Re: [Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects
On Sat, 4 Aug 2012 14:12:08 +0200, Ziko van Dijk wrote: Hello, I repeat my proposal that every wiki-website (project) should install a (international) contact person, and these contact persons should be following a mailing list with specified information for them. They inform the wiki-website-community about important issues on the village pump or via another way. We have seen that purely informal positions (the self-appointed ambassadors) don't work. Kind regards Ziko I am afraid this might not work as well, especially in the projects where the community is divided over a number of principal issues. The third way is to appoint such a person by WMF, but as I have written earlier in this thread, this might be also difficult. I just plainly do not see any easy solutions. Cheers Yaroslav ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects
Hello, I repeat my proposal that every wiki-website (project) should install a (international) contact person, and these contact persons should be following a mailing list with specified information for them. They inform the wiki-website-community about important issues on the village pump or via another way. We have seen that purely informal positions (the self-appointed ambassadors) don't work. Kind regards Ziko 2012/8/4 Tilman Bayer tba...@wikimedia.org: On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 11:27 AM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: Hi, In the 2012-13 WMF plan document I saw an interesting thing: We’ve hosted key community stakeholders such as English Wikipedia’s ArbCom and Portuguese Wikipedia’s top contributors, in an effort to better understand and respond to issues they're facing. (page 41). I was very happy to read this. In general, I hope that such focused meetings will be held with more language communities. I don't think that I need to explain why :) I don't know how did the meeting with the Portuguese Wikipedians go; I suppose that it was good. I don't remember that I read anything about it in blogs or mailing lists, but I may have missed it. Apart from the one post linked by Steven (https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/03/22/brazil-meetups-march/ ), the Wikimedia blog has seen several other posts about other meetings of WMF with Portuguese Wikipedia contributors in Brasil: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/02/20/brazil-campus-party/ https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/11/brazil-recruiting-and-partnership-with-the-community-moves-forward/ https://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/10/19/brazil-trip-3/ See also the recurring Brazil Catalyst section in the monthly WMF reports. Maybe what I'm about to write is known already, but I'll say it anyway. An important thing in such meetings is to have a community member who contributes to the Wikipedia in that language AND to the English Wikipedia. This is needed because the Foundation people are probably familiar with policies, customs and jargon in the English Wikipedia. Even simple terms, like Village Pump, are not necessarily familiar to people who primarily edit in other languages; not all Wikipedias have ArbComs; not all Wikipedias prohibit voting; etc. Such a person will be able to translate between the English Wikipedia terms and the local Wikipedia terms. Without such a person misunderstandings will definitely happen, even if everybody knows the English language well. You are of course right that it is important to be aware of the differences between the many language versions of Wikipedia. But it might be worth knowing that the WMF's Brazil Catalyst project (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programa_Catalisador_do_Brasil ) has been run out of Brazil by a native speaker of Portuguese for quite some time now, with a WMF contractor who has been editing on the Portuguese Wikipedia and (less frequently) the English Wikipedia since 2006. I'm not sure about the validity of your conjectures with regard to them. And even before that, there had been in-depth efforts by WMF to understand the local community, see e.g. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Brazil_Catalyst_Project/Community_Interviews -- Tilman Bayer Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications) Wikimedia Foundation IRC (Freenode): HaeB ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- --- Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter http://wmnederland.nl/ Wikimedia Nederland Postbus 167 3500 AD Utrecht --- ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects
Thank you for the links, Tilman! 2012/8/4 Tilman Bayer tba...@wikimedia.org: On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 11:27 AM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: Hi, In the 2012-13 WMF plan document I saw an interesting thing: We’ve hosted key community stakeholders such as English Wikipedia’s ArbCom and Portuguese Wikipedia’s top contributors, in an effort to better understand and respond to issues they're facing. (page 41). I was very happy to read this. In general, I hope that such focused meetings will be held with more language communities. I don't think that I need to explain why :) I don't know how did the meeting with the Portuguese Wikipedians go; I suppose that it was good. I don't remember that I read anything about it in blogs or mailing lists, but I may have missed it. Apart from the one post linked by Steven (https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/03/22/brazil-meetups-march/ ), the Wikimedia blog has seen several other posts about other meetings of WMF with Portuguese Wikipedia contributors in Brasil: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/02/20/brazil-campus-party/ https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/11/brazil-recruiting-and-partnership-with-the-community-moves-forward/ https://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/10/19/brazil-trip-3/ See also the recurring Brazil Catalyst section in the monthly WMF reports. Maybe what I'm about to write is known already, but I'll say it anyway. An important thing in such meetings is to have a community member who contributes to the Wikipedia in that language AND to the English Wikipedia. This is needed because the Foundation people are probably familiar with policies, customs and jargon in the English Wikipedia. Even simple terms, like Village Pump, are not necessarily familiar to people who primarily edit in other languages; not all Wikipedias have ArbComs; not all Wikipedias prohibit voting; etc. Such a person will be able to translate between the English Wikipedia terms and the local Wikipedia terms. Without such a person misunderstandings will definitely happen, even if everybody knows the English language well. You are of course right that it is important to be aware of the differences between the many language versions of Wikipedia. But it might be worth knowing that the WMF's Brazil Catalyst project (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programa_Catalisador_do_Brasil ) has been run out of Brazil by a native speaker of Portuguese for quite some time now, with a WMF contractor who has been editing on the Portuguese Wikipedia and (less frequently) the English Wikipedia since 2006. I'm not sure about the validity of your conjectures with regard to them. And even before that, there had been in-depth efforts by WMF to understand the local community, see e.g. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Brazil_Catalyst_Project/Community_Interviews -- Tilman Bayer Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications) Wikimedia Foundation IRC (Freenode): HaeB ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects
There's a very strong selection bias on this list towards those that can read English, and those that have the time to follow very long, convoluted discussions. ;-) I think Ziko's talking more about a low-traffic list with key issues/points concisely described, which is completely different from this list, or any other currently in existence. (Note that there are currently 775 project wikis, of which only a few percent are in the English language - see [[Special:SiteMatrix]] on your favourite project wiki.) Thanks, Mike On 4 Aug 2012, at 05:22, Rjd0060 wrote: What is wrong with just using this (and other lists, as appropriate) for this? Not only can every community participate, it isn't restricted to another group of users ... everybody can! -- Ryan User:Rjd0060 On Sat, Aug 4, 2012 at 8:12 AM, Ziko van Dijk vand...@wmnederland.nl wrote: Hello, I repeat my proposal that every wiki-website (project) should install a (international) contact person, and these contact persons should be following a mailing list with specified information for them. They inform the wiki-website-community about important issues on the village pump or via another way. We have seen that purely informal positions (the self-appointed ambassadors) don't work. Kind regards Ziko ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects
On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 11:27 AM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: Hi, In the 2012-13 WMF plan document I saw an interesting thing: We’ve hosted key community stakeholders such as English Wikipedia’s ArbCom and Portuguese Wikipedia’s top contributors, in an effort to better understand and respond to issues they're facing. (page 41). I was very happy to read this. In general, I hope that such focused meetings will be held with more language communities. I don't think that I need to explain why :) I don't know how did the meeting with the Portuguese Wikipedians go; I suppose that it was good. I don't remember that I read anything about it in blogs or mailing lists, but I may have missed it. Apart from the one post linked by Steven (https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/03/22/brazil-meetups-march/ ), the Wikimedia blog has seen several other posts about other meetings of WMF with Portuguese Wikipedia contributors in Brasil: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/02/20/brazil-campus-party/ https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/01/11/brazil-recruiting-and-partnership-with-the-community-moves-forward/ https://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/10/19/brazil-trip-3/ See also the recurring Brazil Catalyst section in the monthly WMF reports. Maybe what I'm about to write is known already, but I'll say it anyway. An important thing in such meetings is to have a community member who contributes to the Wikipedia in that language AND to the English Wikipedia. This is needed because the Foundation people are probably familiar with policies, customs and jargon in the English Wikipedia. Even simple terms, like Village Pump, are not necessarily familiar to people who primarily edit in other languages; not all Wikipedias have ArbComs; not all Wikipedias prohibit voting; etc. Such a person will be able to translate between the English Wikipedia terms and the local Wikipedia terms. Without such a person misunderstandings will definitely happen, even if everybody knows the English language well. You are of course right that it is important to be aware of the differences between the many language versions of Wikipedia. But it might be worth knowing that the WMF's Brazil Catalyst project (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programa_Catalisador_do_Brasil ) has been run out of Brazil by a native speaker of Portuguese for quite some time now, with a WMF contractor who has been editing on the Portuguese Wikipedia and (less frequently) the English Wikipedia since 2006. I'm not sure about the validity of your conjectures with regard to them. And even before that, there had been in-depth efforts by WMF to understand the local community, see e.g. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Brazil_Catalyst_Project/Community_Interviews -- Tilman Bayer Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications) Wikimedia Foundation IRC (Freenode): HaeB ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects
Oh my dear beloved Steven, It VERY much is. The editors who wrote the biggest number of articles is Portuguese (Nuno Tavares), the one who run pretty much all the bots in pt wiki and is also Adm and crat is also portuguese (Alchimista aka André Barbosa), the one who created and put foward the policy of a unified Wikipedia portuguese (the AO version) is also Portuguese (Manuel de Sousa). The fact is that Brasil is in the strategic planning, and Portugal isn't. So WMF tend to forgot us. _ *Béria Lima* *Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. Ajude-nos a construir esse sonho. http://wikimedia.pt/Donativos* On 29 July 2012 18:33, Steven Walling steven.wall...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 2:01 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: That reads like it was a meeting with a selection of Brazilian Wikipedians. That does not equate with Portuguese Wikipedia’s top contributors. I'm sure some of Portuguese Wikipedia’s top contributors are Brazilian, but it is rather disingenuous to suggest they all are. This was part of your outreach work to Brazil, not Portuguese Wikipedia. Why describe it so inaccurately? I can see how you would think this if you're not involved with these communities, but a clear majority of the active editors on Portuguese Wikipedia are in fact Brazilian. The description given is not inaccurate. Steven ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects
John, when those meetings happened, what they said was we want to meet people from Brasil and when asked who they wanted to meet, the answer was anyone, doesn't matter how long you contribute or how much, we only want to talk with the Brazilian community,so no, none of those meetings were calls for top editors. They were called meetups, they were advertised that way, and they were treated that way. And I can aso say no WMF people contact any Portuguese editor in regarding to that (let's not say they travel there, but Skype and e-mail also exist, and weren't used) _ *Béria Lima* *Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. Ajude-nos a construir esse sonho. http://wikimedia.pt/Donativos* On 29 July 2012 19:33, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 5:09 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: On 29 July 2012 22:57, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: Can your masters degree in mathematics point out where in Wikimedia's statement it said all or implied anything other than having met some of Portuguese Wikipedia's top contributors? Not sure what the big deal is. The word all actually appeared in my email that Steven was replying to. He claimed that a majority of Portuguese Wikipedians being from Brazil contradicted my statement that not all (top) Portuguese Wikipedians are from Brazil. That was a straw man argument, due to all and majority not meaning the same thing. confirming.. there are residents of Portugal in http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaPT.htm#wikipedians but the 'majority' do appear to be Brazilian. I cant easily see if those top contributors attended the meetups at https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/03/22/brazil-meetups-march/ -- John Vandenberg ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects
Hire someone from the local Wikipedia community to do it. This can be integrated into the proposed language community and cultural translation WMF fellow's job description. MediaWiki feature decisions are gruesome chores. In small language project communities the active editors typically don't involve themselves with feature decisions until the feature is rolled out and breaks an entire Wikipedia with one commit. (eg. https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30392 ) By hiring the local editor you can make sure they can be bothered to involve themselves in feature decisions, and informing their local communities about it. Deryck On 30 July 2012 16:11, Oliver Keyes oke...@wikimedia.org wrote: As a very general point; working out how to include non-enlang editors in features decisions is right at the top of my list of wicked problems to handle. If anyone has any ideas, please shoot me an email :) On 30 July 2012 14:07, Béria Lima berial...@gmail.com wrote: John, when those meetings happened, what they said was we want to meet people from Brasil and when asked who they wanted to meet, the answer was anyone, doesn't matter how long you contribute or how much, we only want to talk with the Brazilian community,so no, none of those meetings were calls for top editors. They were called meetups, they were advertised that way, and they were treated that way. And I can aso say no WMF people contact any Portuguese editor in regarding to that (let's not say they travel there, but Skype and e-mail also exist, and weren't used) _ *Béria Lima* *Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. Ajude-nos a construir esse sonho. http://wikimedia.pt/Donativos* On 29 July 2012 19:33, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 5:09 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: On 29 July 2012 22:57, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: Can your masters degree in mathematics point out where in Wikimedia's statement it said all or implied anything other than having met some of Portuguese Wikipedia's top contributors? Not sure what the big deal is. The word all actually appeared in my email that Steven was replying to. He claimed that a majority of Portuguese Wikipedians being from Brazil contradicted my statement that not all (top) Portuguese Wikipedians are from Brazil. That was a straw man argument, due to all and majority not meaning the same thing. confirming.. there are residents of Portugal in http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaPT.htm#wikipedians but the 'majority' do appear to be Brazilian. I cant easily see if those top contributors attended the meetups at https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/03/22/brazil-meetups-march/ -- John Vandenberg ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- Oliver Keyes Community Liaison, Product Development Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects
On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 12:30 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: Amir E. Aharoni, 29/07/2012 20:27: In the 2012-13 WMF plan document I saw an interesting thing: We’ve hosted key community stakeholders such as English Wikipedia’s ArbCom and Portuguese Wikipedia’s top contributors, in an effort to better understand and respond to issues they're facing. (page 41). I was very happy to read this. In general, I hope that such focused meetings will be held with more language communities. I don't think that I need to explain why :) I'm not sure I like the idea of key community stakeholders, but I agree. The following passage is interesting as well, in fact I had forwarded it to WikiIT-l already: «In response, in 2012-13 we intend to invest in more thoroughly understanding the non-en-WP communities, and growing our social and political capital. To that end, we will build a team of three community advocates inside the Legal and Community Advocacy department, with the goal of better understanding the non-English language communities, particularly German, Japanese, Spanish, Russian, French and Italian. We will also recruit an additional 5-10 experienced community members as short-term WMF fellows.» Nemo Yes! This is part of an interesting and difficult long-term problem that I think we are all familiar with -- how to capture common views and concerns from a set of diverse communities, especially when no one person is responsible for being a representative of any particular community -- and, for the WMF, how to support all of the projects (not just some of them!). While the little tangent about the annual plan in this thread is, I think, overly hostile and pedantic -- many, many items are condensed and summarized in the annual plan, believe me -- the point that no one individual or group can speak for any particular wiki, and that we should always be careful about being accurate about this, is certainly true. But, that said, trying to figure out representative project concerns from a wide swath of projects, summarizing them, and then doing something about it is absolutely needed. I think there is very much a need and desire from everyone involved with, for instance, building software or helping with community support to make sure the end result works for and supports all of the projects in all languages and is not biased towards one language or wiki culture. This is (as Oliver notes) one of our grand challenges as a community and movement -- an unsolved, difficult and crucial problem. I'm not sure if in the long term focusing on specific language communities and recruiting fellows is the sustainable answer for the WMF -- actually I'm pretty sure it isn't -- but I also don't think it can hurt to try and build a deep (and as Amir notes cross-project translated) analysis of how different communities work, and this work will provide the basis for thinking about project comparisons. This is one of the deep gaps in the current Wikipedia research, too, and I'd love to see either the WMF or the research community (or both) do some deeper work into analyzing classes of projects as well as individual projects -- do very small Wikipedias share a set of needs? What about medium-sized ones? Do Asian-language projects share concerns or similar community structures? etc etc. And, I would love to see us build a stronger structure for transmitting community concerns up to the WMF/chapters/developers/etc, and vice versa: we should work on rebuilding the embassy and ambassador network, creating translation and interwiki portals for small languages on those projects, and so on. best, phoebe -- * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers at gmail.com * ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects
On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 8:40 AM, Deryck Chan deryckc...@wikimedia.hkwrote: Hire someone from the local Wikipedia community to do it. Easily said, but... which local community? All 280ish of them? Wait, that's just languages we're up to nearly 700 sites now, aren't we? :) pb ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects
phoebe ayers, 30/07/2012 18:52: I'm not sure if in the long term focusing on specific language communities and recruiting fellows is the sustainable answer for the WMF -- actually I'm pretty sure it isn't -- but I also don't think it can hurt to try and build a deep (and as Amir notes cross-project translated) analysis of how different communities work, and this work will provide the basis for thinking about project comparisons. This is one of the deep gaps in the current Wikipedia research, too, and I'd love to see either the WMF or the research community (or both) do some deeper work into analyzing classes of projects as well as individual projects -- do very small Wikipedias share a set of needs? What about medium-sized ones? Do Asian-language projects share concerns or similar community structures? etc etc. For instance I'd like to understand who decided that no editor survey for non-Wikipedias will ever be made. Nobody has ever answered the question and we're sick of asking it again. :-) https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_talk:Wikipedia_Editors_Survey_November_2011#Unanswered_questions_about_previous_survey Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects
Amir E. Aharoni, 29/07/2012 20:27: In the 2012-13 WMF plan document I saw an interesting thing: We’ve hosted key community stakeholders such as English Wikipedia’s ArbCom and Portuguese Wikipedia’s top contributors, in an effort to better understand and respond to issues they're facing. (page 41). I was very happy to read this. In general, I hope that such focused meetings will be held with more language communities. I don't think that I need to explain why :) I'm not sure I like the idea of key community stakeholders, but I agree. The following passage is interesting as well, in fact I had forwarded it to WikiIT-l already: «In response, in 2012-13 we intend to invest in more thoroughly understanding the non-en-WP communities, and growing our social and political capital. To that end, we will build a team of three community advocates inside the Legal and Community Advocacy department, with the goal of better understanding the non-English language communities, particularly German, Japanese, Spanish, Russian, French and Italian. We will also recruit an additional 5-10 experienced community members as short-term WMF fellows.» Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects
Amir E. Aharoni, 29/07/2012 21:35: I'm not sure I like the idea of key community stakeholders Well, this sends us back to Tom Morris' classic post: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2012-February/118759.html But that's a different topic. Is it really only a problem of language? Why should the WMF meet ArbCom members, for instance? It doesn't seem a suitable way to understand a community. I'm not saying that there are easy alternatives of course. :-) Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects
2012/7/29 Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com: Amir E. Aharoni, 29/07/2012 21:35: I'm not sure I like the idea of key community stakeholders Well, this sends us back to Tom Morris' classic post: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2012-February/118759.html But that's a different topic. Is it really only a problem of language? The problem is that many parts of the report are written in Corporatese English, and key community stakeholders is an example of it. I'm not even sure what that means. Quite possible its actual meaning is much better than the way it sounds. Why should the WMF meet ArbCom members, for instance? It doesn't seem a suitable way to understand a community. I'm not saying that there are easy alternatives of course. :-) ArbCom is quite important for the English Wikipedia, but it's certainly not the only important thing. And indeed, the Foundation is investing quite a lot in other channels of communication with enwiki, which is OK. Most importantly, it also starts to invest in communication with other languages. The general direction is good; I'm just trying to give some tips. -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects
Is it really only a problem of language? Why should the WMF meet ArbCom members, for instance? It doesn't seem a suitable way to understand a community. I'm not saying that there are easy alternatives of course. :-) Nemo For instance, Russian Wikipedia community is strongly divided for already quite some time, with one fraction being systematically elected to form the majority of ArbCom, and another fraction holding the chapter and consequently having better access to the WMF. I just can not see who could be the person hired by the Foundation to figure out what the situation actually is. Cheers Yaroslav ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects
On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 11:27 AM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: I don't know how did the meeting with the Portuguese Wikipedians go; I suppose that it was good. I don't remember that I read anything about it in blogs or mailing lists, but I may have missed it. Maybe what I'm about to write is known already, but I'll say it anyway. Our blog post reporting back on the trip to Brazil is here, in English and Portuguese: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/03/22/brazil-meetups-march/ :-) Steven ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects
Thomas Dalton, 29/07/2012 23:01: On 29 July 2012 21:52, Steven Walling steven.wall...@gmail.com wrote: Our blog post reporting back on the trip to Brazil is here, in English and Portuguese: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/03/22/brazil-meetups-march/ That reads like it was a meeting with a selection of Brazilian Wikipedians. That does not equate with Portuguese Wikipedia’s top contributors. I'm sure some of Portuguese Wikipedia’s top contributors are Brazilian, but it is rather disingenuous to suggest they all are. This was part of your outreach work to Brazil, not Portuguese Wikipedia. Why describe it so inaccurately? Indeed, I'd never have connected the two things if Steven hadn't explained it. Nemo ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects
On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 2:01 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: That reads like it was a meeting with a selection of Brazilian Wikipedians. That does not equate with Portuguese Wikipedia’s top contributors. I'm sure some of Portuguese Wikipedia’s top contributors are Brazilian, but it is rather disingenuous to suggest they all are. This was part of your outreach work to Brazil, not Portuguese Wikipedia. Why describe it so inaccurately? I can see how you would think this if you're not involved with these communities, but a clear majority of the active editors on Portuguese Wikipedia are in fact Brazilian. The description given is not inaccurate. Steven ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects
On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 2:39 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: While I may not be involved in the Portuguese Wikipedia, I do have a masters degree in mathematics, so I can reliably inform you that majority is not the same as all. The WMF tends to employ smart people, so I assume that whoever wrote that bit of the plan knew that that wasn't the most accurate way of describing the activity. So, my question to you is: why did they describe it that way? Why say Portuguese Wikipedia’s top contributors when a selection of Wikipedians in Brazil would have been far more accurate? You're making a mountain out of a mole hill here, Thomas. Perhaps the caveat some of should be added to Portuguese Wikipedia's top contributors, but the current statement is more accurate than the one you proposed, given the state of Pt Wikipedia and who came to our meetups. Steven ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects
On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 5:39 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: On 29 July 2012 22:33, Steven Walling steven.wall...@gmail.com wrote: I can see how you would think this if you're not involved with these communities, but a clear majority of the active editors on Portuguese Wikipedia are in fact Brazilian. The description given is not inaccurate. While I may not be involved in the Portuguese Wikipedia, I do have a masters degree in mathematics, so I can reliably inform you that majority is not the same as all. The WMF tends to employ smart people, so I assume that whoever wrote that bit of the plan knew that that wasn't the most accurate way of describing the activity. So, my question to you is: why did they describe it that way? Why say Portuguese Wikipedia’s top contributors when a selection of Wikipedians in Brazil would have been far more accurate? Can your masters degree in mathematics point out where in Wikimedia's statement it said all or implied anything other than having met some of Portuguese Wikipedia's top contributors? Not sure what the big deal is. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects
On 29 July 2012 22:48, Steven Walling steven.wall...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 2:39 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: While I may not be involved in the Portuguese Wikipedia, I do have a masters degree in mathematics, so I can reliably inform you that majority is not the same as all. The WMF tends to employ smart people, so I assume that whoever wrote that bit of the plan knew that that wasn't the most accurate way of describing the activity. So, my question to you is: why did they describe it that way? Why say Portuguese Wikipedia’s top contributors when a selection of Wikipedians in Brazil would have been far more accurate? You're making a mountain out of a mole hill here, Thomas. Perhaps the caveat some of should be added to Portuguese Wikipedia's top contributors, but the current statement is more accurate than the one you proposed, given the state of Pt Wikipedia and who came to our meetups. This is not a mole hill. It is the WMF (I assume intentionally, since you must have known better) misleading people about its activities. You had a particular message you wanted to give, so you described the activity in a way that supported that message even though that was not an accurate description. Your description is certainly not more accurate that mine, given that mine is 100% accurate... ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects
On 29 July 2012 22:57, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: Can your masters degree in mathematics point out where in Wikimedia's statement it said all or implied anything other than having met some of Portuguese Wikipedia's top contributors? Not sure what the big deal is. The word all actually appeared in my email that Steven was replying to. He claimed that a majority of Portuguese Wikipedians being from Brazil contradicted my statement that not all (top) Portuguese Wikipedians are from Brazil. That was a straw man argument, due to all and majority not meaning the same thing. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects
On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 3:07 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: This is not a mole hill. It is the WMF (I assume intentionally, since you must have known better) misleading people about its activities. You had a particular message you wanted to give, so you described the activity in a way that supported that message even though that was not an accurate description. To be clear here: I did not write that passage. I don't know who did. But since you have descended to the level of calling people liars and quickly hijacked one of the few positive threads of late, you can consider my interest in your concerns on this matter to be exactly zero. Steven ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects
On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 12:09 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: On 29 July 2012 22:57, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: Can your masters degree in mathematics point out where in Wikimedia's statement it said all or implied anything other than having met some of Portuguese Wikipedia's top contributors? Not sure what the big deal is. The word all actually appeared in my email that Steven was replying to. He claimed that a majority of Portuguese Wikipedians being from Brazil contradicted my statement that not all (top) Portuguese Wikipedians are from Brazil. That was a straw man argument, due to all and majority not meaning the same thing. Given that this is a mailing list read by hundreds of people, would it make sense to discuss this particular grammar and word choice issue on a Meta talk page, and concentrate on the bigger issues here on the mailing list, that might be of interest to those not involved in this discussion on semantics? (On the other hand, I would like to take this opportunity to applaud everyone here; I think it is a unique achievement that our community reads every report with such a keen eye for any factual error or exaggeration. If the seemingly most interesting error we can find on the first day of perusing it is the unclear distinction between 'majority' and 'all' in it, then surely the people who put this together have done a splendid job. Still, I would prefer, if we spent our time discussing the substance, rather than the presentation.) Best regards, Bence ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects
On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: On 29 July 2012 22:48, Steven Walling steven.wall...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 2:39 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: While I may not be involved in the Portuguese Wikipedia, I do have a masters degree in mathematics, so I can reliably inform you that majority is not the same as all. The WMF tends to employ smart people, so I assume that whoever wrote that bit of the plan knew that that wasn't the most accurate way of describing the activity. So, my question to you is: why did they describe it that way? Why say Portuguese Wikipedia’s top contributors when a selection of Wikipedians in Brazil would have been far more accurate? You're making a mountain out of a mole hill here, Thomas. Perhaps the caveat some of should be added to Portuguese Wikipedia's top contributors, but the current statement is more accurate than the one you proposed, given the state of Pt Wikipedia and who came to our meetups. This is not a mole hill. It is the WMF (I assume intentionally, since you must have known better) misleading people about its activities. You had a particular message you wanted to give, so you described the activity in a way that supported that message even though that was not an accurate description. Your description is certainly not more accurate that mine, given that mine is 100% accurate... This is a joke, right? You are irritated that they said top Portuguese Wikipedia contributors instead of some top Portuguese Wikipedia contributors because why? What motive could the WMF have had for misleading you in this way? Did you mistakenly assume that this meant they met with people in Portugal? Did you imagine that they met both Portuguese and Brazilian contributors to the Portuguese Wikipedia on the same trip? Please, enlighten us. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] conversations between WMF and non-English projects
On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 5:09 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: On 29 July 2012 22:57, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: Can your masters degree in mathematics point out where in Wikimedia's statement it said all or implied anything other than having met some of Portuguese Wikipedia's top contributors? Not sure what the big deal is. The word all actually appeared in my email that Steven was replying to. He claimed that a majority of Portuguese Wikipedians being from Brazil contradicted my statement that not all (top) Portuguese Wikipedians are from Brazil. That was a straw man argument, due to all and majority not meaning the same thing. confirming.. there are residents of Portugal in http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaPT.htm#wikipedians but the 'majority' do appear to be Brazilian. I cant easily see if those top contributors attended the meetups at https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/03/22/brazil-meetups-march/ -- John Vandenberg ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
