Re: [Foundation-l] Movement roles letter, Feb 2012

[Theo10011]

On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 5:21 PM, Bishakha Datta wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 4:42 PM, Florence Devouard  >wrote:
>
> >
> > One benefit I can identify from this decision is that we could push
> > forward that
> > * partner organizations are ONLY recognized by Wikimedia Foundation
> > * whilst chapters could finally push forward the idea that a new chapter
> > has to be recognized by the network of chapter + WMF rather than WMF
> only.
> > In short, a chapter could be an element of a network whilst a partner
> will
> > be only a WMF partner and not necessarily accepted by the network of
> > chapters.
> >
> >
> I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this. How would this benefit
> the movement?
>

While I can't speak of direct harm or benefit for the movement, I would put
some distinction between the recognition process. Chapters have a board and
are open to membership, how partner organizations deal with this issue and
their bylaws is still left open. Before we jump head-first into this,
proper consideration has to be given about the liability and the vetting
procedure for this. As it stands, the approval process seems identical
between chapters and partners organizations, this is not a good thing. It
might be advisable to give more time to the legal dept. and ChapCom to
fully vet the paperwork as it currently does for chapters, since chapters
also carry a higher liability and exposure for the movement, while partner
organizations are relatively independent, whatever their underlying
criteria might be. Partner organization status, if without a formal
registration, can be approved directly by WMF.

It can save a lot of time and effort, and limit a lot of exposure for the
existing chapters, not to mention make the overall process of approving
partner organizations, a simpler one. Chapters have to assimilate into an
existing community of established chapters, their approval can only enforce
and support the new entity. We also have to decide if we want all these
future organizations bunched up together, or if they will have a tiered
approach to their relationship.

There's probably a better reason, but this was the one that came to me.

Regards
Theo
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] My public aplogies to Jan-Bart (was Movement roles letter, Feb 2012)

[Theo10011]

On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 8:38 PM, Sue Gardner  wrote:

> While we're on the topic, here's a public service announcement. It's
> Bishakha Datta, not Bishaka Datta. The single most-frequently
> misspelled name on our lists, AFAICT. Also, Erik Moeller or Erik
> Möller with umlaut. Never Erik Moller with no umlaut :-)


Oh cmon we're not going to start using umlauts (exception - heavy metal
umlauts?).

Erik has to settle with having his name misspelled, unless he considers
changing it. ;)
(think of all the time-saving from looking at the alt-key codes for us
non-German keyboard users)

Regards
Theo
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] My public aplogies to Jan-Bart (was Movement roles letter, Feb 2012)

[Theo10011]

On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 9:26 PM, Oliver Keyes  wrote:

> If we're discussing this; my name is correctly pronounced "Oliver Keyes,
> God of Delphi, Sol, and all Ethereal Planes Known and As-Yet Undiscovered"


Olly olly oxen free! (with a silent G)

Theo
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Controversial content software status

[Theo10011]

On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 10:54 AM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> If you search for "devoirs" (= homework) or "vacances" (= holiday) on
> French Wikipedia, you're presented with a porn video in which a man and a
> woman engage in sex acts (cunnilingus and fellatio) with a dog.
>
>
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sp%C3%A9cial%3ARecherche&profile=images&search=devoirs&fulltext=Search&searchengineselect=mediawiki
>
>
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sp%C3%A9cial%3ARecherche&profile=images&search=vacances&fulltext=Search&searchengineselect=mediawiki
>
>
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Devoirs_de_vacances.ogv
>
> I respectfully request an official statement from the individual Board
> members and the Executive Director on this situation. What is your view:
> Should Wikimedia projects continue to offer users unfiltered and
> unfilterable search hits, up to and including bestiality porn, in response
> to innocuous search terms like "homework", "toothbrush" and "holiday"?


Hi Andrea

I feel you conflate a bunch of moral and technical issues when you raise
your points about this issue. I agree with Tobias on some of his
observations about your posts.

At the risk of MZ pointing out that I am repeating someone, I have felt
that the category based search system and infrastructure for images is
sorely broken. I don't think a lot of list members would disagree on that
point, it needs some technical development, maybe a move to a tag-based
system while we figure out a better system.

The other issue is morality and responsibility. I don't think any
executives or board members should make a statement about that video. It's
a stated policy that they are not responsible for the content on the
project. To hold them legally or morally responsible, for what 100,000
contributors might do at any given point, is unrealistic and unreasonable.
They can not be held liable for actions of vandals, as much as of community
members who upload media in good faith. Depending on how you perceive this,
who does have some responsibility is the community itself. It governs
itself, has its own rules about content, WMF regularly points to it in
cases of content dispute.

Now, when dealing with a particular community, the subject of relativity
comes in. What you deem offensive might not be to others. There is no
universal controversial content - there is graphic content, sexual content,
disturbing content, but it is just content, the effect it has on the viewer
is always relative. There are people who might deem any image of a woman
not covered in a veil as offensive, there are a lot of people who have no
problem at the sight of nudity, whether its breast or someone's bottom, it
won't raise any eyebrows. Someone commented about graphic, medical images,
how they can do without having them in articles, they also added that they
should be there in case they do want to look. There is no universal, one
filter fits-all approach as several others have pointed out.

The subject of your previous post comes from this[1]. According to Imdb,
appears to be a 5 minute french adult short from 1920. As Thomas pointed
out, its content is probably illegal and possibly carries a prison term.
While neither of us know about french laws on the subject, it is suffice to
say it is a content issue and should definitely be marked and brought to
the attention of a French admin to verify. There is no filter that can
automatically detect if an uploaded images has nudity, graphic or even
illegal content, it can only be viewed by someone, tagged and deleted, as I
see it, that is the system we've always had, one that Youtube and others
you mention also apply. If you can put aside the issue of graphic depiction
and morality, do you think its existence needs to be acknowledged or wiped
from the history of the world?

My personal opinion on this subject aside, I do think there is a lot of
development needed to just fix the image search system we have. As I said
above, there is no universal controversial content. it is all content, the
effect is has on a viewer is always relative.

Regards
Theo

[1]http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0419683/
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Draft charter of the Wikimedia Chapters Association

[Theo10011]

On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 1:17 AM, Nathan  wrote:

> So a group of chapters, reacting against a perceived effort to centralize
> the movement, create a brand new central body with an extensive (and
> apparently, expensive) bureaucracy? Are there really a lot of people that
> think this is a good idea?


I do.

I proposed the Council back in August. It didn't come into existence as a
reaction against any perceived effort to centralize, from any chapter in
particular. It was to address a structural gap. Similar ideas have been
around in one or the other form before this, but this effort is the one
coming closest to fruition. The basic premise is a cooperative body between
chapters. The number of chapters has been growing at a steady pace in the
last few years; this was envisioned as a central organization to promote
cooperation and provide better representation to the chapters.

I can not speak of the current status and any perception of extensive
bureaucracy thereof. I'm not a big fan of some of the things within the
effort, but most are pretty minor. Anyway, the pages and majority of the
discussion has been on Meta, you are welcomed to state your concerns and
discuss them directly.

Regards
Theo
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Fwd: Announcement: New editor engagement experiments team!

[Theo10011]

On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 6:35 AM,  wrote:

> This strikes me as a very oddly articulated concern about a crowd-sourcing
> project. The basic premise underlying the whole model is increasing the
> quantity of contributors increases the quality of the content.  Is this
> really disputed?


An astute observation.

I do believe the end goal is increasing the size of the collected wisdom,
whether it is achieved by merely increasing the size of the crowd so the
mean is more accurate or some other approach entirely. There isn't a lot of
experiments or past projects to base this on, but I don't believe that the
same numbers approach is the right way to proceed.

What the concern should be, in this particular case, is the almost myopic
focus on the statistical rise and fall in the number of contributors. And
that too, focused on one language of one project. Regardless of which side
of the argument one is on, you can not overlook the importance of getting a
complete picture.

I suppose it is revealing that some of the earlier criticism already on
this thread, is about the impersonal nature of interactions and usage of
automated tools and templates. Individualism is usually the first casualty
of collectivist constructs. Collectivism replaces the individual nature for
a more linear, modular, yet parsimonious approach to interaction. As it
should, I suppose, since the sole focus is on increasing the collective and
nothing more. They are both very related, you will have more usage of
templates, and automated tools, and less personal interactions, as the size
grows and only new, possibly temporary contributors join on an hourly
basis.

Templates or automated tools do not directly cause any rise or fall in the
number of contributors, they and their increased usage, is merely the
symptom of the underlying issue.

Regards
Theo
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Fwd: Announcement: New editor engagement experiments team!

[Theo10011]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 7:36 AM, John Vandenberg  wrote:

> That sounds like a great idea for projects where the readership and/or
> editorship is low.  On those projects, it is very likely that a reader
> with even a tiny interest in editing can be converted to a good
> editor, and they are worth the effort because they have a few rare
> qualities: they can read the language and they have found the project.
>
> Has there been any investigations in how we should use sitenotices
> (and landing pages) to maximise the chance that a reader is converted,
> where this is sensible?
>

We did try this on a couple of occasions, I believe with the Indic language
projects.

In the 2010 fundraiser, when central notice was still new, I was tasked
with trying this out with the Indic projects. We had a contribute banner
Geo-located to Indian visitors that lead to a page directing visitors to
local projects[1]. This approach might have been considered again by the
WMF India programs at a later juncture, I'm not sure what data might be
available on this. I found out the infrastructure on the small Indic
language projects was not up to par; directing visitors to help pages in
local languages, and policy pages, was much harder than English Wikipedia,
they didn't exist in some cases.

Anyway, we did not receive any positive feedback or saw any measurable
impact on the projects when this was undertaken. There might be data to
analyze related to this, but I'm only speaking from my own perspective.

I'm curious to see this approach tried on other English language projects,
as well as more languages of Wikipedia in the 100,000 article range. If
anyone is interested in investigating, this can be easily set-up on Meta.

Getting back a bit to the earlier topic, and what Sj said, I agree human
interactions are indeed valuable to building communities, but the community
is getting too large. The ratio of experienced editors vs. new editors,
enthusiasts is not proportionate, add to that the vandals, clean-up and
regular editorial work, there is only a finite amount of time that can go
towards forming personal bonds. I agree, welcoming users and having
friendly interactions is something any new user can do, but most are not
directed towards those things. While ideal, it might not even be necessary
to have such interactions in order to support the commons
goal. Incidentally, Facebook relies on automated tools, and notifications,
to engage and retain its user-base.

Regards
Theo

[1]http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/IN/Welcome
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Fwd: Announcement: New editor engagement experiments team!

[Theo10011]

 On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 5:10 AM,  wrote:

>
>
>
>
> On Mar 21, 2012, at 10:07 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:
>
> > birgitte...@yahoo.com wrote:
> >> On Mar 21, 2012, at 8:53 AM, MZMcBride  wrote:
> >>> Sue Gardner wrote:
>  Everybody knows that reversing stagnating/declining participation
>  in Wikimedia's projects is our top priority.
> >>>
> >>> Thank you for sharing this.
> >>>
> >>> How much discussion has there been internally about this being the
> wrong
> >>> approach? A good number of active editors (who I imagine Wikimedia is
> also
> >>> trying to engage and retain) feel that Wikimedia's sole focus is on the
> >>> numbers game. That is, Wikimedia is all about adding people, but
> doesn't
> >>> seem to care about the quality of the content that it's producing (or
> the
> >>> quality of the new contributors, for that matter).
> >>>
> >>> The vision of the Wikimedia movement is to create a free and accessible
> >>> repository of (high-quality) educational content; the vision is not
> about
> >>> trying to get as many people involved as possible (or even build a
> >>> movement).
> >>>
> >>> Is there a concern that the current focus on simply boosting the
> numbers (a
> >>> focus on quantity) is overshadowing the arguably more important goal of
> >>> improving the content (a focus on quality)?
> >>
> >> This strikes me as a very oddly articulated concern about a
> crowd-sourcing
> >> project. The basic premise underlying the whole model is increasing the
> >> quantity of contributors increases the quality of the content.  Is this
> really
> >> disputed?
> >
> > How do you draw that correlation? It seems like you're missing a very
> > important "may." Surely it depends on what kind of contributors you're
> > pulling in and why. It would be trivial to add a lot of contributors
> through
> > gimmicky incentives ("make ten edits, win a prize!"), but are those the
> type
> > of editors we want?
> >
>
> On the content level it doesn't really matter what what kind of
> contributors you are pulling in.  Given increased contributors over time
> (given they stick around after the contests you find distasteful end)
> quality of content improves.  This is the model assumption wikis are based
> upon.  Which why I find your stated objection so odd.  Now that said, I
> must admit there one and only one kind of contributor I find to have a
> significant negative impact on the quality of Wikipedia (and I imagine
> perhaps Wikinews as well): the "true-believer".  But I do not see this
> being a practical concern of the sort project under discussion.
> True-believer's seem to be one of the kinds of people that begin
> contributing without any encouragement.
>
>
> > Content is king. People visit Wikimedia wikis for their content and the
> > Wikimedia Foundation's stated mission is to "... empower and engage
> people
> > around the world to collect and develop educational content " The
> > hawkeyed focus on simply bumping up the number of contributors doesn't
> > necessarily improve the content. It may. But if the focus is purely on
> the
> > numbers (and not the quality of the contributors being added), it may
> also
> > make the content worse.
>
> I couldn't disagree more. In fact, I truly believe the only ways to bring
> about a significant improvement in the quality of content on a project as
> mature as the English or German Wikipedia are A) increase the numbers of
> contributors, or B) increase the average life-span of activity for
> contributors. Every other sort project I can imagine, while possibly
> leading to a net improvement in quality, would only amount to dumping a
> bucket of water into the ocean.
>
> Seriously, and with all due respect, do you really believe it likely the
> content will actually become less accurate, less comprehensive, less
> neutral, and/or less understandable because of WMF inadvertently
> encouraging the wrong "kind" of people to join in?
>
> I cannot imagine this happening.
>
> >
> > It isn't the Wikimedia Foundation's stated vision or mission to build a
> > movement; the idea is to find ways to create and disseminate free, high
> > quality, educational content. So I continue to wonder: is the current
> focus
> > of adding more and more people overshadowing the arguably more important
> > focus of producing something of value? There are finite resources (as
> with
> > nearly any project), but they're being used to develop tools and
> > technologies that focus on one project (Wikipedia) and that often have
> > questionable value (MoodBar, ArticleFeedback, etc.). ArticleFeedback has
> > gone through five major iterations; FlaggedRevs was dropped after one.
> > Doesn't that seem emblematic of a larger problem to you?
>
> No it really isn't a convincing concern for me.  But I do understand this
> objection a great deal better.  Still I would rather see WMF put full
> effort into what it believes most worthwhile, than to be grudgingly
> addressing what I might think to be somewhat mor

Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Fwd: Announcement: New editor engagement experiments team!

[Theo10011]

Thanks for this email Birgitte. I greatly enjoyed reading it, it gives
insight in not just your own motivation, but mine and several others who I
have come to know. I apologize for my following lengthy response as well.
This is a well-articulated, reasoned response, that should stand apart from
the ongoing discussion.

This does not mean I don't disagree with some of your points in the
discussion. I believe we have two fundamentally different perspectives on
this. It shapes our opinion of where we are and where we are headed
towards. The central difference resides on the difference between an editor
and a member of the crowd. I do not believe every individuals can become an
editor. I should make a clear distinction here that I am referring to
active editors, not just every reader who can incidentally make a
correction to never repeat again. The edits stand on their own, the
individuals might not. That is where we differ on, the crowd we are both
referring to is composed of a large majority of those, and very few actual
editors. The conversion rate between the two has been out of proportion for
some time now.

It may be that collected edits might be what you are referring to here, not
the individual contributor. Collected edits form the wisdom of the crowd,
they are irrespective of who they came from. Editors, curators, new
contributors, vandals, PR agents, occupy the entire spectrum of the crowd.
The issue is between the normal ecosystem that came to be on its own, and
the artificial albeit temporary addition to the equation.

Activities undertaken to artificially boost one side, by incentives and
outreach effort, have not yielded positive results. We are having this
discussion because there is a trend that has developed. The past measures
have not yielded favorable results. It has contrarily, in some cases,
increased the already heavy burden on one side, the backlogs have only
increased through them, so have copyright violations and so on. These
attempts artificially inflate and unbalance the ecosystem, by temporarily
bringing in an unmotivated crowd for the sake of statistics.

On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 12:07 PM,  wrote:

>
> I snipped previous emails because your summary is accurate and this ended
> up being massive. Fair warning.
>
> Let's say this doesn't happen.  Things stay exactly as they are now. No
> increase in vandals nor PR agents nor anything other kind contributor for
> the rest of the year.  Do you imagine the workload for admins and veteran
> editors to be acceptable? Do you imagine the quality of articles to be
> acceptable? They are not.  I and am not talking about award-winning levels
> of quality. I am speaking articles right now that were tagged as being
> inaccurate, contradictory, or biased many months ago yet still are
> unaddressed.  I am thinking of known contributor's of copyright problems
> whose edits are cataloged and are waiting for someone willing to tediously
> review them. I suspect a large factor in the attrition of veteran editors
> is the current workload as it stands.  It is hard to stay motivated when
> you can't hardly notice your work has made any dent in the backlog.
>

Yes, there is a difference between the actual workload, generated by
inaccuracies, copyright violations, policies, plain old vandalism, and the
one brought in artificially to address a trend. One side is already having
a hard time with regular tasks, veteran editors are facing attrition, new
editors are sometimes adding to the backlog instead of lowering it.

Temporarily Incentivizing and bringing in a large number of unmotivated
editors for the sake of numbers, only exasperates the problem. I believe
this is the cost of experimentation MZMcBride and others were referring to.
It only increases the workload over the normal, by temporarily recruiting
one side of the crowd from which only a minority will continue editing.


>
> I suppose I simply see the bigger concern to be: What if we don't add
> 1,000 new curators who care to learn how to interpret copyright law and
> 3,000 new contributors who are willing respond to RfCs and participate in
> peer review?  The vandals will come as inevitably as 8 year-olds transform
> into 12 year-olds. The PR agents are equally likely to remain consistent. I
> don't really understand the basis of the concern that this outreach is
> expected to add more vandals and PR agents. Why is it so suspect that this
> project could add sincere and useful people which are, perhaps in some
> aspects of their personality and/or circles of interest, simply a different
> kind of person than you and I who self-selected to contribute without any
> such an overt program? But truthfully while there are certainly tasks I
> selected to work on my own, because I find them inherently captivating
> (poetry) or because I am inherently driven to understand and make sense out
> what is presented as arbitrary and seeming senseless to me (copyright law),
> there are many contributions of signifi

Re: [Foundation-l] Board Resolutions from March 30th 2012

[Theo10011]

On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 3:22 AM, Michael Peel  wrote:

> On voting transparency: this is a great step forward. However, I would
> encourage the WMF to take a further step, and to explain why trustees voted
> approve/abstain/against. This could potentially be done by (for examples)
> adding notes next to votes explaining reservations or key supporting
> factors, or by making resolutions more focused (e.g. the fundraising
> decision could have been split into four: principles, chapter payment
> processing, four chapters, and additional chapters, which would have
> provided more insight here).


Agreed. I'm really glad to see the individual voting on those resolution. I
would love to know more about the mind-set as well, it seems like a
reasonable request.

This helps explain the current mentality and stances within the board. I
had a couple of wrong impressions about the current trustee stances before
seeing the individual votes, this helps clear things up. My thanks to Sj
for being alone in opposing this, now I'm curious about the abstains; back
to conjecturing, I suppose.

Thomas, I think 2015 is chosen because FDC is set to be evaluated at the
end of 2014, following which, either it would act as the buffer on those
issues or get back to the drawing board.

Regards
Theo
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Umberto Eco on small languages/dialects Wikipedias (Aristotle article)

[theo10011]

There is however a direct correlation between poverty and internet
access. Regardless of the linguistic diversity, its an issue of usage, the
highest read, reviewed and edited articles would have the highest merits in
terms of quality and length. It is an issue of reflexivity, lots of
contributors means lots of eyes viewing the same content which means that it
would be corrected and edited by the largest population. This is the reason
why English language Wikipedia has the largest and highest rated articles
compared to any other language because its written and viewed by the single
largest contributor group.

Theo


On Sun, Sep 19, 2010 at 3:02 PM, Mark Williamson  wrote:

> We have heard this type of criticism before, that lower-prestige
> varieties or languages that are not "official" or "national" languages
> are somehow intrinsically incapable or unsuited to encyclopedic
> writing. Article quality on a Wiki is not high or low due to some
> intrinsic characteristic or trait of the language variety used, it is
> a result of the content not being well-developed. Also, many languages
> in a relatively small territory does not mean living in a ghetto; on
> the contrary, count how many national languages there are in Europe,
> then count how many across all of Latin America, then take a look at
> economic indicators and you'll see that there is no necessary
> correlation between linguistic diversity and poverty.
>
> -m.
>
> On Sun, Sep 19, 2010 at 1:49 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo)
>  wrote:
> > I suppose you may be interested:
> > http://espresso.repubblica.it/dettaglio/el-me-aristotil/2134379/18
> > But, don't expect it to be an actual usable judgement about those
> > projects, because it's more like a pretext to comment some recent
> > Italian events.
> > A Google translation to English contains "only" 2-3 completely wrong
> > sentences.
> >
> > Nemo
> >
> > ___
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Attack pages at Encyc. Dramatica

[theo10011]

Like Steven said ED is in it for the lulz. So please don't feed the trolls
(I know a few editors from en:wp that are on ED).

In terms of legal standing, US has much less plaintiff-friendly Defamation
laws than most European Countries, and most differ widely from state to
state. I don't think you would have an easy case in any jurisdiction.

Think of it along the lines Celebrity blogs, Probably congratulate those who
have their own page on ED.

LULZ abound.

Regards

Theo

On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 12:41 AM, Anirudh Bhati wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 9:53 PM, Steven Walling
>  wrote:
> > People on ED are exactly the same as 4chan: they are in it for the
> lulz.[1]
> >
> > They will probably always write these attack pages/satire/whatever term
> you
> > prefer. We're mostly pretty odd folk, so it's easy to make fun. But
> giving
> > them attention of any kind is what they want most, since it gives them an
> > opportunity for more mischief (and thus more lulz).
> >
> > In other words, don't feed.
>
> Unless they are exposing sensitive and private information (facts)
> about you or someone you know.
>
> Anirudh Bhati
>
> 00 91 9328712208
> Skype: anirudhsbh
>
>
> > ___
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians

[theo10011]

Well why only African American Wikimedians, I think the issue might be the
same with other Racial Minorities in the US. How about Hispanic American or
Asian American Wikimedians. Apart from social issues inherent to minorities,
I think there might be something worth looking into, I doubt there would be
any data available to look into it yet.


I seem to recall, there was also the issue of Gender bias among Wikimedians
that was brought up earlier this year.


Regards


Theo


On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 3:05 AM, phoebe ayers  wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Milos Rancic  wrote:
> > For some time I am a bit puzzled by the fact that I don't know any
> > African American Wikimedian. For some time just because I am living in
> > a European country without African population, so everything seemed to
> > me quite normal for a long time.
> >
> > I tried to make a parallel between Roma people and African Americans,
> > but it is not a good one. It is very hard to find a Roma with
> > university degree. At the other side, two former State Secretaries are
> > African Americans and present US president is almost, too.
> >
> > What are the reasons? Why American Wikimedian community is exclusively
> white?
> >
> > Maybe the answer to that question would give us an idea what should we
> > solve to get more contributors.
>
> I ask myself the same question whenever I go to teach the incoming
> classes of computer science students here at my university. Although
> this is California, and we are close to having no ethnic majority in
> the state as a whole,*  the university population doesn't neatly
> mirror state demographics;** and the CS classes, anecdotally speaking,
> mirror it much less so. (It would be easy to claim that this is true
> nationwide, though the data*** doesn't actually back that up). And
> anyway, we know that formal education is a poor proxy for being a
> Wikipedian, or even for computer culture as a whole. You could
> probably just as helpfully look at the demographics of Silicon
> Valley, or any other big tech center in the U.S., and wonder why
> it was skewed white.
>
> I've only personally met a couple of black Americans in my time going
> around the U.S. meeting Wikipedians, which again is totally anecdotal,
> but considering that I've met a few hundred American Wikipedians in
> total would seem to argue for a low rate of participation. But then
> again, the people I've met at Wikimania and elsewhere are highly
> self-selected, and don't necessarily match our actual editor base with
> any certainty (I think about the black editor I met once at a small
> meetup who had never been to any sort of meetup before, or as far as I
> know since). I think the truth is that we just don't know, the same
> way that we just don't know exactly how many women participate or why.
>
> We *do* know -- both anecdotally and statistically, based on the
> readership to editorship conversion rates -- that all Wikipedians are
> outliers: we are all unusual in some way. It is not common to both
> want to participate in a wiki project and then to expend significant
> amounts of time doing so, and we more or less know the general reasons
> why someone does become a Wikipedian. These motivations, from what I
> can tell, cut across nationality and gender and all other possible
> categories: and I've been wondering if we've been going about this
> diversity discussion rather the wrong way for a long time -- if we
> should focus not on why so few people out of the general population
> participate, but rather who is likely to make a good Wikipedian and
> how we can encourage them, in all circumstances.*
>
> -- phoebe
>
> p.s. race in America, as you can gather from reading the Wikipedia
> article below, is far from a dichotomy: I'd frame this question rather
> as what's our overall diversity, in terms of ethnicity and class and
> gender, with an eye to how we succeed or fail at being welcoming and
> representative; and how we address topical systemic bias overall.
>
>
> * http://www.laalmanac.com/population/po40.htm
> ** http://statfinder.ucop.edu/library/tables/table_106.aspx
> *** http://elliottback.com/wp/black-diversity-in-it-and-computer-science/,
> data from here: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf07308/pdf/tab13.pdf;
> compare to national demographics:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States#Racial_makeup_of_the_U.S._population
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County,_California#Demographics
> * Things like university outreach programs do exactly this.
>
> --
> * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers
>  gmail.com *
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https:/

Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Executive Director?

[theo10011]

I didn't like the assumption of bad faith earlier on part of the team, the
fundraising team [1] as you would note, consists of Community members from
different locations and backgrounds. I am from India, Moushirah is from
Egypt, Dan and James are community members who also work remotely, all of us
are community members working on the fundraiser together. Philippe himself
has been a long-standing community member for the past few years before
joining the foundation. The implication of an Us Vs. them mentality here, is
counter-productive to our common goal.

The banner in question was created yesterday and barely went live for a very
short time before MZ mentioned it on the list. It was rectified within hours
once there was an objection raised, this I thought, was an example of the
community working together.

Also, as someone who has a different background than the majority of people
on the list, I can speak to the recognizability factor of Wikipedia Vs.
Wikimedia. I can personally attest to uncertainty between the association of
Wikimedia with Wikipedia. As a matter of fact, I agree that the we should
inform the readers about the difference and the relation between the two,
but you also must understand that there are constraints to what we can do
with a banner. We have a limited amount of space on each banner to connect
with our readers, Jimmy's appeal as the Wikipedia Founder has worked
incredibly well so far, so have the editor appeals, we took some liberty
with the intoduction and took the shorter approach in light of direct
statistical evidence between our options. It was never our intention
to deceive or imply anything beyond the facts.

My only issue is with the assumption of Bad faith on our part, we did the
best considering the data that was available. In light of the reaction,
changes were made as quickly as possible and the differences clarified.


Regards


Salmaan Haroon
User:Theo10011
Community Associate


[1]http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Staff
 

On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 9:30 AM, KIZU Naoko  wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 9:16 AM, Zack Exley  wrote:
> > OK, everyone -- I learned my lesson! Thanks for teaching it.
> >
> > I was looking at it from the perspective of the reader who has never
> heard
> > the word "Wikimedia". There are millions and millions of them. Luckily
> they
> > simply think we are misspelling Wikipedia, and are donating anyways. We
> will
> > continue to answer their emails alerting us to our error with patient
> > explanations.
>
> I'm pretty sympathetic with you. I got same kind emails on OTRS queues
> I'm taking care of too.
>
> How about having Jimmy (in the next time? Or right now?) add one line
> to his personal message for donors something to try clarification on
> that, on Wikimedia Foundation is founded for fostering Wikipedia and
> other sister projects? Donors may notice - at least some of them
> hopefully.
>
>
> >
> > --
> > Zack Exley
> > Chief Community Officer
> > Wikimedia Foundation
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 2:20 PM, Nathan  wrote:
> >
> >> 2010/12/9 Delphine Ménard :
> >> > On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 7:59 PM, Thomas Dalton <
> thomas.dal...@gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >> >> On 9 December 2010 18:54, Michael Snow 
> wrote:
> >> >>> While I understand the challenges in communicating effectively with
> a
> >> >>> variety of audiences, I think the point that's been raised is that
> for
> >> a
> >> >>> project that is all about trying to describe things as accurately as
> >> >>> possible, much of the community feels that in order to maintain a
> basic
> >> >>> level of accuracy, it's worth it to forgo whatever additional money
> we
> >> >>> might raise by giving it up. To phrase it differently, this is not a
> >> >>> messaging decision that should be left to the outcome of AB testing.
> >> >>> That's an argument to which I'm sympathetic.
> >> >>
> >> >> That certainly describes my position very well. Thank you.
> >> >
> >> > And mine. My thanks too.
> >> >
> >> > To even imply that Wikipedia has an executive director is not only a
> >> > falsehood, but also somehow undermines all the efforts the Wikimedia
> >> > community has put in over the years to differentiate Wikimedia from
> >> > Wikipedia, and more importantly, to make sure that it was clear that
> >> > Wikimedia organisations (chapters and Foundation alike) have no power
> >> > over editorial content.
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > Delphine
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >>
> >>
> >> I agree completely with Michael Snow and Delphine. The impulse is
> >> understandable, but it's a mistake to encourage a misunderstanding
> >> that can undermine the confidence of the public in Wikipedia's
> >> independence and create confusion about the structure of the WMF and
> >> its projects.
> >>
> >> Nathan
> >>
> >> ___
> >> foundation-l mailing list
> >> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> >> Unsubscribe: 

Re: [Foundation-l] Making wikimediafoundation.org more open to contributions

[theo10011]

Great Work, MZ.

One small point, the buttons on foundation wiki redirect to a the page we
get on FWF page on Meta, the edit page has a newly created header that
includes "Wikimedia is not associated with Wikileaks". I think the confusion
with Wikileaks issue is ephemeral and is not as common anymore. Maybe we
should consider removing that small disclaimer on the edit page, its already
there on the main page itself.


Regards


Theo

On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 11:35 AM, James Alexander wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 12:34 AM, Erik Moeller  wrote:
>
> > 2011/1/27 MZMcBride :
> > > In the spirit of being bold, I've taken a number of steps to correct
> what
> > I
> > > view as deficiencies in the current contribution system, all of which
> > I'll
> > > outline in this e-mail. If anyone has objections to these changes,
> > they're
> > > more than welcome to revert them and we can discuss ways to improve the
> > > overall situation.[2]
> >
> > Looks great to me :-)
> >
> > I agree that the edit restrictions on the WMF wiki are very
> > unfortunate and there's still much more that can be done (perhaps one
> > day leading toward www.wikimedia.org as a single information,
> > collaboration and discussion hub, subsuming both WMF and Meta, and
> > possibly other backstage wikis).
> >
> > --
> > Erik Möller
> > Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
> >
> > Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
> >
> > ___
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
>
> Agreed, There are pages that you would obviously not want touched but I
> really wish it could be more open. In the long run I agree I think we want
> something more all encompassing with the community etc. I believe there is
> an extension that turns on raw html for protected pages only or by
> namespace... though I've never used them before. In the long run I'm sure
> there are lots of options but in the short run I like the changes.
>
>
> --
> James Alexander
> jameso...@gmail.com
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

[Foundation-l] New York Times - Gender gap on Wikipedia.

[theo10011]

Hi

I saw this article in the New York Times today. In case other's missed it,
here's a link.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/business/media/31link.html?ref=media



Regards



User:Theo10011
Salmaan Haroon
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Changes to the identification policies and procedures

[Theo10011]

Steven,The Meta page for OTRS was updated to reflect the changes from Feb 1.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=OTRS/volunteering/Header&diff=prev&oldid=2341291


http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=OTRS/volunteering/Header&diff=prev&oldid=2341294

People
have made numerous mentions of the Identification issue publicly on Meta.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Cbrown1023#OTRS_Access


Regards


Theo


On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 8:57 AM, Steven Walling wrote:

> The discussion has only been going on at the OTRS list sine February 1st. I
> know a public announcement is coming because it's standard operating
> procedure at the Foundation. Please be patient.
>
> On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 7:09 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:
>
> > Steven Walling wrote:
> > > These changes were going to be discussed and documented in public...
> > [...]
> > > Speaking as an OTRS volunteer not as a staff member (this initiative
> > isn't
> > > part of my job)...
> >
> > I don't follow. How do you know that these changes were going to be
> > discussed and documented in public? These changes have been discussed for
> > at
> > least some portion of January without any community involvement. When,
> > exactly, was the community going be made aware that these changes were
> > being
> > discussed? When was the community going to be made aware that these
> changes
> > had been implemented? An announcement has already been made. When was the
> > Community Department going to involve the community (at least to give it
> a
> > courtesy heads-up)?
> >
> > > No one can give definitive answers about a process that
> > > isn't finalized yet, and it's been conducted in private for the last
> > couple
> > > days out of respect for the people whose personal information is
> > potentially
> > > involved here.
> >
> > Can you explain this further? You won't discuss an issue that involves
> the
> > community because of respect for what? What you're saying makes
> absolutely
> > no sense. If basic questions can't be answered about, for example, data
> > retention after this change has been announced (and to an extent
> > implemented), I don't see how Wikimedia is respecting its volunteers or
> > their private information.
> >
> > MZMcBride
> >
> >
> >
> > ___
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] New General Counsel!: Geoffrey Brigham

[Theo10011]

Hi Geoff,


{{welcome}}

Welcome !!!


Regards

Theo


On Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 1:38 AM, Samuel Klein  wrote:

> Welcome to Wikimedia, Geoff!  May you find both challenges and
> inspiration on our legal frontiers.
>
> SJ
>
>
> Sue writes:
> > Hey folks,
> >
> > I'm delighted to tell you that the Wikimedia Foundation has a new
> > General Counsel.
> >
> > Geoff Brigham, formerly of eBay, will start with us March 7 once he's
> > relocated from Paris to San Francisco. He'll report to me.
> >
> > To recap: In late October, I hired m|Oppenheim to find us a new
> > General Counsel. I expected it to be a tough search, because
> > appropriate GCs for the Wikimedia Foundation don't exactly grow on
> > trees. As a growing U.S.-based non-profit that operates one of the
> > world's most popular websites in partnership with a global network of
> > volunteers, we need a GC who can handle a broad range of legal issues
> > including the legal defense of our projects in an international
> > context, an array of matters related to policy and regulatory
> > compliance, issues such as privacy, and helping us with the challenges
> > of opening a new office in India. Very few people have that kind of
> > breadth. And for our GC as with all our jobs, we are also looking for
> > someone who is passionate about the mission, has a collaborative and
> > inclusive personal style, is inclined towards transparency, and
> > ideally is a bit of an iconoclast. It's a lot to ask of one person :-)
> >
> > So we braced ourselves for a long and difficult search. But in fact it
> > turned out to be highly enjoyable. Over a period of several months,
> > m|Oppenheim talked with hundreds of connectors and candidates, and in
> > the end we interviewed about a dozen finalists. They were terrific,
> > inspiring lawyers: I was glad to meet them all. And I am delighted
> > that we discovered Geoff.
> >
> > Geoff spent eight years at eBay during its main growth years, which
> > gives him important experience managing the legal challenges and risks
> > inherent in operating a popular site. His work at eBay encompassed
> > North America, Europe, Asia and Australia where he handled legal
> > issues throughout the world. He's worked alone and led large teams. He
> > is hands-on, collaborative, open-minded and inclusive. And he is
> > extremely excited about working with us.
> >
> > A little more about Geoff's background: Most recently, Geoff was
> > Vice-President and Deputy General Counsel at eBay in San Jose,
> > California. There, he directed legal affairs in more than 15 countries
> > throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Australia, encompassing
> > litigation, copyright and trademarks, privacy, ethics, product and
> > site content review, policy and regulatory compliance, new market
> > advice, contracts, governance and site security.  Previously he worked
> > for eBay in Bern, Switzerland for four years as Vice-President &
> > Senior Director, and in Paris, France for two years as Senior
> > Compliance and Litigation Counsel.
> >
> > Prior to joining eBay, Geoff was Assistant United States Attorney in
> > Miami, Florida. Before that he worked for the U.S. Department of
> > Justice in Paris and Washington, was an Associate with Finley, Kumble,
> > Wagner et al. in Washington, and was a law clerk for the Honorable
> > Howard F. Corcoran, U.S. Judge for the District of Columbia.  Geoff
> > received his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in
> > Washington DC. He also holds a B.A. in Political Science and French,
> > from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.
> >
> > He speaks English and French. He's a passionate music fan and an
> > accomplished flute player: he used to busk many years ago, playing
> > jazz and classical music on the Parisian streets, and he was well
> > known at eBay for playing his flute in the office in the early
> > mornings. Maybe that will happen at the Wikimedia Foundation too :-)
> >
> > Many thanks to Lisa Grossman of m|Oppenheim for leading this important
> > search for us. My thanks also to everyone who helped Lisa and me
> > define the General Counsel role and surface and interview candidates,
> > including (roughly in order of their involvement) Erik Moeller, Cyn
> > Skyberg, Kat Walsh, Arne Klempert, Stu West, SJ Klein, Barry Newstead,
> > Veronique Kessler, Danese Cooper, Zack Exley, Jimmy Wales, Bishakha
> > Datta, Matt Halprin, Gautam John, Pavel Richter and Shari Steele. My
> > thanks also to Derrick Coetzee, who happened to be in the office one
> > day and got pulled into an impromptu conversation helping brief Geoff
> > about some of the issues facing us. I also want to thank Wikimedia
> > France for staging its GLAM conference in Paris recently: Geoff
> > attended it and says that meeting Wikimedians there, and watching them
> > work, significantly contributed to his desire to join us.
> >
> > If I remember correctly how this list works, replies to this mail
> > should go directly to foundatio

Re: [Foundation-l] "share in Facebook/Twitter/etc" icon

[Theo10011]

On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 10:49 PM, Steven Walling wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 9:13 AM, Jon Davis  wrote:
>
> If you're interested in borrowing the Wikinews "share" links, the template
> > in question is:
> >
> > http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Template:Social_bookmarks
> >
>
> strategy.wikimedia.org did basically the same thing on proposals as well.
>

As did the Fundraiser Thank you page. Albeit with a more limited set of
options than others, but it worked great.

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Thank_You/en

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Template:Share_this


Theo



> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] How should we greet newcomers?

[Theo10011]

Hi Lennart

Would this be related to merely modifying the welcome template or something
a little more encompassing?

One idea that I had was to somehow refer new visitors to WikiProjects or
articles in need of expansion, based on some selection option where they can
select their field of expertise or interest. An easy way to implement it
would be providing an option to assign Categories to new users themselves,
we would only need a front end with an attractive UI.

We refer them through the welcome template to get started on what they like,
they are referred to a tool which gives them several options from languages
to fields to hobbies all based on categories and as they select those the
categories are added to their user-page. The tool refers them at the end to
WikiProjects and listed open tasks based on those selections.Its a similar
option to what yahoo, hotmail used to have, options to select field of
interests which they would use to for future marketing opportunities.
Similar to that, just in a non-spammy, helpful way.

I don't think embedding a video would be a feasible option, it might get
very resource intensive to host and implement.

I have added my suggestion to the outreach wiki, I was wondering if anyone
else had any thoughts related to it.

Theo


On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 5:56 PM, Lennart Guldbrandsson <
wikihanni...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I know that some of you who are reading this have problems editing any
> other
> wiki than your home wiki. It feels foreign. I myself have that problem
> sometimes. But now you have the chance to do something remarkable. You just
> have to go to the Outreach wiki to do it.
>
> During the next 10 days, you can pitch in as many new versions of the pages
> that the newcomers see when they get an account. For instance, if you think
> that the newcomers should be met by a video that explains Wikipedia's
> policies before they start editing, go ahead and make a page with a video
> in
> it! You can add as many different versions as you have the time or
> inclination to do. And it doesn't have to be perfect, either. We have a
> design firm that can help us make it look good later on, so you can
> concentrate on what the text should be.
>
> By February 21st, we want at least five versions of the three different
> pages that we can then do A/B tests on. (More versions are welcome, so do
> not feel bad if your version becomes nr 6.)
>
> This is the link:
>
>
> http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Account_Creation_Improvement_Project/Testing_content
>
> Please edit those pages as though they were your own wiki. Make yourself at
> home on the Outreach wiki.
>
> You can read more about the Account Creation Improvement Project here:
>
> http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Account_Creation_Improvement_Project
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Lennart
>
> --
> Lennart Guldbrandsson, Fellow of the Wikimedia Foundation and chair of
> Wikimedia Sverige // Wikimedia Foundation-stipendiat och ordförande för
> Wikimedia Sverige
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Shorter Url for non-latin languages

[Theo10011]

I thought the biggest reason to get a url shortener was suggested as links
in and from non-latin languages, the issue was character encoding for
non-latin scripts.

But if we're considering top level domains already, how about our own tld
for all the projects. The foundation already has hundreds of projects, a
single tld for all current and future project- .wmf or .wiki.

Theo

On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 12:55 AM, RYU Cheol  wrote:

> There is a related proposal at strategy :
>
> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal_talk:.WIKI._and_.WK._top_level_domains
>
> <
> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal_talk:.WIKI._and_.WK._top_level_domains
> >I
> think we can choose our own pathname  manually just like
> http://en.wp.wmf.org/WMF. (Wikimedia Foundation)
> And When you want to point out exact paragraph,
> http://en.wp.wmf.org/WMF#1.2(We usually do not use numbers as
> paragraph headers, in this case second
> section of a first paragraph)
>
> On the proposal, I also suggested to add twitter button on every articles.
>  Those shortened URLs might be helpful.
>
> Cheol
>
> 2011/2/13 The Mono 
>
> > Of course, this is not possible.
> >
> > > Very nice url would be for example: http://en.wp.wmf.org/Az09Q . This
> > would make possible to see which project the link leads to.
> >
> > Wmf.org is already registered, but in the future, a .Wmf TLD might be
> > possible.
> >
> >
> > --
> > *Mono*
> > http://enwp.org/m:User:Mono
> >
> > ___
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] The matrix, reloaded (movement roles, or who does what in Wikimedia?)

[Theo10011]

On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 7:42 PM, Austin Hair  wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 1:54 PM, FT2  wrote:
> > Apologies for my unusual denseness here, but this matrix makes no sense
> to
> > me, and lacks any information needed for constructive improvement.
> >
> > What I'd be looking for is a description of what the role and
> responsibility
> > is, in each box. Knowing that Business partnerships/Foundation is
> > "Globally", or that Advocacy+lobbying/Groups is "Support groups", tells
> me
> > precisely zero of any value about any organizational matter, roles, work
> > needed, and so on.
>
> Well, that's sort of the point.
>
> It's the start of something that we hope to have extensive community
> input on—it's the first step, not the last. Thirteen people
> brainstormed over the course of a few hours two weeks ago, and we
> wanted to throw what we had out there so everyone has a chance to
> participate.
>
> The definition of "groups" is particularly vague, as noted in the
> description. It's not something that I expect to resolve this week or
> next, but with some help we might have it mostly clarified within a
> few months.
>
> If you have specific questions, let's discuss! There's plenty of space
> on the wiki, and I'm happy to address stuff on this list and make sure
> it's integrated into the main body of work.
>

Hey Austin

I left a message on the talk page about the definition of "groups" in the
context of Movement Roles Project last week. I also brought this up in the
IRC hour a week ago. I know the intention here is to be as inclusive as
possible, but can we start to classify what "groups" are expected to be
included in the project.

A little more clarification about these "groups" would be greatly helpful
either on wiki or the mailing list.

I would assume that chapters are one such groups that are definitely going
to be included in the classification, if so, can we at least include them
somewhere so people have a general idea here about the context or what's
expected.


Theo
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Friendliness: a radical proposal

[Theo10011]

On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 11:43 PM, Neil Harris wrote:

> Thesis:
>
> The main reason why Wikipedia seems unfriendly to beginners is the
> reduction in the assumption of good faith. A lot of this could be
> resolved simply by creating large numbers of new admins. This should be
> done automatically. So why not just do it?
>
> Argument and proposal:
>
> Many admins and edit patrollers find themselves forced into an
> aggressive stance in order to keep up with the firehose of issues that
> need to be dealt with, a surprising amount of which is fueled by
> deliberate malice and stupidity and actually does require an aggressive
> and proactive response.
>
> This is not the admins' fault. The major reason for this is the broken
> RfA process, which has slowed the creation of new admins to a trickle,
> and has led to an admin shortage, which in turn has led to the current
> whack-a-mole attitude to new editors, and a reduction in the ability to
> assume good faith.
>
> I'd like to move back to an older era, where adminship was "no big
> deal", and was allocated to any reasonably polite and competent editor,
> instead of requiring them to in effect run for political office.
>
> If, say, over the next three years, we could double the number of
> admins, we could halve the individual admin's workload, and give them
> more a lot more time for assuming good faith. And, with the lesser
> workload and more good faith, there will be a lot less aggression
> required, and that will trickle outwards throughout the entire community.
>
> I can't see any reason why this shouldn't be done by an semi-automated
> process, completely removing the existing broken RfA process.
>
> Now it might be argued that this is a bad idea, because adminship
> confers too much power in one go.  If so, the admin bit could be broken
> out into a base "new admin" role, and a set of specific extra "old
> admin" powers which can be granted automatically to all admins in good
> standing, after a period of perhaps a year. For an example of the kind
> of power restrictions I have in mind, perhaps base new admins might be
> able to deliver blocks of up to a month only, with the capability of
> longer blocks arriving when they have had the admin bit for long enough.
>
> All existing admins would be grandfathered in as "old admins" in this
> scheme, with no change in their powers. Every new admin should be
> granted the full "old admin" powers automatically after one year, unless
> they've done something so bad as to be worthy of stripping their admin
> bit completely.
>
> None of this should be presented as a rank or status system -- there
> should only be "new admins", and "old admins" with the only distinction
> being the length they have been wielding their powers -- admin "ageism"
> should be a specifically taboo activity.
>
> Now, we could quite easily use a computer program to make a
> pre-qualified list of editors who have edited a wide variety of pages,
> interacted with other users, avoided recent blocks, etc. etc., and then
> from time to time send a randomly chosen subset of them a message that
> they can now ask any "old admin" to turn on their admin bit, with this
> request expected not to be unreasonably withheld, provided their edits
> are recognizably human in nature. (The reason why "new admins" should
> not be able to create other admins is to prevent the creation of armies
> of sockpuppet sleeper admin accounts riding on top of this process -- a
> year of competent adminning should suffice as a Turing test.)
>
> So: unless there is a good reason not to, why not do this?
>
> -- Neil
>
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l



I think those are two separate issues. I don't think having a large number
of admins would have an effect on apparent friendliness to beginners, if I
had to guess I would say having more admins would probably increase the
degree of alienation. Admins do a lot of janitorial tasks, having more would
prob. increase the administrative activity. This is in addition to having
new admins who wouldn't have been properly vetted by the community, which
would bring in new and unknown admins into the equation. There is an another
school of thought, who believe that some admins might be the problem.
Beginners might not be able to separate or understand that an admins actions
is isolated and doesn't represent the larger community, they're probably
unaware of possible recourse available to them after an administrative
action.

The second problem is the current RfA process, which I agree has been
getting really restrictive for genuine candidates. I saw people oppose
deserving candidates for the most trivial of reasons, from a single userbox
to not being descriptive enough in edit summaries. I agree that we need to
reconsider the current RfA process, the number of new admins has been
fal

Re: [Foundation-l] Raising funds without being quite so annoying to readers

[Theo10011]

WereSpielChequers, I believe we either tried or considered all those things
and more.

I think we established continuing donations sometime half-way through the
fundraiser, it mostly depends on the payment intermediaries- Philippe and
Megan really worked hard on getting it. From what I recall, Zack and the
rest of the team considered all those things and many more to reach out to
possible benefactors during the fundraiser. They didn't just consider money
raised per ad, but a whole host of metrics about every banner and every
minute detail.

Do bear in mind that there are a lot of legal limitation when dealing with
such an international user-base - things like merchandising are governed by
non-profit policies, internationalizing is another issue we have to
consider. The foundation is limited in that option and that is where the
chapters need to take the lead in establishing donation infrastructure in
their respective countries.


Theo


On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 8:00 PM, David Gerard  wrote:

> On 5 March 2011 14:19, Neil Harris  wrote:
>
> > And also, WMF should make it possible to accept continuing donations as
> > a subscription on a monthly basis.
>
>
> Even better, they should do this already!
>
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Monthly_donations/en
>
> (a link from http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate with the words
> "If you'd like to make an automatic monthly donation please click
> here."
>
>
> - d.
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Job openings - Bugmeister

[Theo10011]

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 12:30 AM, Casey Brown  wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 12:34 PM, Jan Kucera (Kozuch)
>  wrote:
> > what about this job opening? Has it been filled already?
>
> Mark Hershberger (MAH) is fulfilling the role of Bugmeister and he's
> already started cleaning up Bugzilla.  Id link to the announcement,
> but I'm not sure where it was.  I'm CCing him if you have any
> questions.
>
> --
> Casey Brown
> Cbrown1023
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

I don't think it was announced on Foundation-l, there was an announcement on
wikitech-l.

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech/221758

it was also covered in Signpost Tech report back in January.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-01-17/Technology_report


Theo
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Is Google allowing users to block Wikipedia?

[Theo10011]

On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 2:30 AM, Kul Takanao Wadhwa
wrote:

> On 3/19/11 1:56 PM, Erik Moeller wrote:
> > 2011/3/19 Erik Moeller :
> >> Looks like it's one of their small percentage experiments. Haven't
> >> been able to reproduce it myself. Not clear whether it's just
> >> wikipedia.org or other/all sites.
> > Bence pointed to this explanation:
> >
> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/hide-sites-to-find-more-of-what-you.html
> >
> Thx. I know about the general blocking option but wanted to know if
> anyone has seen other sites, besides Wikipedia, specifically called out
> too.
>
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


I first thought it might have had something to do with google's new
search algorithm.

I thought a similar feature had been around for a while, to block results
from a particular site. There was a star option earlier to prioritize
results from a particular site, it seems to be a natural progression.

It seems to be a personalized search feature, not directly related to
Wikipedia visibility in search results.

Theo
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] 2011 Board Elections: Input needed

[Theo10011]

On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 6:54 PM, Andre Engels  wrote:

> Lowering the edit counts sounds good, it does however also have a
> downside, in that it makes it easier to vote using sockpuppets or
> meatpuppets.
>
> I agree with voices speaking out against giving voting rights based on
> donations; I do also think giving people voting rights based only on
> being 'readers' basically means giving it out to random people.
>
> There's two groups I would be first thinking of when extending the
> voting populace. The first is those with commit rights on the
> Mediawiki code (I'd feel a single commit in the last year would be
> enough - in general having been granted commit right shows already
> that one is active as a Mediawiki community member). The second would
> be participants of Wikimania or other Wikimedia or chapter events
> (using a specific but extensive list).
>
> --
> André Engels, andreeng...@gmail.com
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

I don't think it's a good idea to include donors especially donors above or
below a certain point, to essentially buy the right to vote. As for
developers, campus ambassadors - most of them are already community members,
its their decision to vote or not. They are already composed of community
members, their inclusion hasn't really been an issue in my opinion.

The discussion about including readers into the voting pool has also been
going on Meta [1]. I believe the 'reader' group is far too wide and random
to be successfully considered a separate entity in the elections. Its also
getting too close to the election to come up with policies and
infrastructure to implement suffrage for random readers.

I would point to the recently concluded Steward election as an example of
who to include in the voting process. I would hope that the selection is
limited to the community, at almost a 100,000, it's far larger than the
voting pool of any other similar organization.


Theo
User:Theo10011


[1]http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Board_elections/2011#Participation
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Message to community about community decline

[Theo10011]

On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 10:43 AM, Yann Forget  wrote:

> Hello,
>
> 2011/3/29  :
> > On 28/03/2011 18:35, Nathan wrote:
> >> The bar for contributing is higher. Whether because editing is more
> >> technically challenging, or because the rules and standards are more
> >> complex, or simply because more of what people know is documented than
> >> it was 4 years ago... it's harder in a variety of ways for people to
> >> contribute significantly on a regular basis (i.e. become regular
> >> editors, as opposed to making several contributions and not
> >> returning).
> >>
> >
> > Ah there is the reason, the sum of all human knowledge is approaching
> > completion. Well done to all.
>
> We are very far from that.
> All the issue is that of notability.
>
> If we apply the current criteria, which is mainly applied on Western
> subjects, to other parts of the world, we could have 10 times more
> articles (villages and towns, local customs and food, etc.).
>
> Regards,
>
> Yann
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


I see two different points here, I believe what we need to focus more on is
editor-retention rather than editor-recruitment. We seem to be looking at
the situation with only cold, hard numbers.

The fact that the majority of editors are white male geeks as Kaldari said,
is because they have the easiest access and time available to edit. There
are far too many reasons the other groups are not at the same level of
participation- technological, cultural, social, busy schedules, so on. We
can not address most of them, we can inform a reader that they can edit what
they read, but we can't force them to edit. It is beyond our reach to
consider recruiting people who are not passionate about contributing.

The second issue as I see it, we might not be approaching the sum of all
human knowledge but we're running out of what the core non/semi-professional
community can contribute. We are at over 3.5 million articles (go Pokemon)
on English wikipedia, we surpassed all other encyclopedias a long time ago.
We just can't keep adding articles at the same speed as we use to, we have
to accept that and actively focus on improving what we already have. New
editors might not be the magic pill that we need here, there
is definitely a learning curve when it comes to editing, and they might just
leave like some experienced editors.


Theo
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Outdated manual

[Theo10011]

On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 3:50 AM, MZMcBride  wrote:

> Sue Gardner wrote:
> > On 9 April 2011 01:14, Milos Rancic  wrote:
> >> May someone update manual in which it is written that Wikipedia is the
> >> fifth site by traffic? For the most of 2010 and whole 2011 it has varied
> >> between 6th and 8th place [1].
> >>
> >> Repeating that it's on the 5th place says about us one or both of the
> >> next two things:
> >>
> >> * We are out of reality.
> >> * We are using false information in our PR.
>

Milos, It might also mean that the information being referred to, hasn't
been updated. The Wikipedia entry on Wikipedia had the same issue a while
ago when some of the stats were not up to date by a huge margin. The current
Wikipedia entry on English wikipedia quotes stats and the date it was taken
on, both are correct. It doesn't have to mean either of those two things.


> >
> > The top five websites as measured by comScore global unique visitors,
> > the industry standard for internet audience measurement, are: Google,
> > Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, Wikimedia. That's February 2011 data, the
> > most recent available.
>
> As far as I understand this, that would mean that saying "Wikipedia is the
> fifth most visited website" is still completely wrong, as the comScore data
> is an aggregate of the various Wikimedia wikis. As the Director of
> Wikipedia, I would think this would be rather obvious to you. ;-)
>

I don't think Sue said "Wikipedia is the fifth most visited website". Its
'Wikimedia Foundation sites' in comScore data.


Theo
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Outdated manual

[Theo10011]

On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 4:38 AM, MZMcBride  wrote:

> Theo10011 wrote:
> > I don't think Sue said "Wikipedia is the fifth most visited website". Its
> > 'Wikimedia Foundation sites' in comScore data.
>
> I don't think you did your homework.
>
> From <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Template:2010/SueLetterC/en>:
> > We are the number five website in the world, with more than 400 million
> > readers per month.
>
> That was a personal appeal from Sue.
>
> If you search wikimediafoundation.org for references to "fifth most",
> you'll
> find plenty of results from Sue, Jimmy, Veronique, Erik, and others calling
> Wikipedia the fifth most visited site in the world (it's in the general
> FAQ,
> the Annual Plan FAQ, a recent press release, and in several job openings
> postings that I can see off-hand).
>
> What was your point again?
>
> MZMcBride
>
>
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

I only meant in the previous post which I quoted. I didn't know you were
referring to off-list mentions of "fifth most".

I agree that there needs to be clarification on the usage of "fifth most" on
wmf wiki at least.


Theo
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Very slow load time for the last few days

[Theo10011]

I had problems with load times and time-outs, ever since the email
notification was turned on. I asked the tech team if they were related, they
didn't think so. Maybe, its a co-incidence, but did anyone notice if the
slowness increased when email notifications were turned on?

Theo


On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 11:52 PM, Thomas Morton <
morton.tho...@googlemail.com> wrote:

> en.wiki just slowed to a crawl and is now errored out. It has been going
> from normal to treacle slow all day.
>
> Tom
>
> On 18 May 2011 19:20, Sarah  wrote:
>
> > The English Wikipedia has been experiencing painfully slow load times
> over
> > the last few days, and lots of error messages when trying to save, to the
> > point where the site has become difficult to use. There's discussion
> about
> > it on the Village Pump, and someone has filed a bug report, but no one
> has
> > any idea why it's happening, or whether it's being looked into. I would
> > link
> > to the discussion, but I can't get the page to open.
> >
> > Does anyone on the list have information about it?
> >
> > Sarah
> > ___
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] CentralNotice use

[Theo10011]

I asked Mono to announce POTY centralnotice use on Foundation-l after he
made a request on Meta. The only consensus to MZ's RfC on Meta [1] was that
Global banners could be used for Non-fundraising reasons after consensus is
achieved for the proposal and the banner itself on Meta first.

Currently, there are no clear guidelines on the community's use of
central-notice - multiple geo-located, chapter-requested campaigns have been
running on central-notice without objection. Global-banners have been used
for things like the March/May update and for soliciting candidates for the
board election.

It's time to consider guidelines if we are going to have Global banners.


Theo


http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Global_banners


On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 9:41 PM, Mono mium  wrote:

> The POTY banner was announced on this list with no objections.
>
>
>
> On Thursday, May 19, 2011, church.of.emacs.ml
>  wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Do we have any guidelines limiting the use of CentralNotices? I noticed
> > there are a lot lately (fundraising, wikimania and most recently board
> > elections and commons POTY), some of which are not of much interest to
> > the audience.
> >
> >
> > Take for example one of the most recent banners about candidate
> > submissions for Wikimedia's Board Elections[1]. Until most recently, it
> > has been displayed on every single page view for most of our 400 Million
> > readers or so, according to the setup for 20 days. >99.% of our
> > readers won't be candidates and for most of them, this is of no interest
> > at all. Which is sad of course, we'd love to get more qualified and
> > diverse candidates – that is to say, not only members of Wikimedia's
> > core community. Nevertheless, the question remains: do the positive
> > effects (chances on higher diversity) outweigh the negative consequences
> > (readers/authors are annoyed)?
> >
> > Take another example: The call for votes on common's anual picture of
> > the year competition has two very large banners with colorful images on
> > them [2].
> >
> > I think, there has to be a serious consideration for each banner,
> > whether its positive effects outweigh negative consequences. Most
> > importantly, the fact that banners divert the readers attention and are
> > therefor in most cases not in his direct interest, has to be considered.
> >
> > There are several ways of minimizing negative effects:
> > 1. Display it for logged-in users only. This is especially useful for
> > information concerning active Wikimedians, e.g. Wikimania, POTY, etc.
> > 2. Reduce weight - don't display a banner on every page view, but only
> > on one in ten. (We have to use blank banners to do that, right?[3])
> > 3. Reduce duration. (e.g. Don't display banners for a month, only a week)
> > 4. Reduce banner size and intrusiveness. Use text banners instead of
> > colorful images.
> >
> > What do you think? Do we need to limit the use of CentralNotice through
> > guidelines or introduce technical measurements (e.g. blank banners[3])
> > or just appeal to meta admins to consider negative effects or is
> > everything fine the way it is?
> >
> > Regards,
> > Tobias / User:Church of emacs
> >
> > [1]
> >
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NoticeTemplate/view&template=boardvotecandidates
> > [2]
> >
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:CentralNotice&method=listNoticeDetail¬ice=poty2010
> > [3] Afaik changing weight alone only changes the distribution of
> > banners. We'd have to add a "pseudo banner" which is completely empty
> > and then give it some weight. Using that, we ensure that there isn't a
> > banner on *every* page view, only on 1 in 5 or 1 in 10 or so.
> >
> >
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] CentralNotice use

[Theo10011]

On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 11:11 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:

> Theo10011 wrote:
> > Currently, there are no clear guidelines on the community's use of
> > central-notice - multiple geo-located, chapter-requested campaigns have
> been
> > running on central-notice without objection. Global-banners have been
> used
> > for things like the March/May update and for soliciting candidates for
> the
> > board election.
> >
> > It's time to consider guidelines if we are going to have Global banners.
>
> You seem to have missed my e-mail posted two hours prior to your e-mail.
>
> MZMcBride
>

Ya, I must've missed that.

I'm going to add some suggestions, it would be great if anyone else also
takes a look at it.

Also, we need a page on Meta where any future requests could be placed and
voted on, the current logging page for central notice could eventually be
replaced with it.


Theo
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Scheduled intermittent downtime on all Wikimedia projects on May 24

[Theo10011]

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 4:40 PM, Domas Mituzas wrote:

> Hi!
>
> > That's... completely missing the point. Yes the specific errors faced
> were
> > unexpected or unforseen, BUT they were a* direct result* of the
> maintenance
> > between 13:00 and 14:00. I am simply passing on the feeling of our
> > readership; which was that the situation was badly communicated to them.
>
> As majority of our users are anons, who visit us once a day or two, we
> should probably have started a communication campaign at least two months
> before the maintenance.
> We practice a lot during fundraisers :-)
>
> OTOH, if there's no downtime, maybe we're causing quite some frustration
> with superfluous communication? :-)
>
> > I am trying to share my experience here as a sysadmin and website
> operator;
>
> Oh, finally we got some sysadmins and website operators here.
> As a sysadmin you sure understand that in larger distributed systems which
> are not all built on a set of SPOFs there can be various failure modes,
> happening at various layers and various fuzziness.
> As a website operator you sure know that it is lots of effort to prepare
> boilerplates for every possible situation :-)
>
> > users hate downtime/maintenance, and will complain about it endlessly.
>
> You have some annoying users, our users are awesome and don't complain
> endlessly!
>
> > Improving our communication of planned maintenance is definitely a good
> idea.
>
> So is curing cancer.
>
> Marcus Buck wrote:
> > Domas, what are you trying to achieve with your comments on Tom's
> > suggestions?
>
>
> Put some clue in?
>
> > The sensible reaction (from a person who is involved in the maintenance)
> would be:
>
> I know nobody likes this, but sensible reaction is to work on good
> operation rather than standing in front of a mirror and trying five hundred
> different "I'm sorry" phrases.
> You look too much from that single position, that "communication is good",
> without weighting costs or other options.
>
> Cheers,
> Domas
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

I have no idea what Domas is trying to say.

I agree with Thomas that there should be a better option to communicate with
users about downtime and possible performance issues. I don't know how one
would expect a user to discern between a planned downtime for maintenance
vs. actual performance issues. There has been several issues earlier this
year with performance and even temporary outages, not to mention there might
have been more pronounced performance issues in certain locations.

Instead of diverting users to IRC, how about an outage/error page with a
twitter/identi.ca feed with updates from the tech team, or at least a page
with customized message in case of previously planned outage. Most of the
tech staff already use Twitter/Identi.ca to update users, maybe we can look
for a way to incorporate that feed in the outage page itself or point them
to it.

How would someone who is not on any of the mailing lists, or has suppressed
the banners supposed to find out about the difference between these issues?


Theo
User:Theo10011
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Scheduled intermittent downtime on all Wikimedia projects on May 24

[Theo10011]

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 5:31 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:

> Theo10011 wrote:
> > Instead of diverting users to IRC, how about an outage/error page with a
> > twitter/identi.ca feed with updates from the tech team, or at least a
> page
> > with customized message in case of previously planned outage. Most of the
> > tech staff already use Twitter/Identi.ca to update users, maybe we can
> look
> > for a way to incorporate that feed in the outage page itself or point
> them
> > to it.
>
> Is it so much to ask that you read the mailing list thread before replying?
>

Yes! hehyou expect me to read Bugzilla?


> Nobody's asking you to memorize every word, but having some general idea of
> what has been discussed would make your replies less redundant and/or
> seemingly obtuse.
>

More Noise.


>
> MZMcBride
>
>
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Scheduled intermittent downtime on all Wikimedia projects on May 24

[Theo10011]

There was, it ran for a day. (
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralNotice)-  Generic maintenance
notice.

Theo


On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 1:41 PM, Thomas Morton  wrote:

> I'm pretty sure there was a site notice; I recall seeing one anyway :)
>
> Tom
>
> On 26 May 2011 09:09, Federico Leva (Nemo)  wrote:
>
> > Milos Rancic, 26/05/2011 09:57:
> > > Site notice for a week before the maintenance would be useful, too. We
> > > communicate with our users via web site, not via emails.
> >
> > A week of pain to signal (and not avoid) an hour of pain? Doesn't look
> > like a gain.
> >
> > Nemo
> >
> > ___
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Election results?

[Theo10011]

Results are out.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2011/Results/en


Theo

On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 8:04 PM, Harel Cain  wrote:

> I only want to rephrase what I said back at the beginning of the thread:
> it's perfectly understandable if things run late (huh, Wikimania taught me
> this first hand). It's just that little one-sentence update on the results
> page that was missing and would have spared us this thread.
>
> Now, some more patience - I'll go drink something :)
>
>
> Shabbat Shalom from Jerusalem,
>
> Harel
>
> On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 17:09, Austin Hair  wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 4:05 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:
> > > Domas Mituzas wrote:
> > >>> I'm told volunteers are capable of editing wiki pages and posting to
> > >>> mailing lists. I haven't been able to independently verify this,
> > though.
> > >>
> > >> I'm told that some volunteers can be extremely obnoxious too.
> > >
> > > Eh, don't be so hard on yourself. Sometimes you have something useful
> to
> > > say.
> >
> > Now, now, everyone be nice. The moderation button isn't that far from me.
> >
> > Austin
> >
> > ___
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Projects in simple languages

[Theo10011]

The last request was a 2 line proposal added by an anon ip[1] in passing,
their only edit. I wouldn't call that a community.

Theo

[1]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Requests_for_new_languages%2FWikipedia_Simple_German_4&action=historysubmit&diff=2519024&oldid=2087184


On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 12:00 AM, Milos Rancic  wrote:

> On 06/20/2011 08:23 PM, Milos Rancic wrote:
> > The logical line of my thoughts was to allow *any* project in simple (or
> > equivalent) language if there is a scientific basis. Mostly because
> > there could be created valid communities around non-world-languages with
> > large number of speakers (German and Japanese are examples).
>
> Just to add one personal note: Four requests [1][2][3][4] for Simple
> German Wikipedia have influence on my position.
>
> As I said on LangCom list, I am personally opposed to the projects in
> simple languages, as, out of English one, their purpose tend to be
> censored "family friendly" projects. Including the request for the
> request in Simple German.
>
> However, if there is a valid community which aims to create educational
> project -- encyclopedia, to be precise --, I don't think that we have
> right to forbid them that.
>
> [1]
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Simple_German
> [2]
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Simple_German_2
> [3]
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Simple_German_3
> [4]
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Simple_German_4
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Board letter about fundraising and chapters

[Theo10011]

Nathan, there is no reason to single out Beria. She at least responded to
the questions. There are a lot of people reading this who didn't and have
far more authority to comment on the matter than her.

Theo

On Sat, Aug 6, 2011 at 2:52 AM, Nathan  wrote:

> Beria, I don't think your views on transparency as stated mesh all
> that well with the character of this list. I'd suspect the same is
> true of the wider community of editors and donors; the assertion that
> details be discussed in private is both improper and at distinct odds
> with the history of the WMF. If chapters prefer that their actions not
> be subject to the oversight of the WMF and Wikimedia community, then
> they should do their own fundraising and develop their own trademarks.
>
> On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 5:12 PM, Béria Lima  wrote:
> > If they do revoke (which they can, because do report are part of Chapter
> > Agreement), will be also a private discussion. I do understand your
> people
> > curiosity to know what they discusses, but all the relevant info are
> public.
> > Only particular details are handle in private
> > _
> > *Béria Lima*
> > (351) 925 171 484
> >
> > *Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter
> livre
> > acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. É isso o que estamos a
> > fazer .*
> >
> >
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Like button

[Theo10011]

On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 6:38 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote:

> > Hmm, it'd be a neat extension for Commons. I don't think "like" or "+1"
> > should be used, as they're not sufficiently wiki. But something that
> > expresses the same sentiment, that allows users to express approval of
> good
> > photos (similar to Flickr), could be cool.
> >
> > MZMcBride
> >
> Is the talk page not good enough?
>

No.

How about "<3" or "Love it"?

I do love the current 'like' template though on en.wp. ;)

Theo


>
> Cheers
> Yaroslav
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l