Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Foundation Report, May 2012

2012-06-16 Thread James Salsman
I also want to say something good. I think the fact that the fundraising team is using multivariate analysis instead of simple A/B testing now is beyond good, it's just spectacular. A/B testing was excruciatingly slow, and this is a huge advance. I hope it means that all the banner text

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked principle of least surprise for the image filter?

2012-06-18 Thread James Salsman
If all the people in favour of filters had spent their time building them rather than arguing about them, we would have had a wide array of different solutions, without any politics or drama. That said, if people want to filter Wikipedia, a client-side solution rather than a filtered mirror

Re: [Wikimedia-l] The new narrowed focus by WMF

2012-10-21 Thread James Salsman
Why when we talk about editor engagement we think exclusively about new editors? How about retaining people, who already made Wikipedia (= the product) and keep maintaining it? Retention of people who have made dozens of edits is about the same as it's ever been. Retention of people who've

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Question for Board

2012-10-24 Thread James Salsman
to active status, having made more than 50 edits each after having gone at least six months without editing. Sincerely, James Salsman ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo

[Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [altmetrics:21] SF hackathon

2012-10-29 Thread James Salsman
Apparently I am moderated on wikimedia-sf. -- Forwarded message -- From: James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com Date: Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 9:56 PM Subject: Fwd: [altmetrics:21] SF hackathon To: San Francisco Wikimedians wikimedia...@lists.wikimedia.org -- Forwarded message

Re: [Wikimedia-l] deliberately lowered fundraising growth rate (was: Fundraising updates?)

2012-12-21 Thread James Salsman
How do you see the fiduciary responsibilities of the board playing into fundraising targets? The employees of the board share their fiduciary responsibilities. Are you suggesting the Board has a duty to raise as much money as possible? No. When actual fundraising far exceeded expectations,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] deliberately lowered fundraising growth rate (was: Fundraising updates?)

2012-12-21 Thread James Salsman
Costs don't scale linearly with pageviews. Nor do donations, especially when you consider that much of that growth in pageviews now comes from the 'Global South' (where people generally have less disposable income to donate) and from mobile devices (which we don't really fundraise on,

Re: [Wikimedia-l] deliberately lowered fundraising growth rate (was: Fundraising updates?)

2012-12-21 Thread James Salsman
SJ, Thank you for your reply: Fundraising targets have been set to match our projected needs for the year, for the past few years. Does the very recent abandonment of several aspects of the Strategic Plan, after the July 2012-3 Annual Plan goal was set at $46.1 million, which itself was

Re: [Wikimedia-l] deliberately lowered fundraising growth rate (was: Fundraising updates?)

2012-12-22 Thread James Salsman
I forgot that you are not able to edit Meta. Because I was accused of violating the research policy by a staff member who admitted some months later that there was no research policy. I will migrate the relevant parts of the discussion here to the wiki, since a wiki is a useful place to

Re: [Wikimedia-l] proposed urgent Board of Trustees resolution without a meeting

2012-12-24 Thread James Salsman
to comment. For that reason I will be recommending specific community initiatives during next year's Board elections. Best regards, James Salsman ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman

Re: [Wikimedia-l] fundraising status?

2012-12-25 Thread James Salsman
On Mon, Dec 24, 2012 at 10:40 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: ... As Zack noted earlier this month, banners are down until the end-of-year push. This has not changed. From December 26 to Dec 31 we'll begin showing banners again to everyone for a final push to the year end goal.

Re: [Wikimedia-l] fundraising status?

2012-12-25 Thread James Salsman
Your posts are assuming a ridiculous degree of bad faith, where you you start from your own confusion and extrapolate downwards we've stopped fundraising this year -- December 21 http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Fundraising_2012diff=4885494oldid=4884949 we're hoping to

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Annual Audit of the Wikimedia Foundation

2012-12-27 Thread James Salsman
paying about four times as much interest. It is unclear from the auditors' statements whether you accomplished this. Did you? Sincerely, James Salsman ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org

[Wikimedia-l] bond funds? (was Re: Annual Audit of the Wikimedia Foundation)

2012-12-27 Thread James Salsman
Another thing I want to point out, because I just noticed it. The recent years' yields on bond funds has been slightly higher than equity (stock) mutual funds, but with only a very small fraction of the volatility: http://news.morningstar.com/fundReturns/FundReturns.html?category=$FOCA$HY I'm

Re: [Wikimedia-l] fundraising status?

2012-12-27 Thread James Salsman
On Thu Dec 27, 2012 at 1:08 PM, Samuel Klein meta.sj at gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 12:18 PM, James Salsman jsalsman at gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 10:12 AM, Zack Exley zexley at wikimedia.org wrote: Maximizing for us means raising our budget with as little negative

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Rationale for fundraising record?

2012-12-28 Thread James Salsman
investments were expected to perform below the rate of inflation when they were purchased. Sincerely, James Salsman ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

[Wikimedia-l] compromise?

2012-12-28 Thread James Salsman
How about for the April fundraiser, instead of setting a dollar value goal, we agree to use multivariate analysis instead of A/B testing to optimize the messaging from volunteer submissions in advance, then run the whole thing for a fixed time frame, say three weeks, and then use the actual amount

Re: [Wikimedia-l] compromise?

2012-12-28 Thread James Salsman
, and could be a disaster... What are the possible failure modes? On Dec 28, 2012 9:46 PM, James Salsman jsalsman at gmail.com wrote: How about for the April fundraiser, instead of setting a dollar value goal, we agree to use multivariate analysis instead of A/B testing to optimize the messaging

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Multivariate Fundraising Tests (Re: compromise?)

2012-12-28 Thread James Salsman
about how to account for that other than to do a multivariate test shortly before beginning fundraising in earnest. On Fri, Dec 28, 2012 at 3:46 PM, Matthew Walker mwal...@wikimedia.org wrote: James, On Fri, Dec 28, 2012 at 2:11 PM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: I mean as in the tests

Re: [Wikimedia-l] compromise?

2013-01-03 Thread James Salsman
than editors and the public would not overwhelmingly support such an action in support of income equality? I intend to find out. ... it would be irresponsible of us to try to keep up with the average Tech company, as James Salsman had suggested. Leslie, the most frequent cause of bankruptcy

Re: [Wikimedia-l] compromise?

2013-01-04 Thread James Salsman
Michael Snow wrote: ... You think that having people mortgage their future and simply giving them more cash, which they don't ultimately enjoy other than to pay loans at distressed interest rates, is a greater benefit to them than providing the best insurance coverage we can offer? No, I

Re: [Wikimedia-l] compromise?

2013-01-06 Thread James Salsman
Pine wrote: ... I think Erik addressed your question about pay in a way that is very reasonable and I would ask you to re-read his comments Thank you very much for asking me to do this. I overlooked the video mentioned in Erik's comments and I see now that it may be the root of the problems

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Aaron Swartz is dead

2013-01-12 Thread James Salsman
Aaron explained how he originally measured Wikipedia contributions: http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/whowriteswikipedia/swartz2006 -- which is only linked through the bibliography he kept up on the topic http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/whowriteswikipedia/ which is linked at the end of the main essay. Less

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia ED Sue Gardner named to Global Voices Board of Directors (MZMcBride)

2013-01-17 Thread James Salsman
MZMcBride wrote: ... Given the mention of global citizen journalists in the blog post, I was a little surprised to not see a mention of Wikinews. Some collaboration between the Wikinewsies and the Global Voices folks might be good to explore. (I'll admit that I'm still somewhat trying to wrap

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia ED Sue Gardner named to Global Voices Board of Directors (MZMcBride)

2013-01-17 Thread James Salsman
Philippe Beaudette wrote, in response to: ... http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Reporter_Reimbursement_Program ... I'm not sure that link makes the point you wish to make, James. For instance, you note that it has NO supporting signups? Per

[Wikimedia-l] Fwd: [opensource] The Legacy of Aaron Swartz - event at Law School, January 28, 2013 12:45pm - 2:00pm

2013-01-24 Thread James Salsman
At Stanford Monday afternoon; RSVP required: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/law/forms/AaronSwartz.fb -- Forwarded message -- Date: Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 8:43 PM Subject: [opensource] The Legacy of Aaron Swartz - event at Law School, January 28, 2013 12:45pm - 2:00pm Event next

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Engagement survey questions

2013-01-28 Thread James Salsman
in the Ascent Advisor survey allowed. Since it's only 25 minutes to office hours I better send this now and send more information on how to do that later. Best regards, James Salsman ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Voice Intro Project

2013-02-08 Thread James Salsman
Andy Mabett wrote: People could use AudioBoo, for example, if it had a Flickr-like way for uploaders to open-license a recoding. I'ive reached out to them suggesting that, with no luck yet. The open source solution for voice recording with the largest cross-browser and cross-platform support

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member

2013-02-17 Thread James Salsman
Samuel Klein wrote: ... The person we find this time will also be through our community and advisor networks Will there be an opportunity for the community to pose questions to finalists, the answers to which the Board might be able to evaluate in making a final decision?

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member

2013-02-18 Thread James Salsman
experience with editing or otherwise supporting Foundation projects? Sincerely, James Salsman ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Your support is wanted: The WMF Board of Trustees is looking for a new Board member

2013-02-18 Thread James Salsman
months… which is fair enough to some degree?) (and to be fair: at this point, with all the experience I have within the movement I would want to see most of these decisions researched before committing to a point of view) Jan-Bart On Feb 18, 2013, at 9:19 AM, James Salsman jsals

[Wikimedia-l] White House orders open access to federally sponsored research

2013-02-22 Thread James Salsman
This looks pretty substantial: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/ostp_public_access_memo_2013.pdf The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) hereby directs each Federal agency with over $100 million in annual conduct of research and development expenditures to

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fundraising testing

2013-02-27 Thread James Salsman
Where are the results of the current fundraiser testing? And why has 2012 been deleted from http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:FundraiserStatistics ? ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation's non-disclosure agreement

2013-03-06 Thread James Salsman
I'd like to know more about the non-disparagement clause which multiple people have stated that the Foundation's NDA includes. In particular, does it forbid employees from discussing the fact that the Foundation's policy of paying below market salary discriminates against potential hires with

Re: [Wikimedia-l] fiction: WMF policy of paying less than market

2013-03-07 Thread James Salsman
Jan-Bart de Vreede wrote: ... I do want to make sure you (and everyone else) realise that there is no FACT like the one that you mention. fact that the Foundation's policy of paying below market salary discriminates against potential hires with large expenses such as kids in college or a

[Wikimedia-l] questions on the use of banner space to promote a cause

2013-03-30 Thread James Salsman
countries have to become before it would be appropriate for the Foundation to advocate on the issue? Is it already appropriate? Would it only be appropriate if the proportion of editors leaving the project due to personal poverty was increasing? Would it never be appropriate? Sincerely, James

Re: [Wikimedia-l] questions on the use of banner space to promote a cause

2013-04-01 Thread James Salsman
geni wrote: On 30 March 2013 20:57, James Salsman jsalsman at gmail.com wrote: ... (A) Should the Foundation devote banner space on project home pages to CISPA advocacy?[3][4] (B) Should the Foundation devote banner space on project home pages to CALEA advocacy?[5] (C) Should

[Wikimedia-l] CFAAA+CALEA vs. SOPA+PIPA: the amortization

2013-04-13 Thread James Salsman
Hi Garfield, Would you please find out how much the CFAA and CALEA amendements would be expected to cost readers, editors, and the Foundation compared to what SOPA or PIPA would have cost if they had passed, and let the wikimedia-l and advocacy advisors lists know? Best regards, James Salsman

Re: [Wikimedia-l] CFAAA+CALEA vs. SOPA+PIPA: the amortization

2013-04-13 Thread James Salsman
could have cost, under what I believe is a very reasonable set of assumptions. If Sue or Garfield share your opinion that the question is unanswerable, please let me know right away. Thanks again. Sincerely, James Salsman On Apr 13, 2013, at 5:03 PM, James Salsman jsalsman at gmail.com wrote: Hi

Re: [Wikimedia-l] CFAAA+CALEA vs. SOPA+PIPA: the amortization

2013-04-13 Thread James Salsman
Marc Pelletier wrote: On 04/13/2013 07:25 PM, James Salsman wrote: In short, the CFAA amendments alone would likely cost readers, editors, and the Foundation more than 500 times as much as SOPA or PIPA could have cost, under what I believe is a very reasonable set of assumptions. {{cn

[Wikimedia-l] an open letter to Sue Gardner

2013-05-24 Thread James Salsman
people more and took my advice about statistics more often, i.e., on using multivariate analysis instead of A/B testing. In any case, I hope you are well. Please visit the interstellar sleeper ship prototypes in the Lagrange Point region in Second Life when you get the time. Best regards, James

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Google Planning Wireless Networks To Connect The Next 1B People

2013-05-28 Thread James Salsman
Kul Wadhwa wrote: Microsoft with other partners has also been working on bringing broadband to Kenya (and ultimately other African countries) via white spaces However, every party has their own agenda so hopefully competition lowers prices and gives people more choices. And having many

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Children and Simple English

2013-05-30 Thread James Salsman
Mathias Damour wrote: The only sad thing is that it won't be launched in other languages There is a longstanding proposal to create simple language Wikipedias in languages other than English and France, but it remains to be seen whether it is compatible with the current narrowing focus

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Invitation to WMF May 2013 Metrics and Activities Meeting: Thursday, June 6, 18:00 UTC

2013-06-07 Thread James Salsman
Where is the draft Annual Plan referred to at 1:02 of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoCEj5AOrFA ? ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

[Wikimedia-l] Solving the China censorship problem

2013-06-07 Thread James Salsman
If we transcoded the stoplist would we still trigger censorship in China? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions/Archive_20#Mentioning_Wikipedia_on_Chinese_Skype_triggers_surveillance All centralized authorities engage in misguided attempts to impose

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Solving the China censorship problem

2013-06-08 Thread James Salsman
on an interpretation of Dan Pink's work which he and the secondary literature both firmly reject. Perhaps the elections and ED replacement will provide leadership who care more about the evidence than suffering through having to admit that they've been misguided. On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 10:28 PM, James

Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM

2013-06-10 Thread James Salsman
Federico Leva wrote: ... WMF will log the same (partial) data, but for 100 % of visits rather than 1/1000. How much more will that cause the Foundation to spend on processing subpoenas from law enforcement agencies? Will those agencies be charged for the time and organizational overhead of

Re: [Wikimedia-l] PRISM

2013-06-13 Thread James Salsman
Do others feel that the letter to US Congress text at https://optin.stopwatching.us/ (for which there does not seem to be a direct URL, sorry) is appropriately worded? I am far more impressed by the text at http://bestbits.net/prism-nsa/ which Jan Engelmann suggested on the Advocacy Advisors

[Wikimedia-l] reasonable compensation near the mid-point of the tech sector

2013-07-09 Thread James Salsman
Gayle, Page 26 of the 2013-4 Annual Plan says that you have optimized Wikimedia's value proposition [with] reasonable compensation near the mid-point of the tech sector. How much of a change to previous compensation scales pegged to the nonprofit sector does that represent in percentage terms?

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Advocacy Advisors] Participating in a specific, transparency-focused action

2013-07-18 Thread James Salsman
Luis Villa wrote: ... we'll continue to look out for opportunities that make sense ourselves, and of course the community should always feel able and empowered to start things as well The Foundation uses Google Drive/Docs internally. And extensively so, right? Why don't you publish a

[Wikimedia-l] change in article edits after visual editor roll-out (was Re: Feedback for the Wikimedia Foundation)

2013-07-22 Thread James Salsman
Robert Rohde wrote: ... early evidence that VE makes new users less likely to edit [2][3] ... [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:VisualEditor%27s_effect_on_newly_registered_editors/Results [3]

[Wikimedia-l] Fwd: change in article edits after visual editor roll-out (was Re: Feedback for the Wikimedia Foundation)

2013-07-22 Thread James Salsman
Nathan wrote: ... Because they are measuring different things? The first refers to newly registered editors, which the second (judging by your summary) does not. You are absolutely right. This gives us a silver lining insight that about 80% of anonymous IP editors have the editing experience

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: change in article edits after visual editor roll-out (was Re: Feedback for the Wikimedia Foundation)

2013-07-23 Thread James Salsman
Oliver Keyes wrote: active editors == editors with [5/10/depending on standard] edits a month. It's pretty impossible, at our end, for us to identify one person between multiple IPs or one person between multiple IPs. Why can't you use behavioral and expertise characteristics to measure the

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Feedback for the Wikimedia Foundation

2013-07-23 Thread James Salsman
Erik Möller wrote: ... we need to collectively figure out what a discoverable, intuitive user experience should look like We're not going to solve these challenges if we lock away VisualEditor... Erik, I don't understand. Could you please explain how making the visual editor opt-in only

[Wikimedia-l] a compromise proposal for visual editor dogfooding

2013-07-24 Thread James Salsman
Why not make the visual editor the default with opt-out for 5% of newly registered editors and anonymous IP page loads, and opt-in for everyone else until there is evidence that it is not decreasing the number of edits? ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list

[Wikimedia-l] fundraising experiment (ongoing!) results and question

2013-07-26 Thread James Salsman
As much as I complain about the fundraising team's continued neglect of the as yet unmeasured potential of the majority of the volunteer-submitted banner messaging ideas, I thought it would be nice to show the results of their latest experiment: http://i.imgur.com/gDBvNSt.png Note that the

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Updates on VE data analysis

2013-07-26 Thread James Salsman
Dario, Do you intend to measure the total number of edits per day prior to and after the visual editor roll-out? It appears that you have not analyzed or presented any data associated with those statistics. For example, why are you not providing a daily version of the hourly graph at

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Updates on VE data analysis

2013-07-26 Thread James Salsman
On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 7:28 PM, Dario Taraborelli dtarabore...@wikimedia.org wrote: ... We do have a graph of total hourly edits on enwiki across mainspaces here: http://ee-dashboard.wmflabs.org/graphs/enwiki_edits_api - it's trivial to bin by day and filter to the main namespace only, I'll

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Updates on VE data analysis

2013-07-26 Thread James Salsman
Steven Walling wrote: ... We know, for instance, that as the summer progresses, editing activity drops and climbs again in the fall How do we know that? According to http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm database edits increased from June to July and fell from July to

[Wikimedia-l] article bytes more meaningful than users or revisions (was Re: Updates on VE data analysis)

2013-07-27 Thread James Salsman
MZMcBride wrote: ... the number of non-deleted revisions per day for the English Wikipedia. The results are here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Permalink/565971356 So, that looks terrible: http://i.imgur.com/Z9lYCWj.png It looks terrible in the same way that every other graph of active

Re: [Wikimedia-l] article bytes more meaningful than users or revisions (was Re: Updates on VE data analysis)

2013-07-27 Thread James Salsman
Denny Vrandečić wrote: ... Is the graph http://i.imgur.com/TfaD99V.png based on actual data? Yes, the precise sizes for the dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/MMDD/enwiki-MMDD-pages-articles-multistream.xml.bz2 files are: 2012-07-02 9524994664 2012-08-02 9824345489 2012-09-02 9929910893

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Changes at the Wikimedia Foundation Fundraising Team

2013-07-29 Thread James Salsman
follow FiveThirtySix will first regret it, and then end up following it afterwards to prevent further such regret. Also, congratulations to Megan and Lisa! Sincerely, James Salsman ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe

Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA

2013-07-31 Thread James Salsman
Nathan wrote: ... It seems that most of the data they collect is wiped within 3 days; that the data itself can only be analyzed under a fairly specific set of minimization rules Are you referring to the 2009 Holder minimization rules which per

[Wikimedia-l] Disinformation regarding perfect forward secrecy for HTTPS

2013-08-01 Thread James Salsman
With the NSA revelations over the past months, there has been some very questionable information starting to circulate suggesting that trying to implement perfect forward secrecy for https web traffic isn't worth the effort. I am not sure of the provenance of these reports, and I would like to see

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Disinformation regarding perfect forward secrecy for HTTPS

2013-08-01 Thread James Salsman
Ryan Lane wrote: ... Assuming traffic analysis can be used to determine your browsing habits as they are occurring (which is likely not terribly hard for Wikipedia) The Google Maps example you linked to works by building a huge database of the exact byte sizes of satellite image tiles. Are you

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Disinformation regarding perfect forward secrecy for HTTPS

2013-08-02 Thread James Salsman
George William Herbert wrote: ... It would also not be much more effort or customer impact to pad to the next larger 1k size for a random large fraction of transmissions. Padding each transmission with a random number of bytes, up to say 50 or 100, might provide a greater defense against

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Disinformation regarding perfect forward secrecy for HTTPS

2013-08-02 Thread James Salsman
Marc A. Pelletier wrote: ... A minor random increase of size in document wouldn't even slow down [fingerprinting.] That's absolutely false. The last time I measured the sizes of all 9,625 vital articles, there was only one at the median length of 30,356 bytes but four articles up to 50 bytes

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Disinformation regarding perfect forward secrecy for HTTPS

2013-08-02 Thread James Salsman
... random padding without (at least) pipelining and placards *is* worthless to protect against traffic analysis No, that is not true, and http://www.ieee-security.org/TC/SP2012/papers/4681a332.pdf explains why. Padding makes it difficult but not impossible to distinguish between two HTTPS

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Disinformation regarding perfect forward secrecy for HTTPS

2013-08-02 Thread James Salsman
Marc A. Pelletier wrote: ... http://www.ieee-security.org/TC/SP2012/papers/4681a332.pdf ... have you actually /read/ that paper? Of course I have. Have you read the conclusions at the bottom right of page 344? What kind of an adversary trying to infer our readers' article selections is going to

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Disinformation regarding perfect forward secrecy for HTTPS

2013-08-02 Thread James Salsman
please address https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_cipher_modes_of_operation#Padding Sure. As soon as someone creates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_Shimmerso I can use an appropriate example. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Disinformation regarding perfect forward secrecy for HTTPS

2013-08-02 Thread James Salsman
Anthony, padding in this context means adding null or random bytes to the end of encrypted TCP streams in order to obscure their true length. The process of adding padding is entirely independent of the choice of underlying cipher. In this case, however, we have been discussing perfect forward

[Wikimedia-l] Another example of encryption FUD

2013-08-02 Thread James Salsman
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/517781/math-advances-raise-the-prospect-of-an-internet-security-crisis/ is another example of a very highly placed secondary news source casting fear, uncertainty, and doubt on the value of industry-standard encryption practices which is not only based on the

[Wikimedia-l] law enforcement buying vulnerabilities on black market leaving them unreported for surveillance

2013-08-19 Thread James Salsman
While the trickling release of Edward Snowden's revelations from bad to worse in weekly incremental steps has been enormously effective in swaying public opinion, it has made formulating a meaningful response very difficult. A few weeks ago we learned that the FBI has been purchasing personal

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Radiological images

2013-09-17 Thread James Salsman
So, there has never been a copyright or privacy dispute involving any actual radiology image, nor has anyone been able to find any evidence of a hint of any such dispute. The law is silent on the question because there has never been such a dispute. Yet some people want to delete hundreds of such

[Wikimedia-l] New Google interface to Wikipedia

2013-10-02 Thread James Salsman
of user referral log entries to the TAFI blurb? Sincerely, James Salsman Oliver Keyes wrote: No idea; if people have proposals...well, see above :). On 29 September 2013 20:10, James Salsman jsalsman at gmail.com wrote: They are really interested in finding ways to feed back

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Carbon footprints on Wikipedia.

2013-10-09 Thread James Salsman
Geoff, The inherent complexity and controversy of carbon footprints suggests that you should seek assistance at the Teahouse before proceeding with further editing on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse Tim Starling wrote: ...

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Carbon footprints on Wikipedia.

2013-10-10 Thread James Salsman
The inherent complexity and controversy of carbon footprints. What do you mean by that? Even those who fight for inclusion of the facts about climate change on Wikipedia aren't very likely to follow the peer reviewed secondary literature when it comes to reporting the extent of changes in

[Wikimedia-l] addressing paid advocacy

2013-11-08 Thread James Salsman
previous paid advocacy successes. If this were to become an ongoing effort culminating in name and shame releases (We caught these paid advocates puffing up these corporations' articles and blocked them) it could easily drive the worst abusers out of business. Sincerely, James Salsman

[Wikimedia-l] Fundraising mysteries

2013-11-25 Thread James Salsman
if it falls off at the same rate as the July test, that still means you could produce an endowment sufficient to do away with fundraising at current spending levels in less than eight months. Best regards, James Salsman ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fundraising mysteries

2013-11-28 Thread James Salsman
/Fundraising_2013#July_.26_August_Update On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 5:12 PM, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote: If October 4th and/or 22nd had large donations because of one-time events instead of regular donation appeal changes, why are they both bracketed by vastly abnormally successful previous

[Wikimedia-l] is the German/EU Policy Issues Survey a push-poll from empowerment to enabling?

2013-11-30 Thread James Salsman
. Best regards, James Salsman ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's accept Bitcoin as a donation method

2013-12-11 Thread James Salsman
Hi Megan, If someone wants to donate the harvestable platinum from an asteroid, would you please make sure that an appropriately progressive excise tax is paid to the ufohastings.com concerns? Thanks muchly. On Dec 11, 2013 8:03 PM, wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org wrote: Send

[Wikimedia-l] Our remit

2013-12-23 Thread James Salsman
If people chose to opt into censorship then its a bit outside our remit. For values of empowerment equal to very sincere well wishes. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:

[Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdored

2013-12-29 Thread James Salsman
Can we please stop paying the Microsoft and NSA taxes and start buying datacenter equipment which costs a lot less? Cubieboard/Cubietrucks for instance? Ref.: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/catalog-reveals-nsa-has-back-doors-for-numerous-devices-a-940994.html Best regards, James

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdored

2013-12-29 Thread James Salsman
When this came up last time, it turned out that there was some kind of a deal in place, and certainly many if not most published pictures of the Wikimedia data center feature rows of shiny Dell logos. But Dell does support Microsoft and the NSA, obviously, and also supports some very creative

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdored

2013-12-29 Thread James Salsman
... Wikimedia Labs uses x86 hardware virtualization (just one example) How does that tie us to x86? http://www.eweek.com/servers/arm-server-chips-get-xen-virtualization-support/ ... a conservative $200/server estimate I have been recommending hardware which costs closer to $70 per server

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdoored

2013-12-29 Thread James Salsman
Jasper, if you can't write an email or pick up the phone asking for a hardware quote without supporting the status quo of the Foundation datacenter being a monument to the poster boy of corporate tax abuses, Microsoft OEM bundling abuses, and NSA collaboration, I really can't help you. If you're

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Dells are backdoored

2013-12-30 Thread James Salsman
Jasper has tried to give you honest, useful information based on his actual experience and expertise in the matter It sure seemed like he was trying to imply that ARM servers cost more than twice what they actually do, and that there is some vague reason that we are tied to x86 because porting

[Wikimedia-l] (no subject)

2013-12-30 Thread James Salsman
Neither of Calxeda's articles gives a figure for capital cost I think they went under the moment their first competitor charging typical markups (Mitac) started shipping. Get some GFX servers and some of these to do your own tests: http://www.mitac.com/Business/7-Star.html you can't just plug

Re: [Wikimedia-l] RfC: Should we support MP4 Video on our sites?

2014-01-16 Thread James Salsman
Why would we promote patent- and secrecy-encumbered formats when Google has spent so much on opening WebM? Also, why does the Multimedia Team care about video when most Wiktionary headwords don't have uploaded audio exemplars yet? Where are our priorities?

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community consultation + Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director selection process

2014-01-22 Thread James Salsman
contrary to the peer reviewed secondary literature, many examples of which still exist in the English Wikipedia. Best regards, James Salsman ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community consultation + Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director selection process

2014-01-22 Thread James Salsman
common view among Stanford's Hoover Institution-sponsored staff, their relatives, and alumni. See also the proportion of Americans who disbelieve evolution, vaccines, and radioisotope dating. Best regards, James Salsman On Wednesday, January 22, 2014, James Salsman jsals...@gmail.com wrote

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community consultation + Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director selection process

2014-01-30 Thread James Salsman
... try to clone Sue http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recurring_Futurama_characters#Cubert_Farnsworth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_(2009_film) Could the WMF strategy extend to creating a Death Star to preserve all of human knowledge? If Sue and Leonie Haimson were mutual

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community consultation + Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director selection process

2014-01-30 Thread James Salsman
My suggestion of Leonie Haimson as co-director was most certainly not frivolous, and concern trolling on comments made in the spirit of fun to try to sideline consideration of her is offensive. Erik and others, what has Ting accomplished that would make him a better Director or Co-director than a

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Community consultation + Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director selection process

2014-01-31 Thread James Salsman
Craig Franklin wrote: ... it would be grossly unprofessional for Erik, Jan-Bart, or anyone else to publicly discuss the relative merits of people who may or may not be involved in a confidential hiring process No, the Board resolved to consult the community as necessary to assist with

[Wikimedia-l] ED qualifications

2014-01-31 Thread James Salsman
... Most people who are already in a current job are not going to be willing to have open debates about the job opportunities they are seeking. Not only because their 'boss' will know but also because if they are in a public company that could cause large issues in the market etc Do we

Re: [Wikimedia-l] ED qualifications

2014-01-31 Thread James Salsman
... we should consider it a strength in an individual to refuse to consider applying for a position where every aspect of their career and personal life would be microscopically examined by thousands of people What if the tiny fraction of people who were open to examination of their merits

[Wikimedia-l] ED profile

2014-01-31 Thread James Salsman
Jan-Bart de Vreede wrote: ... a large part will never be contacted as a potential candidate, simply because they are not close to matching the profile Is the profile documented or subjective? ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list

Re: [Wikimedia-l] My choice for ED

2014-02-01 Thread James Salsman
How could you say no to a face like this? https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kitty_meowing.jpg Is that the same angst-offsetting kitten as on j.mp/heygooglers ? ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:

[Wikimedia-l] Conflict resolution wikis

2014-02-15 Thread James Salsman
participant driving the process schedule (to the extent that human is skilled at it) but there are some very attractive opportunities for e.g. Wikidata and maintenance bot integration down the road if it works out. Best regards, James Salsman ___ Wikimedia

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