subject:"\[Wikimedia\-l\] Go away, community \(from WMF wiki at least\)"


On 5/13/13 8:54 AM, Theo10011 wrote:

Hi Casey

First, I miss seeing you around, in case you are not omnipresent anymore.

On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org wrote:


On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 8:28 PM, Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com wrote:

Try and be a bit nicer please. Gayle is still relatively new and this

level

of scrutiny might be jarring for someone.


Comments like these have always bothered me.

Gayle isn't some random secretary or new run-of-the-mill employee. She
is a C-level staff member who has been here for more than a year and
made a policy decision that people have feedback on. While the
feedback may not have come in the nicest form, it is still valid and
we can't just ignore it because it wasn't nice enough. As a high
level staff member in charge of your own department, you need to deal
with it -- this is one thing that comes with the job, unfortunately.
It's an insult to Gayle to assume that she will not be able to handle
criticism or answer people's responses. A C-level staff member needs
to be able to handle this scrutiny, even high level scrutiny, when
they were the one that made the call, and I'm sure she's more than
capable of doing that.



Fair point. I'll concede that one, I might have a soft spot for certain
people for no apparent reason. Out of anyone else affected perhaps you're
truly the really slighted party in all of this, and it really wouldn't be
my place to tell you to be nicer.

I still find out in bits and pieces how many things Casey handled. You and
Cary made these issues disappear and made a lot more currently broken
things function. The cracks seem to be showing more these days, which lends
credence to a theory that you and Cary might have acted as buffer points on
some of these things. As both of you became more inactive, minor things
start generating more friction.

Perhaps, it's a bit of maturity that makes the difference here, but there
is no real-world implication of C-Level - they have these tiers that
supposedly imply something in staff but they aren't born different or sent
to army camps for training - they are just people. You know, people
fumbling around, making mistakes, accidentally pissing other people off. We
all stumbled our way here I think, no one started editing perfectly or
never said a wrong thing or made a faux-pas - I made 4 today. Yes, some
people handle criticism better than others, but I can tell your from
witnessing it first-hand that being singled out by ~100 strangers is an
emotionally taxing experience. Or maybe the gender gap discussions have
sensitized me too much :P and I'm being biased.

Lastly, I'll ask again, what was the expectation here? Yes, I took some
time out between clubbing baby seals, and kicking blind people, to take
away flags I don't understand, from strangers I don't know. You know,
because I'm evil like that - nothing short of that would have gratified
the current quest. There are two possible reasons, either someone else on
staff asked or Ms. Young wasn't provided all the facts and didn't realize
the implications. Both involve implicating another staff member, the course
she took seems evident that it's not the road she wants to go down. While I
don't agree, given her position, I can empathize.



[Note that I'm speaking generally -- I personally think Gayle can
handle criticism and she seems very nice. She also probably had no
idea this would create dramz. My comment is directed towards the
general omg think of the staff member! response to criticism that is
systemic in our movement.]



You've actually read my mail on those other lists, do you really think I'm
the one to say omg think of the staff member! ? I recall arguing the
opposite on at least 3 very visible occasions.

On the other hand, I had deja vu reading Philippe's email. Between the two,
I think Gayle is far more pensive than Philippe's appears to be. It's
almost combative. He agrees that he advised her wrong, and then spends the
latter half chastising the tone on IRC and emails, and ends with a familiar
sign-off. I vehemently believe he had more to do with this than just being
the trigger-man. Considering how long he's known Mz, the amount of
interactions they've had, even the times Mz has helped Philippe. He knew
the reaction, perhaps why this was done first without warning in this way.
I would point out seven years ago the WMF was paralyzed from lack of
strategy and direction - and say I can really make an argument that it's
actually the other way round. The strategy then was to grow. Now it's
running in every direction and switching mid-stream - you can start from
global development, to the education program and find a lot in between.

-Theo


Just as a side comment, I laughed a bit when I read that seven years 
ago, WMF was paralyzed.


Eck... early 2006, Wikimedia Foundation was hardly more than two years 
old. I would have many words to paint these days, some black, some white 
and many greys. But paralyzed would

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-13 Thread Peter Southwood

You realise that this is going to continue until an actual explanation of 
the desysopping comes out?
Some of us are waiting for the reasons before posting opinions. The weekend 
is now over and maybe now some reasons can emerge.

Cheers,
Peter
- Original Message - 
From: James Alexander jameso...@gmail.com

To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Monday, May 13, 2013 7:50 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)



*

I'm just going to top post here because responding to you in line won't be
helpful to anybody.The staff ARE held to a higher standard, they are held
to a higher standard day in and day out. If you don't think they are then
you're blind. They get attacked at a level that is NOTHING compared to 
what

they do or dish out NOTHING. They hold back because they're staff and they
should hold back.

Can the foundation get better? Of course it can, is every single thing
Philippe said still true? Yes, in fact I'd probably be harsher about it.
I'm sometimes embarrassed to be from the community when I read the mailing
list and, less often, on wiki. Even I have to sit down on my hands, calm
down, have a cup of tea and then go on damage control explaining to other
staff members that we need to get better but that the community isn't
nearly as bad as it seems sometimes. I have to remind myself that I'm not
lying when I tell them that it isn't the entire community yelling at them,
just a dozen or two on a mailing list and that they don't represent
everyone. There is no doubt that the Foundation can get better in many
areas, but I will 100% stand by my statement that the way that some
portions of the community (that tend to congregate on the mailing lists 
and

certain areas on wiki)  is embarrassing and insane. Given some of the
statements that are made I'm not actually sure staff SHOULD respond to
those people, yet they still do in the end because they're staff, and
they're held to a higher standard.

Is it true that some of this is 'the wiki way' and they should 'get used 
to

it' because 'that's how we treat ourselves'? I'd say that 99%+ of the wiki
isn't anywhere near as bad though I sadly admit that some of it is though
most realize that's bad. The lack of civility on wiki has been a long
running problem we have all known about, yet for some reason some people
have decided that targeting the staff is fair game.

In the US, and most countries I know, employers have a legal obligation to
ensure a healthy working environment both physical and emotional. The
working environment for our staff is NOT always emotionally healthy.
*
*
*
*James*
*

On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 10:05 PM, Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org 
wrote:



On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 8:28 PM, Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com wrote:
 Try and be a bit nicer please. Gayle is still relatively new and this
level
 of scrutiny might be jarring for someone.

Comments like these have always bothered me.

Gayle isn't some random secretary or new run-of-the-mill employee. She
is a C-level staff member who has been here for more than a year and
made a policy decision that people have feedback on. While the
feedback may not have come in the nicest form, it is still valid and
we can't just ignore it because it wasn't nice enough. As a high
level staff member in charge of your own department, you need to deal
with it -- this is one thing that comes with the job, unfortunately.
It's an insult to Gayle to assume that she will not be able to handle
criticism or answer people's responses. A C-level staff member needs
to be able to handle this scrutiny, even high level scrutiny, when
they were the one that made the call, and I'm sure she's more than
capable of doing that.

[Note that I'm speaking generally -- I personally think Gayle can
handle criticism and she seems very nice. She also probably had no
idea this would create dramz. My comment is directed towards the
general omg think of the staff member! response to criticism that is
systemic in our movement.]

On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 9:03 PM, Philippe Beaudette
phili...@wikimedia.org wrote:
 With that said: I'm afraid we're headed toward a precipice.  What I'm
 seeing scares me.  I see less and less good faith being offered toward
the
 WMF.

This is something that bothers me too.

The situation is always framed as poor WMF. Yes, it is true that bad
faith is assumed on both sides, but I don't really think the community
(including the chapters) is the only one doing that. A lot of the
reason the community responds with such little faith or with such
outrage at the actions of the Wikimedia Foundation is because they do
not afford them any good faith either -- the community is simply
acting on the defensive. Many decisions are just handed out, are
half-baked, or are handled behind closed doors, so people have no idea
how to respond and feel no ownership.

If people have no control over a situation, the only way to respond is
to point fingers and complain. We

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-13 Thread Fae

On 13 May 2013 08:18, Keegan Peterzell keegan.w...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 2:03 AM, James Alexander jameso...@gmail.comwrote:
 That's a bit relative, James.  The active folk on this mailing list make
 for a pretty good cross section of thoughts/feelings/opinions of the
 movement.  I've refrained from this discussion and will continue to do so
 on specifics, because it's politics and that's not something I do on
 Wikipedia/Wikimedia.

On this, I have watched this thread with interest. I started following
it when sitting in a chapter board meeting all day on Saturday. From
the outset I knew I would not want to make any specific comment and
get sucked into another dramah, I have too big a pile of these already
anyway.

There are lessons to be learned here. I continue to hope that the WMF
can find a way of learning from these experiences, particularly if
they set a long term pattern, in addition to answering the specific
questions about this incident. For me, I certainly have learned that
for the other organizations I am involved with that control wikis and
have the wonderful luxury of working through the good will of unpaid
volunteer admins and bureaucrats, the policies that apply should only
change with careful and recorded consultation, even if I am personally
sure that there are very clear legal or excellent good and important
or urgent governance reasons to make changes.

For those on Monday morning finding a little egg left on their faces,
perhaps it is time to brew some freshly ground coffee, make some hot
buttered toast and turn this into a productive breakfast? Stay mellow.
;-)

PS I'm not attempting to claim any high ground here, so before anyone
points it out, yes I'm pretty darn flawed myself. Sometimes I do learn
from mistakes though, I have a lifetime of foolishness to regret and
learn from.

Cheers,
Fae
--
fae...@gmail.com http://j.mp/faewm
Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/mfae

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-13 Thread Peter Southwood

That was actually my point.
Cheers,
Peter
- Original Message - 
From: James Alexander jameso...@gmail.com

To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Monday, May 13, 2013 9:03 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 12:00 AM, Peter Southwood 
peter.southw...@telkomsa.net wrote:

Lets get a few things in perspective:
1. How many community members were abusive/unreasonable/whatever beyond
what might be considered a startle reaction to an apparent attack without
warning?
2 How many people constitute this community
Divide answer 1 by answer 2

Consider how much of the response was a snowball effect of frustration 
due

to a distinct shortage of explanation and direct answers to what might be
considered reasonable questions.

And yes, Welcome to Wikipedia 

Cheers,
Peter

2 is an unreasonable number to divide by when it's such a small cross
section of the actual community on these lists.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-13 Thread Craig Franklin

Upon reading Gayle's response, and reflecting on some of the comments I
made on Saturday night, I have come to the conclusion that some of the
things I said may have come across as a little harsh and condescending.
 While that was my intention (my point was that sometimes the community
can bite, so you have to watch your fingers while interacting with them!),
I think that what I said could quite easily have come across as
patronising.  This wasn't my intent, but I sincerely and unreservedly
apologise to Gayle if this was how it was taken and if my words caused
anyone any distress.

Later, after I have dinner, I'm going to respond with a post to analyse
what went wrong and offer some positive suggestions to how I think these
situations can be avoided in the future, but the positive suggestion I am
going to take for myself at this point is Florence's excellent advice to
step back and let people explain themselves *before* I jump down their
throat.

Cheers,
Craig


On 13 May 2013 18:02, Fae fae...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 13 May 2013 08:18, Keegan Peterzell keegan.w...@gmail.com wrote:
  On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 2:03 AM, James Alexander jameso...@gmail.com
 wrote:
  That's a bit relative, James.  The active folk on this mailing list make
  for a pretty good cross section of thoughts/feelings/opinions of the
  movement.  I've refrained from this discussion and will continue to do so
  on specifics, because it's politics and that's not something I do on
  Wikipedia/Wikimedia.

 On this, I have watched this thread with interest. I started following
 it when sitting in a chapter board meeting all day on Saturday. From
 the outset I knew I would not want to make any specific comment and
 get sucked into another dramah, I have too big a pile of these already
 anyway.

 There are lessons to be learned here. I continue to hope that the WMF
 can find a way of learning from these experiences, particularly if
 they set a long term pattern, in addition to answering the specific
 questions about this incident. For me, I certainly have learned that
 for the other organizations I am involved with that control wikis and
 have the wonderful luxury of working through the good will of unpaid
 volunteer admins and bureaucrats, the policies that apply should only
 change with careful and recorded consultation, even if I am personally
 sure that there are very clear legal or excellent good and important
 or urgent governance reasons to make changes.

 For those on Monday morning finding a little egg left on their faces,
 perhaps it is time to brew some freshly ground coffee, make some hot
 buttered toast and turn this into a productive breakfast? Stay mellow.
 ;-)

 PS I'm not attempting to claim any high ground here, so before anyone
 points it out, yes I'm pretty darn flawed myself. Sometimes I do learn
 from mistakes though, I have a lifetime of foolishness to regret and
 learn from.

 Cheers,
 Fae
 --
 fae...@gmail.com http://j.mp/faewm
 Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/mfae

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)


On 5/13/13 9:27 AM, Heather Ford wrote:

On May 13, 2013, at 6:57 AM, phoebe ayers wrote:

You know, it's kind of the
ultimate Wikimedian tempest: arguing over who gets to add users and delete
pages on what is quite possibly the world's most boring wiki[1]...

I would take a stab and stay that it's not about who gets access but about how 
people are treated. Sending a mass email to a bunch of people saying that they 
no longer have admin access is pretty much like firing them by mass email with 
no warning - but it's probably a bit worse than that since the people who do 
this work do it because they love Wikipedia and because they care about it, and 
it's a slap in the face to be given the pink slip like this. And it is also 
rightfully worrying because it isn't the first time it's happened.

I know this because a few years ago, while perusing the WMF wiki, I noticed 
that my name had moved from current to past advisory board members. Shocked, I 
emailed around to find out what had happened. Apparently I'd been fired and 
thanked for my service (another mass email that had apparently gone to my 
iCommons email address and which I no longer had access to) but to this day I 
have never received any advice on why I was removed, despite asking for 
clarification in person and via email on a few occasions. I don't like to whine 
and complain [1] and I thought that it was just me, but it made me sad and 
upset because I felt like I'd done a lot for Wikimedia, was one of the few 
advisory board members who showed up to meetings and tried to get things done, 
and to be discarded like that was really upsetting.

This is what this is about. It's about people engaging with one another on a 
personal, human level and understanding what it means to be a part of this 
thing, this crazy wonderful thing. Maybe it also takes some deeper engagement 
in editing these things to understand the implications of what seems to be just 
a technical thing like removing rights, placing in different categories but is 
heavily political, heavily personal.

And so I'd offer different advice from taking a walk or eating an ice cream or 
writing more mass emails to this list. I'd suggest that the people concerned to 
write personal emails to the *individuals* who were affected by this and to 
engage in a conversation among individuals about why this happened and how 
they're going to make it better together. At iCommons, when I was on the 
receiving end of similar anger, I had a mantra that I tried to stick to. When 
someone sends something that is upsetting, get on the phone with them. Sort it 
out one-on-one. This, for me, passionately for me, is what's needed here.

Best,
Heather

[1] here I am whining and complaining but hopefully it is to make a point at 
least.

Heather Ford
Oxford Internet Institute Doctoral Programme
www.ethnographymatters.nethttp://www.ethnographymatters.net
@hfordsa on Twitter
http://hblog.org



And for the record, here are the minutes of the discussion which 
ultimately resulted in the removal of several advisory board members.

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/November_13-15,_2009#Advisory_Board_Update

I sympathize Heather.


Regarding your proposition... I believe it is a good one.

This said... attempts to implement it may reveal really hard for the 
person looking for a phone discussion. Calling anyone at San Francisco 
is a real challenge as everything is done to discourage people to call 
the office (I understand why :)).


I tried too many times to have good memory of that experience...
(answering machine... talking to me in English... asking me unknown 
extension numbers... pouah)



Florence



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-13 Thread Federico Leva (Nemo)


Philippe Beaudette, 13/05/2013 11:21:

I actually was, Florence :-)


Let's see... https://en.wikipedia.org/?diff=prevoldid=55625971
First (registered user, non deleted) edit 28 May... so not 7 years yet? ;-)
And of course answering on day counts is a very constructive way to 
address Florence's points, congrats.


Nemo

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-13 Thread Heather Ford

On May 13, 2013, at 9:10 AM, Florence Devouard wrote:

On 5/13/13 9:27 AM, Heather Ford wrote:
On May 13, 2013, at 6:57 AM, phoebe ayers wrote:

You know, it's kind of the
ultimate Wikimedian tempest: arguing over who gets to add users and delete
pages on what is quite possibly the world's most boring wiki[1]...

I would take a stab and stay that it's not about who gets access but about how 
people are treated. Sending a mass email to a bunch of people saying that they 
no longer have admin access is pretty much like firing them by mass email with 
no warning - but it's probably a bit worse than that since the people who do 
this work do it because they love Wikipedia and because they care about it, and 
it's a slap in the face to be given the pink slip like this. And it is also 
rightfully worrying because it isn't the first time it's happened.

I know this because a few years ago, while perusing the WMF wiki, I noticed 
that my name had moved from current to past advisory board members. Shocked, I 
emailed around to find out what had happened. Apparently I'd been fired and 
thanked for my service (another mass email that had apparently gone to my 
iCommons email address and which I no longer had access to) but to this day I 
have never received any advice on why I was removed, despite asking for 
clarification in person and via email on a few occasions. I don't like to whine 
and complain [1] and I thought that it was just me, but it made me sad and 
upset because I felt like I'd done a lot for Wikimedia, was one of the few 
advisory board members who showed up to meetings and tried to get things done, 
and to be discarded like that was really upsetting.

This is what this is about. It's about people engaging with one another on a 
personal, human level and understanding what it means to be a part of this 
thing, this crazy wonderful thing. Maybe it also takes some deeper engagement 
in editing these things to understand the implications of what seems to be just 
a technical thing like removing rights, placing in different categories but is 
heavily political, heavily personal.

And so I'd offer different advice from taking a walk or eating an ice cream or 
writing more mass emails to this list. I'd suggest that the people concerned to 
write personal emails to the *individuals* who were affected by this and to 
engage in a conversation among individuals about why this happened and how 
they're going to make it better together. At iCommons, when I was on the 
receiving end of similar anger, I had a mantra that I tried to stick to. When 
someone sends something that is upsetting, get on the phone with them. Sort it 
out one-on-one. This, for me, passionately for me, is what's needed here.

Best,
Heather

[1] here I am whining and complaining but hopefully it is to make a point at 
least.

Heather Ford
Oxford Internet Institute Doctoral Programme
www.ethnographymatters.nethttp://www.ethnographymatters.net
@hfordsa on Twitter
http://hblog.org


And for the record, here are the minutes of the discussion which ultimately 
resulted in the removal of several advisory board members.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/November_13-15,_2009#Advisory_Board_Update

I sympathize Heather.


Regarding your proposition... I believe it is a good one.

This said... attempts to implement it may reveal really hard for the person 
looking for a phone discussion. Calling anyone at San Francisco is a real 
challenge as everything is done to discourage people to call the office (I 
understand why :)).

Ah, I meant it more as people in the San Francisco office calling (or at least 
attempting to call) volunteers :) A personal email would be a good second best, 
though :) Sending apologies to the whole list: certainly. But sending apologies 
to real individuals affected by this requires personal emails - and not just 
the ones where you copy and paste!


I tried too many times to have good memory of that experience...
(answering machine... talking to me in English... asking me unknown extension 
numbers... pouah)


Florence



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-13 Thread Philippe Beaudette

Previous account, Nemo. :)

—
Philippe Beaudette
Director, Community Advocacy
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc



On May 13, 2013, at 3:01 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote:

 Philippe Beaudette, 13/05/2013 11:21:
 I actually was, Florence :-)

 Let's see... https://en.wikipedia.org/?diff=prevoldid=55625971
 First (registered user, non deleted) edit 28 May... so not 7 years yet? ;-)
 And of course answering on day counts is a very constructive way to address 
 Florence's points, congrats.

 Nemo

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)


omg, he just admitted sockpupetting !!!


On 5/13/13 12:35 PM, Philippe Beaudette wrote:

Previous account, Nemo. :)

—
Philippe Beaudette
Director, Community Advocacy
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc



On May 13, 2013, at 3:01 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote:


Philippe Beaudette, 13/05/2013 11:21:

I actually was, Florence :-)


Let's see... https://en.wikipedia.org/?diff=prevoldid=55625971
First (registered user, non deleted) edit 28 May... so not 7 years yet? ;-)
And of course answering on day counts is a very constructive way to address 
Florence's points, congrats.

Nemo


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-13 Thread Tomasz W. Kozlowski

This isn't a comment aimed at anyone in particular, so I'm not going to 
quote anybody, but can we please stop hijacking this thread, and posting 
about how Wikimedia Foundation staff are also humans and how the WMF was 
badly organised X years ago — which are valid discussion for a different 
time — and get back to the bottom of the topic?


Here are some questions that I asked, and which haven't been covered at 
all:


1) Who made the decision to remove adminship from all community members?
2) Why did you make this decision now? What changed?
3) Who precisely (what department) is responsible for the maintenance of 
the wiki, and why didn't they perform their roles before?


And a question that I think someone else asked:
1) For how long has the decision of removing adminship from those 
community members been discussed behind the closed door of the WMF, and 
who participated in that discussion?


I think that having those questions answered will bring much more value 
than focusing on things that have been discussed over and over in the past.


(Also, I think that FT2's idea of working together on creating 
guidelines and best practices for moving forward proposals — both 
technical and community-related — is worth looking at.)


-- Tomasz

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-13 Thread Yaroslav M. Blanter


On 13.05.2013 14:07, Tomasz W. Kozlowski wrote:

This isn't a comment aimed at anyone in particular, so I'm not going
to quote anybody, but can we please stop hijacking this thread, and
posting about how Wikimedia Foundation staff are also humans and how
the WMF was badly organised X years ago — which are valid discussion
for a different time — and get back to the bottom of the topic?

Here are some questions that I asked, and which haven't been covered 
at all:


1) Who made the decision to remove adminship from all community 
members?

2) Why did you make this decision now? What changed?
3) Who precisely (what department) is responsible for the maintenance
of the wiki, and why didn't they perform their roles before?

And a question that I think someone else asked:
1) For how long has the decision of removing adminship from those
community members been discussed behind the closed door of the WMF,
and who participated in that discussion?



If I read the e-mails correctly, 1 and 2 were covered. 1 is Gayle, and 
2 is that it was on her to do list for a long time, so apparently she 
decided to perform this on Friday afternoon since it was not pleasant 
and had to be done anyway.


I am not sure though pursuing these questions is very much 
constructive. I personally would be more interested in 5) what measures 
are to be taken to exclude this in the future, and 6) how can we 
continue assuming good faith and be nice to each other.


FT2 tried to relegate these questions to a separate thread, but so far 
unfortunately without much follow-up.

Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-13 Thread Matthew Roth

Wading into the water here. I hope we can separate the blog issue out a bit
from the Foundation wiki issue, at least in terms of the user rights part.

I was the one who changed a whole slew of user rights from Editor to
Contributor, which in our WordPress setup limits some of their abilities,
like approving comments, uploading files and editing posts written by other
people, among others. I was cleaning up old emails from previous WMF
Communications interns/volunteers, staff members and others I hadn't seen
active in the two years I've been here. It was easy to see who was former
staff (@wikimedia.org emails), but not as much with volunteers who had been
given access in the past (and there were a number of them with zero
activity in years). I should have been more careful and I'm happy to
reinstate Editor rights for anyone else I inadvertently moved (and
upset).

I'm sorry Casey and Alex for the confusion. I've moved your accounts back
to the Editor rights category. If I bungled anyone else's permissions,
please let me know.

thanks,
Matthew

On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 7:43 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter pute...@mccme.ruwrote:

On 13.05.2013 14:07, Tomasz W. Kozlowski wrote:

This isn't a comment aimed at anyone in particular, so I'm not going
to quote anybody, but can we please stop hijacking this thread, and
posting about how Wikimedia Foundation staff are also humans and how
the WMF was badly organised X years ago — which are valid discussion
for a different time — and get back to the bottom of the topic?

Here are some questions that I asked, and which haven't been covered at
all:

1) Who made the decision to remove adminship from all community members?
2) Why did you make this decision now? What changed?
3) Who precisely (what department) is responsible for the maintenance
of the wiki, and why didn't they perform their roles before?

And a question that I think someone else asked:
1) For how long has the decision of removing adminship from those
community members been discussed behind the closed door of the WMF,
and who participated in that discussion?

If I read the e-mails correctly, 1 and 2 were covered. 1 is Gayle, and 2
is that it was on her to do list for a long time, so apparently she
decided to perform this on Friday afternoon since it was not pleasant and
had to be done anyway.

I am not sure though pursuing these questions is very much constructive. I
personally would be more interested in 5) what measures are to be taken to
exclude this in the future, and 6) how can we continue assuming good faith
and be nice to each other.

FT2 tried to relegate these questions to a separate thread, but so far
unfortunately without much follow-up.
Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-13 Thread Todd Allen

Philippe,

Thank you for a thoughtful reply. I have especially taken seriously your
advice to moderate the tone, something I have been guilty of in the past.
We expect editors to treat one another respectfully even when they
disagree, and I think staff should receive the same courtesy.

That aside, I do indeed disagree.

Communication is not the problem. Yes, it was a problem here, but it was
not -the- problem.

This started for me with ACTRIAL. The community came to an unprecedented
consensus for a major change, and asked WMF to implement.

WMF said no.

The community looked at the new new-message system and clearly said Do not
want! Roll it back!

WMF said no.

I see a precipice too. But that precipice is with WMF attempting to rule,
rather than serve, the communities they lead. Just like project admins are
expected to use their technical authority to uphold and implement community
consensus, never to overrule or subvert it, so should we expect the same of
WMF. We know how to run our projects better than you do.

After ACTRIAL, we heard the same thing-We communicated poorly. Much of
the frustration you see, and certainly my own, is the I didn't hear that
aspect.

When you overrule the community, it is a slap in the face. You are telling
the volunteers who took the time to develop and gain consensus for their
proposal that they both wasted their time and do not know what they are
doing. What we are saying is not Give us a little better notice when you
plan to slap our face or Please explain a little better why you slapped
my face. It is, instead, Please stop slapping my face.

Once again, you are being told You are standing on my toes. Perhaps it was
inadvertent, but it hurts. Please move. What I would like to be clear on
is that when you hear that with one voice from the community, it requires
not an apology or explanation, but a reversal. That didn't happen in the
two scenarios I mentioned, and it hasn't in several others. Yes, that
created bitterness and mistrust, disillusionment and many to leave
altogether. To ask a serious question, not intended to be sarcastic or
rhetorical, did you foresee some other outcome from such absolute overrules?

I hope I've spoken clearly and without undue bitterness, but I feel this
point must be made clearly. Communication isn't the root problem. Heavy
handedness is. I suppose you could say the problem is in listening. The
community is, in many cases, coming to a strong consensus on what it does
and does not want. The WMF is ignoring that and doing something else.

You won't stop that from being a problem by communicating better or sooner.
At the end of the day, we need you to stop doing that.

Here, you've been told We disapprove of this action. Do we talk around it
and leave more resentment to linger? Or do you listen and reverse it?

Thanks if you took the time to read all this. I see a precipice, too. Let's
all step back.

Regards,

Todd Allen
On May 12, 2013 7:04 PM, Philippe Beaudette phili...@wikimedia.org
wrote:

 So, I took Florence's excellent advice and went for a walk (beautiful day
 in SF, by the way - absolutely perfect).

 And I reflected on what I've seen since flipping the switch on things
 last Friday.  Here's where I stand, and I haven't discussed this with
 anyone else at WMF, including Gayle.

 At the expense of sounding trite, I think I can safely say Mistakes were
 made.  Gayle was trying to solve a real problem, and she got a lot of
 advice on how to do that.  But the principle role of a staff member in a
 role such as mine is to advise, I think, and I'm afraid that I didn't
 offer good advice in this case.  I don't think I gave bad advice - rather,
 I didn't give as good of advice as I could have.  What our leadership
 should be able to expect from staff is that we look at things from a
 different perspective, and I think I failed to get as far out of my own
 head and into other peoples' to offer that varying perspective.  So when I
 say that mistakes were made, I include my role in that, through commission
 or omission, and I sincerely apologize for that.

 With that said: I'm afraid we're headed toward a precipice.  What I'm
 seeing scares me.  I see less and less good faith being offered toward the
 WMF.  One of the arguments that doesn't work for me is seven years ago the
 WMF didn't make these mistakes - because seven years ago the WMF was
 paralyzed from lack of strategy and direction.  All of that has changed and
 the WMF is out and aggressively trying things to arrest the editor decline
 and improve the user experience.  And yet, when our talented engineers try
 a data-driven tactic for something that needs to change, they're lambasted
 for forgetting the existing community.  And yet everyone here knows that if
 we don't change some things, things will get very very ugly, very very
 quickly.

 One of the things that must continue to change is the tone on the wikis,
 and the tone (in IRC and by email) between staff and volunteers.  I

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-13 Thread Dariusz Jemielniak

hi Florence,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sock_puppetry

sockpuppeting is using more than one account in the same time. There are
legitimate situations when users have a new account set up (e.g. after
forgetting a password). Also, some users have multiple accounts for privacy
reasons. Finally, we also have a clean start policy, which is not
considered improper.

Regarding the whole crisis now, and in particular in relation to wiki (not
blog) I believe that two things need to be separated: the decision to get
rid of community admins from wiki, and the way it was enforced.

I think I'm quite neutral to the decision itself. If it is a WMF wiki, and
if indeed there were some problems with staff being overridden by
volunteers, I think it may perhaps make some sense to leave it to WMF.
However, the way this change was introduced was definitely poorly planned,
badly communicated (and not announced ahead of time), occasionally harsh,
quite insensitive. Also, clearly, some discussion ahead of time would be
good - both to let people know, but also to let the community think about
addressing the problems related to it, too.

I believe that especially Gayle, but also Philippe, have expressed their
sincere apologies for the way things turned out, and for their
unthoughtfulness prior to going through with the plan. Gayle also promised
to reflect more on the issue once she gets back to the office. I think that
this is quite a good way to deal with the problem.

best,

Dariusz (pundit)

On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 1:45 PM, Florence Devouard anthe...@yahoo.comwrote:

omg, he just admitted sockpupetting !!!

On 5/13/13 12:35 PM, Philippe Beaudette wrote:

Previous account, Nemo. :)

--
Philippe Beaudette
Director, Community Advocacy
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc

On May 13, 2013, at 3:01 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com
wrote:

Philippe Beaudette, 13/05/2013 11:21:

I actually was, Florence :-)

Let's see...
https://en.wikipedia.org/?**diff=prevoldid=55625971https://en.wikipedia.org/?diff=prevoldid=55625971

First (registered user, non deleted) edit 28 May... so not 7 years yet?
;-)
And of course answering on day counts is a very constructive way to
address Florence's points, congrats.

Nemo

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-13 Thread Theo10011

On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 10:09 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak dar...@alk.edu.plwrote:

 hi Florence,

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sock_puppetry

 sockpuppeting is using more than one account in the same time. There are
 legitimate situations when users have a new account set up (e.g. after
 forgetting a password). Also, some users have multiple accounts for privacy
 reasons. Finally, we also have a clean start policy, which is not
 considered improper.


facepalm

Do you know anything about Florence? BTW Aren't you the FDC chair?

-Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-13 Thread Andy Mabbett

On 13 May 2013 18:01, Oliver Keyes oke...@wikimedia.org wrote:

.You bring
 up Echo; yes, we didn't bring the Orange Bar back. But we spent a lot of
 cycles coming up with alternatives, running them past people, with many
 editors and many staffers actively engaged in the process. We had
 designers, developers, product managers participating in the discussion,

And still you miss (if not ignore) the point; you removed something
which was useful; consensus - supported by justifications and
experience - was that it should be restored, and you ignored that
consensus.

You consulted on options including that restoration; and when it it
was supported, you disregarded it out-of-hand.

You (collectively) made unsupportable assertions and accusations, and
resorted to snide comments when called on them.

 and in the end we came up with something that everyone, well, begrudgingly
 tolerates.

And that's just downright false.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-13 Thread David Goodman

Basically, you (in the plural)  thought you could do better than the
consensus, and therefore simply without rejecting it , did not implement it
while you tried other things first.   All these trials would have been
good, ''had they been done before implementation.'' I am waiting for
someone from the foundation to come out and agree to that, a recognition
that the error was that they needed to be done first.

I am then waiting for a statement that all future changes of this sort will
be broadly announced and trialed first,

And I'm further waiting for a statement that the  actual implementation
will depend on the consensus.

Frankly, if these are not forthcoming, the community needs to consider what
it can do to retain control over the interface. While  some individuals at
the WMF may have greater individual expertise at some of the things
involved, they collectively do not have better judgment than the editing
community about what makes a good editing interface. They may have the
power to override it, but  they do not have the right to do so.   If they
think they ought to have the right, let them justify it.

Probably the first step is to insist on its consensus on this feature. I
wouldn't want to make an example of this otherwise, but unless we have  an
acknowledgement that we will have the right to decide in the future, the
time to assert our right to decide is now. The WMF presumably thinks it can
out-wait us, and needs to learn otherwise.   I'm not eager to do this:
I've heard some ideas, and I hope we do not need them.




On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 1:32 PM, Andy Mabbett a...@pigsonthewing.org.ukwrote:

 On 13 May 2013 18:01, Oliver Keyes oke...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 .You bring
  up Echo; yes, we didn't bring the Orange Bar back. But we spent a lot of
  cycles coming up with alternatives, running them past people, with many
  editors and many staffers actively engaged in the process. We had
  designers, developers, product managers participating in the discussion,

 And still you miss (if not ignore) the point; you removed something
 which was useful; consensus - supported by justifications and
 experience - was that it should be restored, and you ignored that
 consensus.

 You consulted on options including that restoration; and when it it
 was supported, you disregarded it out-of-hand.

 You (collectively) made unsupportable assertions and accusations, and
 resorted to snide comments when called on them.

  and in the end we came up with something that everyone, well,
 begrudgingly
  tolerates.

 And that's just downright false.

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-- 
David Goodman

DGG at the enWP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-13 Thread Isarra Yos

Employees have a separate wiki specifically for employee things. The 
foundationwiki is different from that, serving as a forefront to the 
movement itself, something which we are all a part of - and that admin 
access should be reflecting people's specific type of association with 
the movement doesn't seem to be a decided fact.


On 13/05/13 07:59, Jane Darnell wrote:

I can sympathize with the issue, namely, that it would be nice if only
Foundation employees could be allowed admin access on their own wiki.
I recall a similar issue (which was not so widely blown up) for our
WMNL board wiki in the Netherlands (and yes Phoebe, that is a very
boring wiki). I find it interesting to read Gayle's reaction, but I
don't think she should have apologized.

The way the community interacts with newbies is unforgiveable, period.
This is a perfect example of the reason that many women will go away
after their first few edits, or they grow some sort of special magic
Wikipedia filter. Even if she was just the messenger and it was
Philippe's idea, as far as the reactions to Gayle go, I agree with
Philippe's it's often damn hard to wade into these waters..., but I
would rather conclude with Staff members are Wikipedians too.

And don't get me started on the concept of higher standards!!

2013/5/13, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com:

On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 10:32 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo)
nemow...@gmail.comwrote:


Casey Brown, 13/05/2013 07:05:


[...] [Note that I'm speaking generally -- I personally think Gayle can

handle criticism and she seems very nice. She also probably had no
idea this would create dramz. My comment is directed towards the
general omg think of the staff member! response to criticism that is
systemic in our movement.]


Still, omg think of the staff member! seems to be the point Gayle and
Philippe make on this thread. If history teaches something, I guess the
board will soon approve a resolution to request the development of a
Personal Communitymember Filter to AT LAST hide all that offensive content
in our community. MediaWiki-mailman integration offers some challenges,
but
our commitment to openness will swiftly help, shutting down more mailing
lists in favour of wiki discussions.

Nemo


Au contraire, I feel we should all earn some kind of barnstar just for
participating in this discussion/situation. You know, it's kind of the
ultimate Wikimedian tempest: arguing over who gets to add users and delete
pages on what is quite possibly the world's most boring wiki[1]...

It's also a quintessentially Wikimedian debate because there's all this
subtext -- assumed but not articulated -- that isn't minor at all: about
community ownership versus corporate control, about who has authority to
make decisions in what sphere, about the role volunteers play in the
organization, over what personal reputation means on the projects, over
what admin rights mean, what kind of work environment the staff have, etc..
I'm gonna take a stab in the dark here and guess that Gayle wasn't
intending to start a debate on all these big important topics, or even
perhaps to comment on them at all. I'm also gonna say from experience that
it's often damn hard to wade into these waters and take an action *without*
touching off a debate on all these subjects. As someone said upthread, the
golden rule does help, as does practice working with the wiki way, and
knowing all the personal ins and outs of Wikimedia and our arcane culture.
But *even that* doesn't always save someone from making an unpopular
decision, or from screwing up or not thinking through all the ways they
might be wading into a minefield -- and that goes for all of us, staff,
board,  community alike. Hey, ask me how I know.

Sheesh, being part of the world's biggest collaborative project is hard
sometimes.

-- phoebe


1. I exempt, of course, the internal wiki at my workplace, which has won
the crown many years running.
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-— Isarra


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-13 Thread Dariusz Jemielniak

Theo,

I know who Florence is and was, and quite honestly her suggestion that
Philippe was sockpuppeting in my view only called for this short reminder.
And if she joked, I'm sure she appreciated it, too. :)

PS You forgot the /facepalm tag!

dj


On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 7:31 PM, Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 10:09 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak dar...@alk.edu.plwrote:

 hi Florence,

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sock_puppetry

 sockpuppeting is using more than one account in the same time. There are
 legitimate situations when users have a new account set up (e.g. after
 forgetting a password). Also, some users have multiple accounts for
 privacy
 reasons. Finally, we also have a clean start policy, which is not
 considered improper.


 facepalm

 Do you know anything about Florence? BTW Aren't you the FDC chair?

 -Theo




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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-13 Thread Erik Moeller

On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 10:56 AM, David Goodman dgge...@gmail.com wrote:
 Basically, you (in the plural)  thought you could do better than the
 consensus, and therefore simply without rejecting it , did not implement it
 while you tried other things first.   All these trials would have been
 good, ''had they been done before implementation.'' I am waiting for
 someone from the foundation to come out and agree to that, a recognition
 that the error was that they needed to be done first.

Hi David,

I'm a little bit lost as to what you're referring to here, is this
about the decision to not reinstate the orange notifications bar after
the Echo rollout? If so, I already clarified [1] that I felt that we
didn't do a good job recognizing the likely impact of this change
earlier and addressing it more systematically upfront. We've since
implemented a compromise, and work is continuing to iterate on this
and other aspects of the new notifications system.

In general, for features rollouts (and if we want to talk more about
this, we should really split the thread), my recommendation is to
adopt a beta-production mode switch similar to the mobile site, which
will give us a generalized way to test new features with users who are
willing to do so, while not committing us to provide an opt-out
preference or mode switch for every new feature (which, while an easy
way to appease upset users, is also a recipe for technical debt). Had
Echo been available in beta on en.wp for a while before being
activated, I think the rollout could have been a lot smoother.

All best,
Erik

[1] 
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Notificationsdiff=prevoldid=553547662

--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-13 Thread Tomasz W. Kozlowski


Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote:

If I read the e-mails correctly, 1 and 2 were covered. 1 is Gayle, and 2 
is that it was on her to do list for a long time, so apparently she 
decided to perform this on Friday afternoon since it was not pleasant 
and had to be done anyway.


I'm not so sure about this, actually. Gayle clearly writes that they 
have been talking internally for a while, which suggests that more 
people have been involved in making this decision.


Knowing whether this was just a decision taken between Gayle and 
Philippe, or whether more senior WMF staff members have been involved 
(Erik? Sue?) would definitely change the way I feel about it, and could 
also have other consequences.


Also, the fact that this subject might have been on Gayle's to-do list 
for a while doesn't answer the second part of my question — the one 
about the changes which prompted such a sudden removal of rights from 
those volunteers.


I am not sure though pursuing these questions is very much constructive. 
I personally would be more interested in 5) what measures are to be 
taken to exclude this in the future, and 6) how can we continue assuming 
good faith and be nice to each other.


Seconded–having those questions answer would really help. I'll also try 
to follow up to FT2's proposal in a more constructive way — maybe by 
starting a page on Meta, I'll see what can be done.


-- Tomasz

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

On 5/13/13 6:39 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak wrote:

hi Florence,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sock_puppetry

Eh. I know... I was joking Dariusz. As in ... trying to lighten the
smoky atmosphere :)

Because I disagree with Philippe on his current stance and I think his
advice to Gayle was no good advice. But I love the guy 100% (or even
more than 100% since I discovered he had a big boy...) so I can live
with our disagreement anyway and forgive him for the bad move.

best,

Exactly. Well put.

Flo

Dariusz (pundit)

On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 1:45 PM, Florence Devouard anthe...@yahoo.comwrote:

omg, he just admitted sockpupetting !!!

On 5/13/13 12:35 PM, Philippe Beaudette wrote:

Previous account, Nemo. :)

--
Philippe Beaudette
Director, Community Advocacy
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc

On May 13, 2013, at 3:01 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com
wrote:

Philippe Beaudette, 13/05/2013 11:21:

I actually was, Florence :-)

Let's see...
https://en.wikipedia.org/?**diff=prevoldid=55625971https://en.wikipedia.org/?diff=prevoldid=55625971

First (registered user, non deleted) edit 28 May... so not 7 years yet?
;-)
And of course answering on day counts is a very constructive way to
address Florence's points, congrats.

Nemo

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-13 Thread David Goodman

right; wrong thread.

But yes,beta is good,as with the virtual editor.


On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 2:15 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 10:56 AM, David Goodman dgge...@gmail.com wrote:
  Basically, you (in the plural)  thought you could do better than the
  consensus, and therefore simply without rejecting it , did not implement
 it
  while you tried other things first.   All these trials would have been
  good, ''had they been done before implementation.'' I am waiting for
  someone from the foundation to come out and agree to that, a recognition
  that the error was that they needed to be done first.

 Hi David,

 I'm a little bit lost as to what you're referring to here, is this
 about the decision to not reinstate the orange notifications bar after
 the Echo rollout? If so, I already clarified [1] that I felt that we
 didn't do a good job recognizing the likely impact of this change
 earlier and addressing it more systematically upfront. We've since
 implemented a compromise, and work is continuing to iterate on this
 and other aspects of the new notifications system.

 In general, for features rollouts (and if we want to talk more about
 this, we should really split the thread), my recommendation is to
 adopt a beta-production mode switch similar to the mobile site, which
 will give us a generalized way to test new features with users who are
 willing to do so, while not committing us to provide an opt-out
 preference or mode switch for every new feature (which, while an easy
 way to appease upset users, is also a recipe for technical debt). Had
 Echo been available in beta on en.wp for a while before being
 activated, I think the rollout could have been a lot smoother.

 All best,
 Erik

 [1]
 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Notificationsdiff=prevoldid=553547662

 --
 Erik Möller
 VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation

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-- 
David Goodman

DGG at the enWP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-12 Thread Craig Franklin

Well, perhaps there was extensive consultation from Phillippe and Gayle if
it had been planned over a long period of time and I just missed it.  If
that's the case, I'm sure that one of them will point it out for us first
thing on Monday morning, at which point I'd have to start removing egg from
my face ;-)

Cheers,
Craig


On 12 May 2013 14:15, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote:

 It's also worth noting this wasn't a last minute decision at all; its
 foreshadowed in a number of comments by Philippe going back to
 seemingly mid-March, and there may be warnings of it earlier. So the
 WMF staff have been discussing this change internally for at least 6
 weeks or so. That's a long time to not think up a better plan for
 rolling it out.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)


On 5/11/13 8:01 PM, Seb35 wrote:

Thanks a lot for this explanation.

On the other side, wikis not only need content producers (here WMF) but
also curators (wikignomes) who are sorting the pages, deleting and
moving pages, typocorrecting, templating things, helping new users in
formatting texts, etc. (I read some of the Florence’s blogposts :) --
and not being admin restricts a lot the possible actions.


Yeah ! :-)

As a side note, Philippe has apparently restored my admin status (I did 
not ask any special favor) upon the reason that I am on the Advisory Board.


But let me put it this way...

I do not buy the argument offered by Sue that But, my understanding is 
also that occasionally volunteers have overridden decisions made by 
staff on the Wikimedia Foundation wiki.


Sorry Sue... but this is a very poor argument. If there is a problem 
with ONE or TWO editors (was there at least two ?) then the way to go is 
to talk with this editor, not to remove all volunteer administrators who 
have been helping nicely for so many years.


In the past, we used to talk about soft security as opposed to hard 
security. Hard security was about passwords, rights, filters, walls, 
blocking, deleting and such. Soft security was about conversations, peer 
reviews, reversions, recent changes, and other collaborative transparent 
processes.
We have been going on for over 10 years primarily relying on soft 
security. And it did not work so badly in the end. Because for one bad 
person, and one confused, there were swarms of good people.
Is not that sad that staff decided that soft security was no more the 
way to go, and that implementing hard security to prevent problems with 
ONE or TWO people was a better way than relying upon dozen of good 
people and spending a little bit of time discussing with the confused ?


The decision made by staff make it appear that volunteers are more an 
inconvenience than a help.


I can not blame a staff member to feel this way if he had to spent some 
time arguing with a volunteer whilst he had a mandate to do something 
specific and the volunteer was preventing it (whether a good or bad 
idea). It can be very annoying ;)


However, I feel that management and board should have a slightly higher 
view on the matter and should realize how much they actually DO NEED the 
volunteers to BE happy and to FEEL useful and appreciated (See the 
recent discussion related to Wikimedia Hong Kong) and to reflect whether 
the long term outcome of the decision to remove admin rights to 
volunteers on the foundation wiki (and blog if I understood well) is a 
good idea or not.



Alternatively, it might be good to really move as much as possible of 
the Wikimedia Foundation Wiki to meta (where at least, the community is 
in charge of who is admin and who is not).




Flo

PS: however, do note that it is a good idea to remove admin flags from 
users who quit the community entirely.



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)


On 5/12/13 8:13 PM, David Gerard wrote:

On 12 May 2013 18:47, Florence Devouard anthe...@yahoo.com wrote:


Alternatively, it might be good to really move as much as possible of the
Wikimedia Foundation Wiki to meta (where at least, the community is in
charge of who is admin and who is not).



This is a good idea anyway.

Having the WMF wiki become a staff-controlled operation is not an
outlandish or terrible idea - it's the official site of the nonprofit
itself, after all. But this was not a good way to do it.

That said, there are projects who do much worse. Here's GNOME's
attempt to win the XFree86 Memorial Award for Community Management for
2013: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=698544


- d.


:) Yeah, pretty bad.

The main reason I would consider WMF wiki SHOULD NOT be an entirely 
staff-controlled and operated site is the fact we originally wanted it 
to be at least in part multilingual.


Current staff does not seem to be very interested in that original wish.

Some requests for translation are sometimes made but lot's of outdated 
content is still over there. Sometimes, it does not matter too much. 
Other times, it is quite unfortunate. Check out for example

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy

Important ? yes
Should be translated ? I would say yes, as much as possible
Should old versions stick there ? I would say vehemently no, should not

Still, many languages still display the old version.
The staff will hide itself behind the fact that only the English 
version matters. Which is why Dutch is still the old version: 
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacybeleid

Is that good ? No, I would say it is not serious.

Who can help clean that up ?
Well... if not the volunteers, then it would have to be the staff job. 
Except I doubt the staff would consider that to be part of its job. If 
only because staff does not speak 300 languages.


What's the best way to motivate volunteers to help with translation and 
update of non-English content ? I am not sure, but probably not in 
removing their admin bit as if they were dangerous people. Right now, I 
would go as far as saying that WMF on the contrary should look out for 
more people to help clean up ;)


How does that happen right now ? Well, volunteers do ask on meta to get 
an account for WMF wiki. Where ? Here: 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Request_for_an_account_on_the_Foundation_wiki


And guess who is taking care of giving them access ?
A volunteer who has the technical means to create them accounts.
Oh wait... not any more. Ah, hum. Well, I take it a staff member will do 
that in the future :)


---

Alternatively, the staff, with the official support of their management 
and the board can decide that the Foundation wiki should not try any 
more to be translated in other languages and should stick to what it 
actually is: a US-based non profit company.


Translations may be non-official... and on meta.

---

The multilingualism we hoped so dearly has always been an issue. It is 
poorly dealt with on the Wikimedia Foundation blog. Poorly dealt with on 
the Foundation Wiki. Poorly dealt with on OTRS.


:(

Florence


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)


On 5/12/13 8:26 PM, Thehelpfulone wrote:

On 12 May 2013 18:47, Florence Devouard anthe...@yahoo.com wrote:


Alternatively, it might be good to really move as much as possible of the
Wikimedia Foundation Wiki to meta (where at least, the community is in
charge of who is admin and who is not).



Mostly in charge, there are a few exceptions where adminship has been
granted by WMF staff for their work without going through any formal
community procedures:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Administrators#Temporary_adminship_or_adminship_by_decree




I do not see that as a really problematic issue. Unfortunate, but not 
really problematic. As long as the appointed admin behave within 
community rules and does good, there is only damage to our pride and 
disrespect to the rules. But ... results over rules. Result is what 
matters. Rules is only a way to get there.


A serious problem would be
* IF the staff was the one deciding who is admin generally
* IF the staff was boldly removing admin access to volunteers



Still, if you want to be a bit pointy, you should probably mention that 
it is unclear why 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Smazeland still 
needs to be an admin


Flo



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-12 Thread Thehelpfulone

On 12 May 2013 19:44, Florence Devouard anthe...@yahoo.com wrote:

:) Yeah, pretty bad.

The main reason I would consider WMF wiki SHOULD NOT be an entirely
staff-controlled and operated site is the fact we originally wanted it to
be at least in part multilingual.

Current staff does not seem to be very interested in that original wish.

Some requests for translation are sometimes made but lot's of outdated
content is still over there. Sometimes, it does not matter too much. Other
times, it is quite unfortunate. Check out for example
http://wikimediafoundation.**org/wiki/Privacy_policyhttp://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy

Important ? yes
Should be translated ? I would say yes, as much as possible
Should old versions stick there ? I would say vehemently no, should not

Still, many languages still display the old version.
The staff will hide itself behind the fact that only the English version
matters. Which is why Dutch is still the old version:
http://wikimediafoundation.**org/wiki/Privacybeleidhttp://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacybeleid
Is that good ? No, I would say it is not serious.

Who can help clean that up ?
Well... if not the volunteers, then it would have to be the staff job.
Except I doubt the staff would consider that to be part of its job. If only
because staff does not speak 300 languages.

What's the best way to motivate volunteers to help with translation and
update of non-English content ? I am not sure, but probably not in removing
their admin bit as if they were dangerous people. Right now, I would go as
far as saying that WMF on the contrary should look out for more people to
help clean up ;)

How does that happen right now ? Well, volunteers do ask on meta to get an
account for WMF wiki. Where ? Here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/**
wiki/Request_for_an_account_**on_the_Foundation_wikihttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Request_for_an_account_on_the_Foundation_wiki

And guess who is taking care of giving them access ?
A volunteer who has the technical means to create them accounts.
Oh wait... not any more. Ah, hum. Well, I take it a staff member will do
that in the future :)

---

Alternatively, the staff, with the official support of their management
and the board can decide that the Foundation wiki should not try any more
to be translated in other languages and should stick to what it actually
is: a US-based non profit company.

Translations may be non-official... and on meta.

---

The multilingualism we hoped so dearly has always been an issue. It is
poorly dealt with on the Wikimedia Foundation blog. Poorly dealt with on
the Foundation Wiki. Poorly dealt with on OTRS.

For what it's worth, I did try to get some re-translation organised in
early February: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/WMF and
asked communications staff at the WMF for their input. To be fair to them
they did say that they'd look into it and get back to me but I think they
might have been swamped with other things so it was forgotten.
--
Thehelpfulone
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Thehelpfulone
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-12 Thread Federico Leva (Nemo)


Thehelpfulone, 12/05/2013 20:58:

For what it's worth, I did try to get some re-translation organised in
early February: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/WMF and
asked communications staff at the WMF for their input. To be fair to them
they did say that they'd look into it and get back to me but I think they
might have been swamped with other things so it was forgotten.


I don't think staff has ever touched translation on WMF wiki, it's 
always been done by the almighty heroes Cbrown1023, Aphaia, Az1568 with 
their gazillion edits and a few others. It's unfair to think they'd have 
something to say.
Meta has the Translate extension, the translators and the community. At 
this point it's clear that foundationwiki is going to rot, we should 
just set up all the policies and important documents on Meta for 
translation and start the work again; we've been stuck for too many 
years now. Eventually, the links will go where the value is and nobody 
will care about the wasteland at foundationwiki.


Nemo

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-12 Thread Yaroslav M. Blanter


On 12.05.2013 20:44, Florence Devouard wrote:


The multilingualism we hoped so dearly has always been an issue. It
is poorly dealt with on the Wikimedia Foundation blog. Poorly dealt
with on the Foundation Wiki. Poorly dealt with on OTRS.

:(

Florence



If someone approaches me and asks to write a blog post about the 
Russian Wikivoyage (where I happen to be an admin) I could do it in two 
or three languages. (I certainly can survive if nobody does).


On the other hand if I only write it in Russian - would it be such a 
good idea? From what I know, the number of Russian Wikimedians who read 
the blog on a regular basis is measured by a single digit.


Cheers
Yaroslav

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)


On 5/12/13 9:28 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote:

On 12.05.2013 20:44, Florence Devouard wrote:


The multilingualism we hoped so dearly has always been an issue. It
is poorly dealt with on the Wikimedia Foundation blog. Poorly dealt
with on the Foundation Wiki. Poorly dealt with on OTRS.

:(

Florence



If someone approaches me and asks to write a blog post about the Russian
Wikivoyage (where I happen to be an admin) I could do it in two or three
languages. (I certainly can survive if nobody does).

On the other hand if I only write it in Russian - would it be such a
good idea? From what I know, the number of Russian Wikimedians who read
the blog on a regular basis is measured by a single digit.

Cheers
Yaroslav


Fortunately, we know that numbers is not always what matters ;)

Flo



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-12 Thread Philippe Beaudette

That is correct. Because despite your attempts to turn me into the
decision making authority here, I wasn't. You don't need to talk to
the worker bee who executed, you want to talk to the person who made
the decision. That's not me. And she is traveling.

And also, you know, I'm working brutal hours right now and yeah, I
wanted to try to not be posting this weekend. I had to deal with my
mistake in not removing Phoebes rights at the same time and I had to
deal with an elections thing. But was I anxious to come wading into a
situation where - despite you clearly being told that I wasn't a
decision maker - you continue to (for whatever reason) advance the
asinine position that someone must be pulling gayles strings and
therefore it must be me because I am evil?  No, you know, MZ, I didn't
come skipping gleefully to that conversation.

Let me be clear: I respect the work that you do. But I have zero time
for your distortions of the situation when you've been told that it
wasn't my decision.

You want an explanation?  I'm sure that Gayle will offer one. But for
the umpteenth time, I was the person pushing the button because
someone had to be. So lets leave my motivations out of this okay?  I'm
spending hundreds of hours per month fighting to support the volunteer
community here and your assignations to the contrary are insulting.

PB

—
Philippe Beaudette
Director, Community Advocacy
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc



On May 12, 2013, at 10:06 AM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote:

 Philippe has had time to go back and remove Phoebe's user rights and
 Philippe has had time to post to this mailing list about the upcoming
 Wikimedia elections, but he has chosen not to participate in this thread
 at all about his actions.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-12 Thread MZMcBride

Philippe Beaudette wrote:
You want an explanation?  I'm sure that Gayle will offer one. But for
the umpteenth time, I was the person pushing the button because
someone had to be.

Why did you feel compelled to act here when it wasn't your decision? Was
there something preventing Gayle from doing this herself?

It's pretty strange to involve yourself in this decision (that wasn't
yours) and then turn around and say well why are you pointing at me?!
You were raised in a wiki culture, just as I was, where an individual is
responsible for the actions of his or her account. You obviously felt an
obligation to act here. What remains unclear is why.

MZMcBride



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-12 Thread Federico Leva (Nemo)


MZMcBride, 12/05/2013 22:45:

Why did you feel compelled to act here when it wasn't your decision? Was
there something preventing Gayle from doing this herself?


Be honest, if Gayle had done this herself you would have said that maybe 
she hadn't read the documentation on Special:UserRights carefully and it 
was a mistake. :)




It's pretty strange to involve yourself in this decision (that wasn't
yours) and then turn around and say well why are you pointing at me?!
You were raised in a wiki culture, just as I was, where an individual is
responsible for the actions of his or her account. You obviously felt an
obligation to act here. What remains unclear is why.


To me it's very clear, nobody wanted to take responsibility or blame for 
the decision(*) so they let someone who's going out of town take the 
blame, someone in another department press the button, and the top 
management cover everything with flimsy rhetoric. Next time they could 
do better, the act could be executed before a longer holiday or be 
spread across more departments (a third person to send the notification 
emails, or a deflag squad of 14 staffers as with fusillading). But no 
worries, the WMF is still a young org and is learning.


Nemo

(*) Which may have been discussed for several weeks, as Nathan pointed out.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)


On 5/12/13 10:45 PM, MZMcBride wrote:

Philippe Beaudette wrote:

You want an explanation?  I'm sure that Gayle will offer one. But for
the umpteenth time, I was the person pushing the button because
someone had to be.


Why did you feel compelled to act here when it wasn't your decision? Was
there something preventing Gayle from doing this herself?

It's pretty strange to involve yourself in this decision (that wasn't
yours) and then turn around and say well why are you pointing at me?!
You were raised in a wiki culture, just as I was, where an individual is
responsible for the actions of his or her account. You obviously felt an
obligation to act here. What remains unclear is why.

MZMcBride


Why = contractual agreement with his employer. He may have been raised 
in the wiki culture, he has obligations as staff.


Give Philippe a break MZMcBride. You are obviously unhappy and there are 
reasons for that; But giving Philippe the bad ride is not the way to go. 
Take a break, drink a tea, grab chocolate, watch a movie, have a walk. 
Anything. It is Sunday anyway.


Flo




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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-12 Thread Craig Franklin

Thanks for clarifying this Phillippe.

I must say that I think this discussion is becoming unpleasantly personal
(and my initial email on the topic probably didn't help there, I concede).
 How about we stop pointing fingers at each other and conduct an honest and
transparent appraisal of what has happened with a view to learning lessons
from it so that it doesn't happen again.  I also have to point out that
while it's not ideal at all that this happened late on a Friday afternoon
when everyone was leaving the office, nor is it reasonable to expect paid
staff to snap to and respond on the weekends during their personal time.
 The damage has been done now, and it's not so urgent an issue that it
can't wait until Monday for a response.

Cheers,
Craig


On 13 May 2013 06:23, Philippe Beaudette pbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 That is correct. Because despite your attempts to turn me into the
 decision making authority here, I wasn't. You don't need to talk to
 the worker bee who executed, you want to talk to the person who made
 the decision. That's not me. And she is traveling.

 And also, you know, I'm working brutal hours right now and yeah, I
 wanted to try to not be posting this weekend. I had to deal with my
 mistake in not removing Phoebes rights at the same time and I had to
 deal with an elections thing. But was I anxious to come wading into a
 situation where - despite you clearly being told that I wasn't a
 decision maker - you continue to (for whatever reason) advance the
 asinine position that someone must be pulling gayles strings and
 therefore it must be me because I am evil?  No, you know, MZ, I didn't
 come skipping gleefully to that conversation.

 Let me be clear: I respect the work that you do. But I have zero time
 for your distortions of the situation when you've been told that it
 wasn't my decision.

 You want an explanation?  I'm sure that Gayle will offer one. But for
 the umpteenth time, I was the person pushing the button because
 someone had to be. So lets leave my motivations out of this okay?  I'm
 spending hundreds of hours per month fighting to support the volunteer
 community here and your assignations to the contrary are insulting.

 PB

 —
 Philippe Beaudette
 Director, Community Advocacy
 Wikimedia Foundation, Inc



 On May 12, 2013, at 10:06 AM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote:

  Philippe has had time to go back and remove Phoebe's user rights and
  Philippe has had time to post to this mailing list about the upcoming
  Wikimedia elections, but he has chosen not to participate in this thread
  at all about his actions.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-12 Thread Marc A. Pelletier

On 05/12/2013 04:42 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:
 The most he could ask from you is a comment on how frequently you have
 to be the one pushing the button against the community.

Again with this meme!

Against the community.

*NOBODY* works against the community.  Sometimes, we do things that
displease part, or most of the community.  Sometimes, there are
mistakes, flubbed judgment calls, and boneheaded gaffes.  By accident,
confusion or miscommunication, the community might have been harmed.
Occasionally, even, someone acts like a human and does something in
anger or stupidity that was clearly wrong in retrospect.

But Against the community means seeing the community as an adversary,
and acting to undermine or harm it.  The very *attitude* necessary to
say this is what causes those problems, trying to paint Us vs. Them on
what should be collaboration.

If you think Philippe - or through him Gayle - did what they did
against the community, then you have already have abandoned any
pretense of good faith towards the foundation and towards them
personally.  Unless you can back your assertions of malice, please take
them elsewhere.

/rant

-- Marc


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-12 Thread Tim Starling

On 12/05/13 02:48, Sue Gardner wrote:
 The staff working on the
 Wikimedia Foundation wiki have jobs they've got to get done, in support of
 the entire movement. If they spend days or weeks needing to persuade a
 single community member of the merits of something they want to do on the
 Foundation wiki, or if they need to modify their plans extensively to
 accommodate the opinions of a single community member, that reduces the
 amount of time available for them to do the rest of their work. Which, I
 repeat, is in the service of the movement overall.

So it was a response to a particular conflict?

 My understanding is that the Wikimedia Foundation staff who work on
 the Foundation wiki have been grateful (and are grateful) for the help
 they've gotten from community members in maintaining the Foundation wiki,
 and that we hope they'll continue to help us.

Let's hope so. But in my experience, stripping titles such as
administrator from volunteers is an excellent way to get them to
leave. It's not really about the technical privileges, these titles
are a recognition of good work done, and a symbol of trust, and are
one of the few rewards we give to volunteers. Stripping privileges
from a volunteer is upsetting, and undermines their core motivation
for contributing.

So I can appreciate that the conflict needed to be resolved, but I
have to wonder whether this was the best way to go about it.

-- Tim Starling


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-12 Thread Gayle Karen Young

Hello folks,

So... I caught bits of this while I was on layover between plane flights,
so I've had time to have the multiple reactions that one has (nothing like
an 11-hour flight to think about a situation). I've had time to feel
defensive, insulted, opened, humbled, curious, thoughtful, regretful,
optimistic...

This is an earnest “I'm sorry, I'll do better” and I don't perfectly know
what that looks like yet, because I (and I suspect like you) go from day to
day within in a complex life trying to do the best I can. I'll respond more
later, as I've got some scheduled time a way and like all human beings I
need it, but will circle back when I return to work next Monday.

I was thinking that I would be a very different person if I never made
mistakes. :) In fact, contemplation of that is rather funny if any of you
know me or the circumstances of my life. I could have done the process
differently.

I DO sometimes forget we're all on the same side. That's a darned shame. I
do it sometimes because part of my job is to deal with how beleaguered some
members (not all – I'm trying to find my way back to nuance and ask you to
too) because sometimes they ask me for help, because I deal every day with
burnout and chaos and challenging interpersonal dynamics, and I see some of
the downright abusive messages that no person (staff or admin or user or
each and any one of you reading this) should be subject to while pursuing
work they love. (I also get to see some of the grateful messages, the way
we support one another, not just tear people down. That part is /awesome/.)

I find our staff and volunteers that I've worked with remarkable - people
who I'm ridiculously grateful to work with and for.  And I have no doubt
that some of you have experienced staff (myself included) in ways I'm blind
to, and I think there's room for all of us to get better. But I wish people
could see how, even though it's our job, it can be sometimes just
exhausting to try to please so many different voices. Some of you may think
that the Foundation doesn't think about the community – and I think we
sometimes listen so much that it's a little crazy because, as has been
explained to us, the community is not one voice, not one thing, not one
person. It's a vast, beautiful, sometimes conflicted, sometimes coordinated
people working on this enormous shared endeavor. So it's not that community
is not worth listening to, but how and where and to what pieces, and how do
we get better at it and how do we amplify the constructive voices and not
let deconstructive voices (both within the Foundation and without) tear us
down because this work is hard. All our work is hard. I do appreciate the
volunteers who have stepped and kept things going when I was personally at
capacity.

When I read that I need to remember just who pays my salary, I think a
whole bunch of things (and have the various reactions I have, where both
assume good faith that someone means that and I also look at the
possibility that it was meant to be insulting and provoking). And at the
end of the day, millions of people do and hundreds of thousands of editors
help make that happen. I don't forget that. I do think that I am called to
this role because on my best days, it uses me well – it uses my skills and
knowledge and abilities in ways that I hope are good for the world. I am
not anyone's servant (except perhaps for this cause), and I am deeply
listening.

So sometimes I forget we're on the same side, and thank you for reminding
me. Thank you for the temperate voices, the ones who present a point of
view I hadn't considered. As you can likely imagine, I hear more that way.
Most people do.

Someone mentioned that it's easier to lay good ground than to fix something
in retrospect, and that most certainly is very, very true. :) (I really
dislike that other people had to answer for me while I was out of
commission - and my own fault for doing something on my to-do list the
Friday before leaving town. Totally get that.)

So...listening, thinking... also tired, but optimistic, and I hope and want
to keep doing better. This definitely feels like a bit of trial by fire.

Warmest regards,

Gayle



-- 
Gayle Karen K. Young
Chief Talent and Culture Officer
Wikimedia Foundation
415.310.8416
www.wikimediafoundation.org
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-12 Thread Alex Zariv

On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 3:44 PM, Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org wrote:

 On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 7:15 AM, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote:
  This is the email that got sent out to everyone,

 For what it's worth, this didn't get sent out to everyone. I was a
 bureaucrat and administrator, and have the most edits on that wiki
 (afaik?), and wasn't notified. Like Huib, I was also in the batch of
 blog moderator removals and wasn't notified about that either.

 I'm not very active anymore, so it's not really a huge deal, but it's
 still bad form to have not gotten any kind of notification at all.


I'm going to have to agree with Casey on this. I
also received absolutely zero notification or warning as a longtime
bureaucrat and administrator that my rights were to be removed on WMF wiki
or the foundation's blog.

We should have been reached out to directly and have been informed of this
decision. Even if there was little about it that we could change.

Alex
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-12 Thread Tomasz W. Kozlowski


Gayle Karen Young wrote:


Hello folks,


[...]


Gayle


So what did you want to say? I haven't been able to find any answers to 
any questions that have been asked by so many people in this thread.


-- Tomasz

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-12 Thread Theo10011

On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 5:34 AM, Tomasz W. Kozlowski tom...@twkozlowski.net
 wrote:


 So what did you want to say? I haven't been able to find any answers to
 any questions that have been asked by so many people in this thread.


Try and be a bit nicer please. Gayle is still relatively new and this level
of scrutiny might be jarring for someone. I'm not sure what the expectation
was here, it wasn't going to be a grand plan or a hidden explanation for
this action. Sue and Erik gave their versions, so as far as explanations
go, if Philippe said he was the button pusher, Gayle could have argued she
was merely the one who authorized the button pushing. I kind of like that
she didn't take that route.

I don't think there's anywhere else to go from here. I suppose now it comes
down to futile arguments over levels of culpability. At the most, there was
malicious intent against Mz, where his removal alone was the eventual goal,
and a policy had to be erected or modified to facilitate that. The rest
might have been an amalgamation of inactive users and bystanders who got
caught on either side of it. It's sad if it had to come down to that.
Admins like THO and Mz, are godsend.

At the very least, this was handled poorly. I don't think anyone including
the executives would disagree with that one. Perhaps a courtesy note - a
thank you, a warning, some time in between - would have made the world of a
difference. Maybe the problem itself instead of the person could have been
isolated, and talked out. I still have a sneaking suspicion that Gayle
didn't realize what she was getting into.

I also think that people reading this are missing a lot of the context and
history here. Before the removal of his rights, Mz made ~2000 edits on that
wiki this year. A lot of them are tedious edits which no one really does
from the foundation's side. I think he's been working on his Manana list
since 2009[1] for that wiki.

For those that might not know him, even a cursory look at Mz's meta or
en.wp talk page would reveal that his time is valued as it is in other
places. It's filled with people asking for help with bots, db queries,
Mediawiki, small hacks and what not, he can certainly do a heck of a lot
more than an average technically-inept editor like me can. Mz also has his
own charm, and for the people who know him, love him for it. A few staff
members though, do seem immune to that exposure and do tend to lock horns
occasionally.

The two years that I have known Philippe and Mz (and strangely both were
among the first people I interacted with), they have had more than a few
contentious moments. Philippe might have a tendency to be a bit more prone
to control (IMO). I have also seen him discuss issues about staff rights,
and who has access where for a long while. It wouldn't be surprising to
learn that this removal, and policy change was in the offing. Perhaps, the
issue got exacerbated with Zack and Erik's concerns (something about HTML
insertions?) about the fundraising infrastructure residing on WMF wiki, who
knows.

Regards
Theo

[1]http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Ma%C3%B1ana
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-12 Thread Russavia

On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 7:58 AM, Gayle Karen Young gyo...@wikimedia.org wrote:
 This definitely feels like a bit of trial by fire.

True dat. Now that you have received your initiation, there's nothing
left to say but WELCOME TO WIKIPEDIA :)

Cheers,

Russavia

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-12 Thread Philippe Beaudette

So, I took Florence's excellent advice and went for a walk (beautiful day
in SF, by the way - absolutely perfect).

And I reflected on what I've seen since flipping the switch on things
last Friday.  Here's where I stand, and I haven't discussed this with
anyone else at WMF, including Gayle.

At the expense of sounding trite, I think I can safely say Mistakes were
made.  Gayle was trying to solve a real problem, and she got a lot of
advice on how to do that.  But the principle role of a staff member in a
role such as mine is to advise, I think, and I'm afraid that I didn't
offer good advice in this case.  I don't think I gave bad advice - rather,
I didn't give as good of advice as I could have.  What our leadership
should be able to expect from staff is that we look at things from a
different perspective, and I think I failed to get as far out of my own
head and into other peoples' to offer that varying perspective.  So when I
say that mistakes were made, I include my role in that, through commission
or omission, and I sincerely apologize for that.

With that said: I'm afraid we're headed toward a precipice.  What I'm
seeing scares me.  I see less and less good faith being offered toward the
WMF.  One of the arguments that doesn't work for me is seven years ago the
WMF didn't make these mistakes - because seven years ago the WMF was
paralyzed from lack of strategy and direction.  All of that has changed and
the WMF is out and aggressively trying things to arrest the editor decline
and improve the user experience.  And yet, when our talented engineers try
a data-driven tactic for something that needs to change, they're lambasted
for forgetting the existing community.  And yet everyone here knows that if
we don't change some things, things will get very very ugly, very very
quickly.

One of the things that must continue to change is the tone on the wikis,
and the tone (in IRC and by email) between staff and volunteers.  I know
that volunteers are individual and - in addition to several frankly abusive
emails I've received this weekend, I've also received absolutely wonderful
support from volunteers who reached out to make me smile, laugh, or just
remind me why I love this community.  But the abusive ones absolutely
*must*stop.  I have never once, in my entire time at WMF, sent an
email that
approaches the level of things that I see WMF staff subjected to routinely,
and I have to counsel over and over that it's okay, they don't speak for
the community, but I see the community tacitly support that behavior (or
fail to condemn it), and it's hard to say with a straight face that the
people sending abusive mail or making abusive statements in IRC don't speak
for the community.

So my challenge and my promise:  I promise to reflect on the experiences of
this weekend and figure out how I could have offered Gayle better advice,
given the circumstances, and given the fact that there are some things that
are not public about the decision, and unfortunately they can't be.  My
challenge to the community:  think about the tone of what you see happening
around you.  And if you wouldn't want to see your grandmother asked a
question like that, and if it would make you feel defensive to see her
questioned in that tone, then step in and make it clear that the tone is
unacceptable.  Staff members are people too.  How about finding one that
has done something you appreciate (come on, there must be ONE) and tell
them so?  You'd be shocked how much gratitude they'll feel, because you may
be the first community member EVER to tell them that.

Best,
pb



___
Philippe Beaudette
Director, Community Advocacy
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

415-839-6885, x 6643

phili...@wikimedia.org


On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 5:46 PM, Russavia russavia.wikipe...@gmail.comwrote:

 On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 7:58 AM, Gayle Karen Young gyo...@wikimedia.org
 wrote:
  This definitely feels like a bit of trial by fire.

 True dat. Now that you have received your initiation, there's nothing
 left to say but WELCOME TO WIKIPEDIA :)

 Cheers,

 Russavia

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-12 Thread Everton Zanella Alvarenga

Hi Philippe,

your message just reminds me a recent message I sent here and a
general feeling about sometimes the wiki community only stressing the
negative aspects and mistakes we all do (contractors, staff,
volunteers etc.)

* Highlight the positive aspects and multicultural comparisons
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-April/125361.html

I must tell it can also be difficult for the community to realise the
amount of work done by WMF professionals (and it is really difficult
to share this), summed up with this environment of distrust makes the
situation be like we are seeing here in this most recent wikidrama,
that can be solved with some patience and, as you are doing here,
messages after a little walk away from the computer no thursty to be
the last voice. :)

It is curious this agressive nature of the momevement seems also to
happen in soem other local communities - at least is what I see at the
Portuguese Wikipedia and some volunteers more involved with offline
activities (no visual editor or similar initiatives will solve that
;).

My best wishes for this particular case and I hope you and other
colleagues will be treated with respect. I know how hard it is after
working hard and beeing kicked in the ass all the time, sometimes by
the very same people, who work hard as volunteers, but put themselves
as gods because of that. (and hey, it is even harder when you also
worked for years as a volunteer)

Tom

On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 10:03 PM, Philippe Beaudette
phili...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 So, I took Florence's excellent advice and went for a walk (beautiful day
 in SF, by the way - absolutely perfect).

 And I reflected on what I've seen since flipping the switch on things
 last Friday.  Here's where I stand, and I haven't discussed this with
 anyone else at WMF, including Gayle.

 At the expense of sounding trite, I think I can safely say Mistakes were
 made.  Gayle was trying to solve a real problem, and she got a lot of
 advice on how to do that.  But the principle role of a staff member in a
 role such as mine is to advise, I think, and I'm afraid that I didn't
 offer good advice in this case.  I don't think I gave bad advice - rather,
 I didn't give as good of advice as I could have.  What our leadership
 should be able to expect from staff is that we look at things from a
 different perspective, and I think I failed to get as far out of my own
 head and into other peoples' to offer that varying perspective.  So when I
 say that mistakes were made, I include my role in that, through commission
 or omission, and I sincerely apologize for that.

 With that said: I'm afraid we're headed toward a precipice.  What I'm
 seeing scares me.  I see less and less good faith being offered toward the
 WMF.  One of the arguments that doesn't work for me is seven years ago the
 WMF didn't make these mistakes - because seven years ago the WMF was
 paralyzed from lack of strategy and direction.  All of that has changed and
 the WMF is out and aggressively trying things to arrest the editor decline
 and improve the user experience.  And yet, when our talented engineers try
 a data-driven tactic for something that needs to change, they're lambasted
 for forgetting the existing community.  And yet everyone here knows that if
 we don't change some things, things will get very very ugly, very very
 quickly.

 One of the things that must continue to change is the tone on the wikis,
 and the tone (in IRC and by email) between staff and volunteers.  I know
 that volunteers are individual and - in addition to several frankly abusive
 emails I've received this weekend, I've also received absolutely wonderful
 support from volunteers who reached out to make me smile, laugh, or just
 remind me why I love this community.  But the abusive ones absolutely
 *must*stop.  I have never once, in my entire time at WMF, sent an
 email that
 approaches the level of things that I see WMF staff subjected to routinely,
 and I have to counsel over and over that it's okay, they don't speak for
 the community, but I see the community tacitly support that behavior (or
 fail to condemn it), and it's hard to say with a straight face that the
 people sending abusive mail or making abusive statements in IRC don't speak
 for the community.

 So my challenge and my promise:  I promise to reflect on the experiences of
 this weekend and figure out how I could have offered Gayle better advice,
 given the circumstances, and given the fact that there are some things that
 are not public about the decision, and unfortunately they can't be.  My
 challenge to the community:  think about the tone of what you see happening
 around you.  And if you wouldn't want to see your grandmother asked a
 question like that, and if it would make you feel defensive to see her
 questioned in that tone, then step in and make it clear that the tone is
 unacceptable.  Staff members are people too.  How about finding one that
 has done something you

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-12 Thread Casey Brown

On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 8:28 PM, Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com wrote:
 Try and be a bit nicer please. Gayle is still relatively new and this level
 of scrutiny might be jarring for someone.

Comments like these have always bothered me.

Gayle isn't some random secretary or new run-of-the-mill employee. She
is a C-level staff member who has been here for more than a year and
made a policy decision that people have feedback on. While the
feedback may not have come in the nicest form, it is still valid and
we can't just ignore it because it wasn't nice enough. As a high
level staff member in charge of your own department, you need to deal
with it -- this is one thing that comes with the job, unfortunately.
It's an insult to Gayle to assume that she will not be able to handle
criticism or answer people's responses. A C-level staff member needs
to be able to handle this scrutiny, even high level scrutiny, when
they were the one that made the call, and I'm sure she's more than
capable of doing that.

[Note that I'm speaking generally -- I personally think Gayle can
handle criticism and she seems very nice. She also probably had no
idea this would create dramz. My comment is directed towards the
general omg think of the staff member! response to criticism that is
systemic in our movement.]

On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 9:03 PM, Philippe Beaudette
phili...@wikimedia.org wrote:
 With that said: I'm afraid we're headed toward a precipice.  What I'm
 seeing scares me.  I see less and less good faith being offered toward the
 WMF.

This is something that bothers me too.

The situation is always framed as poor WMF. Yes, it is true that bad
faith is assumed on both sides, but I don't really think the community
(including the chapters) is the only one doing that. A lot of the
reason the community responds with such little faith or with such
outrage at the actions of the Wikimedia Foundation is because they do
not afford them any good faith either -- the community is simply
acting on the defensive. Many decisions are just handed out, are
half-baked, or are handled behind closed doors, so people have no idea
how to respond and feel no ownership.

If people have no control over a situation, the only way to respond is
to point fingers and complain. We all work on things together -- there
aren't many areas that are exclusively community or WMF. If you don't
let the community do anything to fix a problem or constructively
contribute to bettering the situation, you're going to find yourself
stuck with a lot of bad faith and complaining.

Take the WMFwiki policy decision for example -- was it really
necessary to discuss everything behind closed doors? Did the action
need to be taken two hours before the work week ended and before the
decision maker would be out of reach? We're always painting the
Wikimedia Foundation as the victim, but we're forgetting that they
definitely have their share of the blame. I realize that we're all
human, but, at the end of the day, the Foundation *should* be held to
a higher standard -- they are being paid to learn from their mistakes,
get things done correctly, and handle criticism. If something is going
to be controversial, it should not be done on a Friday before work
ends and then say no one can respond until Monday when someone
critiques it.

[Again: I'm speaking more generally. I don't personally care that much
about the WMFwiki issue, since I'm not active much anymore.]

We definitely have an agency issue here. The volunteers and the
community should not be viewed as a lone aggressor -- they're who
the Foundation ultimately report to: Staff = ED = Board =
Community. The readers and donors are clear stakeholders, but the
community is at the top of the pyramid. The Foundation is not
completely innocent, but when things go wrong, we can't just call the
community out for complaining and then ignore the reason for that
complaint.

--
Casey Brown (Cbrown1023)
caseybrown.org

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-12 Thread Federico Leva (Nemo)


Casey Brown, 13/05/2013 07:05:

[...] [Note that I'm speaking generally -- I personally think Gayle can
handle criticism and she seems very nice. She also probably had no
idea this would create dramz. My comment is directed towards the
general omg think of the staff member! response to criticism that is
systemic in our movement.]


Still, omg think of the staff member! seems to be the point Gayle and 
Philippe make on this thread. If history teaches something, I guess the 
board will soon approve a resolution to request the development of a 
Personal Communitymember Filter to AT LAST hide all that offensive 
content in our community. MediaWiki-mailman integration offers some 
challenges, but our commitment to openness will swiftly help, shutting 
down more mailing lists in favour of wiki discussions.


Nemo

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-12 Thread James Alexander

*

I'm just going to top post here because responding to you in line won't be
helpful to anybody.The staff ARE held to a higher standard, they are held
to a higher standard day in and day out. If you don't think they are then
you're blind. They get attacked at a level that is NOTHING compared to what
they do or dish out NOTHING. They hold back because they're staff and they
should hold back.

Can the foundation get better? Of course it can, is every single thing
Philippe said still true? Yes, in fact I'd probably be harsher about it.
I'm sometimes embarrassed to be from the community when I read the mailing
list and, less often, on wiki. Even I have to sit down on my hands, calm
down, have a cup of tea and then go on damage control explaining to other
staff members that we need to get better but that the community isn't
nearly as bad as it seems sometimes. I have to remind myself that I'm not
lying when I tell them that it isn't the entire community yelling at them,
just a dozen or two on a mailing list and that they don't represent
everyone. There is no doubt that the Foundation can get better in many
areas, but I will 100% stand by my statement that the way that some
portions of the community (that tend to congregate on the mailing lists and
certain areas on wiki)  is embarrassing and insane. Given some of the
statements that are made I'm not actually sure staff SHOULD respond to
those people, yet they still do in the end because they're staff, and
they're held to a higher standard.

Is it true that some of this is 'the wiki way' and they should 'get used to
it' because 'that's how we treat ourselves'? I'd say that 99%+ of the wiki
isn't anywhere near as bad though I sadly admit that some of it is though
most realize that's bad. The lack of civility on wiki has been a long
running problem we have all known about, yet for some reason some people
have decided that targeting the staff is fair game.

In the US, and most countries I know, employers have a legal obligation to
ensure a healthy working environment both physical and emotional. The
working environment for our staff is NOT always emotionally healthy.
*
*
*
*James*
*

On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 10:05 PM, Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org wrote:

 On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 8:28 PM, Theo10011 de10...@gmail.com wrote:
  Try and be a bit nicer please. Gayle is still relatively new and this
 level
  of scrutiny might be jarring for someone.

 Comments like these have always bothered me.

 Gayle isn't some random secretary or new run-of-the-mill employee. She
 is a C-level staff member who has been here for more than a year and
 made a policy decision that people have feedback on. While the
 feedback may not have come in the nicest form, it is still valid and
 we can't just ignore it because it wasn't nice enough. As a high
 level staff member in charge of your own department, you need to deal
 with it -- this is one thing that comes with the job, unfortunately.
 It's an insult to Gayle to assume that she will not be able to handle
 criticism or answer people's responses. A C-level staff member needs
 to be able to handle this scrutiny, even high level scrutiny, when
 they were the one that made the call, and I'm sure she's more than
 capable of doing that.

 [Note that I'm speaking generally -- I personally think Gayle can
 handle criticism and she seems very nice. She also probably had no
 idea this would create dramz. My comment is directed towards the
 general omg think of the staff member! response to criticism that is
 systemic in our movement.]

 On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 9:03 PM, Philippe Beaudette
 phili...@wikimedia.org wrote:
  With that said: I'm afraid we're headed toward a precipice.  What I'm
  seeing scares me.  I see less and less good faith being offered toward
 the
  WMF.

 This is something that bothers me too.

 The situation is always framed as poor WMF. Yes, it is true that bad
 faith is assumed on both sides, but I don't really think the community
 (including the chapters) is the only one doing that. A lot of the
 reason the community responds with such little faith or with such
 outrage at the actions of the Wikimedia Foundation is because they do
 not afford them any good faith either -- the community is simply
 acting on the defensive. Many decisions are just handed out, are
 half-baked, or are handled behind closed doors, so people have no idea
 how to respond and feel no ownership.

 If people have no control over a situation, the only way to respond is
 to point fingers and complain. We all work on things together -- there
 aren't many areas that are exclusively community or WMF. If you don't
 let the community do anything to fix a problem or constructively
 contribute to bettering the situation, you're going to find yourself
 stuck with a lot of bad faith and complaining.

 Take the WMFwiki policy decision for example -- was it really
 necessary to discuss everything behind closed doors? Did the action
 need to be taken two hours

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-12 Thread phoebe ayers

On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 10:32 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo)
nemow...@gmail.comwrote:

 Casey Brown, 13/05/2013 07:05:

 [...] [Note that I'm speaking generally -- I personally think Gayle can

 handle criticism and she seems very nice. She also probably had no
 idea this would create dramz. My comment is directed towards the
 general omg think of the staff member! response to criticism that is
 systemic in our movement.]


 Still, omg think of the staff member! seems to be the point Gayle and
 Philippe make on this thread. If history teaches something, I guess the
 board will soon approve a resolution to request the development of a
 Personal Communitymember Filter to AT LAST hide all that offensive content
 in our community. MediaWiki-mailman integration offers some challenges, but
 our commitment to openness will swiftly help, shutting down more mailing
 lists in favour of wiki discussions.

 Nemo


Au contraire, I feel we should all earn some kind of barnstar just for
participating in this discussion/situation. You know, it's kind of the
ultimate Wikimedian tempest: arguing over who gets to add users and delete
pages on what is quite possibly the world's most boring wiki[1]...

It's also a quintessentially Wikimedian debate because there's all this
subtext -- assumed but not articulated -- that isn't minor at all: about
community ownership versus corporate control, about who has authority to
make decisions in what sphere, about the role volunteers play in the
organization, over what personal reputation means on the projects, over
what admin rights mean, what kind of work environment the staff have, etc..
I'm gonna take a stab in the dark here and guess that Gayle wasn't
intending to start a debate on all these big important topics, or even
perhaps to comment on them at all. I'm also gonna say from experience that
it's often damn hard to wade into these waters and take an action *without*
touching off a debate on all these subjects. As someone said upthread, the
golden rule does help, as does practice working with the wiki way, and
knowing all the personal ins and outs of Wikimedia and our arcane culture.
But *even that* doesn't always save someone from making an unpopular
decision, or from screwing up or not thinking through all the ways they
might be wading into a minefield -- and that goes for all of us, staff,
board,  community alike. Hey, ask me how I know.

Sheesh, being part of the world's biggest collaborative project is hard
sometimes.

-- phoebe


1. I exempt, of course, the internal wiki at my workplace, which has won
the crown many years running.
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[Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Tomasz W. Kozlowski


Hi all,
for those of you who do not watch the RecentChanges on the Foundation 
wiki https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges, I 
think it might be somehow surprising to see that in a top-level 
decision, almost all volunteer administrators of the wiki have been 
stripped off their adminship yesterday evening (UTC time).


As far as I know, community members have been helping out maintaining 
this wiki for as long as 2006, spending countless hours of their free 
time on categorising existing pages, importing translations from Meta, 
and recently, deleting unnecessary and broken pages left over by WMF staff.


Apparently, this is something that not only isn't appreciated, but 
unwelcome. Let me repeat that: the WMF does not wish volunteers to help 
out with running their wiki, even if they have been helping out almost 
since the very start of the wiki.


Some questions come to my mind right now:

1) Who made the decision to remove adminship from all community members? 
(I'm assuming it was Gayle, but it could've be someone from the 
Communications department for all we know.)

2) Why did you make this decision now? What changed?
3) Why did you decide to desysop people straight away instead of 
discussing things with them first?


These are questions directed at the WMF—for you regular folks, I have a 
riddle (I'll give a WikiLove barnstar to the first person to submit a 
correct answer). There is /at least/ one community member who does not 
hold any official position within the WMF, and who has not been 
desysopped in yesterday's purge—do you know who this person is?


-- Tomasz

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Huib Laurens

The same happend to the Wikimedia Blog.

Most of the moderators where volunteers (and the only real active ones
also). My moderator rights where removed and I have to go after that
myself, I didn't got a message or anything.

While I was list administrator for wikitech-l I got the mail also that I
needed to give my password so that the list can be run by the staff. I
didn't respond to that mail (Thought it was spam cause It was send by
gmail). \

It gives me the feeling that we need a bigger fundraiser cause people GET
PAYED for doing things other people DO FOR FREE.

Huib

On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 1:15 PM, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote:

This is the email that got sent out to everyone,

---
Dear XXX,
Thank you for your work with the Foundation wiki. At this time, we
are formalizing a new requirement, which is that administrator access
is given only to staff and board. I am having administrator access to
accounts that are neither staff or board be disabled, effective
immediately.
Sincerely,
Gayle
--
Gayle Karen K. Young
Chief Talent and Culture Officer
Wikimedia Foundation
415.310.8416
www.wikimediafoundation.org
---

Gayle's response (which was the first time she has edited the wiki in
~5 months[2]) seems lacking[1] in general and the subsequent responses
about knowing what these people do on the wiki

Another interesting fact is that Mz got desysoped first, When you
would expect it to be done in alphabetically order.

We've been discussing this for awhile, and the thought is that it's
ultimately the Foundation's web presence, not the community's web
presence. A useful parallel to consider might be how userrights are
given to staffers on the community wikis; they're distributed as and
when they're needed for a specific task.

Um, Rights for staff on wikis are given out like candy?, although not
as much thee days but it still happens.

Also, How is the foundation wiki not apart of the community? Has the
position of the legal department changed? or the boards? just randomly
changing without any imput or discussions seems utlimately strange.
since it is actually their wiki (just like everything else that falls
under the foundation)

[1].
https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?diff=91857oldid=91855#Users_stripped_of_rights.3F

[2].
https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AContributionstarget=Gyoung

[3]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:Log/rights

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--
Met vriendelijke groet,

Huib Laurens
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Craig Franklin

This sort of tone might be appropriate coming from HR in a bank or
something, but I'm tremendously disappointed that something so tactless and
rude was sent out from a senior officer in the Foundation to its
volunteers. I know Gayle is a new hire, so I'm assuming good faith that
she wasn't aware that taking this sort of attitude with volunteers would go
down like a lead balloon.

Someone at the WMF needs to take Gayle into an office and patiently explain
to her that the volunteers whose access she just disabled, effective
immediately are the same ones that keep the websites that per her salary
going.

Cheers,
Craig Franklin

On 11 May 2013 21:15, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote:

This is the email that got sent out to everyone,

Gayle's response (which was the first time she has edited the wiki in
~5 months[2]) seems lacking[1] in general and the subsequent responses
about knowing what these people do on the wiki

Another interesting fact is that Mz got desysoped first, When you
would expect it to be done in alphabetically order.

Um, Rights for staff on wikis are given out like candy?, although not
as much thee days but it still happens.

[1].
https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?diff=91857oldid=91855#Users_stripped_of_rights.3F

[2].
https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AContributionstarget=Gyoung

[3]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:Log/rights

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Russavia

Having an HR IR background myself, I am most surprised that the
person for managing TALENT and CULTURE would take such a move without
even so much as consulting with the community who keep the WMF's
presence on the internet working, nor without giving them an actual
reason as to why this has occurred.

I can only encourage Karen to either 1) explain why this was an
absolutely necessary step to make, or 2) reverse those actions.

Russavia

On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 7:51 PM, Craig Franklin
cfrank...@halonetwork.net wrote:
This sort of tone might be appropriate coming from HR in a bank or
something, but I'm tremendously disappointed that something so tactless and
rude was sent out from a senior officer in the Foundation to its
volunteers. I know Gayle is a new hire, so I'm assuming good faith that
she wasn't aware that taking this sort of attitude with volunteers would go
down like a lead balloon.

Cheers,
Craig Franklin

On 11 May 2013 21:15, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote:

This is the email that got sent out to everyone,

Gayle's response (which was the first time she has edited the wiki in
~5 months[2]) seems lacking[1] in general and the subsequent responses
about knowing what these people do on the wiki

Another interesting fact is that Mz got desysoped first, When you
would expect it to be done in alphabetically order.

Um, Rights for staff on wikis are given out like candy?, although not
as much thee days but it still happens.

[1].
https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?diff=91857oldid=91855#Users_stripped_of_rights.3F

[2].
https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AContributionstarget=Gyoung

[3]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:Log/rights

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Russavia

Apologies, I mean Gayle, not Karen.

Russavia

On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 8:14 PM, Russavia russavia.wikipe...@gmail.com wrote:
Having an HR IR background myself, I am most surprised that the
person for managing TALENT and CULTURE would take such a move without
even so much as consulting with the community who keep the WMF's
presence on the internet working, nor without giving them an actual
reason as to why this has occurred.

I can only encourage Karen to either 1) explain why this was an
absolutely necessary step to make, or 2) reverse those actions.

Russavia

Cheers,
Craig Franklin

On 11 May 2013 21:15, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote:

This is the email that got sent out to everyone,

Gayle's response (which was the first time she has edited the wiki in
~5 months[2]) seems lacking[1] in general and the subsequent responses
about knowing what these people do on the wiki

Another interesting fact is that Mz got desysoped first, When you
would expect it to be done in alphabetically order.

Um, Rights for staff on wikis are given out like candy?, although not
as much thee days but it still happens.

[1].
https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?diff=91857oldid=91855#Users_stripped_of_rights.3F

[2].
https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AContributionstarget=Gyoung

[3]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:Log/rights

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Deryck Chan

Given the foundation's recent tsunami of centralisation I'm not surprised
by this at all. The message is clear - the community doesn't belong here.
Go back to meta.

I'll be interested to see how long the WMF wiki will last before they hit
their first massive technical problem happens and they need to call in a
volunteer to fix it.

Deryck

On 11 May 2013 12:15, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote:

This is the email that got sent out to everyone,

Gayle's response (which was the first time she has edited the wiki in
~5 months[2]) seems lacking[1] in general and the subsequent responses
about knowing what these people do on the wiki

Another interesting fact is that Mz got desysoped first, When you
would expect it to be done in alphabetically order.

Um, Rights for staff on wikis are given out like candy?, although not
as much thee days but it still happens.

[1].
https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?diff=91857oldid=91855#Users_stripped_of_rights.3F

[2].
https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AContributionstarget=Gyoung

[3]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:Log/rights

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Itzik Edri

Can we please give time to the Foundation to response and express their
side before everyone starts to attack them? I think we had enough of that
on Internal-l.

After the first response, or at least 24h, I will understand everyone
feelings about that. (And right now I'm also don't agree or understand
WMF's decision, but I'm waiting to hear them first).

On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 4:46 PM, Deryck Chan deryckc...@wikimedia.hkwrote:

Given the foundation's recent tsunami of centralisation I'm not surprised
by this at all. The message is clear - the community doesn't belong here.
Go back to meta.

I'll be interested to see how long the WMF wiki will last before they hit
their first massive technical problem happens and they need to call in a
volunteer to fix it.

Deryck

On 11 May 2013 12:15, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote:

This is the email that got sent out to everyone,

Gayle's response (which was the first time she has edited the wiki in
~5 months[2]) seems lacking[1] in general and the subsequent responses
about knowing what these people do on the wiki

Another interesting fact is that Mz got desysoped first, When you
would expect it to be done in alphabetically order.

Um, Rights for staff on wikis are given out like candy?, although not
as much thee days but it still happens.

[1].

https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?diff=91857oldid=91855#Users_stripped_of_rights.3F

[2].

https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AContributionstarget=Gyoung

[3]. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:Log/rights

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

Deryck Chan wrote:
Given the foundation's recent tsunami of centralisation I'm not surprised
by this at all. The message is clear - the community doesn't belong here.
Go back to meta.

Yeah, I think you're right. It seems to be part of a larger pattern.

* Blog access has been restricted (as noted).
* Bugzilla adminship has been restricted to staff only.
* wikimediafoundation.org adminship is now restricted to staff and Board
Members.
* Shell access has been restricted to staff only (no more volunteer
sysadmins).

Relatedly, the Toolserver is being slowly killed in favor of a controlled
sandbox called Wikimedia Labs and all Wikimedia accounts are being
unified (with forceable usurps/renames) to make it easier to track and
control users across all Wikimedia wikis.

It's very surprising that the Board has been so quiet about all of this.
Generally, a few staff members (notably Philippe and his team) have tried
to create tiers in which paid staff are above volunteers. Even the most
trusted volunteers are no longer allowed to hold positions of trust within
the Wikimedia community. This is very bad. Are there ways to address this?

But to blame this on Gayle is kind of insane. It seems clear to me that
she's being used as a pawn here. There are very few indications that this
has anything to do with her, aside from a few log entries (from...
Philippe) inexplicably pointing to her name. And the curt e-mail she sent
out to affected users. Her involvement with the wiki would charitably be
described as negligible.

The director of _community advocacy_ (Philippe) is stripping nearly every
community member of user rights. And yet there's still no provided
rationale for the change in policy, other than it being based on a series
of private discussions. Meanwhile, the home page of
wikimediafoundation.org stresses how transparent the organization is.

This is a pretty disappointing day. I'd be interested to hear what Gayle,
Philippe, or the Board has to say.

MZMcBride



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

Itzik Edri wrote:
Can we please give time to the Foundation to response and express their
side before everyone starts to attack them? I think we had enough of that
on Internal-l.

After the first response, or at least 24h, I will understand everyone
feelings about that. (And right now I'm also don't agree or understand
WMF's decision, but I'm waiting to hear them first).

I agree that it would be nice to have a full explanation from the
Wikimedia Foundation here (particularly from Philippe and Gayle, who have
apparently conspired).

But I'm not sure I agree that time is needed to evaluate what has
happened. There was certainly no wait before users were stripped of their
user rights. The lack of any emergency makes this rash series of actions
even more upsetting and confusing.

Wikimedia _is_ its community. When a few staff members start to kick out
the community (from the blog, from Bugzilla, from volunteer sysadminning),
it's a pretty awful situation that needs to be immediately addressed, in
my opinion. The alternative is that most volunteers will simply go away.
While that may seem like a victory to certain staff members, I wonder when
they'll realize that it's these same volunteers that keep the projects
running. When the dedicated and trusted volunteers leave, their (paid)
jobs will soon follow. Wikimedia simply isn't sustainable without trusted
volunteers. Slapping them in the face does what?

MZMcBride



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Leslie Carr

Sent from my mobile. Please excuse the brevity and typos.
On May 11, 2013 4:36 PM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote:

 Deryck Chan wrote:
 Given the foundation's recent tsunami of centralisation I'm not surprised
 by this at all. The message is clear - the community doesn't belong here.
 Go back to meta.

 Yeah, I think you're right. It seems to be part of a larger pattern.

 * Blog access has been restricted (as noted).
 * Bugzilla adminship has been restricted to staff only.
 * wikimediafoundation.org adminship is now restricted to staff and Board
 Members.
 * Shell access has been restricted to staff only (no more volunteer
 sysadmins).

Someone better tell that to domas and his ssh key.

As someone tasked with protecting the servers,ssh keys should be restricted
as much as possible, both with staff and volunteers. that is technical and
not political.

 Relatedly, the Toolserver is being slowly killed in favor of a controlled
 sandbox called Wikimedia Labs and all Wikimedia accounts are being
 unified (with forceable usurps/renames) to make it easier to track and
 control users across all Wikimedia wikis.

 It's very surprising that the Board has been so quiet about all of this.
 Generally, a few staff members (notably Philippe and his team) have tried
 to create tiers in which paid staff are above volunteers. Even the most
 trusted volunteers are no longer allowed to hold positions of trust within
 the Wikimedia community. This is very bad. Are there ways to address this?

 But to blame this on Gayle is kind of insane. It seems clear to me that
 she's being used as a pawn here. There are very few indications that this
 has anything to do with her, aside from a few log entries (from...
 Philippe) inexplicably pointing to her name. And the curt e-mail she sent
 out to affected users. Her involvement with the wiki would charitably be
 described as negligible.

 The director of _community advocacy_ (Philippe) is stripping nearly every
 community member of user rights. And yet there's still no provided
 rationale for the change in policy, other than it being based on a series
 of private discussions. Meanwhile, the home page of
 wikimediafoundation.org stresses how transparent the organization is.

 This is a pretty disappointing day. I'd be interested to hear what Gayle,
 Philippe, or the Board has to say.

 MZMcBride



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Federico Leva (Nemo)


K. Peachey, 11/05/2013 16:59:

On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 12:56 AM, Leslie Carr lc...@wikimedia.org wrote:

...
As someone tasked with protecting the servers,ssh keys should be restricted
as much as possible, both with staff and volunteers. that is technical and
not political.


That same argument can also be used for restricting all but even a
smaller circle of staff from root. Probably not the best example to
lead with...


Yes, or all the sysops on foundationwiki with 0 edits. :)

Nemo

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

Leslie Carr wrote:
 * Shell access has been restricted to staff only (no more volunteer
 sysadmins).

Someone better tell that to domas and his ssh key.

As someone tasked with protecting the servers, ssh keys should be
restricted as much as possible, both with staff and volunteers. that is
technical and not political.

That was just sloppy wording on my part, apologies. Shell/root access has
been indeed been restricted to staff only. About four users have been
grandfathered in (Domas, Jens, River, Robert S.). I'll note that these
users have all contributed an enormous amount (for free!) to the Wikimedia
movement. They deserve only our appreciation for the volunteer work
they've done. And they serve as a model of what trusted volunteers can do.
Please don't suggest that this has anything to do with technical
decisions. Even a child can see that this is pure politics.

Leslie, do you agree with these policies that remove all non-staff from
positions of trust? Do you agree with creating tiers between staff and
everyone else?

MZMcBride



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Leslie Carr

On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 4:59 PM, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 12:56 AM, Leslie Carr lc...@wikimedia.org wrote:
 ...
 As someone tasked with protecting the servers,ssh keys should be restricted
 as much as possible, both with staff and volunteers. that is technical and
 not political.

 That same argument can also be used for restricting all but even a
 smaller circle of staff from root. Probably not the best example to
 lead with...


Actually it is the perfect example to lead with -- very few people
with shell access have root.


--
Leslie Carr
Wikimedia Foundation
AS 14907, 43821
http://as14907.peeringdb.com/

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Leslie Carr

On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 5:04 PM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote:
 Leslie Carr wrote:
 * Shell access has been restricted to staff only (no more volunteer
 sysadmins).

Someone better tell that to domas and his ssh key.

As someone tasked with protecting the servers, ssh keys should be
restricted as much as possible, both with staff and volunteers. that is
technical and not political.

 That was just sloppy wording on my part, apologies. Shell/root access has
 been indeed been restricted to staff only. About four users have been
 grandfathered in (Domas, Jens, River, Robert S.). I'll note that these
 users have all contributed an enormous amount (for free!) to the Wikimedia
 movement. They deserve only our appreciation for the volunteer work
 they've done. And they serve as a model of what trusted volunteers can do.
 Please don't suggest that this has anything to do with technical
 decisions. Even a child can see that this is pure politics.

 Leslie, do you agree with these policies that remove all non-staff from
 positions of trust? Do you agree with creating tiers between staff and
 everyone else?

I have no opinion on all the other policies - my concern, expertise,
and really the only place I think my opinion even matters is for the
servers.

My opinion is that we should restrict any ssh access on the cluster to
those who have demonstrated that they both need it and can handle the
responsibility. If a volunteer has been very responsible in labs and
has a demonstratable need, I'd be fine with that.  The reason that ops
staff get ssh access and root is that we (hopefully) during our
interview and references have demonstrated the ability to handle the
access responsibly, have a need, and on top of that have signed a big
stack of paperwork.  But the more that we can do on labs without ever
touching production, the better off the stability of the cluster.

Also I believe that several analytics folks ( under admins::restricted
in admins.pp ) are not employees but do have some ssh access.


Leslie


 MZMcBride



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--
Leslie Carr
Wikimedia Foundation
AS 14907, 43821
http://as14907.peeringdb.com/

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Andy Mabbett

On 11 May 2013 14:46, Deryck Chan deryckc...@wikimedia.hk wrote:

 Given the foundation's recent tsunami of centralisation I'm not surprised
 by this at all.

Sad to say, this chimes with the Foundation's recent decision to
consult on changes to en.Wikipedia's method of notifying users that
they have a talk page message, and then to reject the overwhelming
consensus (to return the familiar orange bar, at least while other
options are discussed) of that consultation.

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

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Andy Mabbett

On 11 May 2013 15:36, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote:

 Yeah, I think you're right. It seems to be part of a larger pattern.

+ Withdrawal of the ability to use WMF logos/ wordmarks in community
projects, such as QRpedia.

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

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Marc A. Pelletier

On 05/11/2013 06:26 AM, Tomasz W. Kozlowski wrote:
 Let me repeat that: the WMF does not wish volunteers to help out with
 running their wiki, even if they have been helping out almost since the
 very start of the wiki.

Tomasz, while it seems clear that communications about that move seem to
have been lacking, I think it's unwarranted to ascribe ill-intent to the
WMF staff.  Perhaps you should wait for a response from them before you
declare what their wishes may be or what their reasons were?

-- Marc


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Tomasz W. Kozlowski


Marc A. Pelletier wrote:


Tomasz, while it seems clear that communications about that move seem to
have been lacking, I think it's unwarranted to ascribe ill-intent to the
WMF staff.  Perhaps you should wait for a response from them before you
declare what their wishes may be or what their reasons were?


I cannot tell what was the /intent/ of the WMF when they acted (for 
obvious reasons), but I think that my description of the situation was 
pretty justified — and the message sent to all those desysopped 
volunteers could not have been more clear. If the WMF wants their help, 
why would they desysop them in the first place?


If you had read my e-mail, then I'm sure you noticed that I actually 
asked about the reasons for this decision and its execution, as I am 
unable to find any justification for what happened.


[Yes, I do understand there is a considerable time difference, etc; I'll 
be patiently waiting for a response from the WMF.]


-- Tomasz

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Theo10011

On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 9:32 PM, Tomasz W. Kozlowski tom...@twkozlowski.net
 wrote:


 [Yes, I do understand there is a considerable time difference, etc; I'll
 be patiently waiting for a response from the WMF.]


Might even have to wait till Monday. This was done on a Friday night I
think.

There doesn't seem to be any method to how these rights are being assigned
and retained. Observations-

1) Only 2 of the current board members (besides Jimmy) have admin rights.
Prob. on the argument that they are community-elected?
2) A few of the current admins that retained their flag have never made a
contribution, or made any in the last year.
3) Phoebe for some reason, retains her right while currently not being on
staff or the board.
4) Only 2 people are prob. assigned on the basis of advisory board
without any explanation. There is no updated list to check who is on the
advisory board this time.

There does seem to be a pattern about how this is being cleaned up, and I
don't think Gayle is the impetus behind this though she is taking the blame
for it.

Theo
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Sue Gardner

Gayle is travelling today and not online, so I'll take a crack at
responding to this.

The editors are responsible for the projects: the Wikimedia Foundation
knows that, acknowledges it, and is deeply appreciative (as are all
readers) for the work that volunteers do in the projects. The Wikimedia
Foundation is responsible for the Wikimedia Foundation wiki (and the blog).
We are grateful to get community help there, and a small number of
community members do really good work with us on both the WMF wiki and the
blog. But ultimately that wiki, and the blog, are our responsibility, and
we are accountable for making sure that e.g. the staff page, the Board
bios, the resolution texts, etc., are maintained and in good shape. Most
material on the WMF is not created via collaborative production processes
-- it's corporate in nature, meaning that it is developed by the
Wikimedia Foundation, for an audience of Wikimedia Foundation stakeholders,
which includes community members and prospective community members, donors,
readers of the projects, media, and others.

My understanding is that administrator rights have been removed from a
small number of volunteers, but that those people still have basic editing
rights. My understanding is that the Wikimedia Foundation staff who work on
the Foundation wiki have been grateful (and are grateful) for the help
they've gotten from community members in maintaining the Foundation wiki,
and that we hope they'll continue to help us. They've been great, and we're
grateful.

But, my understanding is also that occasionally volunteers have overridden
decisions made by staff on the Wikimedia Foundation wiki. I don't think
that's ever been a huge problem: I don't think we've ever had a situation
in which extensive discussion hasn't reached an okay conclusion. But, the
extensive discussions --which, I understand, have typically been
one-on-one, by which I mean, not a large number of community members or a
community consensus against something the Foundation has wanted to do, but
rather one volunteer disagreeing with something staff have been asked to do
as part of their job --- occasionally, those discussions have been
extremely time-consuming. That's not good. The staff working on the
Wikimedia Foundation wiki have jobs they've got to get done, in support of
the entire movement. If they spend days or weeks needing to persuade a
single community member of the merits of something they want to do on the
Foundation wiki, or if they need to modify their plans extensively to
accommodate the opinions of a single community member, that reduces the
amount of time available for them to do the rest of their work. Which, I
repeat, is in the service of the movement overall.

So I would say this:

This decision is not about the community versus the WMF. This decision
is about the WMF staff, and making it possible for them to do their work on
the WMF wiki with some reasonable degree of efficiency and effectiveness.
This decision clarifies roles-and-responsibilities. On the projects, the
volunteers are the editorial leads, and the WMF plays a supporting role by
creating functionality, maintaining the servers, paying the bandwidth
bills, and so forth. On the WMF wiki, the WMF is the editorial lead, and
volunteers can (and do) play a supporting role helping staff organize
pages, maintain pages, and so forth. That's a reasonable division, and I
think having clarity around it is a good thing.

Slightly more broadly: when the Wikimedia movement was very young,
everybody did everything and there wasn't much division of
roles-and-responsibilities. I remember when the Wikimedia Foundation
budgets were prepared by volunteers, when the trademarks were managed by
volunteers, and so forth. That was appropriate for the time, and even
though it was messy, it was kind of great. Then we all went through a
period in which roles-and-responsibilities were utterly unclear -- it
wasn't at all obvious who should do what, and many
roles-and-responsibilities were hotly disputed. Personally, I feel like
we're moving into a period now in which things are getting clearer. We
don't pay staff to edit the projects: staff who edit do it on their own
time, as a hobby or special personal interest. We do pay staff to do things
that are better done by staff than by volunteers, such as managing the
trademark portfolio. Some volunteers (such as Domas) have very special
privileges and powers, because they've proved over time they are
exceptionally skilled. Some volunteers support the Wikimedia Foundation
staff in their work in a variety of ways, because they've proved their
interest and abilities. Some work happens in close partnership between
staff and volunteers, such as production of blog posts, speaking with the
media, and in projects such as the Global Ed one. Sometimes organized
groups of volunteers are created by volunteers and supported by staff (e.g.
ArbCom or AffCom) and sometimes organized groups of volunteers are created
by

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

Sue Gardner wrote:
So. People can disagree with this decision, and that's okay. But
ultimately, the Wikimedia Foundation is responsible for the Wikimedia
Foundation wiki: it's our job to figure out how best to manage and
Maintain it. That's what we're doing here.

wikimediafoundation.org has historically been managed by the Board. Not
Gayle or Philippe.

I'm still waiting on the Board to chime in here. It's my understanding
that several Board members (current and former) wanted to open the wiki to
more editing and cleanup in the short-term and in the long-term re-unite
the wiki with Meta-Wiki at www.wikimedia.org.

This is a step in the wrong direction.

MZMcBride



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Marc A. Pelletier

On 05/11/2013 12:41 PM, Seb35 wrote:
 At the same time, it’s a very bad timing of doing such a controversial
 action just before weekend, and let people wondering during two days the
 reasons behind this action. So waiting still 2 days..

Yes, IMO that was a faux-pas.  This should have been announced in
advance and not done late Friday, if only to avoid those open questions.

I note, however, that Sue gave an extended response in this thread a bit
ago, so while it may not have been the best of timings, it's been swift.
 :-)

-- Marc


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Tomasz W. Kozlowski

I'm not going to respond to all the points raised in your e-mail, Sue 
(partially because most of them are just too general), so let me just 
mentioned some of them.



The editors are responsible for the projects: the Wikimedia Foundation
knows that, acknowledges it, and is deeply appreciative (as are all
readers) for the work that volunteers do in the projects. The Wikimedia
Foundation is responsible for the Wikimedia Foundation wiki (and the blog).


Then it should perhaps be renamed as the Wikimedia Foundation Blog With 
Guests Post from Community Members.



We are grateful to get community help there, and a small number of
community members do really good work with us on both the WMF wiki and the
blog. But ultimately that wiki, and the blog, are our responsibility, and
we are accountable for making sure that e.g. the staff page, the Board
bios, the resolution texts, etc., are maintained and in good shape. Most
material on the WMF is not created via collaborative production processes
-- it's corporate in nature, meaning that it is developed by the
Wikimedia Foundation, for an audience of Wikimedia Foundation stakeholders,
which includes community members and prospective community members, donors,
readers of the projects, media, and others.


Well, then I am still surprised to see you thank those volunteers for 
their work in this matter—by desysopping them all in one, unannounced 
and not discussed user rights purge.


The most important reason why all those pages that you mention, Sue, are 
maintained and in good shape is that community members have been very 
often driving changes, helping with importing translations, and making 
thousands of small changes (be it typos, categorisation or design-like).


Seeing that there aren't any WMF employees who contributed as much time 
and work as some community members (with the possible exception of 
Philippe and Heather), I'm puzzled to see you make this decision.


This having been written, I would like to reiterate my questions again 
(and add another one):


1) Who made the decision to remove adminship from all community members?
2) Why did you make this decision now? What changed?
3) Why did you decide to desysop people straight away instead of
discussing things with them first?
4) /NEW/ Who precisely (what department) is responsible for the 
maintenance of the wiki, and why didn't they perform their roles before?


-- Tomasz

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Nathan

Argh, why do we have to keep going through this over and over again?
I'm sure we're long past the point where Sue and many members of the
staff are convinced that they will be attacked by someone in reaction
to any decision they could make. Maybe that's true, but its no excuse
for transforming such a picayune change into a drama bomb through the
utter failure to manage the implementation of a change that affects
dedicated volunteers. An advanced notice, an explanation, a thank you,
an expression of hope that volunteers will continue to help. That's
all it would have taken to preserve this as what it ought to have
been, a non-issue. Instead, they received a terse and impersonal
notice after the fact that amounted to the corporate version of
ordering someone off your lawn.

Now we have an explanation, but it's a bit late - and it comes in
place of what the first WMF response ought to have been, an apology
for once again bungling an interaction with volunteers. Not all that
long ago the WMF seemed to consider ahead of time the potential
reaction of volunteers, and to tailor actions and communication to
limit the chance of anger, disappointment and hurt feelings among
them. Perhaps it was a natural, and unspoken, priority at a time when
many WMF leaders were volunteers and former volunteers. Maybe we're
past that point, and the WMF needs to begin actively pushing this
ethos into the organizational culture of both staff and volunteer
leadership groups.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Seb35


Thanks a lot for this explanation.

On the other side, wikis not only need content producers (here WMF) but  
also curators (wikignomes) who are sorting the pages, deleting and moving  
pages, typocorrecting, templating things, helping new users in formatting  
texts, etc. (I read some of the Florence’s blogposts :) -- and not being  
admin restricts a lot the possible actions.


And on the example you give about disagreement between two editors (e.g.  
staffer and volunteer), in theory there is no reason the staffer’s  
solution is better or worse than the volunteer’s solution, but perhaps a  
mean solution can be better than any of the two initial solutions; and in  
this case, the spent time is not a waste of time.


Sébastien

Le Sat, 11 May 2013 18:48:38 +0200, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org a  
écrit:

Gayle is travelling today and not online, so I'll take a crack at
responding to this.

The editors are responsible for the projects: the Wikimedia Foundation
knows that, acknowledges it, and is deeply appreciative (as are all
readers) for the work that volunteers do in the projects. The Wikimedia
Foundation is responsible for the Wikimedia Foundation wiki (and the  
blog).

We are grateful to get community help there, and a small number of
community members do really good work with us on both the WMF wiki and  
the

blog. But ultimately that wiki, and the blog, are our responsibility, and
we are accountable for making sure that e.g. the staff page, the Board
bios, the resolution texts, etc., are maintained and in good shape. Most
material on the WMF is not created via collaborative production processes
-- it's corporate in nature, meaning that it is developed by the
Wikimedia Foundation, for an audience of Wikimedia Foundation  
stakeholders,
which includes community members and prospective community members,  
donors,

readers of the projects, media, and others.

My understanding is that administrator rights have been removed from a
small number of volunteers, but that those people still have basic  
editing
rights. My understanding is that the Wikimedia Foundation staff who work  
on

the Foundation wiki have been grateful (and are grateful) for the help
they've gotten from community members in maintaining the Foundation wiki,
and that we hope they'll continue to help us. They've been great, and  
we're

grateful.

But, my understanding is also that occasionally volunteers have  
overridden

decisions made by staff on the Wikimedia Foundation wiki. I don't think
that's ever been a huge problem: I don't think we've ever had a situation
in which extensive discussion hasn't reached an okay conclusion. But, the
extensive discussions --which, I understand, have typically been
one-on-one, by which I mean, not a large number of community members or a
community consensus against something the Foundation has wanted to do,  
but
rather one volunteer disagreeing with something staff have been asked to  
do

as part of their job --- occasionally, those discussions have been
extremely time-consuming. That's not good. The staff working on the
Wikimedia Foundation wiki have jobs they've got to get done, in support  
of

the entire movement. If they spend days or weeks needing to persuade a
single community member of the merits of something they want to do on the
Foundation wiki, or if they need to modify their plans extensively to
accommodate the opinions of a single community member, that reduces the
amount of time available for them to do the rest of their work. Which, I
repeat, is in the service of the movement overall.

So I would say this:

This decision is not about the community versus the WMF. This  
decision
is about the WMF staff, and making it possible for them to do their work  
on

the WMF wiki with some reasonable degree of efficiency and effectiveness.
This decision clarifies roles-and-responsibilities. On the projects, the
volunteers are the editorial leads, and the WMF plays a supporting role  
by

creating functionality, maintaining the servers, paying the bandwidth
bills, and so forth. On the WMF wiki, the WMF is the editorial lead, and
volunteers can (and do) play a supporting role helping staff organize
pages, maintain pages, and so forth. That's a reasonable division, and I
think having clarity around it is a good thing.

Slightly more broadly: when the Wikimedia movement was very young,
everybody did everything and there wasn't much division of
roles-and-responsibilities. I remember when the Wikimedia Foundation
budgets were prepared by volunteers, when the trademarks were managed by
volunteers, and so forth. That was appropriate for the time, and even
though it was messy, it was kind of great. Then we all went through a
period in which roles-and-responsibilities were utterly unclear -- it
wasn't at all obvious who should do what, and many
roles-and-responsibilities were hotly disputed. Personally, I feel like
we're moving into a period now in which things are getting clearer. We
don't

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Erik Moeller

On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 9:48 AM, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 My understanding is that administrator rights have been removed from a
 small number of volunteers, but that those people still have basic editing
 rights.

Far more than basic, actually. The WMF wiki is unusual in that it
allows insertion of raw HTML by any registered user (this is because
the donation forms used to be hosted there; they're now developed on a
dedicated site). Regular users also have permission to edit the
MediaWiki: namespace, which helps with translation. This means that
regular users can add arbitrary code that will be executed in the
reader's browser, something that only admins can do on most of our
other wikis. There are 600 registered users on the WMF wiki.

While I understand the frustration with admin access being restricted,
volunteers on this particular wiki are still trusted with
extraordinary rights (without prejudice as to whether that
configuration should be broadened or narrowed in future). I asked
Philippe yesterday, and he said that account requests from Meta would
continue to be processed (by JamesA and himself going forward). As Sue
says, having the overall governance responsibilities on the wiki
clarified is a normal step. Sorry for the rocky transition; no
disrespect was intended.

The original text on
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Welcome (written in
2004 when there was no WMF staff) with regard to the Board resolving
all disputes should indeed be updated; the Board delegates day-to-day
operational responsibilities to the organizational staff, and while
the sentence is technically true, it was written at a time when that
delegation was not possible. Nonetheless, it was clear from the very
beginning that the WMF wiki was not operated according to the
community governance practices established in other wikis because it
serves a distinct purpose.

Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Katherine Casey

Having read through this entire thread, I have to ask: would there have
been any value in, instead of desysopping non-staff (because there appears
to be a possibly-valid argument that non-staff did most of the
administrative work on the wmf wiki), instead making it clear that unlike
on all other wikis, +staff users had the final say in any
administrative/editing dispute on the wmf wiki? That is, since Sue says a
large part of the problem was non-staff making staff justify themselves and
their decisions endlessly, why not just short-circuit that particular weak
spot and otherwise let work carry on? I guess the operative questions here
would be something like:

   1. Was there actual misuse of admin tools being done by non-staff?
   2. Were there other, non-misuse issues that arose from non-staff having
   +admin (i.e. we already know about too many challenges to staff, but was
   there anything else that made non-staff admins suboptimal? this would
   include even things like it looks weird to outsiders to have non-staff
   changing 'corporate' content)
   3. If there weren't other issues, could the issue of non-staff
   challenging staff decisions have been corrected with a less-drastic
   solution (such as clarifying who had final say in things)
   4. Is it true that non-staff admins do significant portions of the work
   on that wiki, such that their loss will now cause the wiki to go un- or
   more-poorly-maintained?
   5. If 4 is true, what solutions can we/the WMF put in place to pick up
   that slack so the wiki doesn't become worse?

None of these questions are intended to apportion blame or determine who
was right, but they may help us figure out why actions are being done,
how we could have routed around this huge blow-up, and where to go from
here.

-Fluffernutter


On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 2:19 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 9:48 AM, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org
 wrote:

  My understanding is that administrator rights have been removed from a
  small number of volunteers, but that those people still have basic
 editing
  rights.

 Far more than basic, actually. The WMF wiki is unusual in that it
 allows insertion of raw HTML by any registered user (this is because
 the donation forms used to be hosted there; they're now developed on a
 dedicated site). Regular users also have permission to edit the
 MediaWiki: namespace, which helps with translation. This means that
 regular users can add arbitrary code that will be executed in the
 reader's browser, something that only admins can do on most of our
 other wikis. There are 600 registered users on the WMF wiki.

 While I understand the frustration with admin access being restricted,
 volunteers on this particular wiki are still trusted with
 extraordinary rights (without prejudice as to whether that
 configuration should be broadened or narrowed in future). I asked
 Philippe yesterday, and he said that account requests from Meta would
 continue to be processed (by JamesA and himself going forward). As Sue
 says, having the overall governance responsibilities on the wiki
 clarified is a normal step. Sorry for the rocky transition; no
 disrespect was intended.

 The original text on
 https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Welcome (written in
 2004 when there was no WMF staff) with regard to the Board resolving
 all disputes should indeed be updated; the Board delegates day-to-day
 operational responsibilities to the organizational staff, and while
 the sentence is technically true, it was written at a time when that
 delegation was not possible. Nonetheless, it was clear from the very
 beginning that the WMF wiki was not operated according to the
 community governance practices established in other wikis because it
 serves a distinct purpose.

 Erik
 --
 Erik Möller
 VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread phoebe ayers

On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 3:26 AM, Tomasz W. Kozlowski tom...@twkozlowski.net
 wrote:


 These are questions directed at the WMF—for you regular folks, I have a
 riddle (I'll give a WikiLove barnstar to the first person to submit a
 correct answer). There is /at least/ one community member who does not hold
 any official position within the WMF, and who has not been desysopped in
 yesterday's purge—do you know who this person is?


If you're talking about me (I still seem to have admin rights, and no
official position) I'll happily give up my admin flag -- not sure why I was
left out of the batch. At any rate, I haven't edited much on the wmf wiki
since last year; I just had admin rights so i could move files around when
I was board secretary.

As for the whole thing -- it seems like especially poor timing and
communication around the action. It also seems dumb to desysop some of the
users who know the most about how to format and work with wikis. On the
other hand, the WMF wiki is special -- as the home of material from the
organization that basically does not get changed -- and I know there's been
some incidents, as Sue refers to, of reversals of staff decisions that led
to a lot of misunderstandings. I, and I suspect most of us, just take this
in stride because it's happened to us dozens of times; newer staff may not,
however.

Going forward I'd still support merging most of WMF wiki into meta, where
we can use a normal community admin process; and keeping a limited version
of it around for version-of-record documents and whatever technical needs
re: fundraising it fills, and simply being a lot more clear about policies
around that content.

-- phoebe

-- 
* I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers at
gmail.com *
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Jacob Orlowitz

I just want to highlight Nathan's excellent and reasonable point:

The WMF could work on: manag[ing] the implementation of a change that
affects dedicated volunteers. An advanced notice, an explanation, a thank
you, an expression of hope that volunteers will continue to help. That's all
it would have taken to preserve this as what it ought to have been, a
non-issue.

There's a lot of adversarial dynamics between the Foundation and the
Community.  A little bit of courtesy and civility and thoughtfulness would
go a long way towards avoiding antagonism.

Wikipedians are mission-driven and autonomy-craving.  Work with us on that,
respect it, use it to your advantage.

There are pain points in transition, some of them unavoidable, but WMF
should still seek to minimize harm and improve mutual understanding at each
step.  Otherwise, we get situations that take far more energy than a simple
explanation and expression of appreciation from the outset would have taken.

To paraphrase one of my favorite quotes: It takes less *time *to *do* a
thing *right*, than it does to explain why you did it *wrong.  Easier said
than done, but a worthy goal nonetheless.*

Jake (Ocaasi)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Casey Brown

On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 7:15 AM, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote:
 This is the email that got sent out to everyone,

For what it's worth, this didn't get sent out to everyone. I was a
bureaucrat and administrator, and have the most edits on that wiki
(afaik?), and wasn't notified. Like Huib, I was also in the batch of
blog moderator removals and wasn't notified about that either.

I'm not very active anymore, so it's not really a huge deal, but it's
still bad form to have not gotten any kind of notification at all.

--
Casey Brown (Cbrown1023)
caseybrown.org

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread K. Peachey

(Inline comments most likely, So shoot me)

On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 2:48 AM, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org wrote:
 …
 But, my understanding is also that occasionally volunteers have overridden
 decisions made by staff on the Wikimedia Foundation wiki. I don't think
 that's ever been a huge problem:
 …

Can you expand on this? I haven't really involved in foundationwiki
and I'm not going to go check all the edits for this, But this seems
like a kindly odd-shaped argument in my view. (The only time I was
involved with a staff-vol spat on wmfwiki, is when the staff member
decided the to need to take it to another wiki and then onto IRC as
well, where I and others had to bug staff members to find out whom
they were reporting to)

I highly doubt volunteers are just randomly undoing edits of staff
just because, We should be looking at the underlining issues behind
this, with what they are trying to fix and improving the workflow of
staff and volunteers. Just /randomly/ revoking seems counter-proactive
and detrimental to this.

 …
 So I would say this:

 This decision is not about the community versus the WMF. This decision
 is about the WMF staff, and making it possible for them to do their work on
 the WMF wiki with some reasonable degree of efficiency and effectiveness.

How many staff members that have jobs that rely on editing
foundationwiki? I did a quick scan of the last ~1000 or so edits and
really couldn't see any examples that stood out, If a volunteer
changes a staff edit, Yes it should be looked at but there is
generally a good reason (I've seen plently of staff members editing
other wikis that are clueless about the wiki world and people have
been fixing up their edits), And just removing admin rights doesn't
seem to have anything to do with that at all, Because the volunteers
can still edit (afaik the only rights they really loose are delete and
protect now)

 …
 This decision clarifies roles-and-responsibilities…

Not really, It was done randomly and at the end of a Friday when
most of the foundation stops working for the weekend, with lack of
meaningful communication to those involved (or in some cases,
communication at al), Personally it leaves more questions than
anything.

 …
 Personally, I feel like
 we're moving into a period now in which things are getting clearer. We
 don't pay staff to edit the projects:

I know at least one staff on a project, that has a bit to do with
there work, and has been directed to append staff to all their edit
summaries.

-Crazed ramblings out,
Peachey

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Mono

There's been a long-term conflict with volunteers  staff on
wikimediafoundation.org. As a user, I understand. Each staff member likes
to keep everything their way. They frequently revert changes (take a look
at the discussion and user talk pages, especially for MZMcBride) on 'staff
authority'. This is a logical next step against these users (most likely
MZ) so there's no conflict.

Is this a bad thing? Most likely not. Is the reason behind it a bad thing?
Yes.


On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 4:06 PM, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote:

 (Inline comments most likely, So shoot me)

 On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 2:48 AM, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org
 wrote:
  …
  But, my understanding is also that occasionally volunteers have
 overridden
  decisions made by staff on the Wikimedia Foundation wiki. I don't think
  that's ever been a huge problem:
  …

 Can you expand on this? I haven't really involved in foundationwiki
 and I'm not going to go check all the edits for this, But this seems
 like a kindly odd-shaped argument in my view. (The only time I was
 involved with a staff-vol spat on wmfwiki, is when the staff member
 decided the to need to take it to another wiki and then onto IRC as
 well, where I and others had to bug staff members to find out whom
 they were reporting to)

 I highly doubt volunteers are just randomly undoing edits of staff
 just because, We should be looking at the underlining issues behind
 this, with what they are trying to fix and improving the workflow of
 staff and volunteers. Just /randomly/ revoking seems counter-proactive
 and detrimental to this.

  …
  So I would say this:
 
  This decision is not about the community versus the WMF. This
 decision
  is about the WMF staff, and making it possible for them to do their work
 on
  the WMF wiki with some reasonable degree of efficiency and effectiveness.

 How many staff members that have jobs that rely on editing
 foundationwiki? I did a quick scan of the last ~1000 or so edits and
 really couldn't see any examples that stood out, If a volunteer
 changes a staff edit, Yes it should be looked at but there is
 generally a good reason (I've seen plently of staff members editing
 other wikis that are clueless about the wiki world and people have
 been fixing up their edits), And just removing admin rights doesn't
 seem to have anything to do with that at all, Because the volunteers
 can still edit (afaik the only rights they really loose are delete and
 protect now)

  …
  This decision clarifies roles-and-responsibilities…

 Not really, It was done randomly and at the end of a Friday when
 most of the foundation stops working for the weekend, with lack of
 meaningful communication to those involved (or in some cases,
 communication at al), Personally it leaves more questions than
 anything.

  …
  Personally, I feel like
  we're moving into a period now in which things are getting clearer. We
  don't pay staff to edit the projects:

 I know at least one staff on a project, that has a bit to do with
 there work, and has been directed to append staff to all their edit
 summaries.

 -Crazed ramblings out,
 Peachey

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

2013-05-11 Thread Nathan

If the conflict was primarily with MZMcBride (which seems to be the
case), then it was a bit cowardly to overhaul the entire scheme on the
site in order to avoid telling him to knock it off.

On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 7:44 PM, Mono monom...@gmail.com wrote:
 There's been a long-term conflict with volunteers  staff on
 wikimediafoundation.org. As a user, I understand. Each staff member likes
 to keep everything their way. They frequently revert changes (take a look
 at the discussion and user talk pages, especially for MZMcBride) on 'staff
 authority'. This is a logical next step against these users (most likely
 MZ) so there's no conflict.

 Is this a bad thing? Most likely not. Is the reason behind it a bad thing?
 Yes.



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

Casey Brown wrote:
On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 7:15 AM, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote:
 This is the email that got sent out to everyone,

For what it's worth, this didn't get sent out to everyone. I was a
bureaucrat and administrator, and have the most edits on that wiki
(afaik?), and wasn't notified. Like Huib, I was also in the batch of
blog moderator removals and wasn't notified about that either.

I'm left a little speechless by this. I've always considered my values to
be largely aligned with Wikimedia's, but more and more, I find myself
distanced from it. I don't really want to be associated with people who
can't treat volunteers with basic respect and dignity. Ultimately, like
every other volunteer, I have to evaluate whether my time is better spent
elsewhere.

It's a really sad day for Wikimedia. You and many others who were
summarily stripped of their user rights were integral to building that
wiki and you deserve to be recognized and appreciated, not thrown out on a
whim without notice or warning. Sue talks so much about stewardship, but
this apparently includes anointing a ruler of the wiki who isn't capable
of caring out her own commands. What does this say about the stewardship
of the wiki? Meanwhile the questions about who will actually keep the site
running go unanswered.

For people like Gayle and Philippe to privately collude and then fire us
at the end of the day on a Friday like we're disgruntled employees was
pretty bad. (Both of whom seemed to have been in such a rush to act, but
now are mysteriously too busy to participate in the community mailing list
discussion about their actions.) Watching Erik and Sue try to defend their
actions has been even more painful to watch. But it's long-time community
members who know that this isn't right and who have chosen to not say
anything that are bothering me the most.

It's unsurprising that you and many others aren't very active anymore. :-/
 You're so much better than they deserve.

MZMcBride



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)