Re: [Foundation-l] Block update
Remind me, please, why we are still talking about this. skype: node.ue On Sun, Aug 9, 2009 at 4:13 PM, stevertigoo...@spaz.org wrote: 2009/8/8 Stevertjgo o...@spaz.org: I think those high level discussion can take place either on-wiki or on existing mailing lists without a problem. I generally agree. But existing mailing lists generally means wikien-l - once highly purposed toward resolving on-wiki disputes - is now notoriously dismissive of dispute resolution issues and geared more toward discussing Wikipedia's media image. Discussing specific disputes tends to annoy people on the existing mailing lists and it doesn't make sense to discuss mailing list disputes on-wiki, so the obvious answer seems to be a separate mailing list (or several, divided up by language I don't know if the non-English lists have a problem needing this solution or not). OK, I agree, but would want to generalize it into either the dispute resolution or mailing list dimensions. A 'mailing list for discussing mailing lists and related issues? Hm. I think it being a low traffic list would be a good thing - the moderators would all have to be there and a few mailing list regulars would sign up to keep an eye on things and disputes could hopefully be resolved with a minimum of drama. Alright. I am not easily persuaded, but you make an interesting case. A lists-l list then. We can there discuss a new possible disputes-l list, as well as any ending any defunct lists, etc. -Steven ___ 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 election spamming
phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@... writes: ** Despite the election's importance, turnout is so far pretty pathetic, esp. from smaller wikis. Which begs the question: why was the central notice taken down when there is still a day left? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board elections email adding insult to injury
Philippe Beaudette wrote: On Aug 9, 2009, at 4:25 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote: Things started going wrong when the election committee didn't organize itself in time. I should point out, though, that the committee does not organize itself. It responds to a call from the Board of Trustees. Fair enough, but that doesn't make things look good for the Board. Perhaps then a small core of the Election Committee should operate as a standing committee between elections, ready to act when necessary. When the time comes it would have the power to recruit whatever additional manpower it needs. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board election spamming
On Aug 10, 2009, at 12:15 AM, Tisza Gergő wrote: Which begs the question: why was the central notice taken down when there is still a day left? It went down earlier than we expected. It's back up, after a brief outage. Philippe ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Update on struck votes issue on SecurePoll
Earlier today a number of adjustments were made to votes which had been previously struck in the election for Wikimedia Board of Trustees. We believe the votes that are still struck are validly struck; if there is a dispute, any user is encouraged to contact the Election Committee (board-electi...@lists.wikimedia.org) or any member personally for clarification. The current list of votes can be found at https://wikimedia.spi-inc.org/index.php/Special:SecurePoll/list/17 For the committee, Philippe ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Update on struck votes issue on SecurePoll
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 9:34 AM, Philippe Beaudettepbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote: Earlier today a number of adjustments were made to votes which had been previously struck in the election for Wikimedia Board of Trustees. We believe the votes that are still struck are validly struck; if there is a dispute, any user is encouraged to contact the Election Committee (board-electi...@lists.wikimedia.org) or any member personally for clarification. The current list of votes can be found at https://wikimedia.spi-inc.org/index.php/Special:SecurePoll/list/17 Probably, I missed that fact, but how many Wikimedians eligible to vote did we have for elections this time? And is there some data about those numbers from last elections? I found just numbers of voters [1]. [1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections_history ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Update on struck votes issue on SecurePoll
Hoi, First order of business is learning the results and making sure that the people most involved know. I can tell you that I am anxious to learn the result. When it transpires that I have been elected, I would like a moment to collect my thoughts. Statistics are relevant and I am sure that what meaning can be gleaned from them will be. Thanks, GerardM 2009/8/10 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 9:34 AM, Philippe Beaudettepbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote: Earlier today a number of adjustments were made to votes which had been previously struck in the election for Wikimedia Board of Trustees. We believe the votes that are still struck are validly struck; if there is a dispute, any user is encouraged to contact the Election Committee (board-electi...@lists.wikimedia.org) or any member personally for clarification. The current list of votes can be found at https://wikimedia.spi-inc.org/index.php/Special:SecurePoll/list/17 Probably, I missed that fact, but how many Wikimedians eligible to vote did we have for elections this time? And is there some data about those numbers from last elections? I found just numbers of voters [1]. [1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections_history ___ 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] Update on struck votes issue on SecurePoll
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 3:34 AM, Philippe Beaudettepbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote: Earlier today a number of adjustments were made to votes which had been previously struck in the election for Wikimedia Board of Trustees. We believe the votes that are still struck are validly struck; if there is a dispute, any user is encouraged to contact the Election Committee (board-electi...@lists.wikimedia.org) or any member personally for clarification. Is there any reason why some, but not all, super-seeded votes have also been struck? There are a number of cases, but picking one I know personally, strikeDetails 15:49, 28 July 2009 Ragesoss en.wikipedia.org/strike Details 14:06, 9 August 2009Ragesossen.wikipedia.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board elections email adding insult to injury
Presumably the duties of an election committee don't need to terminate with the end of this election? To the extent that organizing actions can be taken ahead of the next cycle, perhaps they should be appended as the final responsibilities of the committee for this cycle. Set up the new pages, create and translate any messages that aren't candidate specific (date specific can be done now and updated later), etc. Nathan ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Update on struck votes issue on SecurePoll
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 9:49 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 3:34 AM, Philippe Beaudettepbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote: Earlier today a number of adjustments were made to votes which had been previously struck in the election for Wikimedia Board of Trustees. We believe the votes that are still struck are validly struck; if there is a dispute, any user is encouraged to contact the Election Committee (board-electi...@lists.wikimedia.org) or any member personally for clarification. Is there any reason why some, but not all, super-seeded votes have also been struck? There are a number of cases, but picking one I know personally, strikeDetails 15:49, 28 July 2009 Ragesossen.wikipedia.org /strike Details 14:06, 9 August 2009Ragesossen.wikipedia.org Yeah, I noticed this quite a bit also. If a voter voted more that once, it seems like all but their last vote is greyed out usually - only sometimes are first votes struck. Not sure if second/third/etc. votes need to be struck just because the user voted again or not, based on that. -- Ryan User:Rjd0060 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Update on struck votes issue on SecurePoll
Hoi, When a person wants to change his vote he can. When he is entitled to vote only once, it is anybodies guess which vote to retain. It seems to me best to decide on an obvious algorithm. I think that the last expressed vote will do just fine. It certainly fits the people who change their vote and we can not decide anything obvious for someone who votes twice. Some people have sock puppets, would it make sense to register them when known ? Thanks, GerardM 2009/8/10 Rjd0060 rjd0060.w...@gmail.com On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 9:49 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 3:34 AM, Philippe Beaudettepbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote: Earlier today a number of adjustments were made to votes which had been previously struck in the election for Wikimedia Board of Trustees. We believe the votes that are still struck are validly struck; if there is a dispute, any user is encouraged to contact the Election Committee (board-electi...@lists.wikimedia.org) or any member personally for clarification. Is there any reason why some, but not all, super-seeded votes have also been struck? There are a number of cases, but picking one I know personally, strikeDetails 15:49, 28 July 2009 Ragesossen.wikipedia.org /strike Details 14:06, 9 August 2009Ragesossen.wikipedia.org Yeah, I noticed this quite a bit also. If a voter voted more that once, it seems like all but their last vote is greyed out usually - only sometimes are first votes struck. Not sure if second/third/etc. votes need to be struck just because the user voted again or not, based on that. -- Ryan User:Rjd0060 ___ 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] Update on struck votes issue on SecurePoll
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 10:02 AM, Rjd0060rjd0060.w...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 9:49 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 3:34 AM, Philippe Beaudettepbeaude...@wikimedia.org wrote: Earlier today a number of adjustments were made to votes which had been previously struck in the election for Wikimedia Board of Trustees. We believe the votes that are still struck are validly struck; if there is a dispute, any user is encouraged to contact the Election Committee (board-electi...@lists.wikimedia.org) or any member personally for clarification. Is there any reason why some, but not all, super-seeded votes have also been struck? There are a number of cases, but picking one I know personally, strikeDetails 15:49, 28 July 2009 Ragesoss en.wikipedia.org /strike Details 14:06, 9 August 2009 Ragesoss en.wikipedia.org Yeah, I noticed this quite a bit also. If a voter voted more that once, it seems like all but their last vote is greyed out usually - only sometimes are first votes struck. Not sure if second/third/etc. votes need to be struck just because the user voted again or not, based on that. What happened with my vote, which Phoebe noticed and brought to both my and the election committee's attention, is that my first vote was initially struck out without being superseded. Phoebe and I speculated that this might have been because I accessed the voting page again without casting a second vote (and then, yesterday, accessed it a third time and voted a second time). -Sage ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Update on struck votes issue on SecurePoll
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 4:35 AM, Milos Rancicmill...@gmail.com wrote: And is there some data about those numbers from last elections? A page with a large number of stats[1] was linked from the Results[2] page last year. I think that's what you want. Well, actually, it gives a lot of statistics... but seems to be missing one of the most important ones: number of eligible voters. [1]http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2008/Votes/en [2]http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2008/Results/en -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Update on struck votes issue on SecurePoll
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 11:37 AM, Casey Brownli...@caseybrown.org wrote: On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 4:35 AM, Milos Rancicmill...@gmail.com wrote: And is there some data about those numbers from last elections? A page with a large number of stats[1] was linked from the Results[2] page last year. I think that's what you want. Well, actually, it gives a lot of statistics... but seems to be missing one of the most important ones: number of eligible voters. There exists a pre-calculated list of eligible voters used to authorize access to the polls. Is there any reason that this couldn't be made public as soon as it is generated? With good eligibility data available spiffy graphs like mine from 2007 can be generated: http://toolserver.org/~gmaxwell/election_analysis/ivote3/graphs.html ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Update on struck votes issue on SecurePoll
Gregory Maxwell wrote: There exists a pre-calculated list of eligible voters used to authorize access to the polls. Is there any reason that this couldn't be made public as soon as it is generated? That particular list file contains non-public information, i.e. an account email address. Whether a redacted version can be made public, *shrug*. KTC -- Experience is a good school but the fees are high. - Heinrich Heine PGP.sig Description: PGP signature ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Knol, a year later
Another interesting point that knol drives home is : Google has a limited conception of what human collaboration looks like : how to identify it, how to harness it. Their efforts to support collaboration are very one-to-one, small-group or single contributor walled gardens that can be made world-readable, but with few tools to support public writing, and with little interest in public bug-trackers and discussion. Is it important for the Foundation to help more global organizations figure this out? Should we set an example in new fields of collaboration, or using other tools as well? There are certainly whole communities of creators who don't contribute to Wikimedia because they can't visualize taking the first step -- or are used to creating / remixing / reviewing with different interfaces and tools. SJ On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 7:19 AM, Gerard Meijssengerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, What I like about Google is that they have the guts to try things out. I like Google because they allow their staff to things that intrigue them. This has brought me gmail among other things. With Google things may fail. What you express is the expectation that Knol would fail and I am with you, I had the same sentiments. A project like Knol is not of interest because it confirms our assumptions, it is of interest because it challenges our assumptions. I hope we will continue to have our assumptions tested because this will keep us on our toes. Thanks, GerardM 2009/8/7 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com More than a year ago Google lunched Knol. It was a sensation then (BTW, it was a sensation for more time than Wolfram Alpha was). Today I just may say that I don't remember when I heard for the Knol last time. More than a year ago, I've wrote a blog post about Knol [1] (I didn't read it again, so I am not so sure what did I write there :) ) and today I've got one comment about Knol at my blog post. Person who made it introduced himself as Michael: There is the Verifiability of Knol. I never found anything relevant or reliable on knol. Knol is starting to be used as a spam platform and self promotion platform. There are high chances that the info you get from knol is false or subiective, not to say that I’ve found articles promoting xenofobism, antisemitism and a lot of ill guided authors. At this time knol seem to be nothing more than a blog platform (with clever marketing) where people can write anything they want. I hardly see any resilience between Wikipedia and Knol, Wikipedia has Verifiability (”editors should provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged”) while on knol you can write any phantasmagoric or lunatic thing you want nobody really cares if it’s false or true or what repercussions may have on people seeking knowledge. Knol has nothing to do with knowledge, it’s just library of opinions not knowledge, unless we agree on the fact that anything that can be written by anybody is knowledge. So from my point of view knol should not be taken serious at this time, at least not more serious than anybody’s blog on the internet. My response is: Michael, thanks for the comment. Yes, I’ve supposed, at Knol’s beginnings, that bias may become its significant problem. It doesn’t have self-regulation and collaboration as a default, like Wikipedia has. And the product is obviously bad. We’ve got, also, one significant lesson: An organization which is very good in many businesses, like Google is, don’t need to be even average in another business. (Wikia is, for example, much better than Knol in that business.) Also, I think that voluntarily knowledge building can’t be built as a [commercial] business model. Nobody cares to make a lot of money to someone else and almost nothing for herself, but a lot of humans care to build knowledge for all of us. [1] - http://millosh.wordpress.com/2008/07/24/google-knol-and-the-future-of-wikipedia-and-wikimedia/ ___ 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] Knol, a year later
Samuel Klein, 10/08/2009 19:15: Another interesting point that knol drives home is : Google has a limited conception of what human collaboration looks like Cf. http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?ViewPoint «One of the social features of a wiki is that it forces the community to deal with disagreements about content. (In a wiki a given page name can only have one current version.) ViewPoint would not require the community to agree--any cooperating subgroup could have its own policies. (This subgroup could be as small as one person, or it could contain all but one community member.) --CliffordAdams» (http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?ViewPointComments) Nemo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Knol, a year later
As perhaps some people here will recall, I was always skeptical of Knol's ability to enter the collaborative knowledge space. The reasons discussed here, including SJ's mentions of the issues of structuring public collaboration, are no doubt valid, but to me -- and of course it may be said that this is my Lawyer Vision(tm) kicking in -- the primary problem for Knol was lack of compatibility with the existing dominant free licenses used by Wikimedia projects and others. In short, it was difficult for Knol to build on the work of other collaborative freely licensed projects without, as a practical matter, violating those licenses. (We saw countless examples of people attempting to import Wikipedia content into Knol, for example, and played a bit of whack-a-mole with those folks.) But to me the takeaway from this error of Knol's licensing design is not that Knol can't work -- it's that it actually could work, if properly thought through. So my view right now is the Wikimedia community can't be complacent about Knol's apparent failure -- properly adjusted and redesigned, it could have quite an impact on us. We're going to have to continue to give serious attention to all the issues, from quality to community to legality, that give us an advantage in terms of fueling creative collaboration, as we go forward. The next Knol can't be relied upon to make the same mistakes. --Mike ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Knol, a year later
Hoi, Given that Knol has not done what was expected of it, it can be considered a failure. However, Google does learn and it is exactly because the Google engineers are free to spend time on other things that I would hesitate to characterise Google because of Knol. When you consider Google Wave, you find an environment that is very powerful. Very powerful and in my opinion quite capable to support the kind of public writing that Wikipedia is known for. When we talk about Wikipedia, we are talking about content. This content is currently delivered by MediaWiki, currently because we used other software before MediaWiki. When we find software that can outwiki MediaWiki, we should consider migrating. Consider how it will impact our usability, impact how it will impact people new to our projects. We have nothing to fear, both our software and our content is FREE as long as our software and content remains free, we can experiment and choose how to progress. Thanks, GerardM 2009/8/10 Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com Another interesting point that knol drives home is : Google has a limited conception of what human collaboration looks like : how to identify it, how to harness it. Their efforts to support collaboration are very one-to-one, small-group or single contributor walled gardens that can be made world-readable, but with few tools to support public writing, and with little interest in public bug-trackers and discussion. Is it important for the Foundation to help more global organizations figure this out? Should we set an example in new fields of collaboration, or using other tools as well? There are certainly whole communities of creators who don't contribute to Wikimedia because they can't visualize taking the first step -- or are used to creating / remixing / reviewing with different interfaces and tools. SJ On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 7:19 AM, Gerard Meijssengerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, What I like about Google is that they have the guts to try things out. I like Google because they allow their staff to things that intrigue them. This has brought me gmail among other things. With Google things may fail. What you express is the expectation that Knol would fail and I am with you, I had the same sentiments. A project like Knol is not of interest because it confirms our assumptions, it is of interest because it challenges our assumptions. I hope we will continue to have our assumptions tested because this will keep us on our toes. Thanks, GerardM 2009/8/7 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com More than a year ago Google lunched Knol. It was a sensation then (BTW, it was a sensation for more time than Wolfram Alpha was). Today I just may say that I don't remember when I heard for the Knol last time. More than a year ago, I've wrote a blog post about Knol [1] (I didn't read it again, so I am not so sure what did I write there :) ) and today I've got one comment about Knol at my blog post. Person who made it introduced himself as Michael: There is the Verifiability of Knol. I never found anything relevant or reliable on knol. Knol is starting to be used as a spam platform and self promotion platform. There are high chances that the info you get from knol is false or subiective, not to say that I’ve found articles promoting xenofobism, antisemitism and a lot of ill guided authors. At this time knol seem to be nothing more than a blog platform (with clever marketing) where people can write anything they want. I hardly see any resilience between Wikipedia and Knol, Wikipedia has Verifiability (”editors should provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged”) while on knol you can write any phantasmagoric or lunatic thing you want nobody really cares if it’s false or true or what repercussions may have on people seeking knowledge. Knol has nothing to do with knowledge, it’s just library of opinions not knowledge, unless we agree on the fact that anything that can be written by anybody is knowledge. So from my point of view knol should not be taken serious at this time, at least not more serious than anybody’s blog on the internet. My response is: Michael, thanks for the comment. Yes, I’ve supposed, at Knol’s beginnings, that bias may become its significant problem. It doesn’t have self-regulation and collaboration as a default, like Wikipedia has. And the product is obviously bad. We’ve got, also, one significant lesson: An organization which is very good in many businesses, like Google is, don’t need to be even average in another business. (Wikia is, for example, much better than Knol in that business.) Also, I think that voluntarily knowledge building can’t be built as a [commercial] business model. Nobody cares to make a lot of money to someone else and almost nothing for herself, but a lot of humans
Re: [Foundation-l] Knol, a year later
Some weeks ago I had an opportunity to talk with a Google employee about a number of topics. One of the things we discussed was Knol. Setting aside the way it may have been marketed in the popular press at the time, she suggested that Google does not currently see Knol as a collaborative medium in the way Wikipedia is. Rather, they currently regard Knol as more of a web publishing platform. In other words, it is a place for individuals and small groups to post their work online with a certain degree of infrastructure and visibility (and Google ads, of course). Whether Knol has distinguished itself from other ways of publishing online, I don't know, though I haven't seen much evidence of that. However, she also made the more interesting point that most of Google's current development efforts with Knol are focused towards foreign languages and scripts. By providing a high level of UTF-8 support, they seem to be hoping that they can capture a significant portion of the non-English web publishing community, which is of course a rapidly growing segment that isn't always well supported by some current offerings. Rather than being the next Wikipedia, maybe a better analogy would be to think of Knol as the next Geocities. -Robert Rohde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Knol, a year later
2009/8/10 Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net: Didn't you ever play Monopoly? The point is that this is not a zero-sum game. If Knol and Citizendium and OpenSite get it together and rocket to #1, #2 and #3 websites, that'll be a fulfilment of our mission: Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment. If someone else does the actual work, fine! It doesn't actually have to be WMF doing it. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Knol, a year later
2009/8/10 Robert Rohde raro...@gmail.com: Some weeks ago I had an opportunity to talk with a Google employee about a number of topics. One of the things we discussed was Knol. Setting aside the way it may have been marketed in the popular press at the time, she suggested that Google does not currently see Knol as a collaborative medium in the way Wikipedia is. Rather, they currently regard Knol as more of a web publishing platform. In other words, it is a place for individuals and small groups to post their work online with a certain degree of infrastructure and visibility (and Google ads, of course). Yes. Google never pushed Knol as a Wikipedia killer and at no time, before or since launch, was it put forward by Google as something that could replace Wikipedia. The comparison to Wikipedia was a complete media fiction, invented from the need to fill space. It has no other basis. Rather than being the next Wikipedia, maybe a better analogy would be to think of Knol as the next Geocities. ooh, ouch. I'd hope the next about.com at least. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Knol, a year later
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 11:08 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: Educational free content production is not competition with us. It's success for us. Of course Knol is not in competition with us, and what I wrote should not be worried about competition. It should be understood as being worried about being complacent with regard to our successes. I can give you some models in which Knol, properly structured, could have replaced us altogether. In some sense that might be a victory for free culture, but I see no particular reason to root for our being replaced just yet. Knol, as first put forward, looked like about.com - factual signed articles. If it had worked, that would have been fantastic as a reference source. And yet it didn't work. The reasons it didn't work should inform our own decisionmaking going forward. In what way would a successful version of Knol actually be a problem for us? If ten other websites fulfill WMF's mission without WMF having to pay the hosting bills, how is that a problem for us? I really don't see it. The key would be whether the ten other websites fulfill WMF's mission, right? What if they fulfill 50 percent of WMF's mission but one of the results of their success is that the Wikimedia community fades away? There are other ways to analyze these issues besides economic competition models, and I don't even think of economics primarily when I think of Knol (as I had hoped my initial posting made clear). Evolution and natural selection are pretty merciless. If there are things we value about Wikimedian projects and culture, we have to give thought to how to preserve and promote and evolve them in an environment that has other entities playing similar (but not the same) roles. Unless one hopes that the ultimate goal of WMF simply is to fade away, and lose whatever made it uniquely valuable. Please go back and take a look at my posting about Knol and try to understand it not as concern about competition, but concern about preservation. It's entirely possible for there to be a Gresham's Law with regard to collaborative encyclopedias, in my view. --Mike ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Knol, a year later
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 11:17 AM, Gregory Maxwell gmaxw...@gmail.comwrote: The risk is that something will come about which doesn't share the bulk of our mission (i.e. isn't free content) but which is a sufficient replacement for the bulk of the readership. Greg frames one of my concerns quite eloquently here. Wikipedia could be replaced by something which was greatly inferior based on many metrics which we, collectively, consider important but which was superior in other ways (better marketed; less likely to randomly display penises on inappropriate articles; etc). And here too. --Mike ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Knol, a year later
2009/8/10 Mike Godwin mnemo...@gmail.com: It's entirely possible for there to be a Gresham's Law with regard to collaborative encyclopedias, in my view. Encyclopedia Dramatica is indeed the only way to keep up with 4chan ... - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Knol, a year later
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 2:38 PM, Mike Godwinmnemo...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 11:08 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: I can give you some models in which Knol, properly structured, could have replaced us altogether. In some sense that might be a victory for free culture, but I see no particular reason to root for our being replaced just yet. An interesting concept. It's hard to replace an open collaborative process, but I think this is a subject worthy of a planning workshop at Wikimania. The advantage of being open and minimal-overhead is that we can discuss great improvements publicly, and implement them. The key would be whether the ten other websites fulfill WMF's mission, right? What if they fulfill 50 percent of WMF's mission but one of the results of their success is that the Wikimedia community fades away? The current active community is largely here for reasons of belief in our core mission. There are so many important and interesting projects that we don't have time as a community to address -- if some new group comes along and starts addressing one of them under a compatible license, I don't see our current contributors somehow being too inflexible to redirect their efforts. (and it seems likely that over time we would learn from the new creators, find out what feedback and engagement they liked from the new system that WP (for instance) didn't provide, and help them improve and expand our current community) There are other ways to analyze these issues besides economic competition models, and I don't even think of economics primarily when I think of Knol (as I had hoped my initial posting made clear). Evolution and natural selection are pretty merciless. If there are things we value about Wikimedian projects and culture, we have to give thought to how to preserve and promote and evolve them in an environment that has other entities playing similar (but not the same) roles. Unless one hopes that the From an evolutionary standpoint, mixing with other cultures and contributing to them without trying to encapsulate them is an effective way to propagate ideas and memes. It's entirely possible for there to be a Gresham's Law with regard to collaborative encyclopedias, in my view. I understand that your original comment was about preservation.I don't think that Gresham's Law applies in the realm of non-rival knowledge and services. It might in the realm of 'public attention' -- though today it is common for people to take in duplicate free information. a project only 60 percent as good at fulfilling our mission could still replace us or make us irrelevant -- losing the values and culture and even much of the content we have helped create. Any study of the history of economics sees patterns like this all the time... active spread of the collaborative culture we believe in requires something like eternal vigilance. How could we lose the content we have helped create? I agree that we could do more to present the principles that support Wikipedia to our readers. The idea of public sharing and a collective commons are just as popular as WP itself, but need reinforcement. while there are many ways to make these elements more universal in our society, but moral suasion on mailing lists is perhaps not the dominant tactic. Neither do emails keep million-person collaborations from becoming irrelevant, yet they are part of the process. We can invest effort as a community in 'eternal vigilance', uniting against a common foe, and fending off memetic predators -- or we can invest effort in spreading ideas and sharing best practices in the spirit of empowering others to learn from our discoveries. There is an opportunity cost either way. Sj ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] IRC office hours - Strategic Planning
It's that time again - Strategic Planning IRC office hours! This week's office hours will be: Wednesday from 04:00-05:00 UTC, which is: Tuesday, 9-10pm PDT Wednesday, 12am-1am EDT For more information, go to http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_Office_Hours Hope to see you there! Philippe Beaudette Facilitator, Strategic Planning Wikimedia Foundation pbeaude...@wikimedia.org Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Knol, a year later
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 21:02, Samuel Kleinmeta...@gmail.com wrote: It's hard to replace an open collaborative process, On the contrary. I believe most of us cannot concentrate working power (human resources) to, say, 5 full-fledged knowledge recording community. Most people tend to have a favourite project to aim attention at, and others get less and less time. If there was 3 equally successful projects mimicking Wikipedia it's very well possible that a significant amount of contributors would pick one project with 1/5th of the contributors (which would [or may] result inferior content due to lower community review) while others may lose interest altogether since they wouldn't be adventurous enough to re-learn the stupid habits of yet another community, or wouldn't want to contribute to a project fractional in size. This is not a linear, logical, easy to describe process. People cannot be moved or reassigned between communities, and by dividing them each project may get less than the proportional amount of contributors joined. Or more, if they'd be successful in specialisation and gather a better functioning community (which is not hard in the case of WP communities, mind you). As well as WP's current success this process is a mistery for future tellers. I'm not sure more wikipedia-like projects would be better, nor that it'd be worse. I guess time have the habit of coming up with new contestants all the time, and one is bound to succeed. All I want is that it should be a free content open project. The name doesn't really matter. Wikipedia or else. Because knowledge wants to be free, after all. grin ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Knol, a year later
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 12:02 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: An interesting concept. It's hard to replace an open collaborative process, but I think this is a subject worthy of a planning workshop at Wikimania. The advantage of being open and minimal-overhead is that we can discuss great improvements publicly, and implement them. This of course is why open democracies are never superseded by more restrictive governance. Because democracy is just naturally more successful, see? The key would be whether the ten other websites fulfill WMF's mission, right? What if they fulfill 50 percent of WMF's mission but one of the results of their success is that the Wikimedia community fades away? The current active community is largely here for reasons of belief in our core mission. There are so many important and interesting projects that we don't have time as a community to address -- if some new group comes along and starts addressing one of them under a compatible license, I don't see our current contributors somehow being too inflexible to redirect their efforts. (and it seems likely that over time we would learn from the new creators, find out what feedback and engagement they liked from the new system that WP (for instance) didn't provide, and help them improve and expand our current community) At first I couldn't see how you had missed the point here -- you seem to assume the community has limitless human labor and resources, and I think there is every reason to believe it does not, including recent statistical data. But then I read your next comments and understood better: I understand that your original comment was about preservation.I don't think that Gresham's Law applies in the realm of non-rival knowledge and services. It might in the realm of 'public attention' -- though today it is common for people to take in duplicate free information. The human resources it takes to build, maintain, preserve, and expand information are rivalrous. But don't take my word for it -- ask economists. How could we lose the content we have helped create? Bruce Sterling identifies many ways in which this can happen, perhaps most notably in the Dead Media Project. Civilizations lose information all the time if it's not actively maintained. We can invest effort as a community in 'eternal vigilance', uniting against a common foe, This common foe thing is something you've made up out of whole cloth. Not one word I've written has posited or imagined a common foe. Perhaps you have confused my writings with someone else's? and fending off memetic predators Memetic predators? What? Where is this coming from? --Mike ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Policy Interlingual Coordinationn - WP:NOT
--- On Sat, 8/8/09, Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote: From: Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Policy Interlingual Coordinationn - WP:NOT To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Saturday, August 8, 2009, 1:31 AM Birgitte SB wrote: I don't know that it is useful to make a general policy for exceptions. I think it is better just to watch out for such problems to pop up and try to direct attention to them when they are noticed. I think it is a better use of time and energy to wait and react to the sorts of extreme situation you suggest, rather than to seek to proactively verify that no wikis are in danger of developing such situations. Not that I would stop anyone form volunteering to take such task on. It is just that it is very tricky. It probably would be more effective to wait till the locals complain and ask for help than to try and step in and accuse admins, who likely have put the most time and edits into the wiki, of mismanagement. Oftentimes locals that even have disagreements with the admins will be inclined to oppose your interference on the principal of solidarity, the devil you know, etc. It is very touchy situation that leans towards misunderstandings even when everyone speaks the same language. As much as I have always supported project autonomy, I know from experience on Wikisource that certain malevolent individuals like Pathoschild will leave no facts undistorted to achieve their ends. I found what happened there deeply offensive. I did ask for help here. You asked then that I move the discussion back to the project, and out of respect for you I did. That accomplished nothing. I suggested mediation, and you effectively refused. Bureaucrats should have enough experience, stature and impartiality to be able to step into these situations and bring people to a common understanding instead of burying their heads in the sand and pretending that there is no problem. A community like the one at Wikisource is obviously too small to have a formal arbitration process, so we should be able to expect better leadership from the bureaucrats. So perhaps it is time for some kind of system outside the project that can look at these personality problems more objectively. Ec I have been offline since Friday and just read this message. I am too angry at your mis-characterization of me to trust myself to respond in any depth. But I cannot allow anyone, including you, to mistake my silence is any sort of agreement. I failed to resolve things to your satisfaction, but I approached you in good faith. When I was not able to help you; you could have approached others or returned the issue to the list then. Instead you wait months to spin things in a false light and label people malevolent. You have lost touch with the fact that we are all acting in good faith towards what we each believe the best path for the projects. When we find ourselves at odds it is not because one side is evil and the other good; but because we rank different values as more important than others. Leave my name out of your future emails. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Knol, a year later
On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 21:48, David Goodmandgoodma...@gmail.com wrote: The number of people available is not limited to the current number. As well as the current number isn't stable. :-) People come and go, sink in wikipedia or get wikistress and go away. There are many potential contributors to an encyclopedia who for one reason or another are unwilling to work at Wikipedia. I accept that. There are many more who would be attracted by the competition. That's a hypothesis. :-) It's well possible that a competition with wrong orientation would alienate more people from offering their time for free than not. I just wanted to comment that we cannot tell for sure beforehand. I do not worry about competition since it's bound to happen, as projects mature, then get old, then die (or rather go into oblivion). Wikipedia will surely not last forever, and great ideas born all the time, some with great possibilities. But it's important to see that some kinds of projects can cause more harm than good without any original bad intent, as community dynamics is way too complex to foretell. It's not wise to blindly welcome anything and anybody. I'd say, we watch, we learn and we'll see. grin ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Two videos FYI: Handling difficult people
Many of us talk/think a lot about how to reduce conflict in our projects. For those who're interested, I was recently pointed towards two relevant videos -- I'm posting them here in hopes they might be useful for others. So, for whoever's interested, here is: * Donnie Berkholz's recent talk at Open Source Bridge, titled Assholes are killing your project. Donnie, a council member at Gentoo Linux, advocates establishment of a friendly culture including a code of conduct, and maintenance of that culture via simple mechanisms for problem reporting and resolution, plus a clear focus on mission. Unfortunately the audio here isn't terrific, so it's not super-easy to follow. http://blip.tv/file/232 * Two open source engineers at Google, Ben Collins-Sussman and Brian Fitzpatrick, with a talk called How Open Source Projects Survive Poisonous People Upshot: Preserve your project's attention and focus, build a healthy community and fortify it with good community practices, be on the lookout for problems, and disinfect where necessary, including marginalization/ignoring of difficult people, and booting them out if you need to. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSFDm3UYkeE Personally, I have also gotten some good value out of Bill Eddy's book High-Conflict People in Legal Disputes. Bill is a mediator, lawyer and former social worker who found himself repeatedly encountering destructive people in his work, and not knowing how to disarm them or disengage from them. He wrote High Conflict People to help other mental health and legal professionals recognize, understand and work productively with various types of conflict-seeking personalities -- but IMO its usefulness extends way beyond the legal system; it's relevant for our work too. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0981509053/ref=cm_li_v_cr_self?tag=linkedin-20 Thanks, Sue -- Sue Gardner Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation 415 839 6885 office Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Block update
Mark Williamsonnode...@gmail.com wrote: Remind me, please, why we are still talking about this. Well, Thomas' idea about a lists-l list for discussing mailing lists and mailing list issues is new, so there is no issue of still talking about this when the this you refer to isn't one of the issues that I raised. Thomas - instead of just complaining about having meta discussions here - is actually doing something productive, and proposes an interesting solution to everybody's problems: 1) nobody likes me taking issue with non-Foundation issues here on foundation-l, 2) but still my issues are legitimate and need to be addressed openly. 3) A lists-l list would be the perfect place to discuss a) blocks, b) issues with list admins, c) new list proposals, d) proposals to integrate or deprecate existing lists, etc. Cary of course would run lists-l, and keeping list discussion there means there would be no issues related to discussing meta (off topic) issues here. All that would show on here or on wikien-l is a pointer to the top post in the thread on the lists-l archive, and everyone is happy. -Stevertigo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Open Library, Wikisource, and cleaning and translating OCR of Classics
Lars, I think we agree on what needs to happen. The only thing I am not sure of is where you would like to see the work take place. I have raised versions of this issue with the Open Library list, which I copy again here (along with the people I know who work on that fine project - hello, Peter and Rebecca). This is why I listed it below as a good group to collaborate with. However, the project I have in mind for OCR cleaning and translation needs to - accept public comments and annotation about the substance or use of a work (the wiki covering their millions of metadata entries is very low traffic and used mainly to address metadata issues in their records) - handle OCR as editable content, or translations of same - provide a universal ID for a work, with which comments and translations can be associated (see https://blueprints.launchpad.net/openlibrary/+spec/global-work-ids) - handle citations, with the possibility of developing something like WikiCite Let's take a practical example. A classics professor I know (Greg Crane, copied here) has scans of primary source materials, some with approximate or hand-polished OCR, waiting to be uploaded and converted into a useful online resource for editors, translators, and classicists around the world. Where should he and his students post that material? Wherever they end up, the primary article about each article would surely link out to the OL and WS pages for each work (where one exists). (Plus you would have to motivate why a copy of OpenLibrary should go into the English Wikisource and not the German or French one.) I don't understand what you mean -- English source materials and metadata go on en:ws, German on de:ws, c. How is this different from what happens today? SJ On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Lars Aronssonl...@aronsson.se wrote: Samuel Klein wrote (in two messages): *A wiki for book metadata, with an entry for every published work, statistics about its use and siblings, and discussion about its usefulness as a citation (a collaboration with OpenLibrary, merging WikiCite ideas) I could see this happening on Wikisource. Why could you not see this happening within the existing OpenLibrary? Is there anything wrong with that project? It sounds to me as you would just copy (fork) all their book data, but for what gain? (Plus you would have to motivate why a copy of OpenLibrary should go into the English Wikisource and not the German or French one.) -- Lars Aronsson (l...@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se ___ 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
