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

2021-04-02 Thread
Unfortunately, I have to report a complete lack of response or
evidence of interest by the WMF taking even the most basic steps to
enforce the commitments that the WMF themselves chose to publish to
this email list.

WMF legal returned an automatic reference number "[Request received] -
24634" on 4 March 2021 (29 days ago). They have not bothered to write
back to recognize the problem or give a "human" response.

I had thought that after the recent progress of dialogue with the
LGBT+ Wikimedia community, that the example problem survey would be
taken down, it was not. Instead, the survey stayed open despite these
complaints through to 23rd March, presumably letting the WMF funding
survey fulfill its objectives, even as it presented some risk to
volunteers that participated. The references to standard Google terms
and conditions were never revised, despite official claims by the WMF
that they did not apply.

These failures and documented false claims by the WMF are
unacceptable, and a massive letdown for other members of WMF staff
that are working incredibly hard to provide better protection and
support for Wikimedian volunteers who represent minority groups.

This case of badly organized surveys has established a basis for
future mistrust, not one of working together or a meaningful
consultation.

Sorry.

Fae

On Thu, 4 Mar 2021 at 16:15, Fæ  wrote:
>
> The most recent official WMF survey "Media Matching Screener
> Survey"[1] which has terms and conditions published on 26 Feb 2021 by
> LMixter (WMF)[2] was promoted on Wikimedia Commons on 1 March 2021 by
> MRaish (WMF),[3] has no mechanism for tracking the geographic region
> of contributors, as demonstrated by the fact that it can be edited by
> open proxies. There are no questions within it or rubric that advise
> contributors not to answer any questions if they are writing from
> certain countries. The first page of the survey asks "What is your
> gender identification?". Every page of the form has a link to "Report
> Abuse" which takes the user to an apparent "Google Forms" standard
> non-WMF statement about abuse with a long statement about a nudity
> policy, and is presumably based on the Privacy Statement[2] a GooglePersonal 
> and confidential, please do not circulate or re-quote.
> internal report, not a WMF managed one. Page 3 has the question "What
> is your country of residence?" but is only asked in the context of
> paying the respondent unspecified compensation.
>
> The survey Privacy Statment[2] acts as the terms and conditions for
> the survey. It does not match the statement made on 17 February 2021.
> Instead, this links to the standard Google Privacy Policy [4] and the
> standard Google Terms of Service[5]. These terms contradict the 17
> February 2021 WMF statement.
>
> Copying in WMF legal to this email, as the earlier statements which
> are asserted to have been reviewed with WMF legal, appear to be untrue
> or a misunderstanding for whatever reason. WMF legal may wish to
> clarify in their own voice as to whether they support the statement by
> the WMF on 17 February 2021, and whether it shall be enforced and
> when.
>
> Reminder of WMF previous statement:
> "... our Enterprise agreement with Google prevents Google from
> accessing the data for their own uses and requires them to inform the
> Foundation of any requests for data that they receive prior to
> disclosure, allowing us an opportunity to file a legal objection"
> "... we are purposefully not asking questions about sexual orientation
> or gender in any geographies where same-sex relations or identifying
> as transgender are criminalized"
>
> Could the WMF please meet their stated commitment for the protection
> of volunteers taking part in surveys and revoke surveys that fail to
> meet them, starting with the "Media Matching Screener Survey"?
>
> Links
> 1. Survey 
> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfT_lxMA_88rC8hZ9stzQ-S9b6VwZXcDNFjd4YmWrNHoAx3jQ/viewform
> 2. Privacy Statement
> https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Media_Matching_Screener_Survey_Privacy_Statement=history
> 3. 
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Invitation_to_help_us_understand_how_you_work_with_media
> 4. https://policies.google.com/privacy
> 5. https://policies.google.com/terms
>
> Thanks,
> Fae
>
> On Sun, 28 Feb 2021 at 11:20, Fæ  wrote:
> >
> > A deeper look into the official response by the WMF raises some
> > questions about what it means in practice and whether a plain English
> > reading of the words is sufficient.
> >
> > Q1: WMF tested open source solutions
> > "[Surveys] [...] we have previously tested and attempted to use open
> > source solutions such as LimeSurvey"
> >
> > Can someone please provide the list of the multiple open source
> > solutions that the WMF has tested and the reports of why they were
> > each abandoned? This would be incredibly helpful for WMF Affiliates
> > who are doing exactly the same thing.
> >
> > Q2: Legal objections

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

2021-03-04 Thread
The most recent official WMF survey "Media Matching Screener
Survey"[1] which has terms and conditions published on 26 Feb 2021 by
LMixter (WMF)[2] was promoted on Wikimedia Commons on 1 March 2021 by
MRaish (WMF),[3] has no mechanism for tracking the geographic region
of contributors, as demonstrated by the fact that it can be edited by
open proxies. There are no questions within it or rubric that advise
contributors not to answer any questions if they are writing from
certain countries. The first page of the survey asks "What is your
gender identification?". Every page of the form has a link to "Report
Abuse" which takes the user to an apparent "Google Forms" standard
non-WMF statement about abuse with a long statement about a nudity
policy, and is presumably based on the Privacy Statement[2] a Google
internal report, not a WMF managed one. Page 3 has the question "What
is your country of residence?" but is only asked in the context of
paying the respondent unspecified compensation.

The survey Privacy Statment[2] acts as the terms and conditions for
the survey. It does not match the statement made on 17 February 2021.
Instead, this links to the standard Google Privacy Policy [4] and the
standard Google Terms of Service[5]. These terms contradict the 17
February 2021 WMF statement.

Copying in WMF legal to this email, as the earlier statements which
are asserted to have been reviewed with WMF legal, appear to be untrue
or a misunderstanding for whatever reason. WMF legal may wish to
clarify in their own voice as to whether they support the statement by
the WMF on 17 February 2021, and whether it shall be enforced and
when.

Reminder of WMF previous statement:
"... our Enterprise agreement with Google prevents Google from
accessing the data for their own uses and requires them to inform the
Foundation of any requests for data that they receive prior to
disclosure, allowing us an opportunity to file a legal objection"
"... we are purposefully not asking questions about sexual orientation
or gender in any geographies where same-sex relations or identifying
as transgender are criminalized"

Could the WMF please meet their stated commitment for the protection
of volunteers taking part in surveys and revoke surveys that fail to
meet them, starting with the "Media Matching Screener Survey"?

Links
1. Survey 
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfT_lxMA_88rC8hZ9stzQ-S9b6VwZXcDNFjd4YmWrNHoAx3jQ/viewform
2. Privacy Statement
https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Media_Matching_Screener_Survey_Privacy_Statement=history
3. 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Invitation_to_help_us_understand_how_you_work_with_media
4. https://policies.google.com/privacy
5. https://policies.google.com/terms

Thanks,
Fae

On Sun, 28 Feb 2021 at 11:20, Fæ  wrote:
>
> A deeper look into the official response by the WMF raises some
> questions about what it means in practice and whether a plain English
> reading of the words is sufficient.
>
> Q1: WMF tested open source solutions
> "[Surveys] [...] we have previously tested and attempted to use open
> source solutions such as LimeSurvey"
>
> Can someone please provide the list of the multiple open source
> solutions that the WMF has tested and the reports of why they were
> each abandoned? This would be incredibly helpful for WMF Affiliates
> who are doing exactly the same thing.
>
> Q2: Legal objections
> "[...] our Enterprise agreement with Google prevents Google from
> accessing the data for their own uses and requires them to inform the
> Foundation of any requests for data that they receive prior to
> disclosure, allowing us an opportunity to file a legal objection.
> [...] we have agreements with other services like Qualtrics"
> Re-reading this, it seems an astonishingly generous and legally
> binding commitment from Google, Qualtrics, and presumably other
> suppliers that have not been named. These suppliers will refuse to
> cooperate with legal investigations, such as US Government agencies,
> or their own internal security threats, before consulting with WMF
> Legal, and will wait for WMF Legal to object.
>
> The question is, can someone please provide a link to a WMF-funded or
> approved survey where this agreement was in place, or is it a
> statement of what might happen in the future?
> Based on my understanding of existing surveys like the still running
> UCoC survey, the WMF terms and conditions and the referenced Google
> terms and conditions are in direct contradiction to this assertion by
> the WMF, and WMF Legal.
>
> Q3: Geographical restriction
> "[...] we are purposefully not asking questions about sexual
> orientation or gender in any geographies where same-sex relations or
> identifying as transgender are criminalized."
>
> Can someone please link to a WMF-funded or approved survey where this
> happened, or is this an ambition for the future that has not happened
> yet?
> In the example of the running UCoC survey (Google docs) 

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

2021-02-28 Thread Vi to
People living in these countries already know which services they can use
and which one they shouldn't. We don't actually expose them to threats by,
instead, we prevent them from using the feature relying upon these services.
Several users probably won't trust these services even if our legal
agreements with relevant providers are fine.

So I think we definitely should start relying upon our internal resources
for this, even a closed source solution hosted by WMF is better than 3rd
party services.

Vito

Il giorno lun 15 feb 2021 alle ore 07:59 Gnangarra  ha
scritto:

> I don't live in a country where I need to be worried about the
> anonymity and privacy, but that doesn't prevent me from  appreciating that
> there are people in countries like Myanmar, Iran, Syria, and many others
> who need the assurity of privacy to contribute to the movement.
>
> On Mon, 15 Feb 2021 at 14:12, Risker  wrote:
>
>> To clarify to anyone who doesn't want to read the actual proposal, which
>> Fae did not repeat here:
>>
>> *Proposal*
>>
>> It is proposed that on Wikimedia Commons that there must be no promotion
>> of surveys or questionnaires which rely on third party sites and closed
>> source tools, such as Google Forms. This should be interpreted as a ban
>> against engaging volunteers by mass messaging, use of banners or posts on
>> noticeboards.
>> *Recommended consequential action*
>>
>> Banners and posts which go against this proposal may be removed by
>> anyone.
>>
>> Posting account(s) may be blocked or have group rights removed at the
>> discretion of administrators, such as all rights that enable mass
>> messaging. In a persistent case, blocks and rights removal may apply to all
>> accounts of the person responsible. A rationale of doing their job as
>> part of being a WMF employee is not considered an exemption.
>>
>>
>> Nowthis applies to everyone who posts about a survey at Wikimedia
>> Commons, as this proposal is strictly related to Commons. It is not a
>> global proposal.  However, it would apply to researchers, to WMF staff, to
>> anyone who uses closed-sourced tools.  There is no suggestion at all about
>> suitable alternative tools.  In fact, there is a severe dearth of quality
>> open source tools.  Researchers may be bound by their facilities to use
>> certain types of tools.
>>
>> Surveys and questionnaires are always voluntary. There's some
>> responsibility on the part of the user to read the privacy statements and
>> use of information statements that are normally mandatory for any
>> legitimate surveys.  More than once I've started to participate in a survey
>> and decided it was asking questions I didn't want to answer, and just never
>> saved them.
>>
>>
>> I think it would also be helpful if someone from WMF Technical could take
>> the time to discuss with the broader community what arrangements have been
>> made in their contract with Google to ensure that the information on those
>> documents (of whatever nature) are not in fact accessible to Google for
>> their data gathering or any other purposes.  There is, of course, a certain
>> irony that three of the four people who have commented on this thread so
>> far all have Gmail email addresses.
>>
>>
>> Risker/Anne
>>
>> On Mon, 15 Feb 2021 at 00:24, Gnangarra  wrote:
>>
>>> I agree with Fae's proposal if we are using tools that exclude community
>>> members out of safety and privacy concerns then we arent fulfilling the
>>> equity goals. I also recognise that alternatives need to be available but
>>> with no incentive for them to be used then there is no development of such
>>> tools, or improvements to their functionality. Faes proposal is putting the
>>> WMF on notice that there are steps we need to take to ensure equity,
>>> safety, and privacy in participation.
>>>
>>> On Mon, 15 Feb 2021 at 09:08, Łukasz Garczewski <
>>> lukasz.garczew...@wikimedia.pl> wrote:
>>>
 With respect, Fae, if you're going to propose banning an existing
 solution, it is on you to propose a suitable alternative or at least a
 process to find it before the ban takes effect.

 I write this as a signatory of Free Software Foundation Europe's Public
 Money? Public Code open letter . I
 am wholeheartedly a proponent of open source software.

 At the same time, I am a firm believer in using the best available tool
 for the job.

 Our mission is too important to hold ourselves back at every step due
 to a noble but often unrealistic wish to use open source solutions for
 everything we do.

 Last year, because of my drive to use proper open source solutions,
 WMPL wasted hours and hours of staff time (mostly mine) and a not
 insignificant amount of members' time because:

- Zeus, a widely used, cryptographically secure voting system is
impossible to setup and maintain and has very sparse documentation,
- CiviCRM, the premier open 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Warmly,
Erik

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

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

2021-02-28 Thread Mathieu Lovato Stumpf Guntz

Oups, sorry for that email, I wanted to respond privately.

The answer to my question seems to have already published in this thread 
with https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T275574 




Le 28/02/2021 à 18:35, Mathieu Lovato Stumpf Guntz a écrit :


Hello Valerio,

Thank you for all that you already have done on the topic.

Do you have precise tasks on which I might help? If not, do you 
already considered opening a task board on this topic and start to 
fill it?


Cheers,
psychoslave

Le 22/02/2021 à 08:15, Valerio Bozzolan via Wikimedia-l a écrit :

Hello everyone,

Apologies for my TL;DR

Interesting topic. I'm recently working on making ethical surveys 
more and more widespread, starting from here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Italia/LimeSurvey 



Every hand is welcome.

Warm wishes!

> As a consequence of the promotion of a Google forms based survey this
> week by a WMF representative, a proposal on Wikimedia Commons has
> been started to ban the promotion of surveys which rely on third
> party sites like Google Forms.
--
[[User:Valerio Bozzan]]
E-mail sent from Evolution from a random GNU/Linux distribution, 
delivered from my Postfix mailserver.


Have fun with software freedom!

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

2021-02-28 Thread Mathieu Lovato Stumpf Guntz

Hello Valerio,

Thank you for all that you already have done on the topic.

Do you have precise tasks on which I might help? If not, do you already 
considered opening a task board on this topic and start to fill it?


Cheers,
psychoslave

Le 22/02/2021 à 08:15, Valerio Bozzolan via Wikimedia-l a écrit :

Hello everyone,

Apologies for my TL;DR

Interesting topic. I'm recently working on making ethical surveys more 
and more widespread, starting from here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Italia/LimeSurvey 



Every hand is welcome.

Warm wishes!

> As a consequence of the promotion of a Google forms based survey this
> week by a WMF representative, a proposal on Wikimedia Commons has
> been started to ban the promotion of surveys which rely on third
> party sites like Google Forms.
--
[[User:Valerio Bozzan]]
E-mail sent from Evolution from a random GNU/Linux distribution, 
delivered from my Postfix mailserver.


Have fun with software freedom!

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

2021-02-28 Thread
A deeper look into the official response by the WMF raises some
questions about what it means in practice and whether a plain English
reading of the words is sufficient.

Q1: WMF tested open source solutions
"[Surveys] [...] we have previously tested and attempted to use open
source solutions such as LimeSurvey"

Can someone please provide the list of the multiple open source
solutions that the WMF has tested and the reports of why they were
each abandoned? This would be incredibly helpful for WMF Affiliates
who are doing exactly the same thing.

Q2: Legal objections
"[...] our Enterprise agreement with Google prevents Google from
accessing the data for their own uses and requires them to inform the
Foundation of any requests for data that they receive prior to
disclosure, allowing us an opportunity to file a legal objection.
[...] we have agreements with other services like Qualtrics"
Re-reading this, it seems an astonishingly generous and legally
binding commitment from Google, Qualtrics, and presumably other
suppliers that have not been named. These suppliers will refuse to
cooperate with legal investigations, such as US Government agencies,
or their own internal security threats, before consulting with WMF
Legal, and will wait for WMF Legal to object.

The question is, can someone please provide a link to a WMF-funded or
approved survey where this agreement was in place, or is it a
statement of what might happen in the future?
Based on my understanding of existing surveys like the still running
UCoC survey, the WMF terms and conditions and the referenced Google
terms and conditions are in direct contradiction to this assertion by
the WMF, and WMF Legal.

Q3: Geographical restriction
"[...] we are purposefully not asking questions about sexual
orientation or gender in any geographies where same-sex relations or
identifying as transgender are criminalized."

Can someone please link to a WMF-funded or approved survey where this
happened, or is this an ambition for the future that has not happened
yet?
In the example of the running UCoC survey (Google docs) this is not in
place. There is a question about gender identity that has the
potential to out people as transgender, and there is no technical
mechanism to filter by geographical location, nor are volunteers asked
to limit themselves if they live in a list of "hostile" countries.

Thanks,
Fae
-- 
fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

On Tue, 23 Feb 2021 at 22:45, Valerio Bozzolan via Wikimedia-l
 wrote:
>
> +1
>
> And if anyone has this document in their hands, please notify us here:
>
> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T275574
>
> On Tue, 2021-02-23 at 08:36 +, Fæ wrote:
> > Could someone provide a link to the discussed security review of
> > LimeSurvey? I've been unable to find it.
> > ...
> > Thanks,
> > Fae
> --
> Valerio Bozz.
>
> E-mail sent from Evolution from a random GNU/Linux distribution,
> delivered from my Postfix mailserver.

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

2021-02-28 Thread Mathieu Lovato Stumpf Guntz

Hello,

I agree that a blind "ban them all right now" is not the way to go.

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


Libre softwares are not perfect, for sure, they come with their own 
caveats. Maybe (re)reading When Free Software Isn't (Practically) 
Superior 
 
might worth our time here.


The question is not "will we meet issues if we use libre softwares?" Of 
course we will! And using non-libre softwares, we would too. The point 
is, on the long run, are we serious about "providing the essential 
infrastructure for free knowledge". If that the case, it won't happen by 
dodging all the difficulties that must be overcome to build such an 
infrastructure. This won't be achieved without sometime going through 
long hours of tedious learning by experience. If we coordinate well 
however, we can leverage on each other successes and failures, without 
giving exclusive privileges of this commonality to some exogenous actor.


Yes, sometime it might be easier on the short-term to take an 
out-of-the-box non-libre solution – although there is guarantee in that 
either. Sometime you will be better served on the short term with a 
libre software that you deploy alone in your corner of the cyberspace. 
Sometimes you'll be better served with a libre software that will be 
deployed, maintained and improved with the help some commercial support. 
Sometimes it might worth to have your own inhouse team to do all that 
work on some specific libre software stacks that match your needs.


Cheers

Le 15/02/2021 à 02:08, Łukasz Garczewski a écrit :
With respect, Fae, if you're going to propose banning an existing 
solution, it is on you to propose a suitable alternative or at least a 
process to find it before the ban takes effect.


I write this as a signatory of Free Software Foundation Europe's 
Public Money? Public Code open letter 
. I am wholeheartedly a proponent 
of open source software.


At the same time, I am a firm believer in using the best available 
tool for the job.


Our mission is too important to hold ourselves back at every step due 
to a noble but often unrealistic wish to use open source solutions for 
everything we do.


Last year, because of my drive to use proper open source solutions, 
WMPL wasted hours and hours of staff time (mostly mine) and a not 
insignificant amount of members' time because:


  * Zeus, a widely used, cryptographically secure voting system is
impossible to setup and maintain and has very sparse documentation,
  * CiviCRM, the premier open source CRM solution for NGOs, refuses to
work correctly after the Wordpress installation is moved to a new
URL, and documentation isn't helpful.

To my knowledge there are no suitable open source options that would 
be easy-to-use and robust enough to support our needs in both cases 
and be comparable to commercial counterparts.


I have wasted a ton of time (and therefore WMPL money), before I 
decided to use state-of-the-art commercial solutions for the needs 
described above. Don't be like me. Don't make other people think & act 
like I did. Be smarter.


Should we use an _equivalent_ open source solution when one is 
available? Yes.

Should we have a public list of open source tools needed? Yes.
Should we use programmes such as Google Summer of Code to build those 
tools? Yes.


Should we waste time using sub-par solutions or doing work manually? 
Hell no.


*So here's a constructive alternative idea:*

  * Let's gather the needs and use cases for tools used by WMF and
affiliates,
  * Let's build a list of potential open source replacements and map
what features are missing,
  * Let's put the word out that we're looking for open source
replacements where there are none available,
  * Let's embed Wikimedia liaisons in key open source projects to
ensure our needs and use cases are addressed promptly,
  * Let's use initiatives such as Summer of Code to kickstart building
some of these tools.

I acknowledge the above is much harder to do than instituting a ban 
via community consensus. It is, however, a much more productive 
approach and will get us to your desired state eventually, and without 
sabotaging the work that needs to happen in the meantime.


Oh, and in case anybody's wondering why we can't build these tools 
in-house:


We could but really, really shouldn't. MediaWiki and the wider 
Wikimedia tech infrastructure is still in need of huge improvements. 
It would be really unwise to distract WMF's development and product 
teams from these goals by requesting they build standard communication 
or reporting tools.


On Sat, Feb 13, 

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

2021-02-23 Thread Ilario Valdelli
First point for security.

What should be secure is the software AND the entity using it.

In case there is a third entity managing the data, there is an additional
level of insecurity to take care.

When people "donate" you your data, they don't take care what is the
software behind but who manages the data, where these data are stored,
until when these data are kept, with whom these data are shared.

As you can see who, when and what refer to people not to software.

If the processes and the people are secure, as it seems to be, the software
is a marginal risk.

Kind regards

On Tue, 23 Feb 2021, 09:53 Fæ,  wrote:

> Could someone provide a link to the discussed security review of
> LimeSurvey? I've been unable to find it.
>
> Considering that the currently open UCoC survey using Google Forms has
> quoted WMF terms and conditions, which imply a special agreement with
> Google, was there a security review for this solution including the
> asserted legal requirement on Google to ask permission from WMF Legal
> before releasing data to authorities in the USA, such as the FBI or
> NSA? It's not clear to me that Google would do this for anyone else.
>
> It would be helpful for all organizations that plan to do surveys on
> the Wikimedia community of volunteers, if the WMF could release a list
> of security assessments done for all survey tools they have used in
> the past, especially if this is now going to be asked of WMF
> Affiliates who will no doubt wish to save donor's money by not
> repeating the security assessments already published.
>
> Thanks,
> Fae
>
> On Tue, 23 Feb 2021 at 02:51, K. Peachey  wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On Tue, 23 Feb 2021, 7:18 am Valerio Bozzolan via Wikimedia-l, <
> wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hello everyone,
> >>
> >> Apologies for my TL;DR
> >>
> >> Interesting topic. I'm recently working on making ethical surveys more
> and more widespread, starting from here:
> >> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Italia/LimeSurvey
> >>Personal and confidential, please do not circulate or re-quote.
> >> Every hand is welcome.
> >>
> >> Warm wishes!
> >>
> >> --
> >>
> >> [[User:Valerio Bozzan]]
> >
> >
> > Did WMIT do any sort of security review before deploying lime?
> >
> > Security issues were found the previous two times wmf looked at from my
> understanding and that was without doing a full security review process
> >
> > Have any sort of privacy impact assessment (PIA) since surveys could
> potentially collect personally identifiable data (PIDs)
> --
> fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
>
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
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>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Surveys using third party tools on Wikimedia projects

2021-02-23 Thread Valerio Bozzolan via Wikimedia-l
+1

And if anyone has this document in their hands, please notify us here:

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T275574

On Tue, 2021-02-23 at 08:36 +, Fæ wrote:
> Could someone provide a link to the discussed security review of
> LimeSurvey? I've been unable to find it.
> ...
> Thanks,
> Fae
-- 
Valerio Bozz.

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delivered from my Postfix mailserver.

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

2021-02-23 Thread
Could someone provide a link to the discussed security review of
LimeSurvey? I've been unable to find it.

Considering that the currently open UCoC survey using Google Forms has
quoted WMF terms and conditions, which imply a special agreement with
Google, was there a security review for this solution including the
asserted legal requirement on Google to ask permission from WMF Legal
before releasing data to authorities in the USA, such as the FBI or
NSA? It's not clear to me that Google would do this for anyone else.

It would be helpful for all organizations that plan to do surveys on
the Wikimedia community of volunteers, if the WMF could release a list
of security assessments done for all survey tools they have used in
the past, especially if this is now going to be asked of WMF
Affiliates who will no doubt wish to save donor's money by not
repeating the security assessments already published.

Thanks,
Fae

On Tue, 23 Feb 2021 at 02:51, K. Peachey  wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tue, 23 Feb 2021, 7:18 am Valerio Bozzolan via Wikimedia-l, 
>  wrote:
>>
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> Apologies for my TL;DR
>>
>> Interesting topic. I'm recently working on making ethical surveys more and 
>> more widespread, starting from here:
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Italia/LimeSurvey
>>Personal and confidential, please do not circulate or re-quote.
>> Every hand is welcome.
>>
>> Warm wishes!
>>
>> --
>>
>> [[User:Valerio Bozzan]]
>
>
> Did WMIT do any sort of security review before deploying lime?
>
> Security issues were found the previous two times wmf looked at from my 
> understanding and that was without doing a full security review process
>
> Have any sort of privacy impact assessment (PIA) since surveys could 
> potentially collect personally identifiable data (PIDs)
--
fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae

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

2021-02-23 Thread Subhashish
Agree about the privacy and security worries shared by some in the list.

>From a software maintenance pov, developing a new tool is sometimes easier
but maintaining and keeping up with the ever-changing internet standards
(and new vulnerabilities and security changes) is hard. That said, a
movement that actively uses surveys and forms does need to make the
personal data transactions secure. To be able to do that, using both open
source tools and (preferably self-hosted) platforms that use e2ee (which
provides better security except in some extraordinary situations [1])
should be preferred. I'd argue a proprietary platform that protects user
data in surveys and collects little metadata is far better than an open
source one that collects and saves user data in plaintext in cloud. But
open source helps to some extent as proprietary platforms could claim many
things when there is no option for public audit of proprietary platforms.
But just open source does *not* help. An additional level of security is a
must and should be the foundational layer when it comes to a survey
platform.

As far as possible solutions go, it would be a good investment to support
developers from the open source community for a survey tool that protects
the privacy of survey participants by the use of e2ee and can be well
integrated into MediaWiki (bonus if not a primary goal). The Foundation and
the larger community (including Chapters and User Groups) would be greatly
benefitted from this. But until a good in-house solution is there, it might
be useful to reach out to other friendly faces in the development world --
Access Now, Article 19, Amnesty International, etc. -- to check what works
for them now.

If and when a platform develops, registered users can then use their
Mediawiki auth for creating privkeys to sign. This would add a
non-repudiable logging mechanism in the backend to add more transparency
and accountability.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law/

Subhashish


On Tue, Feb 23, 2021 at 8:21 AM K. Peachey  wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, 23 Feb 2021, 7:18 am Valerio Bozzolan via Wikimedia-l, <
> wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> Apologies for my TL;DR
>>
>> Interesting topic. I'm recently working on making ethical surveys more
>> and more widespread, starting from here:
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Italia/LimeSurvey
>>
>> Every hand is welcome.
>>
>> Warm wishes!
>>
>> --
>>
>> [[User:Valerio Bozzan]]
>>
>
> Did WMIT do any sort of security review before deploying lime?
>
> Security issues were found the previous two times wmf looked at from my
> understanding and that was without doing a full security review process
>
> Have any sort of privacy impact assessment (PIA) since surveys could
> potentially collect personally identifiable data (PIDs)
>
>> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Surveys using third party tools on Wikimedia projects

2021-02-22 Thread K. Peachey
On Tue, 23 Feb 2021, 7:18 am Valerio Bozzolan via Wikimedia-l, <
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> Apologies for my TL;DR
>
> Interesting topic. I'm recently working on making ethical surveys more
> and more widespread, starting from here:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Italia/LimeSurvey
>
> Every hand is welcome.
>
> Warm wishes!
>
> --
>
> [[User:Valerio Bozzan]]
>

Did WMIT do any sort of security review before deploying lime?

Security issues were found the previous two times wmf looked at from my
understanding and that was without doing a full security review process

Have any sort of privacy impact assessment (PIA) since surveys could
potentially collect personally identifiable data (PIDs)

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

2021-02-22 Thread Valerio Bozzolan via Wikimedia-l
Hello everyone,

Apologies for my TL;DR

Interesting topic. I'm recently working on making ethical surveys more
and more widespread, starting from here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Italia/LimeSurvey


Every hand is welcome.


Warm wishes!


> As a consequence of the promotion of a Google forms based survey this
> week by a WMF representative, a proposal on Wikimedia Commons has
> been started to ban the promotion of surveys which rely on third
> party sites like Google Forms.
-- 
[[User:Valerio Bozzan]]
E-mail sent from Evolution from a random GNU/Linux distribution,
delivered from my Postfix mailserver.

Have fun with software freedom!
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Surveys using third party tools on Wikimedia projects

2021-02-17 Thread Leila Zia
Hi folks,

Disclaimer: I'm not speaking on behalf of WMF. I'm sharing my personal
views based on what I've learned over the years working with different
survey tools.

* Freedom and Open Source is a guiding principle [1] for the Wikimedia
Foundation and something I personally deeply care about. The relevant
section of [1] reads "As an organization, we strive to use open source
tools over proprietary ones, although we use proprietary or closed
tools (such as software, operating systems, etc.) where there is
currently no open-source tool that will effectively meet our needs".
In the case of surveys, I've actively looked for open-source tools
multiple times (every couple of years) and I have not been able to
find one that satisfies our needs effectively. This doesn't mean the
search is over. One day we may find one.

* We need to be able to run surveys effectively and across
languages/projects if we are interested in learning from editors and
readers without relying on proxy measures that are inaccurate and
simply put, in many instances problematic (think about models that
attempt to predict the gender of the users on Twitter using the style
of tweeting or usernames or profile images :( ). Within my team,
Research, we have benefited from surveys to understand what are the
needs and motivations of readers across many languages [2] or better
understand the global gender differences in readership [3].

* I agree with Risker's point that the surveys are optional. Of
course, I also know that it's important to decrease the barriers for
everyone who wants to participate to be able to participate (because
we want to have more equity).

* Given that surveys have real use-cases for many across the movement,
I appreciate Łukasz's point that if you are to ban an existing
solution, it would be essential that you also propose a viable path
forward.

* As others have mentioned, some of the sentiment on this thread is
not new. Back in 2015 a Phabricator ticket was opened to address it:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T94807 . The ticket  shifted to what
survey tool is compatible with WMF's Privacy Policy and there are
clear responses on the ticket. For those of you interested to explore
open source options, that ticket may have good pointers for further
exploration.

Best,
Leila


[1] 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Guiding_Principles#Freedom_and_open_source
[2] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1812.00474.pdf
[3] https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.10403


--
Leila Zia
Head of Research
Wikimedia Foundation

On Wed, Feb 17, 2021 at 12:30 PM Gregory Varnum  wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> Thank you for discussing this matter. The Wikimedia Foundation takes the 
> safety and privacy of volunteers very seriously. I recognize that among the 
> concerns is that the identities of LGBTQ+ members of the movement could be 
> revealed to anti-LGBTQ entities and governments. As someone who has 
> previously worked in advocacy for victims of anti-LGBTQ+ related crimes and 
> acts of discrimination, I am personally very invested in mitigating that 
> risk. After speaking with my colleagues at the Foundation, I wanted to clear 
> up a few topics which have been raised here.
>
> == Commitment to Free & Open Source & Security ==
>
> In all platforms and software used in community interactions, our Security 
> and Legal teams are involved in reviewing possible solutions to ensure that 
> we are minimizing risks to our communities’ safety and privacy as well as the 
> security of our technical infrastructure. While we can never completely 
> remove all risks, we are making an increasingly strong effort to balance our 
> resources and technology values to find the best solution for our needs - as 
> well as the needs of the volunteers and readers of the projects we support.
>
> For the most part, this process allows us to honor our commitment to 
> open-source software and utilize solutions already available - such as our 
> recent adoption of Matrix in internal communications and our continued usage 
> of Phabricator for technical bug tracking. In some cases, there are 
> proprietary solutions that better fit our needs - such as our payroll systems 
> and staff email solutions. Finally, there are also times when there are no 
> solutions available and we need to develop our open-source solutions[1] - 
> such as to address how languages appear on a webpage or to help reduce our 
> site's bandwidth usage. We do not always have the resources to develop our 
> own solutions to processes not core to the operations of the wikis or where a 
> solution already exists that works as well or better than anything we could 
> realistically develop.
>
> == Survey tools ==
>
> With regards to surveys, we have previously tested and attempted to use open 
> source solutions such as LimeSurvey. We will continue to keep an eye on those 
> options and consider them again in future reviews. We are extremely cognizant 
> in exploring these options of potential threats 

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

2021-02-17 Thread Gregory Varnum
Hello,

Thank you for discussing this matter. The Wikimedia Foundation takes the safety 
and privacy of volunteers very seriously. I recognize that among the concerns 
is that the identities of LGBTQ+ members of the movement could be revealed to 
anti-LGBTQ entities and governments. As someone who has previously worked in 
advocacy for victims of anti-LGBTQ+ related crimes and acts of discrimination, 
I am personally very invested in mitigating that risk. After speaking with my 
colleagues at the Foundation, I wanted to clear up a few topics which have been 
raised here.

== Commitment to Free & Open Source & Security ==

In all platforms and software used in community interactions, our Security and 
Legal teams are involved in reviewing possible solutions to ensure that we are 
minimizing risks to our communities’ safety and privacy as well as the security 
of our technical infrastructure. While we can never completely remove all 
risks, we are making an increasingly strong effort to balance our resources and 
technology values to find the best solution for our needs - as well as the 
needs of the volunteers and readers of the projects we support. 

For the most part, this process allows us to honor our commitment to 
open-source software and utilize solutions already available - such as our 
recent adoption of Matrix in internal communications and our continued usage of 
Phabricator for technical bug tracking. In some cases, there are proprietary 
solutions that better fit our needs - such as our payroll systems and staff 
email solutions. Finally, there are also times when there are no solutions 
available and we need to develop our open-source solutions[1] - such as to 
address how languages appear on a webpage or to help reduce our site's 
bandwidth usage. We do not always have the resources to develop our own 
solutions to processes not core to the operations of the wikis or where a 
solution already exists that works as well or better than anything we could 
realistically develop.

== Survey tools ==

With regards to surveys, we have previously tested and attempted to use open 
source solutions such as LimeSurvey. We will continue to keep an eye on those 
options and consider them again in future reviews. We are extremely cognizant 
in exploring these options of potential threats both to the privacy of the data 
collected and the security of the servers operating the software.

Our strict privacy and security needs often require us entering into agreements 
with operators of proprietary software or services that we use. Sometimes the 
agreements are unique and confidential to avoid people who may intend harm from 
gleaning too many technical details. For example, our Enterprise agreement with 
Google prevents Google from accessing the data for their own uses and requires 
them to inform the Foundation of any requests for data that they receive prior 
to disclosure, allowing us an opportunity to file a legal objection. 
Additionally, our Legal department receives notice before changes to these 
kinds of  arrangements are formally accepted, affording us an opportunity to 
make a change in platforms, if necessary, in order to maintain our security and 
privacy requirements. Similarly, we have agreements with other services like 
Qualtrics to provide controls over how our data is managed and secured.

Thanks in large part to the input and efforts of Wikimedia LGBTQ+, we have 
recently made some additional improvements to how we conduct surveys. While our 
surveys have gone through legal review for several years, we have begun 
referring teams to appropriate language about gender and sexual orientation 
questions. Additionally, we are purposefully not asking questions about sexual 
orientation or gender in any geographies where same-sex relations or 
identifying as transgender are criminalized.[2][3] We are continuing to 
investigate and collect ideas on additional measures we can take to protect the 
safety of our communities.

== Ensuring the security of data ==

While storing data ourselves is sometimes the desired outcome, it is not always 
the best solution. It is also worth noting that even when data is stored on our 
servers, we cannot fully guarantee its protection without recognizing the 
constantly evolving nature of digital threats means there will always be as yet 
unknown risks. 

What we have done is continue to grow the capacity of our Security team[4] - 
allowing us to respond more rapidly to potential risks and over time expand our 
capacity to review options more rapidly. We have also established initiatives 
like the Defense of Contributors program[5] - which provides financial legal 
support to volunteers facing legal risks as a result of their participation in 
the Wikimedia movement (including taking surveys). We have added rigor to the 
process of assessing vendors from a security and privacy capabilities 
standpoint, so we are better informed on risks associated with vendors who 

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

2021-02-17 Thread Gnangarra
Kaya

Have we put the ostrich back, where does this go from here? Have we decided
to learn and make an effort or have we reached the inevitable impasse where
everyone hopes the issue has been forgotten about.

There was a reasonable (though I think unlikely) possibility that
contributors in Australia could lose Google as a platform,
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-16/google-search-departure-devastate-australian-small-business/13156958
.
While that looks even less likely google is already offering pay for
services and limiting "free" services like gmail and google docs.

The only assurity the WMF can give about equity, privacy, and access is
through its own services, or services that it hosts.   The movement needs
to be looking at its sustainability in the face of increased government
impact on the ultra large corporate services we are using to operate

On Mon, 15 Feb 2021 at 20:10, Tomasz Ganicz  wrote:

> Well, both ZEUS and CiviCRM works well in many NGO-ses. It is just a
> subject of proper maintenance. Actually, a piece of free software called
> MediaWiki is probably more complicated to maintain than CiviCRM or
> Wordpress but WMF is able to maintain it pretty well :-)  I believe that
> organization able to successfully maintain the largest MediaWiki based
> projects on Earth could also manage to organize free software based survey
> system... This is a subject of priorities rather than resources...
>
>
>
>
>
> pon., 15 lut 2021 o 02:08 Łukasz Garczewski <
> lukasz.garczew...@wikimedia.pl> napisał(a):
>
>> With respect, Fae, if you're going to propose banning an existing
>> solution, it is on you to propose a suitable alternative or at least a
>> process to find it before the ban takes effect.
>>
>> I write this as a signatory of Free Software Foundation Europe's Public
>> Money? Public Code open letter . I am
>> wholeheartedly a proponent of open source software.
>>
>> At the same time, I am a firm believer in using the best available tool
>> for the job.
>>
>> Our mission is too important to hold ourselves back at every step due to
>> a noble but often unrealistic wish to use open source solutions for
>> everything we do.
>>
>> Last year, because of my drive to use proper open source solutions, WMPL
>> wasted hours and hours of staff time (mostly mine) and a not insignificant
>> amount of members' time because:
>>
>>- Zeus, a widely used, cryptographically secure voting system is
>>impossible to setup and maintain and has very sparse documentation,
>>- CiviCRM, the premier open source CRM solution for NGOs, refuses to
>>work correctly after the Wordpress installation is moved to a new URL, and
>>documentation isn't helpful.
>>
>> To my knowledge there are no suitable open source options that would be
>> easy-to-use and robust enough to support our needs in both cases and be
>> comparable to commercial counterparts.
>>
>> I have wasted a ton of time (and therefore WMPL money), before I decided
>> to use state-of-the-art commercial solutions for the needs described above.
>> Don't be like me. Don't make other people think & act like I did. Be
>> smarter.
>>
>> Should we use an *equivalent* open source solution when one is
>> available? Yes.
>> Should we have a public list of open source tools needed? Yes.
>> Should we use programmes such as Google Summer of Code to build those
>> tools? Yes.
>>
>> Should we waste time using sub-par solutions or doing work manually? Hell
>> no.
>>
>> *So here's a constructive alternative idea:*
>>
>>- Let's gather the needs and use cases for tools used by WMF and
>>affiliates,
>>- Let's build a list of potential open source replacements and map
>>what features are missing,
>>- Let's put the word out that we're looking for open source
>>replacements where there are none available,
>>- Let's embed Wikimedia liaisons in key open source projects to
>>ensure our needs and use cases are addressed promptly,
>>- Let's use initiatives such as Summer of Code to kickstart building
>>some of these tools.
>>
>> I acknowledge the above is much harder to do than instituting a ban via
>> community consensus. It is, however, a much more productive approach and
>> will get us to your desired state eventually, and without sabotaging the
>> work that needs to happen in the meantime.
>>
>> Oh, and in case anybody's wondering why we can't build these tools
>> in-house:
>>
>> We could but really, really shouldn't. MediaWiki and the wider Wikimedia
>> tech infrastructure is still in need of huge improvements. It would be
>> really unwise to distract WMF's development and product teams from these
>> goals by requesting they build standard communication or reporting tools.
>>
>> On Sat, Feb 13, 2021 at 4:42 PM Fæ  wrote:
>>
>>> As a consequence of the promotion of a Google forms based 

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

2021-02-15 Thread Tomasz Ganicz
Well, both ZEUS and CiviCRM works well in many NGO-ses. It is just a
subject of proper maintenance. Actually, a piece of free software called
MediaWiki is probably more complicated to maintain than CiviCRM or
Wordpress but WMF is able to maintain it pretty well :-)  I believe that
organization able to successfully maintain the largest MediaWiki based
projects on Earth could also manage to organize free software based survey
system... This is a subject of priorities rather than resources...





pon., 15 lut 2021 o 02:08 Łukasz Garczewski 
napisał(a):

> With respect, Fae, if you're going to propose banning an existing
> solution, it is on you to propose a suitable alternative or at least a
> process to find it before the ban takes effect.
>
> I write this as a signatory of Free Software Foundation Europe's Public
> Money? Public Code open letter . I am
> wholeheartedly a proponent of open source software.
>
> At the same time, I am a firm believer in using the best available tool
> for the job.
>
> Our mission is too important to hold ourselves back at every step due to a
> noble but often unrealistic wish to use open source solutions for
> everything we do.
>
> Last year, because of my drive to use proper open source solutions, WMPL
> wasted hours and hours of staff time (mostly mine) and a not insignificant
> amount of members' time because:
>
>- Zeus, a widely used, cryptographically secure voting system is
>impossible to setup and maintain and has very sparse documentation,
>- CiviCRM, the premier open source CRM solution for NGOs, refuses to
>work correctly after the Wordpress installation is moved to a new URL, and
>documentation isn't helpful.
>
> To my knowledge there are no suitable open source options that would be
> easy-to-use and robust enough to support our needs in both cases and be
> comparable to commercial counterparts.
>
> I have wasted a ton of time (and therefore WMPL money), before I decided
> to use state-of-the-art commercial solutions for the needs described above.
> Don't be like me. Don't make other people think & act like I did. Be
> smarter.
>
> Should we use an *equivalent* open source solution when one is available?
> Yes.
> Should we have a public list of open source tools needed? Yes.
> Should we use programmes such as Google Summer of Code to build those
> tools? Yes.
>
> Should we waste time using sub-par solutions or doing work manually? Hell
> no.
>
> *So here's a constructive alternative idea:*
>
>- Let's gather the needs and use cases for tools used by WMF and
>affiliates,
>- Let's build a list of potential open source replacements and map
>what features are missing,
>- Let's put the word out that we're looking for open source
>replacements where there are none available,
>- Let's embed Wikimedia liaisons in key open source projects to ensure
>our needs and use cases are addressed promptly,
>- Let's use initiatives such as Summer of Code to kickstart building
>some of these tools.
>
> I acknowledge the above is much harder to do than instituting a ban via
> community consensus. It is, however, a much more productive approach and
> will get us to your desired state eventually, and without sabotaging the
> work that needs to happen in the meantime.
>
> Oh, and in case anybody's wondering why we can't build these tools
> in-house:
>
> We could but really, really shouldn't. MediaWiki and the wider Wikimedia
> tech infrastructure is still in need of huge improvements. It would be
> really unwise to distract WMF's development and product teams from these
> goals by requesting they build standard communication or reporting tools.
>
> On Sat, Feb 13, 2021 at 4:42 PM Fæ  wrote:
>
>> As a consequence of the promotion of a Google forms based survey this
>> week by a WMF representative, a proposal on Wikimedia Commons has been
>> started to ban the promotion of surveys which rely on third party
>> sites like Google Forms.[1]
>>
>> Launched today, but already it appears likely that this proposal will
>> have a consensus to support. Considering that Commons is one of our
>> largest Wikimedia projects, there are potential repercussions of
>> banning the on-wiki promotion of surveys which use Google products or
>> other closed source third party products like SurveyMonkey.
>>
>> Feedback is most welcome on the proposal discussion, or on this list
>> for handling impact, solutions, recommended alternatives that already
>> exist, or the future role of the WMF to support research and surveys
>> for the WMF and affiliates by using forking open source software and
>> self-hosting and self-managing data "locally".
>>
>> Links
>> 1.
>> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Proposals#Use_of_off-wiki_surveys_using_third-party_tools
>>
>> Thanks
>> Fae
>> --
>> fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
>> #WearAMask
>>
>> 

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

2021-02-15 Thread
Picking up on the tips that finding an alternative may not be as easy
as the WMF hosting, and perhaps patching, a version of LimeSurvey.[1]

This would be choosing to ignore the fact that WMF funded surveys have
and do include questions that if leaked or otherwise linked to the
identity of the volunteer, may lead to people because of who they are,
they may end up being in prison, being reprogrammed in an internment
camp, or being "disappeared" and murdered by the state. Not every
Wikimedia volunteer on our projects has the luxury of living in a
country where their human rights are protected, and ethically any WMF
funded researcher or WMF contractor should be required to assess their
proposed projects for risks for the volunteers that engage with their
projects.

Being a well-known part of our WM LGBT+ community for many years, I
know folx that live in countries where they risk arrest if they are
too public about their identity and many active volunteers have
approached me in private chats who while not under a legal threat,
fear to contribute to our projects in a public way, because of
repercussions in their every day lives, such as being excluded by
their families or losing their jobs. These risks are far more than
hypothetical, particularly given that the projects which rely on
surveys apparently make no effort at all to advise volunteers to take
steps to protect themselves, such as by filling out the survey from a
ToR browser or warning volunteers living in certain countries (like
Turkey or China) to just please not fill out the survey. It's also
worth noting that our LGBT+ volunteers have been targeted for recent
surveys, with repeated requests on our LGBT+ community groups in
Telegram and by email to take part. At no point were there associated
warnings for the risks, only a link to the WMF privacy terms and a
subsequent link to the Google terms, making it the volunteer's
responsibility to decipher the legalese (in English) and bizarrely
there has never been any effort to restrict the WMF funded surveys to
adults, despite Google clearly warning that non-adults cannot give
consent to use the system.

In response to the claim that "the proposer" has not approached the
WMF in advance, this is at best a bad faith assumption. I have
personally been in meetings this year with T to discuss problems
with WMF funded surveys, raising these issues of protection of
volunteers and the risks of compromising privacy. Some things happen
behind the scenes for good reasons and to maintain our productive
relationships.

Sorry, I do not feel that the greater risk here is that funded
projects that might have some inconvenience to handle if one of our
many Wikimedia projects takes a stand and bans the use of third party
survey tools, in the context that the WMF makes no legal commitment to
be responsible for damages if it goes wrong and a volunteer were to
suffer real-life harm or the consequences lead them to lose their
life. At the end of the day, these surveys are nice and easy to set
up, but they do not save lives, they are not mission-critical, nobody
will lose an eye if we switch them off while we work out better
solutions.

Let's sort it out. The WMF and Affiliates have been addicted to quick
free solutions using Google for years, and in the vast majority of
cases of funded projects, it can be avoided by giving a few hours work
to a paid academic intern; and they need the work.

BTW, yes I use Google mail, that's not a contradiction, this email is
not a survey with personal opinions. I will not end up in prison if
you quote me on Twitter. Those using tangential "arguments" like this
need to take a cool look at why they feel they need to scrape the
barrel.

Links
1. https://www.limesurvey.org

Thanks for the feedback, keep going.
Fae

On Sat, 13 Feb 2021 at 15:40, Fæ  wrote:
>
> As a consequence of the promotion of a Google forms based survey this
> week by a WMF representative, a proposal on Wikimedia Commons has been
> started to ban the promotion of surveys which rely on third party
> sites like Google Forms.[1]
>
> Launched today, but already it appears likely that this proposal will
> have a consensus to support. Considering that Commons is one of our
> largest Wikimedia projects, there are potential repercussions of
> banning the on-wiki promotion of surveys which use Google products or
> other closed source third party products like SurveyMonkey.
>
> Feedback is most welcome on the proposal discussion, or on this list
> for handling impact, solutions, recommended alternatives that already
> exist, or the future role of the WMF to support research and surveys
> for the WMF and affiliates by using forking open source software and
> self-hosting and self-managing data "locally".
>
> Links
> 1. 
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Proposals#Use_of_off-wiki_surveys_using_third-party_tools
>
> Thanks
> Fae
> --
> fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
> #WearAMask


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

2021-02-15 Thread Chris Keating
On Mon, Feb 15, 2021 at 6:59 AM Philippe Beaudette 
wrote:

>  Did anyone ask?
>
>
No, no-one did ask. Which is one reason that  it's regrettable this
conversation has kicked off with a confrontational on-wiki vote.

I would be interested to hear what the WMF's current position on this is.
Obviously there are questions to be asked about how the security and
privacy of Google Forms would compare with other possible solutions. And
there are tradeoffs to be made in terms of how much time, money and energy
should be spent on the wider FLOSS ecosystem. Currently none of us outside
the WMF really has anything to go on in terms of what the answers to those
questions are.

Since the subject of "why are you using closed-source solution X instead of
open-source Y?" is a recurring question in the movement, it would be great
if the WMF could provide some context to their decision-making here.

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

2021-02-15 Thread Ilario valdelli
Instead of insisting to use a tool or another, I think that the main 
point should be the security.


What happens to all these data, who takes care of them, who will read 
them, where they will be published.


Third party or not the recurrent topic of free software is always badly 
managed because we consider that the open software is automatically secure.


Honestly I would suggest you to switch your mind and to stress the point 
of the security instead.


In Europe there is a strong stress of this issues with the GDPR exactly 
to vehiculate the message that what is free may not free at all.


Personally I would prefer someone saying to use another solution because 
the personal date are safer and not to use another tool only because is 
not of a third party.


Kind regards

On 13/02/2021 16:40, Fæ wrote:

As a consequence of the promotion of a Google forms based survey this
week by a WMF representative, a proposal on Wikimedia Commons has been
started to ban the promotion of surveys which rely on third party
sites like Google Forms.[1]

Launched today, but already it appears likely that this proposal will
have a consensus to support. Considering that Commons is one of our
largest Wikimedia projects, there are potential repercussions of
banning the on-wiki promotion of surveys which use Google products or
other closed source third party products like SurveyMonkey.

Feedback is most welcome on the proposal discussion, or on this list
for handling impact, solutions, recommended alternatives that already
exist, or the future role of the WMF to support research and surveys
for the WMF and affiliates by using forking open source software and
self-hosting and self-managing data "locally".

Links
1. 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Proposals#Use_of_off-wiki_surveys_using_third-party_tools

Thanks
Fae


--
Ilario Valdelli
Wikimedia CH
Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens
Association pour l’avancement des connaissances libre
Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera
Switzerland - 8008 Zürich
Wikipedia: Ilario
Skype: valdelli
Tel: +41764821371
http://www.wikimedia.ch


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

2021-02-15 Thread Kunal Mehta

Hi,

On 2/14/21 5:08 PM, Łukasz Garczewski wrote:

*So here's a constructive alternative idea:*

  * Let's gather the needs and use cases for tools used by WMF and
affiliates,
  * Let's build a list of potential open source replacements and map
what features are missing,
  * Let's put the word out that we're looking for open source
replacements where there are none available,
  * Let's embed Wikimedia liaisons in key open source projects to ensure
our needs and use cases are addressed promptly,
  * Let's use initiatives such as Summer of Code to kickstart building
some of these tools.


Please see  which is the 
starting point of what you're looking for.


> 

Oh, and in case anybody's wondering why we can't build these tools in-house:

We could but really, really shouldn't. MediaWiki and the wider Wikimedia 
tech infrastructure is still in need of huge improvements. It would be 
really unwise to distract WMF's development and product teams from these 
goals by requesting they build standard communication or reporting tools.


I don't understand this. If a survey tool is important to the movement, 
why isn't it worth being worked on?


-- Legoktm

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

2021-02-15 Thread Jan Ainali
Limesurvey [1] is a very active project and I would be surprised if a
security error wouldn't have been fixed in many years. Especially if it was
reported as a security incident back to the community. Which should be the
procedure when such things are discovered, is not only good practice in
open source, it's being a good netizen in general.

My point here isn't to put blame for things in the past, but to make sure
that we as a community make sure that the ecosystem of open source tools we
need in all the affiliates is healthy. This is an investment of time for
sure, but instead we don't have to pay by giving up privacy (sometimes we
might also save money in license fees, but this we shouldn't count on).

Doing this investment would Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement
and Provide for Safety and Inclusion, very much inline with our new
strategy recommendations.

[1] https://www.limesurvey.org/

Med vänliga hälsningar
Jan Ainali


Den mån 15 feb. 2021 kl 08:52 skrev Asaf Bartov :

> That tool was Limesurvey.
>
>A.
>
> On Mon, 15 Feb 2021, 08:59 Philippe Beaudette 
> wrote:
>
>> I would also like to add a bit of historical context.  Many years ago,
>> when I worked at the WMF, we were using a FLOSS survey tool (I don't recall
>> which).  We were fairly dependent on it, when one day someone discovered
>> that it was vulnerable to sql injection attacks and Tim Starling (I
>> believe) rightly killed it on our servers. Shortly after that, we moved
>> toward using a non-free tool that was safer and more robust.  I dont recall
>> that the two events were connected, but I would be surprised if they
>> weren't.
>>
>> Tim did the right thing then, even though it meant that we were moved off
>> a FLOSS solution.  Sometimes "Free" just isn't equal, or better.  Sometimes
>> it's an actual honest-to-god security risk and there are reasons why
>> WMF's staff aren't using a free alternative to a proprietary tool.  Did
>> anyone ask?
>>
>> Philippe
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 15, 2021 at 12:13 AM Risker  wrote:
>>
>>> To clarify to anyone who doesn't want to read the actual proposal, which
>>> Fae did not repeat here:
>>>
>>> *Proposal*
>>>
>>> It is proposed that on Wikimedia Commons that there must be no promotion
>>> of surveys or questionnaires which rely on third party sites and closed
>>> source tools, such as Google Forms. This should be interpreted as a ban
>>> against engaging volunteers by mass messaging, use of banners or posts on
>>> noticeboards.
>>> *Recommended consequential action*
>>>
>>> Banners and posts which go against this proposal may be removed by
>>> anyone.
>>>
>>> Posting account(s) may be blocked or have group rights removed at the
>>> discretion of administrators, such as all rights that enable mass
>>> messaging. In a persistent case, blocks and rights removal may apply to all
>>> accounts of the person responsible. A rationale of doing their job as
>>> part of being a WMF employee is not considered an exemption.
>>>
>>>
>>> Nowthis applies to everyone who posts about a survey at Wikimedia
>>> Commons, as this proposal is strictly related to Commons. It is not a
>>> global proposal.  However, it would apply to researchers, to WMF staff, to
>>> anyone who uses closed-sourced tools.  There is no suggestion at all about
>>> suitable alternative tools.  In fact, there is a severe dearth of quality
>>> open source tools.  Researchers may be bound by their facilities to use
>>> certain types of tools.
>>>
>>> Surveys and questionnaires are always voluntary. There's some
>>> responsibility on the part of the user to read the privacy statements and
>>> use of information statements that are normally mandatory for any
>>> legitimate surveys.  More than once I've started to participate in a survey
>>> and decided it was asking questions I didn't want to answer, and just never
>>> saved them.
>>>
>>>
>>> I think it would also be helpful if someone from WMF Technical could
>>> take the time to discuss with the broader community what arrangements have
>>> been made in their contract with Google to ensure that the information on
>>> those documents (of whatever nature) are not in fact accessible to Google
>>> for their data gathering or any other purposes.  There is, of course, a
>>> certain irony that three of the four people who have commented on this
>>> thread so far all have Gmail email addresses.
>>>
>>>
>>> Risker/Anne
>>>
>>> On Mon, 15 Feb 2021 at 00:24, Gnangarra  wrote:
>>>
 I agree with Fae's proposal if we are using tools that
 exclude community members out of safety and privacy concerns then we arent
 fulfilling the equity goals. I also recognise that alternatives need to be
 available but with no incentive for them to be used then there is no
 development of such tools, or improvements to their functionality. Faes
 proposal is putting the WMF on notice that there are steps we need to take
 to ensure equity, safety, and privacy in participation.

 On 

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

2021-02-15 Thread Željko Blaće
Has Limesurvey been patched since?
(asking as I see it widely used among
some very ethical and tech literate projects)

On Mon, Feb 15, 2021 at 8:52 AM Asaf Bartov  wrote:

> That tool was Limesurvey.
>
>A.
>
> On Mon, 15 Feb 2021, 08:59 Philippe Beaudette 
> wrote:
>
>> I would also like to add a bit of historical context.  Many years ago,
>> when I worked at the WMF, we were using a FLOSS survey tool (I don't recall
>> which).  We were fairly dependent on it, when one day someone discovered
>> that it was vulnerable to sql injection attacks and Tim Starling (I
>> believe) rightly killed it on our servers. Shortly after that, we moved
>> toward using a non-free tool that was safer and more robust.  I dont recall
>> that the two events were connected, but I would be surprised if they
>> weren't.
>>
>> Tim did the right thing then, even though it meant that we were moved off
>> a FLOSS solution.  Sometimes "Free" just isn't equal, or better.  Sometimes
>> it's an actual honest-to-god security risk and there are reasons why
>> WMF's staff aren't using a free alternative to a proprietary tool.  Did
>> anyone ask?
>>
>> Philippe
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 15, 2021 at 12:13 AM Risker  wrote:
>>
>>> To clarify to anyone who doesn't want to read the actual proposal, which
>>> Fae did not repeat here:
>>>
>>> *Proposal*
>>>
>>> It is proposed that on Wikimedia Commons that there must be no promotion
>>> of surveys or questionnaires which rely on third party sites and closed
>>> source tools, such as Google Forms. This should be interpreted as a ban
>>> against engaging volunteers by mass messaging, use of banners or posts on
>>> noticeboards.
>>> *Recommended consequential action*
>>>
>>> Banners and posts which go against this proposal may be removed by
>>> anyone.
>>>
>>> Posting account(s) may be blocked or have group rights removed at the
>>> discretion of administrators, such as all rights that enable mass
>>> messaging. In a persistent case, blocks and rights removal may apply to all
>>> accounts of the person responsible. A rationale of doing their job as
>>> part of being a WMF employee is not considered an exemption.
>>>
>>>
>>> Nowthis applies to everyone who posts about a survey at Wikimedia
>>> Commons, as this proposal is strictly related to Commons. It is not a
>>> global proposal.  However, it would apply to researchers, to WMF staff, to
>>> anyone who uses closed-sourced tools.  There is no suggestion at all about
>>> suitable alternative tools.  In fact, there is a severe dearth of quality
>>> open source tools.  Researchers may be bound by their facilities to use
>>> certain types of tools.
>>>
>>> Surveys and questionnaires are always voluntary. There's some
>>> responsibility on the part of the user to read the privacy statements and
>>> use of information statements that are normally mandatory for any
>>> legitimate surveys.  More than once I've started to participate in a survey
>>> and decided it was asking questions I didn't want to answer, and just never
>>> saved them.
>>>
>>>
>>> I think it would also be helpful if someone from WMF Technical could
>>> take the time to discuss with the broader community what arrangements have
>>> been made in their contract with Google to ensure that the information on
>>> those documents (of whatever nature) are not in fact accessible to Google
>>> for their data gathering or any other purposes.  There is, of course, a
>>> certain irony that three of the four people who have commented on this
>>> thread so far all have Gmail email addresses.
>>>
>>>
>>> Risker/Anne
>>>
>>> On Mon, 15 Feb 2021 at 00:24, Gnangarra  wrote:
>>>
 I agree with Fae's proposal if we are using tools that
 exclude community members out of safety and privacy concerns then we arent
 fulfilling the equity goals. I also recognise that alternatives need to be
 available but with no incentive for them to be used then there is no
 development of such tools, or improvements to their functionality. Faes
 proposal is putting the WMF on notice that there are steps we need to take
 to ensure equity, safety, and privacy in participation.

 On Mon, 15 Feb 2021 at 09:08, Łukasz Garczewski <
 lukasz.garczew...@wikimedia.pl> wrote:

> With respect, Fae, if you're going to propose banning an existing
> solution, it is on you to propose a suitable alternative or at least a
> process to find it before the ban takes effect.
>
> I write this as a signatory of Free Software Foundation Europe's Public
> Money? Public Code open letter . I
> am wholeheartedly a proponent of open source software.
>
> At the same time, I am a firm believer in using the best available
> tool for the job.
>
> Our mission is too important to hold ourselves back at every step due
> to a noble but often unrealistic wish to use open source solutions for
> everything we do.
>
> Last year, 

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

2021-02-14 Thread Asaf Bartov
That tool was Limesurvey.

   A.

On Mon, 15 Feb 2021, 08:59 Philippe Beaudette  wrote:

> I would also like to add a bit of historical context.  Many years ago,
> when I worked at the WMF, we were using a FLOSS survey tool (I don't recall
> which).  We were fairly dependent on it, when one day someone discovered
> that it was vulnerable to sql injection attacks and Tim Starling (I
> believe) rightly killed it on our servers. Shortly after that, we moved
> toward using a non-free tool that was safer and more robust.  I dont recall
> that the two events were connected, but I would be surprised if they
> weren't.
>
> Tim did the right thing then, even though it meant that we were moved off
> a FLOSS solution.  Sometimes "Free" just isn't equal, or better.  Sometimes
> it's an actual honest-to-god security risk and there are reasons why
> WMF's staff aren't using a free alternative to a proprietary tool.  Did
> anyone ask?
>
> Philippe
>
> On Mon, Feb 15, 2021 at 12:13 AM Risker  wrote:
>
>> To clarify to anyone who doesn't want to read the actual proposal, which
>> Fae did not repeat here:
>>
>> *Proposal*
>>
>> It is proposed that on Wikimedia Commons that there must be no promotion
>> of surveys or questionnaires which rely on third party sites and closed
>> source tools, such as Google Forms. This should be interpreted as a ban
>> against engaging volunteers by mass messaging, use of banners or posts on
>> noticeboards.
>> *Recommended consequential action*
>>
>> Banners and posts which go against this proposal may be removed by
>> anyone.
>>
>> Posting account(s) may be blocked or have group rights removed at the
>> discretion of administrators, such as all rights that enable mass
>> messaging. In a persistent case, blocks and rights removal may apply to all
>> accounts of the person responsible. A rationale of doing their job as
>> part of being a WMF employee is not considered an exemption.
>>
>>
>> Nowthis applies to everyone who posts about a survey at Wikimedia
>> Commons, as this proposal is strictly related to Commons. It is not a
>> global proposal.  However, it would apply to researchers, to WMF staff, to
>> anyone who uses closed-sourced tools.  There is no suggestion at all about
>> suitable alternative tools.  In fact, there is a severe dearth of quality
>> open source tools.  Researchers may be bound by their facilities to use
>> certain types of tools.
>>
>> Surveys and questionnaires are always voluntary. There's some
>> responsibility on the part of the user to read the privacy statements and
>> use of information statements that are normally mandatory for any
>> legitimate surveys.  More than once I've started to participate in a survey
>> and decided it was asking questions I didn't want to answer, and just never
>> saved them.
>>
>>
>> I think it would also be helpful if someone from WMF Technical could take
>> the time to discuss with the broader community what arrangements have been
>> made in their contract with Google to ensure that the information on those
>> documents (of whatever nature) are not in fact accessible to Google for
>> their data gathering or any other purposes.  There is, of course, a certain
>> irony that three of the four people who have commented on this thread so
>> far all have Gmail email addresses.
>>
>>
>> Risker/Anne
>>
>> On Mon, 15 Feb 2021 at 00:24, Gnangarra  wrote:
>>
>>> I agree with Fae's proposal if we are using tools that exclude community
>>> members out of safety and privacy concerns then we arent fulfilling the
>>> equity goals. I also recognise that alternatives need to be available but
>>> with no incentive for them to be used then there is no development of such
>>> tools, or improvements to their functionality. Faes proposal is putting the
>>> WMF on notice that there are steps we need to take to ensure equity,
>>> safety, and privacy in participation.
>>>
>>> On Mon, 15 Feb 2021 at 09:08, Łukasz Garczewski <
>>> lukasz.garczew...@wikimedia.pl> wrote:
>>>
 With respect, Fae, if you're going to propose banning an existing
 solution, it is on you to propose a suitable alternative or at least a
 process to find it before the ban takes effect.

 I write this as a signatory of Free Software Foundation Europe's Public
 Money? Public Code open letter . I
 am wholeheartedly a proponent of open source software.

 At the same time, I am a firm believer in using the best available tool
 for the job.

 Our mission is too important to hold ourselves back at every step due
 to a noble but often unrealistic wish to use open source solutions for
 everything we do.

 Last year, because of my drive to use proper open source solutions,
 WMPL wasted hours and hours of staff time (mostly mine) and a not
 insignificant amount of members' time because:

- Zeus, a widely used, cryptographically secure voting system is
impossible to 

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

2021-02-14 Thread Gnangarra
I don't live in a country where I need to be worried about the
anonymity and privacy, but that doesn't prevent me from  appreciating that
there are people in countries like Myanmar, Iran, Syria, and many others
who need the assurity of privacy to contribute to the movement.

On Mon, 15 Feb 2021 at 14:12, Risker  wrote:

> To clarify to anyone who doesn't want to read the actual proposal, which
> Fae did not repeat here:
>
> *Proposal*
>
> It is proposed that on Wikimedia Commons that there must be no promotion
> of surveys or questionnaires which rely on third party sites and closed
> source tools, such as Google Forms. This should be interpreted as a ban
> against engaging volunteers by mass messaging, use of banners or posts on
> noticeboards.
> *Recommended consequential action*
>
> Banners and posts which go against this proposal may be removed by anyone.
>
> Posting account(s) may be blocked or have group rights removed at the
> discretion of administrators, such as all rights that enable mass
> messaging. In a persistent case, blocks and rights removal may apply to all
> accounts of the person responsible. A rationale of doing their job as
> part of being a WMF employee is not considered an exemption.
>
>
> Nowthis applies to everyone who posts about a survey at Wikimedia
> Commons, as this proposal is strictly related to Commons. It is not a
> global proposal.  However, it would apply to researchers, to WMF staff, to
> anyone who uses closed-sourced tools.  There is no suggestion at all about
> suitable alternative tools.  In fact, there is a severe dearth of quality
> open source tools.  Researchers may be bound by their facilities to use
> certain types of tools.
>
> Surveys and questionnaires are always voluntary. There's some
> responsibility on the part of the user to read the privacy statements and
> use of information statements that are normally mandatory for any
> legitimate surveys.  More than once I've started to participate in a survey
> and decided it was asking questions I didn't want to answer, and just never
> saved them.
>
>
> I think it would also be helpful if someone from WMF Technical could take
> the time to discuss with the broader community what arrangements have been
> made in their contract with Google to ensure that the information on those
> documents (of whatever nature) are not in fact accessible to Google for
> their data gathering or any other purposes.  There is, of course, a certain
> irony that three of the four people who have commented on this thread so
> far all have Gmail email addresses.
>
>
> Risker/Anne
>
> On Mon, 15 Feb 2021 at 00:24, Gnangarra  wrote:
>
>> I agree with Fae's proposal if we are using tools that exclude community
>> members out of safety and privacy concerns then we arent fulfilling the
>> equity goals. I also recognise that alternatives need to be available but
>> with no incentive for them to be used then there is no development of such
>> tools, or improvements to their functionality. Faes proposal is putting the
>> WMF on notice that there are steps we need to take to ensure equity,
>> safety, and privacy in participation.
>>
>> On Mon, 15 Feb 2021 at 09:08, Łukasz Garczewski <
>> lukasz.garczew...@wikimedia.pl> wrote:
>>
>>> With respect, Fae, if you're going to propose banning an existing
>>> solution, it is on you to propose a suitable alternative or at least a
>>> process to find it before the ban takes effect.
>>>
>>> I write this as a signatory of Free Software Foundation Europe's Public
>>> Money? Public Code open letter . I
>>> am wholeheartedly a proponent of open source software.
>>>
>>> At the same time, I am a firm believer in using the best available tool
>>> for the job.
>>>
>>> Our mission is too important to hold ourselves back at every step due to
>>> a noble but often unrealistic wish to use open source solutions for
>>> everything we do.
>>>
>>> Last year, because of my drive to use proper open source solutions, WMPL
>>> wasted hours and hours of staff time (mostly mine) and a not insignificant
>>> amount of members' time because:
>>>
>>>- Zeus, a widely used, cryptographically secure voting system is
>>>impossible to setup and maintain and has very sparse documentation,
>>>- CiviCRM, the premier open source CRM solution for NGOs, refuses to
>>>work correctly after the Wordpress installation is moved to a new URL, 
>>> and
>>>documentation isn't helpful.
>>>
>>> To my knowledge there are no suitable open source options that would be
>>> easy-to-use and robust enough to support our needs in both cases and be
>>> comparable to commercial counterparts.
>>>
>>> I have wasted a ton of time (and therefore WMPL money), before I decided
>>> to use state-of-the-art commercial solutions for the needs described above.
>>> Don't be like me. Don't make other people think & act like I did. Be
>>> smarter.
>>>
>>> Should we use an *equivalent* open source solution when one 

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

2021-02-14 Thread Philippe Beaudette
I would also like to add a bit of historical context.  Many years ago, when
I worked at the WMF, we were using a FLOSS survey tool (I don't recall
which).  We were fairly dependent on it, when one day someone discovered
that it was vulnerable to sql injection attacks and Tim Starling (I
believe) rightly killed it on our servers. Shortly after that, we moved
toward using a non-free tool that was safer and more robust.  I dont recall
that the two events were connected, but I would be surprised if they
weren't.

Tim did the right thing then, even though it meant that we were moved off a
FLOSS solution.  Sometimes "Free" just isn't equal, or better.  Sometimes
it's an actual honest-to-god security risk and there are reasons why
WMF's staff aren't using a free alternative to a proprietary tool.  Did
anyone ask?

Philippe

On Mon, Feb 15, 2021 at 12:13 AM Risker  wrote:

> To clarify to anyone who doesn't want to read the actual proposal, which
> Fae did not repeat here:
>
> *Proposal*
>
> It is proposed that on Wikimedia Commons that there must be no promotion
> of surveys or questionnaires which rely on third party sites and closed
> source tools, such as Google Forms. This should be interpreted as a ban
> against engaging volunteers by mass messaging, use of banners or posts on
> noticeboards.
> *Recommended consequential action*
>
> Banners and posts which go against this proposal may be removed by anyone.
>
> Posting account(s) may be blocked or have group rights removed at the
> discretion of administrators, such as all rights that enable mass
> messaging. In a persistent case, blocks and rights removal may apply to all
> accounts of the person responsible. A rationale of doing their job as
> part of being a WMF employee is not considered an exemption.
>
>
> Nowthis applies to everyone who posts about a survey at Wikimedia
> Commons, as this proposal is strictly related to Commons. It is not a
> global proposal.  However, it would apply to researchers, to WMF staff, to
> anyone who uses closed-sourced tools.  There is no suggestion at all about
> suitable alternative tools.  In fact, there is a severe dearth of quality
> open source tools.  Researchers may be bound by their facilities to use
> certain types of tools.
>
> Surveys and questionnaires are always voluntary. There's some
> responsibility on the part of the user to read the privacy statements and
> use of information statements that are normally mandatory for any
> legitimate surveys.  More than once I've started to participate in a survey
> and decided it was asking questions I didn't want to answer, and just never
> saved them.
>
>
> I think it would also be helpful if someone from WMF Technical could take
> the time to discuss with the broader community what arrangements have been
> made in their contract with Google to ensure that the information on those
> documents (of whatever nature) are not in fact accessible to Google for
> their data gathering or any other purposes.  There is, of course, a certain
> irony that three of the four people who have commented on this thread so
> far all have Gmail email addresses.
>
>
> Risker/Anne
>
> On Mon, 15 Feb 2021 at 00:24, Gnangarra  wrote:
>
>> I agree with Fae's proposal if we are using tools that exclude community
>> members out of safety and privacy concerns then we arent fulfilling the
>> equity goals. I also recognise that alternatives need to be available but
>> with no incentive for them to be used then there is no development of such
>> tools, or improvements to their functionality. Faes proposal is putting the
>> WMF on notice that there are steps we need to take to ensure equity,
>> safety, and privacy in participation.
>>
>> On Mon, 15 Feb 2021 at 09:08, Łukasz Garczewski <
>> lukasz.garczew...@wikimedia.pl> wrote:
>>
>>> With respect, Fae, if you're going to propose banning an existing
>>> solution, it is on you to propose a suitable alternative or at least a
>>> process to find it before the ban takes effect.
>>>
>>> I write this as a signatory of Free Software Foundation Europe's Public
>>> Money? Public Code open letter . I
>>> am wholeheartedly a proponent of open source software.
>>>
>>> At the same time, I am a firm believer in using the best available tool
>>> for the job.
>>>
>>> Our mission is too important to hold ourselves back at every step due to
>>> a noble but often unrealistic wish to use open source solutions for
>>> everything we do.
>>>
>>> Last year, because of my drive to use proper open source solutions, WMPL
>>> wasted hours and hours of staff time (mostly mine) and a not insignificant
>>> amount of members' time because:
>>>
>>>- Zeus, a widely used, cryptographically secure voting system is
>>>impossible to setup and maintain and has very sparse documentation,
>>>- CiviCRM, the premier open source CRM solution for NGOs, refuses to
>>>work correctly after the Wordpress installation is moved to a new URL, 

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

2021-02-14 Thread Risker
To clarify to anyone who doesn't want to read the actual proposal, which
Fae did not repeat here:

*Proposal*

It is proposed that on Wikimedia Commons that there must be no promotion of
surveys or questionnaires which rely on third party sites and closed source
tools, such as Google Forms. This should be interpreted as a ban against
engaging volunteers by mass messaging, use of banners or posts on
noticeboards.
*Recommended consequential action*

Banners and posts which go against this proposal may be removed by anyone.

Posting account(s) may be blocked or have group rights removed at the
discretion of administrators, such as all rights that enable mass
messaging. In a persistent case, blocks and rights removal may apply to all
accounts of the person responsible. A rationale of doing their job as part
of being a WMF employee is not considered an exemption.


Nowthis applies to everyone who posts about a survey at Wikimedia
Commons, as this proposal is strictly related to Commons. It is not a
global proposal.  However, it would apply to researchers, to WMF staff, to
anyone who uses closed-sourced tools.  There is no suggestion at all about
suitable alternative tools.  In fact, there is a severe dearth of quality
open source tools.  Researchers may be bound by their facilities to use
certain types of tools.

Surveys and questionnaires are always voluntary. There's some
responsibility on the part of the user to read the privacy statements and
use of information statements that are normally mandatory for any
legitimate surveys.  More than once I've started to participate in a survey
and decided it was asking questions I didn't want to answer, and just never
saved them.


I think it would also be helpful if someone from WMF Technical could take
the time to discuss with the broader community what arrangements have been
made in their contract with Google to ensure that the information on those
documents (of whatever nature) are not in fact accessible to Google for
their data gathering or any other purposes.  There is, of course, a certain
irony that three of the four people who have commented on this thread so
far all have Gmail email addresses.


Risker/Anne

On Mon, 15 Feb 2021 at 00:24, Gnangarra  wrote:

> I agree with Fae's proposal if we are using tools that exclude community
> members out of safety and privacy concerns then we arent fulfilling the
> equity goals. I also recognise that alternatives need to be available but
> with no incentive for them to be used then there is no development of such
> tools, or improvements to their functionality. Faes proposal is putting the
> WMF on notice that there are steps we need to take to ensure equity,
> safety, and privacy in participation.
>
> On Mon, 15 Feb 2021 at 09:08, Łukasz Garczewski <
> lukasz.garczew...@wikimedia.pl> wrote:
>
>> With respect, Fae, if you're going to propose banning an existing
>> solution, it is on you to propose a suitable alternative or at least a
>> process to find it before the ban takes effect.
>>
>> I write this as a signatory of Free Software Foundation Europe's Public
>> Money? Public Code open letter . I am
>> wholeheartedly a proponent of open source software.
>>
>> At the same time, I am a firm believer in using the best available tool
>> for the job.
>>
>> Our mission is too important to hold ourselves back at every step due to
>> a noble but often unrealistic wish to use open source solutions for
>> everything we do.
>>
>> Last year, because of my drive to use proper open source solutions, WMPL
>> wasted hours and hours of staff time (mostly mine) and a not insignificant
>> amount of members' time because:
>>
>>- Zeus, a widely used, cryptographically secure voting system is
>>impossible to setup and maintain and has very sparse documentation,
>>- CiviCRM, the premier open source CRM solution for NGOs, refuses to
>>work correctly after the Wordpress installation is moved to a new URL, and
>>documentation isn't helpful.
>>
>> To my knowledge there are no suitable open source options that would be
>> easy-to-use and robust enough to support our needs in both cases and be
>> comparable to commercial counterparts.
>>
>> I have wasted a ton of time (and therefore WMPL money), before I decided
>> to use state-of-the-art commercial solutions for the needs described above.
>> Don't be like me. Don't make other people think & act like I did. Be
>> smarter.
>>
>> Should we use an *equivalent* open source solution when one is
>> available? Yes.
>> Should we have a public list of open source tools needed? Yes.
>> Should we use programmes such as Google Summer of Code to build those
>> tools? Yes.
>>
>> Should we waste time using sub-par solutions or doing work manually? Hell
>> no.
>>
>> *So here's a constructive alternative idea:*
>>
>>- Let's gather the needs and use cases for tools used by WMF and
>>affiliates,
>>- Let's build a list of potential open source 

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

2021-02-14 Thread Gnangarra
I agree with Fae's proposal if we are using tools that exclude community
members out of safety and privacy concerns then we arent fulfilling the
equity goals. I also recognise that alternatives need to be available but
with no incentive for them to be used then there is no development of such
tools, or improvements to their functionality. Faes proposal is putting the
WMF on notice that there are steps we need to take to ensure equity,
safety, and privacy in participation.

On Mon, 15 Feb 2021 at 09:08, Łukasz Garczewski <
lukasz.garczew...@wikimedia.pl> wrote:

> With respect, Fae, if you're going to propose banning an existing
> solution, it is on you to propose a suitable alternative or at least a
> process to find it before the ban takes effect.
>
> I write this as a signatory of Free Software Foundation Europe's Public
> Money? Public Code open letter . I am
> wholeheartedly a proponent of open source software.
>
> At the same time, I am a firm believer in using the best available tool
> for the job.
>
> Our mission is too important to hold ourselves back at every step due to a
> noble but often unrealistic wish to use open source solutions for
> everything we do.
>
> Last year, because of my drive to use proper open source solutions, WMPL
> wasted hours and hours of staff time (mostly mine) and a not insignificant
> amount of members' time because:
>
>- Zeus, a widely used, cryptographically secure voting system is
>impossible to setup and maintain and has very sparse documentation,
>- CiviCRM, the premier open source CRM solution for NGOs, refuses to
>work correctly after the Wordpress installation is moved to a new URL, and
>documentation isn't helpful.
>
> To my knowledge there are no suitable open source options that would be
> easy-to-use and robust enough to support our needs in both cases and be
> comparable to commercial counterparts.
>
> I have wasted a ton of time (and therefore WMPL money), before I decided
> to use state-of-the-art commercial solutions for the needs described above.
> Don't be like me. Don't make other people think & act like I did. Be
> smarter.
>
> Should we use an *equivalent* open source solution when one is available?
> Yes.
> Should we have a public list of open source tools needed? Yes.
> Should we use programmes such as Google Summer of Code to build those
> tools? Yes.
>
> Should we waste time using sub-par solutions or doing work manually? Hell
> no.
>
> *So here's a constructive alternative idea:*
>
>- Let's gather the needs and use cases for tools used by WMF and
>affiliates,
>- Let's build a list of potential open source replacements and map
>what features are missing,
>- Let's put the word out that we're looking for open source
>replacements where there are none available,
>- Let's embed Wikimedia liaisons in key open source projects to ensure
>our needs and use cases are addressed promptly,
>- Let's use initiatives such as Summer of Code to kickstart building
>some of these tools.
>
> I acknowledge the above is much harder to do than instituting a ban via
> community consensus. It is, however, a much more productive approach and
> will get us to your desired state eventually, and without sabotaging the
> work that needs to happen in the meantime.
>
> Oh, and in case anybody's wondering why we can't build these tools
> in-house:
>
> We could but really, really shouldn't. MediaWiki and the wider Wikimedia
> tech infrastructure is still in need of huge improvements. It would be
> really unwise to distract WMF's development and product teams from these
> goals by requesting they build standard communication or reporting tools.
>
> On Sat, Feb 13, 2021 at 4:42 PM Fæ  wrote:
>
>> As a consequence of the promotion of a Google forms based survey this
>> week by a WMF representative, a proposal on Wikimedia Commons has been
>> started to ban the promotion of surveys which rely on third party
>> sites like Google Forms.[1]
>>
>> Launched today, but already it appears likely that this proposal will
>> have a consensus to support. Considering that Commons is one of our
>> largest Wikimedia projects, there are potential repercussions of
>> banning the on-wiki promotion of surveys which use Google products or
>> other closed source third party products like SurveyMonkey.
>>
>> Feedback is most welcome on the proposal discussion, or on this list
>> for handling impact, solutions, recommended alternatives that already
>> exist, or the future role of the WMF to support research and surveys
>> for the WMF and affiliates by using forking open source software and
>> self-hosting and self-managing data "locally".
>>
>> Links
>> 1.
>> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Proposals#Use_of_off-wiki_surveys_using_third-party_tools
>>
>> Thanks
>> Fae
>> --
>> fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
>> #WearAMask
>>
>> 

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

2021-02-14 Thread Łukasz Garczewski
With respect, Fae, if you're going to propose banning an existing solution,
it is on you to propose a suitable alternative or at least a process to
find it before the ban takes effect.

I write this as a signatory of Free Software Foundation Europe's Public
Money? Public Code open letter . I am
wholeheartedly a proponent of open source software.

At the same time, I am a firm believer in using the best available tool for
the job.

Our mission is too important to hold ourselves back at every step due to a
noble but often unrealistic wish to use open source solutions for
everything we do.

Last year, because of my drive to use proper open source solutions, WMPL
wasted hours and hours of staff time (mostly mine) and a not insignificant
amount of members' time because:

   - Zeus, a widely used, cryptographically secure voting system is
   impossible to setup and maintain and has very sparse documentation,
   - CiviCRM, the premier open source CRM solution for NGOs, refuses to
   work correctly after the Wordpress installation is moved to a new URL, and
   documentation isn't helpful.

To my knowledge there are no suitable open source options that would be
easy-to-use and robust enough to support our needs in both cases and be
comparable to commercial counterparts.

I have wasted a ton of time (and therefore WMPL money), before I decided to
use state-of-the-art commercial solutions for the needs described above.
Don't be like me. Don't make other people think & act like I did. Be
smarter.

Should we use an *equivalent* open source solution when one is available?
Yes.
Should we have a public list of open source tools needed? Yes.
Should we use programmes such as Google Summer of Code to build those
tools? Yes.

Should we waste time using sub-par solutions or doing work manually? Hell
no.

*So here's a constructive alternative idea:*

   - Let's gather the needs and use cases for tools used by WMF and
   affiliates,
   - Let's build a list of potential open source replacements and map what
   features are missing,
   - Let's put the word out that we're looking for open source replacements
   where there are none available,
   - Let's embed Wikimedia liaisons in key open source projects to ensure
   our needs and use cases are addressed promptly,
   - Let's use initiatives such as Summer of Code to kickstart building
   some of these tools.

I acknowledge the above is much harder to do than instituting a ban via
community consensus. It is, however, a much more productive approach and
will get us to your desired state eventually, and without sabotaging the
work that needs to happen in the meantime.

Oh, and in case anybody's wondering why we can't build these tools in-house:

We could but really, really shouldn't. MediaWiki and the wider Wikimedia
tech infrastructure is still in need of huge improvements. It would be
really unwise to distract WMF's development and product teams from these
goals by requesting they build standard communication or reporting tools.

On Sat, Feb 13, 2021 at 4:42 PM Fæ  wrote:

> As a consequence of the promotion of a Google forms based survey this
> week by a WMF representative, a proposal on Wikimedia Commons has been
> started to ban the promotion of surveys which rely on third party
> sites like Google Forms.[1]
>
> Launched today, but already it appears likely that this proposal will
> have a consensus to support. Considering that Commons is one of our
> largest Wikimedia projects, there are potential repercussions of
> banning the on-wiki promotion of surveys which use Google products or
> other closed source third party products like SurveyMonkey.
>
> Feedback is most welcome on the proposal discussion, or on this list
> for handling impact, solutions, recommended alternatives that already
> exist, or the future role of the WMF to support research and surveys
> for the WMF and affiliates by using forking open source software and
> self-hosting and self-managing data "locally".
>
> Links
> 1.
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Proposals#Use_of_off-wiki_surveys_using_third-party_tools
>
> Thanks
> Fae
> --
> fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
> #WearAMask
>
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and
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> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 
>


-- 

Z poważaniem · Kind regards

Łukasz Garczewski

Dyrektor ds. operacyjnych · Chief Operating Officer

Wikimedia Polska


tel: +48 601 827 937

e-mail: lukasz.garczew...@wikimedia.pl



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

2021-02-13 Thread
As a consequence of the promotion of a Google forms based survey this
week by a WMF representative, a proposal on Wikimedia Commons has been
started to ban the promotion of surveys which rely on third party
sites like Google Forms.[1]

Launched today, but already it appears likely that this proposal will
have a consensus to support. Considering that Commons is one of our
largest Wikimedia projects, there are potential repercussions of
banning the on-wiki promotion of surveys which use Google products or
other closed source third party products like SurveyMonkey.

Feedback is most welcome on the proposal discussion, or on this list
for handling impact, solutions, recommended alternatives that already
exist, or the future role of the WMF to support research and surveys
for the WMF and affiliates by using forking open source software and
self-hosting and self-managing data "locally".

Links
1. 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Proposals#Use_of_off-wiki_surveys_using_third-party_tools

Thanks
Fae
-- 
fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
#WearAMask

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