Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki
This might be silly, but can you set it so that IPs and non-members can only edit pages in the Talk: space or something? That would allow discussion to occur around important issues while keeping the integrity of things like the minutes and the constitution protected. Of course as Angela said there's no way of really defending against a rogue financial member changing the constitution to ENCYCLOPEDIAS ARE GAY, but I guess that's the price you pay for accessibility. On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 1:05 PM, Liam Wyatt liamwy...@gmail.com wrote: It seems there are a variety of arguments that have now been put forward against opening up editing to non-members: * It's a member benefit - I think we all agree that this is no longer held as a valid claim. IIRC this was the SOLE reason why we didn't have open editing to start with, but no matter. * There'll be lots of vandalism - This has been responded to with the proposal that only logged-in editing be allowed and some form of CAPTCHA/email confirmation be used to stop spambots. * We need to keep the official pages stable - The official pages (rules, minutes, donation info...) can be easily locked from editing in just the same way that the copyright notice page on Wikipedia is locked. We could even use some form of flagged-revs if we chose. * It will look bad to our potential partner organisations - I have heard many criticisms or complaints from external organisations/professionals about Wikimedia/Wikipedia/Wikimedia-Australia and none of them have been about the potential for unruly discussion on the chapter wiki. If an organisation is unwilling to work with the Chapter on the basis that there might be some disucssion on the wiki that they don't like, then they've obviously never heard of Wikipedia. Many organisations have some form of public discussion section on their website (e.g. comments on company blogs) and this does not meant that people think less of the company. If we hope to get more grassroots involvement in the chapter then IMO we cannot force people to pay $40 and register an account before they can engage in chapter activities. Volunteers should not be forced to pay money to volunteer. Any organisation that choses not to associate itself with WM-Au on the basis that we operate a wiki that members of the general public can edit is more than likely not ready to work with an organisation that promotes free-culture at all. And, just like on WP, we can indeed include layers of locks or tags that indicate 'this page is official policy' or 'this page is for general discussion'. -Liam wittylama.com/blog Peace, love metadata On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 11:21 AM, Brian Salter-Duke b_d...@bigpond.net.au wrote: There has been a lot of discussion about the official wiki and who should be able to edit it. This is in response to the whole debate, so I have not kept any other comments. This wiki is the official wiki. It is how we present ourselves, not just to members, but to prospective members, to regulatory bodies, to Glam institutions who we hope to work with, with a range of other bodies and with the general public. It is the only place where our rules are displayed, where minutes of general and committee meetings are recorded, and a host of other official stuff. We are incorporated. We are a legal entity. We now have approval to fund raise in Victoria. We need to apply for fund raising approval to all other States and Territories, except the NT. We have an ABN. We will be applying for deductible gift recipient (DGR) status. All this has to be reflected in our official pages. We are trying hard to relate in a professional manner with a large range of GLAM institutions across the country. They will look to our official wiki for reliable information about us. They will judge how serious we are by how professional we present ourselves. The issue is not really about vandalism, but the integrity and professionalism of the whole official wiki. Vandalism with certainly destroy that, but so will edits that discuss ideas that are not officially approved, and edits that are inappropriate. If readers find information that they find to be inaccurate or inappropriate, they will conclude that we are not a serious professional body that they can work with, and they may doubt the accuracy of material on what are clearly official pages. This does not mean that we have to restrict editing to the committee, but we have to make sure that integrity and professionalism is preserved and indeed enhanced. It is not just a question of removing vandalism. There are some pages that must never be allowed to be vandalised. Karl has suggested that the committee does not need to be involved in removing vandalism, but this misses the point. Certainly non-committee members can assist with improving and preserving the wiki, but the committee has to be involved. That is what the committee is elected for. The
Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki
2009/12/14 Liam Wyatt liamwy...@gmail.com If we hope to get more grassroots involvement in the chapter then IMO we cannot force people to pay $40 and register an account before they can engage in chapter activities. Volunteers should not be forced to pay money to volunteer. Why is it assumed that volunteering == editing the chapter wiki? It seems like a strange argument to me. We're getting projects happening here in Perth and as far as I know neither of our other financial members, both of whom are fully entitled to accounts, have one or have asked for one (if they did we'd certainly enable it, but my point stands.) Increasingly our future is likely going to be with a majority of members who support our mission who are not even from a WMF-project background, and are much more likely to engage with us through social media, messenger, email, telephone and in person. Additionally, there isn't enough people involved on the wiki as it is to justify an argument that more people should be at the table. We have 47 members - if I saw even 10 editing productively, I'd say there could be an argument for more open involvement. As it is, three already busy committee members are the main editors. cheers Andrew ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l
Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki
'...As it is, three already busy committee members are the main editors.' cough cough !! ;-) (ps. I think Andrew's post sort of has cause and effect a bit bassackwards ;-) I see it this way - if engaging and growing membership is a priority then lowering the bar for engagement is a good thing. I have had quite a few conversations with folk who I believe would be quite interested in Chapter based activity, and I'd really like to say things like 'hey, head over to our wiki and you can sign up' or 'hey, that's a good idea, you should join our wiki, and we can work on it' - or even just organising having the ability to RSVP, leave a note or a question. I think wikis are wonderful collaborative environments, and (as others have said) it feels a bit odd to me to have to try and wave the flag for more open editing here - what about the old 'let's be bold, give it a go, and see!' approach? If the barbarians are at the gates, and the wiki gets taken over with nonsense we could just flip the switch back, no? Any Father Ted fans out there will know what I mean if I say 'ah go on... go on go on go on..' cheers, Peter, PM. ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l
Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki
PM, things are decided on Wikimedia Australia by committee, not consensus - this isn't Wikipedia. And I've had a few financial members write to me or chat with me since this debate of sorts opened with concerns similar to Craig's re observations on WM-UK - basically saying the committee members would end up wasting their time dealing with silliness on the Wiki rather than stuff we need to do to grow the chapter. As one said, and I think they won't mind me quoting, this is navel-gazing. I have some other semi-related comments but I'll make a new thread for those as I doubt too many are reading this one at this point. cheers Andrew 2009/12/13 private musings thepmacco...@gmail.com Having open editing for accounts only sounds great to me :-) If this idea could gain consensus, and get done by christmas I think that would be wonderful :-) cheers, Peter, PM. On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 5:44 PM, Craig Franklin cr...@halo-17.net wrote: I think that presenting editing access to the chapter wiki as a “benefit” of membership is a bit silly really. When I spruik membership to potential members, “the ability to edit our wiki!” doesn’t even register on the things I tell them. Perhaps a compromise between the “no access for non-members” and “open access” viewpoints is in order. We could open access to everyone, provided they had an account. Accounts would still need to be approved by someone to weed out spam bots and the like (having managed a public-facing Wiki, I know that this is often a serious problem), and perhaps the accounts of non-members could be sequestered into the user space or something. If you look at Wikimedia UK’s “Recent Changes” page, there is a lot of rubbish there that their admins are having to spend their time cleaning up – frankly I think our people have better things to do than play janitor on the chapter wiki. I don’t know, apart from the whole “open philosophy”, I don’t see any real reasons why anyone who is not a member would want to post on our Wiki, and the fact that the Billabong is quiet… I don’t really see that as a problem since most of the communication and discussion occurs on this list, which is essentially open to the public anyway. Cheers, Craig *From:* wikimediaau-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto: wikimediaau-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] *On Behalf Of *Andrew *Sent:* Saturday, 12 December 2009 9:38 AM *To:* Wikimedia-au *Subject:* Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki At the end of the day, and I think this is a point that isn't well understood because we have a foot on both sides of the border, this is the official wiki for a non profit organisation. The wiki's set up in such a way that those that are willing to support the aims of the organisation can edit freely. I don't know of any other similar organisations which offer open editing or participation - one I know that runs meetings for its members (and this is just networking!) charges $10 for non-members to attend a meeting; another runs closed email lists that non-members can't even see. As for the argument re vandalism - that isn't even our biggest prospective problem. The biggest is actually misrepresentation - the risk that we will be discredited as an organisation in the eyes of those we seek to build partnerships with. In the relatively insular world of free culture, edginess seems like a good thing, but in the real world, quite apart from our legal and other obligations with CAV, we have to deal with businesses, large organisations, governments, NGOs and the like. We're competing for their attention with more professional outfits which can offer them something. We're asking them to give us something - which requires a standard of credibility and professionalism. If random chaos is unfolding on our official website (and that is what it is), we have a bit of a problem in that area. Expecting already busy committee members (and I'm not even speaking for myself here) to monitor the wiki in such circumstances is an imposition on them and a completely unnecessary one - what do we stand to benefit from it, as against the costs? cheers Andrew 2009/12/12 Peter Halasz qub...@gmail.com Sarah, The only actual reason you've given for not opening up the wiki to non-members is because of fear of vandalism. Ok, so we have a problem: Potential vandalism. Solutions? 1. Actually observe actual vandalism before locking anything down. 2. Assign a couple of people to patrolling recent changes once a week 3. Locking individual pages when we require their integrity to be preserved. 4. Requiring wiki users to sign in 5. Requiring new wiki users to wait 3 days before editing 6. Banning everyone but paid members, who, after paying their membership, can apply for an account, which, when it expires, is no longer allowed to edit. C'mon, seriously? You went with #6? To combat vandalism? Although, as you say, we CAN keep the wiki locked up
[Wikimediaau-l] Official Wiki
As the new treasurer of the Wiki-Aus I have been reading this discussion with some interest and I now make the following comment. I am in support of Sarah's continual point that only financial members should be able to edit the official wiki for many reasons, however the below snippet from Andrew's comment is particularly useful and valid. Quite frankly folks the committee members of this chapter already have absolutely far too many things to read - to the extent that there is a very great chance that we will come awash with the excess of that information (and indeed there are clear instances where we have already). Adding to that situation with open editing of the official wiki is neither practical nor reflective of real world boards, and quite frankly we are a real world board with real world responsibilities as a part of corporate governance requirements. In a nutshell we are responsible in the main to the financial members of this chapter and it is only their material that should take any more of our time or effort at the the official chapter pages. There are plenty of ways to draw our attention to issues of concern at other open wikis and so I for one do not support open editing in any form. *Andrew comment sent Saturday, 12 December 2009 9:38 AM Expecting already busy committee members (and I'm not even speaking for myself here) to monitor the wiki in such circumstances is an imposition on them and a completely unnecessary one - what do we stand to benefit from it, as against the costs? _ Use Messenger in your Hotmail inbox Find out how http://windowslive.ninemsn.com.au/hotmail/article/823454/web-im-for-hotmail-is-here___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l
Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki
On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 11:15:35PM +1030, Karl Goetz wrote: On Sat, 12 Dec 2009 11:57:02 +1100 Brian Salter-Duke b_d...@bigpond.net.au wrote: On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 11:09:58AM +1100, Peter Halasz wrote: So lock those specific pages. Have you ever used Wikipedia? Do you think it would exist if they were worried only about representation? I will try to respond to this debate, wearing my hat as Public Officer of WMAU later, but for now let me just say that our official wiki is not like wikipedia. It is much more like: I assume this means this is your personal view? It is my personal view but based on my experience as Public Officer since the start of Wikimedia Australia. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Main_Page As an incorporated association we have legal obligations to the community via CAV, not only to the membership. This means the issue of For those of us not in the know, what is CAV, and can you provide a reference to it for us to look at? CAV is Consumer Affairs Victoria and is the body that administers our incorporation. The general link is:- http://www.consumer.vic.gov.au/ but you need to click on to look under Associations, Clubs Fundraising and then to incorporated associations. It is not just incorporation. We are a legal entitity. We now have approval to fund raise in Victoria. We have an ABN. We will be applying for deductible gift recipient (DGR) status. I will give a more thought through response to the question of access later when I have woken up properly. Brian. access is not simple and it requires thought. There is also a real Not simple on the backend? I assume whatever sits behind the login process is able to automatically remove people who didn't pay (ldap? sql?). If thats the case its also easy to work out who should be in certain edit groups: they have valid memberships or not. tension here, not only about access. For example, there is also a tension between the project's love of anonymity for users, with the legal requirements imposed by incorporating. Aye. Its entirely possible annon edits will not be a possibility. That doesn't mean that only members should be able to edit though. kk Cheers, Brian. -- Karl Goetz, (Kamping_Kaiser / VK5FOSS) Debian contributor / gNewSense Maintainer http://www.kgoetz.id.au No, I won't join your social networking group -- Brian Salter-Duke bd...@wikimedia.org.au publicoffi...@wikimedia.org.au Committee member and Public Officer, Wikimedia Australia Inc. Active on English Wikipedia, Meta-Wiki, Wikiversity, and others. [[User:Bduke]] is single user account with en:Wikipedia main account. ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l
Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki
There has been a lot of discussion about the official wiki and who should be able to edit it. This is in response to the whole debate, so I have not kept any other comments. This wiki is the official wiki. It is how we present ourselves, not just to members, but to prospective members, to regulatory bodies, to Glam institutions who we hope to work with, with a range of other bodies and with the general public. It is the only place where our rules are displayed, where minutes of general and committee meetings are recorded, and a host of other official stuff. We are incorporated. We are a legal entity. We now have approval to fund raise in Victoria. We need to apply for fund raising approval to all other States and Territories, except the NT. We have an ABN. We will be applying for deductible gift recipient (DGR) status. All this has to be reflected in our official pages. We are trying hard to relate in a professional manner with a large range of GLAM institutions across the country. They will look to our official wiki for reliable information about us. They will judge how serious we are by how professional we present ourselves. The issue is not really about vandalism, but the integrity and professionalism of the whole official wiki. Vandalism with certainly destroy that, but so will edits that discuss ideas that are not officially approved, and edits that are inappropriate. If readers find information that they find to be inaccurate or inappropriate, they will conclude that we are not a serious professional body that they can work with, and they may doubt the accuracy of material on what are clearly official pages. This does not mean that we have to restrict editing to the committee, but we have to make sure that integrity and professionalism is preserved and indeed enhanced. It is not just a question of removing vandalism. There are some pages that must never be allowed to be vandalised. Karl has suggested that the committee does not need to be involved in removing vandalism, but this misses the point. Certainly non-committee members can assist with improving and preserving the wiki, but the committee has to be involved. That is what the committee is elected for. The committee is responsible for the integrity and professionalism of our official presentation outside the association. As a wikimedian, of course I am in favour of opening up the wiki as much as we can, but as a member of the committee and as Public Officer responsible for reporting on our work to Consumer Affairs Victoria, I am very conscious of the responsibility to preserve the integrity and professionalism of the official wiki. If we decide to open it up, we must be quite open about what we are doing. We can not just protect some pages, or restrict editing of some pages to certain groups. We must be clear to the readers. I therefore propose that all pages be clearly tagged with a statement of their status. Pages of rules, minutes, etc. should be tagged with something like This page is an official page of Wikimedia Australia Inc. and is approved by the association. Editing is restricted to members of the committee. Other pages might be tagged with something like This page is for the development of ideas by members and supports. Editing is open to all. The page does not necessarily reflect the official views of Wikimedia Australia Inc. We might have a whole series of different tags. The idea is that the reader will not be mislead about our official views and will be quite clear where authentic information is to be found. The committee, because it is responsible, must have the total right to tag any page on the wiki with the first tag above and to restrict editing of that page to the committee. There can be no debate about this. The committee is responsible. Of course these tags will be criticised as being ugly, but to me they are essential. I can only support opening up editing on the official wiki, if we do clearly tag all articles to make their status absolutely clear. Cheers, Brian. -- Brian Salter-Duke bd...@wikimedia.org.au publicoffi...@wikimedia.org.au Committee member and Public Officer, Wikimedia Australia Inc. Active on English Wikipedia, Meta-Wiki, Wikiversity, and others. [[User:Bduke]] is single user account with en:Wikipedia main account. ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l
Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki
It seems there are a variety of arguments that have now been put forward against opening up editing to non-members: * It's a member benefit - I think we all agree that this is no longer held as a valid claim. IIRC this was the SOLE reason why we didn't have open editing to start with, but no matter. * There'll be lots of vandalism - This has been responded to with the proposal that only logged-in editing be allowed and some form of CAPTCHA/email confirmation be used to stop spambots. * We need to keep the official pages stable - The official pages (rules, minutes, donation info...) can be easily locked from editing in just the same way that the copyright notice page on Wikipedia is locked. We could even use some form of flagged-revs if we chose. * It will look bad to our potential partner organisations - I have heard many criticisms or complaints from external organisations/professionals about Wikimedia/Wikipedia/Wikimedia-Australia and none of them have been about the potential for unruly discussion on the chapter wiki. If an organisation is unwilling to work with the Chapter on the basis that there might be some disucssion on the wiki that they don't like, then they've obviously never heard of Wikipedia. Many organisations have some form of public discussion section on their website (e.g. comments on company blogs) and this does not meant that people think less of the company. If we hope to get more grassroots involvement in the chapter then IMO we cannot force people to pay $40 and register an account before they can engage in chapter activities. Volunteers should not be forced to pay money to volunteer. Any organisation that choses not to associate itself with WM-Au on the basis that we operate a wiki that members of the general public can edit is more than likely not ready to work with an organisation that promotes free-culture at all. And, just like on WP, we can indeed include layers of locks or tags that indicate 'this page is official policy' or 'this page is for general discussion'. -Liam wittylama.com/blog Peace, love metadata On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 11:21 AM, Brian Salter-Duke b_d...@bigpond.net.auwrote: There has been a lot of discussion about the official wiki and who should be able to edit it. This is in response to the whole debate, so I have not kept any other comments. This wiki is the official wiki. It is how we present ourselves, not just to members, but to prospective members, to regulatory bodies, to Glam institutions who we hope to work with, with a range of other bodies and with the general public. It is the only place where our rules are displayed, where minutes of general and committee meetings are recorded, and a host of other official stuff. We are incorporated. We are a legal entity. We now have approval to fund raise in Victoria. We need to apply for fund raising approval to all other States and Territories, except the NT. We have an ABN. We will be applying for deductible gift recipient (DGR) status. All this has to be reflected in our official pages. We are trying hard to relate in a professional manner with a large range of GLAM institutions across the country. They will look to our official wiki for reliable information about us. They will judge how serious we are by how professional we present ourselves. The issue is not really about vandalism, but the integrity and professionalism of the whole official wiki. Vandalism with certainly destroy that, but so will edits that discuss ideas that are not officially approved, and edits that are inappropriate. If readers find information that they find to be inaccurate or inappropriate, they will conclude that we are not a serious professional body that they can work with, and they may doubt the accuracy of material on what are clearly official pages. This does not mean that we have to restrict editing to the committee, but we have to make sure that integrity and professionalism is preserved and indeed enhanced. It is not just a question of removing vandalism. There are some pages that must never be allowed to be vandalised. Karl has suggested that the committee does not need to be involved in removing vandalism, but this misses the point. Certainly non-committee members can assist with improving and preserving the wiki, but the committee has to be involved. That is what the committee is elected for. The committee is responsible for the integrity and professionalism of our official presentation outside the association. As a wikimedian, of course I am in favour of opening up the wiki as much as we can, but as a member of the committee and as Public Officer responsible for reporting on our work to Consumer Affairs Victoria, I am very conscious of the responsibility to preserve the integrity and professionalism of the official wiki. If we decide to open it up, we must be quite open about what we are doing. We can not just protect some pages, or restrict editing of some
Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki
On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 02:05:42PM +1100, Liam Wyatt wrote: It seems there are a variety of arguments that have now been put forward against opening up editing to non-members: * It's a member benefit - I think we all agree that this is no longer held as a valid claim. IIRC this was the SOLE reason why we didn't have open editing to start with, but no matter. I agree. * There'll be lots of vandalism - This has been responded to with the proposal that only logged-in editing be allowed and some form of CAPTCHA/email confirmation be used to stop spambots. Still a pain, like the spam on the mailing list. * We need to keep the official pages stable - The official pages (rules, minutes, donation info...) can be easily locked from editing in just the same way that the copyright notice page on Wikipedia is locked. We could even use some form of flagged-revs if we chose. It is more than stable. Some, like minutes, must never change. Soem, like rules, need a general meeting to change them. The process is quite different from most wikis. * It will look bad to our potential partner organisations - I have heard many criticisms or complaints from external organisations/professionals about Wikimedia/Wikipedia/Wikimedia-Australia and none of them have been about the potential for unruly discussion on the chapter wiki. If an organisation is unwilling to work with the Chapter on the basis that there might be some disucssion on the wiki that they don't like, then they've obviously never heard of Wikipedia. Many organisations have some form of public discussion section on their website (e.g. comments on company blogs) and this does not meant that people think less of the company. Right now they probably do not know about our wiki. I am certainly not saying that they will consciously say they are unwilling to work with the Chapter on the basis that there might be some discussion on the wiki that they don't like. I would say that they may get put off if they get the impression that our wiki is not professional about who and what we are. They might not recognise why they are being put off. If we hope to get more grassroots involvement in the chapter then IMO we cannot force people to pay $40 and register an account before they can engage in chapter activities. Volunteers should not be forced to pay money to volunteer. I agree. Any organisation that choses not to associate itself with WM-Au on the basis that we operate a wiki that members of the general public can edit is more than likely not ready to work with an organisation that promotes free-culture at all. See above. And, just like on WP, we can indeed include layers of locks or tags that indicate 'this page is official policy' or 'this page is for general discussion'. It is not like WP. WP policies can be changed by consensus so we can have edit wars on policy pages. Much of our stuff can only be changed by either the committee or a General Meeting (Annual or Special). That is why I say that for these pages we have to lock down and explain with a tag. Maybe we should move stuff that is not wiki-editable to a non-wiki web site on the same server. We can give links to it from the wiki. That would make it clear that it is fixed approved stuff. It would free up the wiki to be like a wiki. At present most of it is not like a wiki. Brian. -Liam wittylama.com/blog Peace, love metadata On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 11:21 AM, Brian Salter-Duke b_d...@bigpond.net.auwrote: There has been a lot of discussion about the official wiki and who should be able to edit it. This is in response to the whole debate, so I have not kept any other comments. This wiki is the official wiki. It is how we present ourselves, not just to members, but to prospective members, to regulatory bodies, to Glam institutions who we hope to work with, with a range of other bodies and with the general public. It is the only place where our rules are displayed, where minutes of general and committee meetings are recorded, and a host of other official stuff. We are incorporated. We are a legal entity. We now have approval to fund raise in Victoria. We need to apply for fund raising approval to all other States and Territories, except the NT. We have an ABN. We will be applying for deductible gift recipient (DGR) status. All this has to be reflected in our official pages. We are trying hard to relate in a professional manner with a large range of GLAM institutions across the country. They will look to our official wiki for reliable information about us. They will judge how serious we are by how professional we present ourselves. The issue is not really about vandalism, but the integrity and professionalism of the whole official wiki. Vandalism with certainly destroy that, but so will edits that discuss ideas that are not officially approved, and edits that are inappropriate. If readers find
Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki
2009/12/12 Liam Wyatt liamwy...@gmail.com Peter (Halasz), um... your last post is probably not helpful. I happen to agree with you that it is a good idea to make the chapter Wiki more open to editing. However, this is a discussion about the validity/importance/appropriateness of doing so and making inflammatory statements risks you falling foul of 'godwins law' and, by corollary, losing automatically. :-) This discussion here has heard from people who are members, elected committee and lapsed members, but I think we've yet to hear from anyone who is not a member as to whether they would be more willing to be involved with chapter activities. I would like to point to the UK chapter's water cooler http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Water_cooler as an example of the kind of active conversations that I think the Chapter should be hosting on our Billabong http://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Billabong - which is where this whole discussion started from. I note with interest that they recently had a discussion on that page about whether their wiki should allow IP editing or not. Could any non-members who are following this discussion please pipe up, as, all current discussants are members and by definition are already allowed to edit and therefore any change wouldn't affect them very much. Umm I'm a non-member, well past member who is no longer financial and believe my editing status has been changed In any case, I have added to the agenda of the forthcoming committee meeting an item about whether we should change editing rights. -Liam [[witty lama]] wittylama.com/blog Peace, love metadata On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 12:44 AM, Angela bees...@gmail.com wrote: I'm not sure why there's an assumption that edits by members are trustworthy (and edits by others are not). Since anyone can become a member, it's not reasonable to expect none of them will ever do anything bad on the wiki. And you're going to have a problem blocking them from the wiki if editing that is supposed to be something that they've been promised in return for their membership fee - do you want to have to give back their money if you find you need to block them? A better option might be to protect important pages and be quick to block problem users. Angela ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l -- GN. http://gnangarra.redbubble.com/ ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l
Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki
I think that presenting editing access to the chapter wiki as a benefit of membership is a bit silly really. When I spruik membership to potential members, the ability to edit our wiki! doesn't even register on the things I tell them. Perhaps a compromise between the no access for non-members and open access viewpoints is in order. We could open access to everyone, provided they had an account. Accounts would still need to be approved by someone to weed out spam bots and the like (having managed a public-facing Wiki, I know that this is often a serious problem), and perhaps the accounts of non-members could be sequestered into the user space or something. If you look at Wikimedia UK's Recent Changes page, there is a lot of rubbish there that their admins are having to spend their time cleaning up - frankly I think our people have better things to do than play janitor on the chapter wiki. I don't know, apart from the whole open philosophy, I don't see any real reasons why anyone who is not a member would want to post on our Wiki, and the fact that the Billabong is quiet. I don't really see that as a problem since most of the communication and discussion occurs on this list, which is essentially open to the public anyway. Cheers, Craig From: wikimediaau-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimediaau-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Sent: Saturday, 12 December 2009 9:38 AM To: Wikimedia-au Subject: Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki At the end of the day, and I think this is a point that isn't well understood because we have a foot on both sides of the border, this is the official wiki for a non profit organisation. The wiki's set up in such a way that those that are willing to support the aims of the organisation can edit freely. I don't know of any other similar organisations which offer open editing or participation - one I know that runs meetings for its members (and this is just networking!) charges $10 for non-members to attend a meeting; another runs closed email lists that non-members can't even see. As for the argument re vandalism - that isn't even our biggest prospective problem. The biggest is actually misrepresentation - the risk that we will be discredited as an organisation in the eyes of those we seek to build partnerships with. In the relatively insular world of free culture, edginess seems like a good thing, but in the real world, quite apart from our legal and other obligations with CAV, we have to deal with businesses, large organisations, governments, NGOs and the like. We're competing for their attention with more professional outfits which can offer them something. We're asking them to give us something - which requires a standard of credibility and professionalism. If random chaos is unfolding on our official website (and that is what it is), we have a bit of a problem in that area. Expecting already busy committee members (and I'm not even speaking for myself here) to monitor the wiki in such circumstances is an imposition on them and a completely unnecessary one - what do we stand to benefit from it, as against the costs? cheers Andrew 2009/12/12 Peter Halasz qub...@gmail.com Sarah, The only actual reason you've given for not opening up the wiki to non-members is because of fear of vandalism. Ok, so we have a problem: Potential vandalism. Solutions? 1. Actually observe actual vandalism before locking anything down. 2. Assign a couple of people to patrolling recent changes once a week 3. Locking individual pages when we require their integrity to be preserved. 4. Requiring wiki users to sign in 5. Requiring new wiki users to wait 3 days before editing 6. Banning everyone but paid members, who, after paying their membership, can apply for an account, which, when it expires, is no longer allowed to edit. C'mon, seriously? You went with #6? To combat vandalism? Although, as you say, we CAN keep the wiki locked up, why SHOULD we? And why with such tight control? Peter Halasz. User:Pengo (Lapsed member) ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l
Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki
Having open editing for accounts only sounds great to me :-) If this idea could gain consensus, and get done by christmas I think that would be wonderful :-) cheers, Peter, PM. On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 5:44 PM, Craig Franklin cr...@halo-17.net wrote: I think that presenting editing access to the chapter wiki as a “benefit” of membership is a bit silly really. When I spruik membership to potential members, “the ability to edit our wiki!” doesn’t even register on the things I tell them. Perhaps a compromise between the “no access for non-members” and “open access” viewpoints is in order. We could open access to everyone, provided they had an account. Accounts would still need to be approved by someone to weed out spam bots and the like (having managed a public-facing Wiki, I know that this is often a serious problem), and perhaps the accounts of non-members could be sequestered into the user space or something. If you look at Wikimedia UK’s “Recent Changes” page, there is a lot of rubbish there that their admins are having to spend their time cleaning up – frankly I think our people have better things to do than play janitor on the chapter wiki. I don’t know, apart from the whole “open philosophy”, I don’t see any real reasons why anyone who is not a member would want to post on our Wiki, and the fact that the Billabong is quiet… I don’t really see that as a problem since most of the communication and discussion occurs on this list, which is essentially open to the public anyway. Cheers, Craig *From:* wikimediaau-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto: wikimediaau-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] *On Behalf Of *Andrew *Sent:* Saturday, 12 December 2009 9:38 AM *To:* Wikimedia-au *Subject:* Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki At the end of the day, and I think this is a point that isn't well understood because we have a foot on both sides of the border, this is the official wiki for a non profit organisation. The wiki's set up in such a way that those that are willing to support the aims of the organisation can edit freely. I don't know of any other similar organisations which offer open editing or participation - one I know that runs meetings for its members (and this is just networking!) charges $10 for non-members to attend a meeting; another runs closed email lists that non-members can't even see. As for the argument re vandalism - that isn't even our biggest prospective problem. The biggest is actually misrepresentation - the risk that we will be discredited as an organisation in the eyes of those we seek to build partnerships with. In the relatively insular world of free culture, edginess seems like a good thing, but in the real world, quite apart from our legal and other obligations with CAV, we have to deal with businesses, large organisations, governments, NGOs and the like. We're competing for their attention with more professional outfits which can offer them something. We're asking them to give us something - which requires a standard of credibility and professionalism. If random chaos is unfolding on our official website (and that is what it is), we have a bit of a problem in that area. Expecting already busy committee members (and I'm not even speaking for myself here) to monitor the wiki in such circumstances is an imposition on them and a completely unnecessary one - what do we stand to benefit from it, as against the costs? cheers Andrew 2009/12/12 Peter Halasz qub...@gmail.com Sarah, The only actual reason you've given for not opening up the wiki to non-members is because of fear of vandalism. Ok, so we have a problem: Potential vandalism. Solutions? 1. Actually observe actual vandalism before locking anything down. 2. Assign a couple of people to patrolling recent changes once a week 3. Locking individual pages when we require their integrity to be preserved. 4. Requiring wiki users to sign in 5. Requiring new wiki users to wait 3 days before editing 6. Banning everyone but paid members, who, after paying their membership, can apply for an account, which, when it expires, is no longer allowed to edit. C'mon, seriously? You went with #6? To combat vandalism? Although, as you say, we CAN keep the wiki locked up, why SHOULD we? And why with such tight control? Peter Halasz. User:Pengo (Lapsed member) ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l
Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki
I don't think it's a good idea to remove it - we want to get more member participation happening in 2010, and there simply wasn't the scope for that in 2009, hence why it wasn't utilised. cheers Andrew 2009/12/11 K. Peachey p858sn...@yahoo.com.au Yes it is possible to edit it, for details: mwbot-deux To edit the navigation menu on the left, edit [[MediaWiki:Sidebar]] using its special syntax. For more details, see http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Interface/Sidebar. ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l
Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki
I too would like to see the chapter wiki being used more, especially for planning IRL events. Perhaps the issue is not so much that the Billabong isn't the right place but that (as mentioned) it's not used by many people as yet - this is largely a factor of the relatively low number of people who are allowed to edit. Currently editing rights on the Australian chapter wiki are restricted to members. I note that the UK chapter's wiki http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Pageallows IP editing (though not on the mainpage) whilst the other English language chapter (NYC) focuses their attention on the meta-wiki pagehttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_New_York_City(which is also open for IP editing). Given this discussion is happening on the wikimedia-au list, rather than the members'-only list, perhaps it is pertinent to ask: would the subscribers to this list be more willing to become involved with the Australian chapter's wiki, events, and eventually perhaps also join the chapter if the Wiki was open for at least logged-in editing from all people? One advantage of this would be that we could centralise discussion about planning activities in Australia on the Australian chapter's wiki rather than having to split it across Wikipedia's meetup pages. One disadvantage of this would be that one of the promoted benefits of membership (being able to edit the wiki) is no longer exclusive. From a personal point of view, I believe that increasing the editability of the chapter wiki will increase the number and range of things happening in Australia and therefore become a driver of membership and activity. But, I'd like to hear what the current non-members think. -Liam (yes, I'm a member) wittylama.com/blog Peace, love metadata On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 11:38 AM, Sarah Ewart sarahew...@gmail.com wrote: I assume it's the same with our wiki though I haven't actually checked myself, but usually editing the MediaWiki interface pages requires admin rights. We really don't want people stuffing around at will with the main interface. I also agree with Andrew about the Billabong page. It's meant to be a page where people can make suggestions and ask for help or whatever and we don't want to make it harder for people to find the central discussion/help page if they need it. I don't see how it not being used much makes a difference. There's only a small number of people who even have accounts with edit rights and the website is still very young so you could justify removing just about all the sidebar links by saying they're not currently used much. As Andrew said, we want to build the membership and as the active members grow the central discussion page will become more useful and important and in the interim it's there for anyone who needs it. On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 9:20 PM, Andrew orderinchao...@gmail.com wrote: I don't think it's a good idea to remove it - we want to get more member participation happening in 2010, and there simply wasn't the scope for that in 2009, hence why it wasn't utilised. cheers Andrew 2009/12/11 K. Peachey p858sn...@yahoo.com.au Yes it is possible to edit it, for details: mwbot-deux To edit the navigation menu on the left, edit [[MediaWiki:Sidebar]] using its special syntax. For more details, see http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Interface/Sidebar. ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l n ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l
Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki
Re planning activities - there doesn't seem much evidence of the meetup pages being used for planning of any kind at present. Most of the meetup pages are deadzones, with only Sydney having any recent editing activity whatsoever (Melbourne and Canberra both show their August meetups as being next rather than last). The problem we have is that we're still very much in the outreach phase and do not yet have critical mass, so discussing events (beyond planning them) in areas where people are unlikely to find them is somewhat counterproductive. I'm not in favour of open editing simply because it is, and should be, a membership benefit - it is after all our official wiki and announcement area. I'm not opposed to individuals being granted access from outside when it suits our purposes to do so - eg our partners in GLAM and elsewhere, or any other official collaborations which explicitly pull in non-Wikimedians. cheers Andrew 2009/12/11 Liam Wyatt liamwy...@gmail.com I too would like to see the chapter wiki being used more, especially for planning IRL events. Perhaps the issue is not so much that the Billabong isn't the right place but that (as mentioned) it's not used by many people as yet - this is largely a factor of the relatively low number of people who are allowed to edit. Currently editing rights on the Australian chapter wiki are restricted to members. I note that the UK chapter's wiki http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Pageallows IP editing (though not on the mainpage) whilst the other English language chapter (NYC) focuses their attention on the meta-wiki pagehttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_New_York_City(which is also open for IP editing). Given this discussion is happening on the wikimedia-au list, rather than the members'-only list, perhaps it is pertinent to ask: would the subscribers to this list be more willing to become involved with the Australian chapter's wiki, events, and eventually perhaps also join the chapter if the Wiki was open for at least logged-in editing from all people? One advantage of this would be that we could centralise discussion about planning activities in Australia on the Australian chapter's wiki rather than having to split it across Wikipedia's meetup pages. One disadvantage of this would be that one of the promoted benefits of membership (being able to edit the wiki) is no longer exclusive. From a personal point of view, I believe that increasing the editability of the chapter wiki will increase the number and range of things happening in Australia and therefore become a driver of membership and activity. But, I'd like to hear what the current non-members think. -Liam (yes, I'm a member) wittylama.com/blog Peace, love metadata On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 11:38 AM, Sarah Ewart sarahew...@gmail.comwrote: I assume it's the same with our wiki though I haven't actually checked myself, but usually editing the MediaWiki interface pages requires admin rights. We really don't want people stuffing around at will with the main interface. I also agree with Andrew about the Billabong page. It's meant to be a page where people can make suggestions and ask for help or whatever and we don't want to make it harder for people to find the central discussion/help page if they need it. I don't see how it not being used much makes a difference. There's only a small number of people who even have accounts with edit rights and the website is still very young so you could justify removing just about all the sidebar links by saying they're not currently used much. As Andrew said, we want to build the membership and as the active members grow the central discussion page will become more useful and important and in the interim it's there for anyone who needs it. On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 9:20 PM, Andrew orderinchao...@gmail.com wrote: I don't think it's a good idea to remove it - we want to get more member participation happening in 2010, and there simply wasn't the scope for that in 2009, hence why it wasn't utilised. cheers Andrew 2009/12/11 K. Peachey p858sn...@yahoo.com.au Yes it is possible to edit it, for details: mwbot-deux To edit the navigation menu on the left, edit [[MediaWiki:Sidebar]] using its special syntax. For more details, see http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Interface/Sidebar. ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l n ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list
Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki
On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 3:27 PM, Sarah Ewart sarahew...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 2:01 AM, Gnangarra gnanga...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/12/11 Liam Wyatt liamwy...@gmail.com One disadvantage of this would be that one of the promoted benefits of membership (being able to edit the wiki) is no longer exclusive. Seriously is this a benefit, whats the wiki for why would anyone join up just to edit the wiki No one will ever join the chapter to get editing rights. The connection of editing rights granted to members and motivation for membership is a step too far and illogical. I don't think anyone really believes that editing rights is a motivation for joining, but it is a right granted to members. Most, possibly all, people join the chapter because they want to support it and that's it. However, I don't support opening editing for the reasons that were raised by several people when this was last discussed a few months ago. We have in the past granted editing rights to people for special reasons (as Andrew referred to, we gave GLAM partners access for organising and working on GLAM) but in general I support editing remaining as a membership right. If no one will join in order to get the right to edit then its value as a right is relatively small. Maybe in the future it will indeed be a valuable right (like some professional associations have log-in websites too) but for the moment having it closed seem to be benefiting neither the members or the non-(potential)-members. The giving of the special access to people has happened, IIRC with two accounts. Both were War Memorial staff who were helping with the preparation of GLAM-WIKI and not as a thankyou or benefit of having been a partner in the event. On the other hand, the reason why the GLAM-WIKI recommendationshttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM-WIKI_Recommendationslive at meta rather than at the chapter wiki (where they, ideally, should have resided) was to allow people to comment on them. though that Wikimedia is built on a philopsy of anyone can edit, surely promoting that philopsy is the aim of the chapter. Wouldnt it be wise for Wikimedia-Australia to hold that as corner stone of its purpose. Does anyone think that the goals and ideals which we hold dear should not be what we present in our public place. I think this is flawed logic too. The Wikimedia Foundation's own website is invitation only, as is the internal wiki, the Chapter's wiki, the OTRS wiki, the ArbCom wiki, etc. All for different reasons, but the idea that we should open editing to anyone because Wikipedia is built on a philosphy of open editing is a wonky rationale IMO. We aren't Wikipedia and we're not obligated to run the chapter in the same way Wikipedia runs. The main reason I don't support opening editing up is that we lack an online community to deal with the problematic edits and vandalism etc that we'll inevitably have to deal with. It's the public face of the chapter and the pages need to be maintained accurately, the membership pages, minutes and resolutions need to have integrity. The UK chapters' website restricts editability to the various pages that are of importance e.g. meeting minuteshttp://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetings, donation http://donate.wikimedia.org.uk/, constitutionhttp://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Constitution... but because it allows editing by default anyone can contribute to volunteerhttp://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Volunteer and water cooler http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Water_cooler. The integrity of the things that need to remain stable is maintained, but it still allows for people to engage. On the other hand, neither the Frenchhttp://www.wikimedia.fr/and German http://www.wikimedia.de/ chapter websites are wikis - they're normal read-only websites. I think both of these latter chapters are something that the Australia can aspire to in terms of capacity, activities, members and pretty-website-ness, but the UK chapter is probably a fairer comparison because our chapters are effectively the same age and have the same budgets (up till now). The chapter Wiki as a way of facilitating discussion within the Australian community is a good starting point, let it be a host for members to write about their wiki experiences, to seek help in opening doors to the GLAM sector, let it be somewhere for non wiki people to seek assistance in opening their doors and making what they have collected freely available to all. I also disagree with this. The chapter's wiki is a special purpose wiki, its official website and public face, it's not a free all-purpose hosting venue. I don't think that being a place where people who are interested in Australian Wikimedia activities can discuss things is considered all-purpose hosting. Sure, if people start spamming etc. we would have to respond somehow (I would suggest requiring login - no IP editing) but if people start talking *too much* on the chapter wiki then I
Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki
re : 'I though that Wikimedia is built on a philopsy of anyone can edit, surely promoting that philopsy is the aim of the chapter. Wouldnt it be wise for Wikimedia-Australia to hold that as corner stone of its purpose. Does anyone think that the goals and ideals which we hold dear should not be what we present in our public place.' Yes yes yes! I'm another strong supporter of open access editing for the wmau wiki - I think it's a really good idea, and is borderline embarassing that it's currently restricted :-) best, Peter, PM. On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 2:58 AM, Liam Wyatt liamwy...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 3:27 PM, Sarah Ewart sarahew...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 2:01 AM, Gnangarra gnanga...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/12/11 Liam Wyatt liamwy...@gmail.com One disadvantage of this would be that one of the promoted benefits of membership (being able to edit the wiki) is no longer exclusive. Seriously is this a benefit, whats the wiki for why would anyone join up just to edit the wiki No one will ever join the chapter to get editing rights. The connection of editing rights granted to members and motivation for membership is a step too far and illogical. I don't think anyone really believes that editing rights is a motivation for joining, but it is a right granted to members. Most, possibly all, people join the chapter because they want to support it and that's it. However, I don't support opening editing for the reasons that were raised by several people when this was last discussed a few months ago. We have in the past granted editing rights to people for special reasons (as Andrew referred to, we gave GLAM partners access for organising and working on GLAM) but in general I support editing remaining as a membership right. If no one will join in order to get the right to edit then its value as a right is relatively small. Maybe in the future it will indeed be a valuable right (like some professional associations have log-in websites too) but for the moment having it closed seem to be benefiting neither the members or the non-(potential)-members. The giving of the special access to people has happened, IIRC with two accounts. Both were War Memorial staff who were helping with the preparation of GLAM-WIKI and not as a thankyou or benefit of having been a partner in the event. On the other hand, the reason why the GLAM-WIKI recommendationshttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM-WIKI_Recommendationslive at meta rather than at the chapter wiki (where they, ideally, should have resided) was to allow people to comment on them. though that Wikimedia is built on a philopsy of anyone can edit, surely promoting that philopsy is the aim of the chapter. Wouldnt it be wise for Wikimedia-Australia to hold that as corner stone of its purpose. Does anyone think that the goals and ideals which we hold dear should not be what we present in our public place. I think this is flawed logic too. The Wikimedia Foundation's own website is invitation only, as is the internal wiki, the Chapter's wiki, the OTRS wiki, the ArbCom wiki, etc. All for different reasons, but the idea that we should open editing to anyone because Wikipedia is built on a philosphy of open editing is a wonky rationale IMO. We aren't Wikipedia and we're not obligated to run the chapter in the same way Wikipedia runs. The main reason I don't support opening editing up is that we lack an online community to deal with the problematic edits and vandalism etc that we'll inevitably have to deal with. It's the public face of the chapter and the pages need to be maintained accurately, the membership pages, minutes and resolutions need to have integrity. The UK chapters' website restricts editability to the various pages that are of importance e.g. meeting minuteshttp://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetings, donation http://donate.wikimedia.org.uk/, constitutionhttp://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Constitution... but because it allows editing by default anyone can contribute to volunteer http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Volunteer and water coolerhttp://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Water_cooler. The integrity of the things that need to remain stable is maintained, but it still allows for people to engage. On the other hand, neither the Frenchhttp://www.wikimedia.fr/and German http://www.wikimedia.de/ chapter websites are wikis - they're normal read-only websites. I think both of these latter chapters are something that the Australia can aspire to in terms of capacity, activities, members and pretty-website-ness, but the UK chapter is probably a fairer comparison because our chapters are effectively the same age and have the same budgets (up till now). The chapter Wiki as a way of facilitating discussion within the Australian community is a good starting point, let it be a host for members to write about their wiki experiences, to seek help in opening doors to the GLAM sector, let
Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki
At the end of the day, and I think this is a point that isn't well understood because we have a foot on both sides of the border, this is the official wiki for a non profit organisation. The wiki's set up in such a way that those that are willing to support the aims of the organisation can edit freely. I don't know of any other similar organisations which offer open editing or participation - one I know that runs meetings for its members (and this is just networking!) charges $10 for non-members to attend a meeting; another runs closed email lists that non-members can't even see. As for the argument re vandalism - that isn't even our biggest prospective problem. The biggest is actually misrepresentation - the risk that we will be discredited as an organisation in the eyes of those we seek to build partnerships with. In the relatively insular world of free culture, edginess seems like a good thing, but in the real world, quite apart from our legal and other obligations with CAV, we have to deal with businesses, large organisations, governments, NGOs and the like. We're competing for their attention with more professional outfits which can offer them something. We're asking them to give us something - which requires a standard of credibility and professionalism. If random chaos is unfolding on our official website (and that is what it is), we have a bit of a problem in that area. Expecting already busy committee members (and I'm not even speaking for myself here) to monitor the wiki in such circumstances is an imposition on them and a completely unnecessary one - what do we stand to benefit from it, as against the costs? cheers Andrew 2009/12/12 Peter Halasz qub...@gmail.com Sarah, The only actual reason you've given for not opening up the wiki to non-members is because of fear of vandalism. Ok, so we have a problem: Potential vandalism. Solutions? 1. Actually observe actual vandalism before locking anything down. 2. Assign a couple of people to patrolling recent changes once a week 3. Locking individual pages when we require their integrity to be preserved. 4. Requiring wiki users to sign in 5. Requiring new wiki users to wait 3 days before editing 6. Banning everyone but paid members, who, after paying their membership, can apply for an account, which, when it expires, is no longer allowed to edit. C'mon, seriously? You went with #6? To combat vandalism? Although, as you say, we CAN keep the wiki locked up, why SHOULD we? And why with such tight control? Peter Halasz. User:Pengo (Lapsed member) ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l
Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki
(Note that my comments above are addressed to a hypothetical situation of open editing, not the current situation which is manageable by any objective standard.) 2009/12/12 Andrew orderinchao...@gmail.com At the end of the day, and I think this is a point that isn't well understood because we have a foot on both sides of the border, this is the official wiki for a non profit organisation. The wiki's set up in such a way that those that are willing to support the aims of the organisation can edit freely. I don't know of any other similar organisations which offer open editing or participation - one I know that runs meetings for its members (and this is just networking!) charges $10 for non-members to attend a meeting; another runs closed email lists that non-members can't even see. As for the argument re vandalism - that isn't even our biggest prospective problem. The biggest is actually misrepresentation - the risk that we will be discredited as an organisation in the eyes of those we seek to build partnerships with. In the relatively insular world of free culture, edginess seems like a good thing, but in the real world, quite apart from our legal and other obligations with CAV, we have to deal with businesses, large organisations, governments, NGOs and the like. We're competing for their attention with more professional outfits which can offer them something. We're asking them to give us something - which requires a standard of credibility and professionalism. If random chaos is unfolding on our official website (and that is what it is), we have a bit of a problem in that area. Expecting already busy committee members (and I'm not even speaking for myself here) to monitor the wiki in such circumstances is an imposition on them and a completely unnecessary one - what do we stand to benefit from it, as against the costs? cheers Andrew 2009/12/12 Peter Halasz qub...@gmail.com Sarah, The only actual reason you've given for not opening up the wiki to non-members is because of fear of vandalism. Ok, so we have a problem: Potential vandalism. Solutions? 1. Actually observe actual vandalism before locking anything down. 2. Assign a couple of people to patrolling recent changes once a week 3. Locking individual pages when we require their integrity to be preserved. 4. Requiring wiki users to sign in 5. Requiring new wiki users to wait 3 days before editing 6. Banning everyone but paid members, who, after paying their membership, can apply for an account, which, when it expires, is no longer allowed to edit. C'mon, seriously? You went with #6? To combat vandalism? Although, as you say, we CAN keep the wiki locked up, why SHOULD we? And why with such tight control? Peter Halasz. User:Pengo (Lapsed member) ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l
Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki
Here's my reasons for why ordinary people (i.e. non-members) just might like to edit the site from the last time this discussion was had: On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 10:55 PM, Lloyd Nguyen zero1...@gmail.com wrote: I think I have to ask, what kind of things could/would a non-member edit on the site? They might like to RSVP to an event. That's the main thing that comes to mind. Also discussion pages (discuss a policy or concern), or fix a typo or formatting. And they might like to be able to contribute in the time leading up to taking on membership. And there will be unforeseen reasons too. I know this is a friendly discussion, but it feels odd having to justify why a wiki should be open here. Lastly, it's a bit of a turn off having to email someone and waiting for response to get access, and I'm sure there are people who simply would see that requirement as being too much bother in comparison to the edit they want to make, or even take the restriction as being less than than welcoming. If spam is the main reason to have accounts, would using a CAPTCHA for non-confirmed accounts help? (is that a simple option in Mediawiki?) Otherwise I'd recommend nothing more restrictive than confirm email address to edit Peter Halasz ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l
Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki
That is called framing the question. Of course *that* kind of participation would be unproblematic. But let's not forget the minutes, resolutions and official activities of the chapter are hosted there, along with our Statement of Purpose and etc. Like I said, as a non-profit organisation we have obligations both to the membership and to the registry (CAV in our case), and those who visit our site should be able to trust what they read as far as it pertains to our organisation and its activities. 2009/12/12 Peter Halasz qub...@gmail.com You think that by opening the wiki up to users with autoconfirmed email addresses, so that they might put themselves down as attending an event, we are at risk of being misrepresented and discredited? I'm sorry I'm not bothering to participate in this conversation any longer. Peter Halasz User:Pengo On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 10:37 AM, Andrew orderinchao...@gmail.com wrote: At the end of the day, and I think this is a point that isn't well understood because we have a foot on both sides of the border, this is the official wiki for a non profit organisation. The wiki's set up in such a way that those that are willing to support the aims of the organisation can edit freely. I don't know of any other similar organisations which offer open editing or participation - one I know that runs meetings for its members (and this is just networking!) charges $10 for non-members to attend a meeting; another runs closed email lists that non-members can't even see. As for the argument re vandalism - that isn't even our biggest prospective problem. The biggest is actually misrepresentation - the risk that we will be discredited as an organisation in the eyes of those we seek to build partnerships with. In the relatively insular world of free culture, edginess seems like a good thing, but in the real world, quite apart from our legal and other obligations with CAV, we have to deal with businesses, large organisations, governments, NGOs and the like. We're competing for their attention with more professional outfits which can offer them something. We're asking them to give us something - which requires a standard of credibility and professionalism. If random chaos is unfolding on our official website (and that is what it is), we have a bit of a problem in that area. Expecting already busy committee members (and I'm not even speaking for myself here) to monitor the wiki in such circumstances is an imposition on them and a completely unnecessary one - what do we stand to benefit from it, as against the costs? cheers Andrew 2009/12/12 Peter Halasz qub...@gmail.com Sarah, The only actual reason you've given for not opening up the wiki to non-members is because of fear of vandalism. Ok, so we have a problem: Potential vandalism. Solutions? 1. Actually observe actual vandalism before locking anything down. 2. Assign a couple of people to patrolling recent changes once a week 3. Locking individual pages when we require their integrity to be preserved. 4. Requiring wiki users to sign in 5. Requiring new wiki users to wait 3 days before editing 6. Banning everyone but paid members, who, after paying their membership, can apply for an account, which, when it expires, is no longer allowed to edit. C'mon, seriously? You went with #6? To combat vandalism? Although, as you say, we CAN keep the wiki locked up, why SHOULD we? And why with such tight control? Peter Halasz. User:Pengo (Lapsed member) ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l
Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki
So lock those specific pages. Have you ever used Wikipedia? Do you think it would exist if they were worried only about representation? ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l
Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki
You are charging volunteers to help you. ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l
Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki
Omg the terrorists are coming! They are armed with web browsers of mass destruction and are going to change our constitution to say jimmy wales is a poo! ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l
Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki
I'm not sure why there's an assumption that edits by members are trustworthy (and edits by others are not). Since anyone can become a member, it's not reasonable to expect none of them will ever do anything bad on the wiki. And you're going to have a problem blocking them from the wiki if editing that is supposed to be something that they've been promised in return for their membership fee - do you want to have to give back their money if you find you need to block them? A better option might be to protect important pages and be quick to block problem users. Angela ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l
Re: [Wikimediaau-l] official wiki
Peter (Halasz), um... your last post is probably not helpful. I happen to agree with you that it is a good idea to make the chapter Wiki more open to editing. However, this is a discussion about the validity/importance/appropriateness of doing so and making inflammatory statements risks you falling foul of 'godwins law' and, by corollary, losing automatically. :-) This discussion here has heard from people who are members, elected committee and lapsed members, but I think we've yet to hear from anyone who is not a member as to whether they would be more willing to be involved with chapter activities. I would like to point to the UK chapter's water coolerhttp://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Water_cooler as an example of the kind of active conversations that I think the Chapter should be hosting on our Billabong http://wikimedia.org.au/wiki/Billabong - which is where this whole discussion started from. I note with interest that they recently had a discussion on that page about whether their wiki should allow IP editing or not. Could any non-members who are following this discussion please pipe up, as, all current discussants are members and by definition are already allowed to edit and therefore any change wouldn't affect them very much. In any case, I have added to the agenda of the forthcoming committee meeting an item about whether we should change editing rights. -Liam [[witty lama]] wittylama.com/blog Peace, love metadata On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 12:44 AM, Angela bees...@gmail.com wrote: I'm not sure why there's an assumption that edits by members are trustworthy (and edits by others are not). Since anyone can become a member, it's not reasonable to expect none of them will ever do anything bad on the wiki. And you're going to have a problem blocking them from the wiki if editing that is supposed to be something that they've been promised in return for their membership fee - do you want to have to give back their money if you find you need to block them? A better option might be to protect important pages and be quick to block problem users. Angela ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l ___ Wikimediaau-l mailing list Wikimediaau-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l