4.0? I am seeing increasing
 amounts of content with 4.0 licensing across the the web, and would like us
 to move sooner rather than later to 4.0 in order to maintain continuity
 with new content where possible.

 I am not a licensing expert and I sometimes get headaches trying to
 deconflict licenses.

 Thanks,
 Pine
 On Oct 28, 2014 3:00 PM, Luis Villa lvi...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 Hi, Rupert-

 I think the movement as a whole should try to move consistently to 4.0 at
 roughly the same time. It is confusing to re-users to have to juggle
 different terms for different pieces of Wikimedia content.[1] So
 Foundation
 content will generally remain 3.0 until we make 4.0 the default license
 across the projects. (I'm aware that some projects have taken this jump on
 the own, but where I've seen this, I've made similar points - for example
 
 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Declaration_of_consent_for_all_enquiriesdiff=prevoldid=622093759
 
 .)

 WMF Legal plans to launch a movement-wide 4.0 discussion when CC has
 issued
 a solid number of translations, ideally in our largest languages. I
 understand the first few translations will be published in the next few
 weeks, and there is a schedule of upcoming translations on CC's wiki
 https://wiki.creativecommons.org/Legal_Tools_Translation#4.0[2].

 Realistically,
 given the holidays, and the lag for large projects, this likely means that
 discussion will happen early in 2015.

 Hope that helps-
 Luis

 [1] I'm well aware we already have a huge problem with this, but I don't
 want it to get worse. :)
 [2] These are updated by the translation teams, not CC itself, so they may
 not be up-to-date/accurate.

 On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 2:00 PM, rupert THURNER rupert.thur...@gmail.com
 
 wrote:

  Hi yana, would you be so kind to explain why wmf did not opt for the
 newest
  commons license, cc-by-sa 4.0?
 
  Rupert
  On Oct 28, 2014 9:06 PM, Yana Welinder ywelin...@wikimedia.org
 wrote:
 
  Good point.  That line can now be deleted from the trademark template.
 
  On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 7:40 AM, Romaine Wiki romaine.w...@gmail.com
  wrote:
 
   Practical question:
   The template:
   https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Wikimedia_trademark
   contains a line: (Consider using {{Copyright by Wikimedia
   https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Copyright_by_Wikimedia
 }}
   instead)
  
   Should that line be removed from the Wikimedia trademark template?
   (including all translations)
  
   Romaine
  
   2014-10-28 10:36 GMT+01:00 Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de:
  
Really cool, great work. Thank you very much.
   
Greetings
Ting
   
Am 10/27/2014 um 06:51 PM schrieb Yana Welinder:
   
 Hi folks,
   
I'm happy to announce that we are re-licensing the Wikimedia logos
 on
Commons to CC BY-SA 3.0:
   
  https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/10/24/wikimedia-logos-have-been-freed/
   
I would really appreciate your help with replacing the {{Copyright
 by
Wikimedia}}

 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Copyright_by_Wikimedia
  [1]
templates on the logos with the {{Wikimedia trademark}}
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Wikimedia_trademark
 [2]
   and
{{cc-by-sa-3.0}} https://commons.wikimedia.
org/wiki/Template:Cc-by-sa-3.0[3]
templates. But we don't want to replace templates on the MediaWiki
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MediaWiki.svg[4] and the
Community

 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Community_Logo.svg
   [5]
logos, which were originally released under free licenses.
   
There are also some pages on Commons, like this one
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Licensing[6], that
 may
   need
to
be updated based on the re-licensed logos.
   
Thanks,
   
Yana
   
[1]
  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Copyright_by_Wikimedia
   
[2]
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Wikimedia_trademark
   
[3] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Cc-by-sa-3.0
   
[4] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MediaWiki.svg
   
[5]
   https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Community_Logo.svg
   
[6] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Licensing

[Wikimedia-l] Please report to Google [was Re: Warning: Wikimedia-l Google Group]

[Luis Villa]

On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 9:18 PM, Karthik Nadar karthik...@wikimedia.in
wrote:

 I think it will be better if most of us can Report the Group.


Yes, please do this. We're also talking with Google about trying to resolve
the issue, but my understanding is that reporting that you've been
fraudulently subscribed will help move that conversation along.

[Same applies to the fake gender-gap list.]

Thanks-
Luis

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons copyright extremism

[Luis Villa]

On Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 8:44 AM, Russavia russavia.wikipe...@gmail.com
wrote:

 Steven,

 Quite seriously, if you can't understand the concept of copyright and
 derivative works, then perhaps this is not the project for you.


I understand the concept of copyright and derivative works, and I think
Stephen has a lot of valid points (even if I don't agree with all of them).
If you want to argue with the substance of what Stephen has to say, please
do.

In the meantime, your email is just an example of the kind of toxic
behavior Jimmy spoke out against at Wikimania this year — and correctly
received loud, sustained applause for.

Luis

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons copyright extremism

[Luis Villa]

On Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 9:02 AM, Katherine Casey 
fluffernutter.w...@gmail.com wrote:

 All sniping aside, it seems to me the problem (question?) here is whether
 Commons's interpretation of package copyright is legally accurate, or
 whether it is (like many of our projects' copyright policies) deliberately
 a bit overbroad. If their packaging policy is Just How Copyright Works,
 then there's not a lot we can do. Steven's points about feeling
 unappreciated/bitten are something that could be worked on, but we can't
 exactly change copyright law. If their packaging policy overreaches actual
 copyright law, then it would be a matter of trying to adjust the Commons
 policy to be more in line with real copyright law. Either way, neckbeards,

toxicity, and whining really have nothing to do with the point of this
 conversation.


Respectfully, I disagree. A lot of copyright interpretation is about
interpreting complicated grey areas of the law, and assessing risks to a
large number of very different parties. The process and culture that does
the interpretation therefore matters a lot. If the culture is unfriendly,
the interpretations that come out of the process are likely to reflect the
views held by those who are the loudest, most determined shouters. A
process and culture that was more flexible and friendly would have better
odds of balancing the complex web of law, risk, and safe harbors that we
operate in. (It would also be better at finding creative solutions when all
of the options appear to suck.)

This isn't to say that every (or even most) Commons decisions are made by
shouters, or that most Commons decisions are bad ones. I've participated in
plenty of reasonable, nuanced copyright discussions with Commoners on and
off Commons, and when Commons works well it is an awesome example of what
we can do together.

But I've also seen a lot of pictures deleted with either no explanation, or
no explanation that could ever make sense to a good-faith-but-not-expert
contributor. And I've spoken to representatives from GLAMs who would much
rather work with organizations like Internet Archive, Europeana, or DPLA,
not because the GLAMs have any nefarious plans to violate copyright, but
because of their concerns about our community. So I think it is fair to say
that the way many people communicate and argue on Commons neither makes us
legally safer nor enlarges our (lower-case) commons.

So, even if I wouldn't have said neckbeards (and I admit I didn't see
that before I defended Stephen) I don't think it is unreasonable to use the
specifics of a particular policy to talk more broadly about how Commons
thinks about copyright, assesses risk, and communicates that to the outside
world.

Sincerely-
Luis

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Wikimedia Foundation
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia France] WikiCheese crowdfunding - Let's photograph 'em all

[Luis Villa]

On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 9:56 AM, Andy Mabbett a...@pigsonthewing.org.uk
wrote:

 What, with Cheddar, Red Leicester, Stilton, and other superior cheeses?


Wiki Loves Cheese 2015?

Luis


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wayback machine

[Luis Villa]

Offlist, I've put John directly in touch with some folks at IA who were
working on citations (related to John's project).

FYI-
Luis

On Mon, Nov 3, 2014 at 10:49 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com
wrote:

 John, 03/11/2014 22:54:

 Does anyone have contact information for the wayback machine? I am trying
 to improve one of my tools for wikipedia, and am wondering if we can get a
 minor change/feature request implemented.


 Usually I recommend:
 * #internetarchive on EFNet for quick sanity check,
 * the forum for generic or lenghty/complex stuff
 https://archive.org/details/web#forum (you can see Jeff is active here),
 * the issue tracker for self-contained issues (of all websites).
 https://webarchive.jira.com/browse/HER

 Of course, read the FAQ first.
 https://archive.org/about/faqs.php#The_Wayback_Machine

 Nemo

 P.s.: Everyone give a look, https://archive.org/index.php?ui3=1


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Cc-by-sa 4.0, Wikimedia logos

[Luis Villa]

/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Access by Wikimedia volunteers to WMF records about them

[Luis Villa]

On Wed, Sep 10, 2014 at 12:27 AM, Fæ fae...@gmail.com wrote:

 Should WMF Legal say they are happy for me to do so, I will be happy
 to publish their reply in full.


Our reply, as I sent it at 7:58 pm Pacific time, Sep. 9:

===
Hi, Ashley-

As you know, the Wikimedia Foundation keeps very little data about users.
Most information that we have is public and accessible on-wiki, like user
pages and contribution pages.  For the small amount of personally
identifiable data that we do collect, we also seek to comply with our data
retention guidelines
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_retention_guidelines, deleting
information after prescribed periods.

Given our small administrative staff, the lack of any mandate under the
relevant applicable law, and the need to focus our limited resources on our
mission, we do not think it is an appropriate use of staff time or donor
money to do significant research in locating and preparing information, if
any, that falls under your broadly scoped request. We appreciate your
understanding.

Sincerely-
Luis
===


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Getting Wikipedia whitelisted for Twitter DMs

[Luis Villa]

I can ask around, but I've not heard of them even having a whitelist for
this situation - do we know for a fact that's the case?

Luis


On Sun, Aug 3, 2014 at 8:44 AM, Andy Mabbett a...@pigsonthewing.org.uk
wrote:

 For some months, Twitter have been blocking most URLs in their direct
 messages (DMs), supposedly as an anti-spam measure.

 Do we have someone who has a contact there, who could ask them to
 whitelist Wikimedia project URLs in DMs?

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

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Getting Wikipedia whitelisted for Twitter DMs

[Luis Villa]

Everything I had seen suggests that no URLs go through, but a little
Googling suggests that there is a whitelist:
http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2013/11/04/handy-hacks-sending-links-via-twitters-direct-message/

That said, every other source I can find mentioning a whitelist points back
at that same article - no one seems to have independently confirmed that.
So I'll poke some folks but don't hold your breath :)

Luis


On Sun, Aug 3, 2014 at 9:54 AM, Andy Mabbett a...@pigsonthewing.org.uk
wrote:

 Thank you.

 Some URLs go though, others do not. I doubt it's random ;-)

 On 3 August 2014 17:06, Luis Villa lvi...@wikimedia.org wrote:
  I can ask around, but I've not heard of them even having a whitelist for
  this situation - do we know for a fact that's the case?
 
  Luis
 
 
  On Sun, Aug 3, 2014 at 8:44 AM, Andy Mabbett a...@pigsonthewing.org.uk
  wrote:
 
  For some months, Twitter have been blocking most URLs in their direct
  messages (DMs), supposedly as an anti-spam measure.
 
  Do we have someone who has a contact there, who could ask them to
  whitelist Wikimedia project URLs in DMs?
 
  --
  Andy Mabbett
  @pigsonthewing
  http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
 
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 community
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 more
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Asking Google to output Wikipedia citation format in Scholar

[Luis Villa]

Possibly relevant as an alternative solution to the problem:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Citoid

I suspect that Google would be reluctant to add a Wikimedia citation
format, because there is no one Wikimedia citation format. (Happy to be
corrected on that if I'm wrong, though.)

Luis


On Sun, Aug 3, 2014 at 10:53 AM, Liangent liang...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hmm, maybe another option is to accept BibTeX format on our side, possibly
 via a Lua module?

 -Liangent
 On Aug 4, 2014 1:15 AM, Andy Mabbett a...@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:

  Google Scholar search results each have a cite link, which generates
  citation text to copy-and-paste in three formats (MLA, APA, Chicago).
 
  Is there someone at Google we can talk to, to get Wikipedia's citation
  format included?
 
  For English-language users (or results), the {{Cite journal}} template
  is probably most appropriate.
 
  --
  Andy Mabbett
  @pigsonthewing
  http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Asking Google to output Wikipedia citation format in Scholar

[Luis Villa]

On Sun, Aug 3, 2014 at 12:25 PM, Andy Mabbett a...@pigsonthewing.org.uk
wrote:

 On 3 August 2014 19:01, Luis Villa lvi...@wikimedia.org wrote:

  I suspect that Google would be reluctant to add
  a Wikimedia citation format

 Trove, the Australian National Library's newspaper archive, are happy to
 do so.


Presumably those materials are all in English, unlike Scholar (and
Wikipedia!)


   because there is no one Wikimedia citation format.
  (Happy to be corrected on that if I'm wrong, though.)

 There isn't, hence I suggested the most suitable for scholarly
 citations in English.


Both Google and Wikimedia claim to be global, multi-lingual solutions. So
both we and Google should be aiming higher.

But of course take my perspective with a grain of salt - I've always found
it crazy that there is not a standardized citation format across the
projects, so I may be putting words in Google's mouth.

Luis

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open Letter to Lila Regarding Access to Non-Public Information Policy

[Luis Villa]

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] The Signpost -- Volume 10, Issue 23 -- 18 June 2014

[Luis Villa]

On Sat, Jun 21, 2014 at 7:23 PM, Richard Ames rich...@ames.id.au wrote:


 I would like to publicly thank the contributors to the Signpost; most are
 listed here:

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom


+1. It is an incredibly useful resource - thank you for all the hard work
you put in.

Luis

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Stop the New Privacy Policy until Lila is Thoroughly Briefed on It, Countdown 14 Hours

[Luis Villa]

 can’t control the actions of community members such as
 administrative volunteers so we don’t include them under the privacy
 policy. Is this accountability? No. She further mystifyingly continues:
 however, under the access policy, these volunteers must sign a
 confidentiality agreement. Mystifyingly, because it's *not* *true*. That
 part of the privacy policy Requirements for Community Members Applying for
 Access to Nonpublic Information requires only an email address and an
 assertion from an anonymous individual that he or she is 18 or over. Is
 there requirement there somewhere for a signature? No. Shall they sign for
 example under the nicknames of the prominent administrators like
 Beeblebrox and Wizardman? This is not accountability. (
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Access_to_nonpublic_information_policy#Minimum_requirements_for_community_members_applying_for_access_to_nonpublic_information_rights
 .)

 How can the executive director be expected to assume responsibility for
 this stuff in 14 hours, on her third official day on the job? Out of simple
 courtesy to her, it needs to be delayed, while she is briefed on it by
 those who most understand it, like the general counsel Geoff Brigham.

 Trillium Corsage









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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia in Who has your back EFF transparency report.

[Luis Villa]

On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 8:36 AM, Pete Forsyth petefors...@gmail.com wrote:

- The report specifically addresses the two stars Wikimedia missed,
stating that (1) it plans to publish a transparency report in July and
 (2)

   should not be judged poorly for not having had the right opportunity to
defend users in court the way the report defines it.


On the second point: we regularly defend user privacy and we regularly
defend users in court. Because of this, we have never taken a privacy issue
to court - so far, we have always been able to talk them out of it or
convince them it is not worth the trouble before it gets that far. We are
successful at this because (1) we have a very good record of winning court
cases, so they do not have a good chance of winning and (2) we collect so
little user information, and we delete it quickly, so we are usually able
to convince them that they won't get anything useful from us even if they
did win.

But the report specifically requires us to defend user privacy in court.
This makes sense for EFF: they need a public court record to prove that
we have defended user privacy. But it doesn't make sense for us: we don't
get credit for all the times that we have privately protected user privacy
and saved the user (and the Foundation's budget!) from going to court.

So really we hope next year to get only five stars - because I hope to
again win *before* court in these cases. We'll see- I'm sure someday
someone will be stupid, and we'll win, and then we'll get our sixth star ;)

A big thanks goes out to Michelle Paulson, and several other folks on the
team including Yana Welinder, for getting us our stars!

Luis (like Cristian and at least 1/2 of the lawyers on the team, also an
EFF member)


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia in Who has your back EFF transparency report.

[Luis Villa]

On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 9:33 AM, Cristian Consonni
kikkocrist...@gmail.comwrote:

 2014-05-20 18:14 GMT+02:00 Luis Villa lvi...@wikimedia.org:
  On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 8:36 AM, Pete Forsyth petefors...@gmail.com
 wrote:
  (2)
 
 should not be judged poorly for not having had the right opportunity
 to
 defend users in court the way the report defines it.
 
 
  On the second point: we regularly defend user privacy and we regularly
  defend users in court. Because of this, we have never taken a privacy
 issue
  to court - so far, we have always been able to talk them out of it or
  convince them it is not worth the trouble before it gets that far. We are
  successful at this because (1) we have a very good record of winning
 court
  cases, so they do not have a good chance of winning and (2) we collect so
  little user information, and we delete it quickly, so we are usually able
  to convince them that they won't get anything useful from us even if they
  did win.

 So this case:

 https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/02/14/wikimedia-foundation-supports-wikipedia-user-subject-to-defamation-lawsuit-in-greece/

 and more in general of this program:

 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal_and_Community_Advocacy/Legal_Fees_Assistance_Program

 are not rated because they are not strictly privacy-related?


That's right. In the Greek case, Diu's identity was already publicly known
when the case was filed - there was no privacy aspect in the actual legal
case. We were not the ones who disclosed his identity, so we did not have
an opportunity to fight for his privacy.

To be clear, Legal Fees Assistance Program could apply to a privacy case if
one came up that met the other requirements. But we can't get the star just
for promising to fight for it - we have to fight for it *in court* to get
the star, and we just haven't had that opportunity yet.

As EFF put it:

*Fight for users privacy in courts.* Wikimedia does not earn credit in this
category. However, it should be noted that many companies never have an
opportunity to challenge a government data request. ... Wikimedia’s lack of
star in this category should not be seen as a demerit.


Hope that clarifies-
Luis




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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Proposed amendment to the Wikimedia Terms of Use

[Luis Villa]

On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 3:46 AM, Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.orgwrote:

 Maybe I missed something, but could you please explain why the Terms of Use
 would be the best place to make this kind of decisions?

 As I understand it, the Terms of Use are Wikimedia-wide, and I'm not 100%
 certain this is the kind of rule we'd want to apply on all projects the
 same way. The community (both language and project) might want to derive
 from it - either way.


Hi, Lodewijk - Geoff responded to this general concern here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Terms_of_use/Paid_contributions_amendment#Yes.2C_I_believe_it_will

Hope that helps answer the question.

Luis


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Proposed amendment to the Wikimedia Terms of Use

[Luis Villa]

On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 12:27 PM, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote:

 Is there a way to incorporate the local policy by reference into the TOU,
 something like The Wikimedia Foundation requires that all users being
 paid
 to contribute follow the disclosure, conflict or related applicable policy
 on each project where said users contribute.? Might that be a solution to
 establishing a binding policy with legal weight, without superseding local
 intentions?


I tried to answer this on meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Terms_of_use/Paid_contributions_amendment#question_about_incorporating_local_policy_.28from_Wikimedia-l.29

Hope that clarifies a bit, given the relevant history.

Luis

P.S. We're replying to things on meta, since that is where the banners are
directing people to go, and because it helps keep a history of the
conversation in one place.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Advocacy Advisors] European Commission Copyright Consultation

[Luis Villa]

I've spent a good chunk of the day reading through the first 31 questions;
the comments on meta about those questions, and the responses proposed by
Dimi and others at http://youcan.fixcopyright.eu/en/full/?guide=wikimedia

All the comments essentially agree, with only some small variations. Since
we don't have any serious splits of opinion, I think the idea of a combined
answer that represents this as the opinion of the Foundation makes sense.
(Not clear to what extent we should also represent this as the opinion of
Wikimedians - opinions welcome on that.)

With that goal in mind, I've drafted proposed answers to each question,
which incorporate comments from (among others) Seb35, Deryck C., Sapfan,
NaBUru38, Aktron, and Kaldari.

I think the best place to discuss individual answers is in the talk pages,
so I'll start uploading those shortly. I've also more-or-less copied this
email into
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:European_Commission_copyright_consultation#Goals_and_next_stepsif
people prefer to discuss there.

Luis



On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 2:09 AM, Michael Maggs mich...@maggs.name wrote:

 It's not clear to me what will be done with the answers proposed so far at

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

 Will  they be submitted as they are, or is someone proposing to merge them
 into a single version (even though many answers have been signed)?

 Also unclear unless I have missed something is who will the answers be
 submitted by, and on whose behalf?  Only individuals - and not the
 Foundation nor chapters - have formally posted answers so far, so is the
 intention that the answers will be submitted by and on behalf of those
 individuals only?

 The page says that the response *can be submitted by the Wikimedia
 Foundation and other interested groups*, so perhaps the answers are
 merely intended as a resource others can use if they wish?

 If the intention is that a formal response will be submitted on behalf of
 the unincorporated group *Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU*, then it
 would be sensible for that group to register with the
 EU Transparency Register, here:

 http://ec.europa.eu/transparencyregister/info/homePage.do?locale=en

 According to the EU, responses to the consultation from non-registered
 entities will *be published separately from the registered
 organisations*, which may mean less influence. See:


 http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/consultations/2013/copyright-rules/index_en.htm

 (I note that the Foundation is not registered!)

 By the way, WMUK will be completing and filing its own separate response.

 Michael



 From: Dimitar Parvanov Dimitrov dimitar.parvanov.dimit...@gmail.com
 Date: 21 January 2014 14:51
 Subject: [Wikimedia-l] European Commission Copyright Consultation
 To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org


 Hi everyone,

 Just a quick reminder that we have 6 more days to collaboratively draft
 answers to the European Commission's copyright consultation.

 The idea is to give the global, online community a chance to come up with
 answers that, if coherent enough, can then be officially given to the
 Commission.

 We see this as a social experiment, since no one until now has ever
 attempted to answer collaboratively and publicly such short-termed and
 in-depth consultations.

 The corresponding link is:

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

 Have fun answering!

 Dimi
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[Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] draft Data Retention Guidelines posted for discussion and commentary

[Luis Villa]

Hi, all-

The Foundation's legal team is happy to announce that the first draft
of the new data retention guidelines are now available for your
translation, review, and feedback. This draft is the result of a
collaboration between many teams within the Foundation, including
Analytics, Operations, Platform, Product, and Legal.

The guidelines are here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_retention_guidelines

The talk page is here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Data_retention_guidelines

As with the other privacy documents, this draft is just that: a draft.
We want to hear from you about how we can make it better. We plan to
hold the community consultation period for this draft open until 14
February 2014.

Once the consultation period is over, the document will continue to be
updated to reflect current retention practices.

Thanks-
Luis  Michelle
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Luis Villa]

On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 4:11 PM, Michael Snow wikipe...@frontier.comwrote:


 Now if you imagine the puzzle globe on that slide implies that
 Wikipedia traffic is retained for intelligence analysis, it's a short
 hop to assume that the Wikimedia Foundation is also the subject of a
 blanket order transferring its server logs to the NSA.

 Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Twitter, yes. But mail.ru? The shift from
 most to all in the first paragraph may make it easy to assume the
 similarity is universal, but it's ignoring the full context. That kind of
 rhetorical shift is a favorite trick of conspiracy theorists, it's how they
 get you to make those short hops to unwarranted conclusions.


Thanks for the voice of reason, Michael.

As a quick reminder here, before any conspiracy theories about orders and
data retention get out of control:

1) We've flat-out denied any sort of involvement in this, and we continue
to stand by that denial:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/14/prism-surveillance-wikimedia/

2) Take with a grain of salt, of course, but our understanding (based on
the few gag orders that have been made public) is that we could be forced
to not confirm having received a National Security Letter, but we can't
actually be forced to lie about it. In other words, if we'd received one we
would not be allowed to say we've received one, but we also could not be
forced to deny it - we'd always have the option to remain silent instead.

3) We understand that the rules cause some people not to trust our denial,
and can't entirely blame them! That is why we've asked the government to
change the rules, so that you can have more trust in us next time we issue
the same denial:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/07/18/wikimedia-foundation-letter-transparency-nsa-prism/

This is not to say that the http/https issue isn't important; like
Engineering, we think progress on that issue is important. But it is
important to keep we don't yet deploy https as widely as we'd like
separate from there are secret orders to transfer all our logs to the NSA.

Thanks-
Luis

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Advocacy Advisors] WMF response to PRISM?

[Luis Villa]

On Mon, Jul 8, 2013 at 11:07 PM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote:

 Luis Villa wrote:
 ...
  I'll probably post some more details on the talk page in the next
  day or two, but suffice to say that we continue to listen for options
  that are aligned with our values and likely to have an impact on
  the discussion.

 Luis, could you please help us understand the specific reasons that the
 proposed options (which seemed to be favored roughly 8 to 3 at the meta
 feedback page) aren't considered to be aligned with the values you're
 referring to?


I discussed this a bit yesterday in the talk page and will flesh that out
more, but the specific concern (raised here, on the blog, and in the talk
page) is that stopwatching is too US-focused. When counting those concerns
as anti-stopwatching votes, the ratio appears more balanced (and the
numbers are quite small, as well).

Would publicizing these free and open secure alternatives to
 commercial applications known to be under surveillance --
 https://prism-break.org/ -- be sufficiently aligned with out values?


Those are international in application so it would not have the same
particular problem. (I'm frankly skeptical that any particular set of tools
can protect someone from a determined government, so I have not looked very
hard at prism-break, but at least conceptually it would seem to be aligned.)

Luis

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[Luis Villa]

[+ Advocacy Advisors]

On Tue, Jun 11, 2013 at 9:08 AM, Liam Wyatt liamwy...@gmail.com wrote:
 Perhaps we as individuals, or the WMF as an organisation, might also like
 to sign up to Mozilla's campaign stopwatching.us?

 Blogpost -
 https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/06/11/stopwatching-us-mozilla-launches-massive-campaign-on-digital-surveillance/
 Website - https://optin.stopwatching.us/

 I note from the selected list of organisations that have already signed (of
 whom several are our frequent allies) we would be in good company.

Hi, Liam-

Participating in StopWatching is definitely one of the options. For
WMF to get involved in that way, there needs to be a consultation with
the Advocacy Advisors list and (time permitting) an RFC. By following
that process, we can be sure that the actions WMF takes are consistent
with community's opinion on the topic.

If you think WMF should be more involved, we (as always) invite and
encourage you to start an RFC or discussion on Advocacy Advisors. We
would pay close attention to those, and use them to help us guide our
next steps. Please let us know if there is anything else we can do to
support, of course.

(Our full internal policy is at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal_and_Community_Advocacy/Foundation_Policy_and_Political_Association_Guideline#Collaborative_Advocacy).

Thanks-
Luis




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Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM

[Luis Villa]

Hi, all-

For your information, we have not been approached to participate in
PRISM, and we have never received or honored an NSA or FISA subpoena
or order.  If we were to be approached in the future, we would reject
participation in any PRISM-type program to the maximum extent possible
and challenge in court any such demand, since this sort of program, as
described in the press, contradicts our core values of a free Internet
and open, neutral access to knowledge.

We should have a blog post up within the next few days to discuss
PRISM and our values in more detail; we will pass that along here when
it is posted.

Thanks-
Luis, Geoff, and Stephen

On Sun, Jun 9, 2013 at 6:17 PM, Liam Wyatt liamwy...@gmail.com wrote:
 This is a simple question with a potentially very complicated answer.

 What, if any, are the implications of the PRISM scandal for Wikimedia?
 Does the fact that our servers are based in the US now compromise our
 mission either in a technical, privacy or an ethical sense?


 - Liam / Wittylama


 --
 wittylama.com
 Peace, love  metadata
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the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for
legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a
lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their
personal capacity.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] UK.Gov passes Instagram Act

[Luis Villa]

On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 1:03 AM, Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.com wrote:

 2013/5/2 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com:
  On 2 May 2013 04:06, shi zhao shiz...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/29/err_act_landgrab/
 
 
  As usual, Orlowski is trolling for clicks. Here's the actual text:
 
  http://niaccurshi.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/orphan-works-enterprise-and-regulatory.html
 

 And The Economist POV:

 http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/05/orphan-works


Another, more considered, piece, from Andres Guadamuz:

http://www.technollama.co.uk/has-the-uk-abolished-copyright-analysis-of-new-orphan-work-legislation


--
Luis Villa
Deputy General Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
415.839.6885 ext. 6810

NOTICE: This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If you
have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about
the mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for
legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a
lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their
personal capacity.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [Toolserver-l] [TS logo] Fwd: Free as in Wikimedia Foundation

[Luis Villa]

Hi, Nathan-

On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 2:00 PM, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote:

 I won't argue the fact that there is value in protecting the
 iconography of the Wikimedia movement from abuse. What I argue with is
 the approach of the legal department


You're right that we could have communicated this better, and I apologize
for that on behalf of legal.


 If you're familiar with my posts to this list, I'm not normally on the
 anti-WMF side of debates (for instance, wrt WCA). But when they make a
 boob move, I don't think its bad faith to point it out.


I agree, and I'm glad your email gives the legal team the same benefit of
the doubt.

I've posted a much more extensive discussion of each of these points (and
several others Nathan and other people have raised) on the talk page:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Logo#Follow_up_on_discussion_here_and_on_wikimedia-l

In the interests of keeping things in one place, I'd ask that we move the
discussion there.

Thanks-
Luis

-- 
Luis Villa
Deputy General Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
415.839.6885 ext. 6810

NOTICE: *This message may be confidential or legally privileged. If you
have received it by accident, please delete it and let us know about the
mistake. As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical
reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community
members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity.*
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Luis Villa joins WMF as Deputy General Counsel

[Luis Villa]

I subscribed while still interviewing, admittedly under a different
address. :) Thanks for the warm welcome, James- I look forward to working
with everyone.

Luis


On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 3:49 PM, James Alexander
jalexan...@wikimedia.orgwrote:

 Responding to this to to make sure it gets to Wikimedia-l and to be the
 first to say on Wikimedia-l \o/ WELCOME!

 Luis seems like the perfect dGC for us with his experience and background.
 Watch out for Geoff he's dangerous and crafty!

 James

 Copying in Luis since I'm not sure if he's on here yet or not :)

 James Alexander
 Manager, Merchandise
 Wikimedia Foundation
 (415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur


 On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 3:37 PM, Geoff Brigham gbrig...@wikimedia.orgwrote:

 *Hi everyone, *
  * *
 *I’m simply thrilled to welcome Luis Villa to the Foundation as our new
 Deputy General Counsel.*
 *
 Thanks to Kat Walsh, I met Luis during my first months at the
 Foundation.  Kat loves Luis, and it is no wonder why.  In addition to
 being a superb lawyer, Luis is an open source developer, has worked with
 leaders in our Internet legal circles, and has a great personality that
 embraces our culture.
 *
 *
 His most recent adventure took place at the Palo Alto office of Greenberg
 Traurig, one of the top  global law firms.  There he worked with well-known
 Internet lawyers like Ian Ballon and Heather Meeker.   Luis focused on
 technology transactions, helping clients create solutions to licensing
 problems, with a particular emphasis on open source and software standards.
 His clients included Mozilla, the Open Compute Project, and a variety of
 clients large and small.  Luis successfully defended Google in the
 Oracle-Google/Android lawsuit, primarily working on the question of API
 copyrightability. I hired Luis as outside counsel to work on a tough
 legal matter for us, and his answers were on point, clear, and practical.
 *
 *
 Luis’ first contact with free software came was when he was in college
 at Duke University. There he studied political science and computer
 science, began using Linux, and helped triage Mozilla's bugzilla. A
 professor paid him to play with Lego, resulting in brief maintainership of
 the GPL’d LegOS operating system and co-authorship of the book Extreme
 Mindstorms.
 *
 *
 After graduation, Luis worked at Ximian, a Linux desktop startup, doing
 quality assurance and eventually managing the desktop team. As part of
 that, he got heavily involved in the GNOME desktop project, becoming
 bugmaster and then getting elected to the board of directors. After Ximian
 was acquired, Luis became geek in residence at Harvard Law School's
 Berkman Center. At Berkman, he translated from lawyer to geek, and managed,
 maintained, and developed several software projects.
 *
 *
 After Berkman, Luis started his legal ventures in life at Columbia Law
 School, where he was Editor in Chief of the Science and Technology Law
 Review, was awarded honors each year, and was co-recipient of the class
 prize for excellence in intellectual property scholarship. His thesis dealt
 with the use of software standards as part of antitrust enforcement.
 Outside of class, he participated in the GPL revision process, worked in
 the General Counsel's office at Red Hat, and developed a surprisingly
 strong attachment to New York City.
 *
 *
 After law school, Luis worked in the legal department at Mozilla, where
 his major project was revising the Mozilla Public License. The license got
 over a thousand words shorter, and gained stronger patent protections and
 compatibility with the Apache and GPL licenses. Luis also worked on
 privacy, contracts, standards bodies, and other issues.
 *
 *
 Outside of work, Luis is an invited expert to the World Wide Web
 Consortium's Patents and Standards Interest Group, and a board member and
 chair of the Licensing Committee at the Open Source Initiative. He also
 enjoys biking, photography, history, Duke basketball (men's and women's),
 and eating.
 *
 *
 Luis's first Wikipedia edit under his current user name dates to Feb.
 2007. Like any good pedant, he has also been making minor spelling and
 grammar corrections anonymously for many years.
 *
 *
 So, as you can tell, we are extremely excited about having Luis on our
 team and wish him a warm welcome.
 *
 * *
 *Cheers, *
 * *
 *Geoff*
 --
 Geoff Brigham
 General Counsel
 Wikimedia Foundation


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