Re: [Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 3:58 PM, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: ...snip... Instead of deleting pornographic content that we deem important to the projects, we can tag those images in a uniform manner and emit POWDER ICRA labelling[1] or similar. The filters can then scale with us. 1. http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/NOTE-powder-primer-20090901/#ICRA1 -- John Vandenberg Bugzilla 982 - MediaWiki should support ICRA's PICS content labeling[1]. [1]. https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=982 -Peachey ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The Fox Article
Would it stand any chance to file against Foxnews for slaunder? It seems they are also actively approaching organizations who donated support to wikimedia. teun On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 5:54 AM, Techman224 techman...@techman224.comwrote: It seems like Fox News can't get enough. Fox News has a history of being the opposite of its so-called fair and balance reporting. I think that they went too far with saying that“Wikipedia’s continued interest in child sexual exploitation is troubling not only because the site hosts some questionable images, but because it can easily serve as a gateway to other sites containing child pornography, I'm pretty sure 100% that Wikimedia doesn't support child porn in any way, plus these images are art that were created so long also they are in public domain, and if they were child porn, they would be removed already. I also know that Erik Möller does not support child porn. If he did, he wouldn't be at the foundation right now. Fox News went too far with this, and they should actually investigate the story before making accusations. Fox News is biased. Techman224 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] The Fox Article
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 2:55 AM, teun spaans teun.spa...@gmail.com wrote: Would it stand any chance to file against Foxnews for slaunder? It seems they are also actively approaching organizations who donated support to wikimedia. The recent mass deletions have made it harder to refute their outrageous claims— since they can now state that these images previously existed but must have been deleted. Images tagged for deletion — though some were still viewable Friday afternoon — include pictures of men, women and young girls involved in a range of sex acts with each other and, in some cases, with animals. I have no doubt that this is referring to any of many 18th century drawings of historic and artistic interest which we still have. For example, as was pointed out on commons, it could even be describing an image like this: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leda_Melzi_Uffizi.jpg (though it was probably describing something more raunchy, some of the french drawings from the 1880s are pretty crazy) In any case, I've never seen _photographs_ meeting the above description on commons. Sadly we can no longer take the easy path of combating the outrageous claims of child porn by pointing to categories such as http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Pedophilia filled with old drawings sourced from the US library of congress and point out that _this_ is what Fox and Sanger are complaining about — because now people will just believe that there previously was something else there which we've since hidden. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
2010/5/8 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org: On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 12:02 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com [...] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:F%C3%A9licien_Rops_-_Sainte-Th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se.png [...] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:F%C3%A9licien_Rops_-_La_tentation_de_Saint_Antoine.jpg [...] And what would that be? I expect someone will be adding article content explaining the historical significance of each of these works. If it's so horrible that they be deleted, it shouldn't be tough to add a paragraph or two which make it obvious why. The paragraph is already there. It's called File usage on other wikis. greetings, elian ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Hello Milos, At first to the two points you pointed out: * No, I didn't mention that sexually explicit content should be deleted and I still think the criteria should not be if something is sexually explicit. The criteria should be if it has educational value. This is what I said in my statement and this is what I think is correct. This is also what is in the statement of the board. And as far as I can say, this is what Jimmy's intention when he started the action. It is certainly possible that Jimmy in doing his work had made some false decisions. We all know that he do make failures. Maybe he didn't researched the context of a particular image, maybe in some cases his criteria was too narrow. One can discuss those on the case basis. But just because as we all know that Jimmy make failures it does not prevent me to give him my full support in doing things. * Yes, I still think that this feature is correct. There are discussions inside of the board and different opinions about what such a feature should look like and if it is appropriate. The statement I made during the elections is my opinion, it does not necessarily reflect the opinion of all board members. To answer your question: We had scheduled for our April meeting the topic about project scope and community health / movement role. Unfortunately because of troubles caused by Eyjafjallajökull most of the trustees didn't managed to the meeting location. We had to held our meeting via phone and Skype and we had to reduce our schedule due to the inconvinience of the communication channel. We had dropped this topic because all trustees think that this is a topic that should be talked about at best face to face because all of us thought that we should give this topic the most possible attention we need. As far as I can say, especially the event pushed into movement by Larry Sanger [2] created the impression at least by some of the trustees that the matter is urgent and we need to take action as soon as possible. This is as said above from my perspective the reason for the action. Now the reason why I support this quick action: I personally would have preferred to have more time to work out a real guidance from the board to the community as to take such a quick action. As you know, I never think I am better than anyone else and I am always aware that my personal view is just a very narrow view. In this special case I cannot judge how urgent or serious the Larry Sanger accusation really is and what a threat it poses against the Foundation. I must trust my member trustees in the US that they can make that judgement. There are at least two trustees, one of them Jimmy, whom I know that they are normally more for a steady and consistant development, and whom I know that they have a very good sense for the community, who had put the issue as urgent. This is the reason why I think it is urgent. The rest I have already informed you. Jimmy informed the board that he want to do something and asked the board for support. I gave him my support because of what I said above. Greetings Ting Milos Rancic wrote: Ting, this is your statement about sexually explicit content from the last elections [1]: First of all I my position to this point had not changed since last year. I think content in Wikimedia projects should be educational, nothing more and nothing less. I think the communities of our major projects are meanwhile good enough to decide what is in scope and what not. This as overall principle. In most part of the world even pure educational content has some restriction of age, sometimes even per law. I think the Foundation should take this into account and give the community the possibility to act in accordance with the local laws if they decide to. From this point of view my suggestion is the following: The foundation should develop the MediaWiki software so that some content that are tagged with an age restriction would not be shown immediately if one comes to such an article. Only if the user confirms that he is above the age limit the content would be revealed. I believe this suggestion was already made by Erik a few years ago and I think we should do it. The board of trustees should issue a resolution in the form like the BPL resolution that announces the feature and call for the responsibility of the community to use this feature in accordance with the community consensus. I see here two things: * You didn't mention that sexually explicit content should be deleted. * You said that it is Board's responsibility to create a feature, not any kind of community's responsibility [out of the scope of particular legal systems]. In that sense, I want to ask you what did Board do except supporting Jimmy to delete many images of educational value? [1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2009/Candidates/Questions/1#Sexual_content_on_WMF
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Marcus Buck wrote: Ting Chen hett schreven: For me, this statement is at the first line a support for Jimmy's effort. It is a soft push from the board to the community to move in a direction. Not my definition of a soft push. In my opinion it's not the task of board or foundation to push the community in any direction. It's the other way round, the community forms board and foundation. The task of board and foundation is to operate the servers, to develop the software needed to operate our projects, and to stop members of the community or of the outside world from doing things harmful to the community, e.g. by violating the law. But they should not decide on the actual content, that's the task of the community. I disagree with this. The Foundation has a mission, and the board has the duty to keep the Foundation, and the community on the rail for this mission. The board had always pushed the community, sometimes more soft, sometimes more harsh. In 2005 on the first Wikimania in Frankfurt the board called the community to take measure to improve the quality and reliability of Wikipedia. This is not the start of our quality offensive but it had trimendously strengthend the effort of the community. The resolution of BLP is another example for the board to give guidance to the community in handling certain topics. In many of our major projects we are facing declining new comer, the community is often regarded as harsh or even unfriendly to new comers. The board is trying to broaden our outreach and make our community and projects more welcome and more diverse. These are all examples where the board push the community into certain directions. We do not need 10,000 close-ups of penises. But we need some penises. Small, medium, big, from different ethnicities, crooked, shaved and unshaved, with jewelry, with diseases etc. pp. We will never reach a state where the number of our penis images is low enough to make conservative agenda makers happy without leaving medical articles or articles on sexuality unillustrated (which would lower their informativeness and thus their educational value). What you wrote here is totally right, and this is also not the reason for the whole action. I wrote in my answer to Milos more detailed about the reason. Greetings -- Ting Ting's Blog: http://wingphilopp.blogspot.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content
On Sat, May 08, 2010 at 03:58:10PM +1000, John Vandenberg wrote: Instead of deleting pornographic content that we deem important to the projects, we can tag those images in a uniform manner and emit POWDER ICRA labelling[1] or similar. The filters can then scale with us. Shall we also make similar proposals favoring the governments of China and Iran re political or religeous content? sincerely, Kim Bruning -- [Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment] gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key FEF9DD72 5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A 01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Ting Chen wrote: It is certainly possible that Jimmy in doing his work had made some false decisions. We all know that he do make failures. Maybe he didn't researched the context of a particular image, maybe in some cases his criteria was too narrow. One can discuss those on the case basis. Errors are understandable, but Jimmy deliberately cast aside the reasoned views of the community's most trusted users by continually wheel-warring with a generic deletion summary (an extraordinarily disrespectful method). Does this have your full support as well? David Levy ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content
Hoi, In my opinion there are three issues. - there is an influx of material that is best kept private - there is material that some may object to - we can not fulfil our aim because Commons and Wikimedia gets blocked in countries like Iran All the pictures best kept private can be deleted. The material that some may object to can be evaluated for its educational and encyclopaedic value and appropriately categorised or deleted. When we start by addressing the first issue, there are two parts to it. The material itself and the people uploading it. The first is easy, the second is a matter of making sure that the message that this kind of material is not acceptable and should not be imported from Flickr or wherever is absolutely clear. Once this process is under way, we can contact countries like Iran and inform them of the measures that have been taken. It is likely that once this process is well under way, the total block of the Wikimedia domain will be lifted including Commons. This may need action from the WMF and the Farsi community to approach this in the best way. The second issue is more problematic. What one person categorises as nudity, someone else will considered dressed. What one culture considers obscene and puts a fig leave on is considered a classic master piece by later cultures. There will be no easy consensus on this except for the cultural value that many of these objects have. The David of Michelangelo is a nude.. The third issue is one that takes careful handling. It is also something where we have to be careful to set our own agenda and not let creeps like Fox have us rush in needless infighting. Our objective is clear and, it is important to note that it is not Wikipedia that has been blocked in Iran. For this reason it is important not to approach this with knee jerk reactions making them look bad and us look good. We do not serve the government of Iran, we serve the students of Iran and the people looking for information. Thanks, GerardM On 8 May 2010 11:50, Kim Bruning k...@bruning.xs4all.nl wrote: On Sat, May 08, 2010 at 03:58:10PM +1000, John Vandenberg wrote: Instead of deleting pornographic content that we deem important to the projects, we can tag those images in a uniform manner and emit POWDER ICRA labelling[1] or similar. The filters can then scale with us. Shall we also make similar proposals favoring the governments of China and Iran re political or religeous content? sincerely, Kim Bruning -- [Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment] gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key FEF9DD72 5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A 01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72 ___ 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] Statement on appropriate educational content
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 7:50 PM, Kim Bruning k...@bruning.xs4all.nl wrote: On Sat, May 08, 2010 at 03:58:10PM +1000, John Vandenberg wrote: Instead of deleting pornographic content that we deem important to the projects, we can tag those images in a uniform manner and emit POWDER ICRA labelling[1] or similar. The filters can then scale with us. Shall we also make similar proposals favoring the governments of China and Iran re political or religeous content? No, I don't beat my wife; thanks for asking. :P [[Internet Content Rating Association]] The descriptive vocabulary was drawn up by an international panel and designed to be as neutral and objective as possible. We already do what we can to help Muslims censor themselves. See [[Talk:Muhammad]], faq 4. -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Board members positions toward Jimmy's last action
By now, just two Board members explicitly stated what do they think about Jimmy's action: Jan-Bart de Vreede and Ting Chen (who explained his position in details). According to not precise Board's statement I may guess who supports Jimmy's action and who doesn't. However, I don't want to guess. As a member of community who directly or through the chapters elects five Board members and other four through the delegation given to the previous five members, I want to know positions of other Board members. Position of two of them (Michael Snow and Arne Klempert) will directly affect my position toward their reelection as chapters members and thus the position of one chapter (the has process already begun). Position of directly elected Board members (Kat Walsh, Ting Chen and Samuel Klein) will affect how I will vote next year. Position of professional Board members (Jan-Bart de Vreede, Stu West, Matt Halprin and Bishakha Datta) will affect what would I require from my representatives inside of the Board. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Hello David, it depends. Please point to me what you mean so that I can give you my opinion on the cases. I personally disagree with some of the decisions the Commons community made in the past, and I do think that in some cases Commons has a too broad definition for educational, and sometimes in my opinion Commons community has an interpretation of board resolutions that is not the same as I approved it [1]. I also think that Commons is not a free media repository like every other in the web. It has a mission, and this mission is the same as the mission of the Foundation. It was created to support other WMF projects so that not every free image used by the projects must be uploaded in every project, and this is its role inside of the WMF projects. If it do come to a clarification of the scope of Commons by the board my personal opinion is quite clear from my statements above. Greetings Ting [1] - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Alan_dershowitz_by_Latuff.jpg_reopen David Levy wrote: Ting Chen wrote: It is certainly possible that Jimmy in doing his work had made some false decisions. We all know that he do make failures. Maybe he didn't researched the context of a particular image, maybe in some cases his criteria was too narrow. One can discuss those on the case basis. Errors are understandable, but Jimmy deliberately cast aside the reasoned views of the community's most trusted users by continually wheel-warring with a generic deletion summary (an extraordinarily disrespectful method). Does this have your full support as well? David Levy ___ 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] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On 8 May 2010 11:17, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: it depends. Please point to me what you mean so that I can give you my opinion on the cases. They've been named in this thread repeatedly. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content
On Fri, May 07, 2010 at 05:30:09PM -0700, Sue Gardner wrote: On 7 May 2010 16:07, Kim Bruning k...@bruning.xs4all.nl wrote: On Fri, May 07, 2010 at 12:30:18PM -0700, Michael Snow wrote: announce-l still has issues. The Board of Trustees has directed me to release the following statement: Just to be sure: Are there no other statements that have been made by the board or are being planned to be made by the board on this subject? sincerly, ?? ?? ?? ??Kim Bruning Kim, the board (and I) have been talking about this for the past couple of days, and we'll continue to talk about it over the next couple of weeks. I think it's fairly likely there will be some kind of statement or statements at the end of that. I'm expecting that over the next few weeks, we all will be paying attention to the conversations on Commons and elsewhere, including here. That establishes that Jimbo currently has board approval for a scrutinize things more carefully in line with policy approach to commons; but he does not appear to have approval for his current delete everything without discussion approach. This is the same on the community side: Scrutinizing is ok, expedited consultation would be acceptable; but speedy deleting without understanding or taking into account technical, functional, social and political remifications is not. In other words: Jimbo Wales currently appears to be operating on commons in a manner that is outside the frame set by WMF+Communities+Himself. In such a situation, a wise man will stop and negotiate a more appropriate frame before he continues. [1] As of last night, there was still room for negotiation, let's hope cooler heads prevail. :-) sincerely, Kim Bruning [1] It's BRD writ large, essentially. -- [Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment] gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key FEF9DD72 5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A 01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 12:09 PM, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: [[Internet Content Rating Association]] Thanks for info. This can be a very good solution! Every user could fill the questionnaire and he or she would see just the content which he or she is willing to see. Some defaults may be applied: Pictures of Muhammad won't be shown in Muslim countries (based on IP), sexually explicit content won't be shown in the most of the world, skeletons won't be shown in China etc. But, every use would be able to define her or his own preferences. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content
On Sat, May 08, 2010 at 08:09:34PM +1000, John Vandenberg wrote: On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 7:50 PM, Kim Bruning k...@bruning.xs4all.nl wrote: On Sat, May 08, 2010 at 03:58:10PM +1000, John Vandenberg wrote: Instead of deleting pornographic content that we deem important to the projects, we can tag those images in a uniform manner and emit POWDER ICRA labelling[1] or similar. ?The filters can then scale with us. Shall we also make similar proposals favoring the governments of China and Iran re political or religeous content? No, I don't beat my wife; thanks for asking. :P Sorry, I didn't mean to ask that ;-) [[Internet Content Rating Association]] The descriptive vocabulary was drawn up by an international panel and designed to be as neutral and objective as possible. Ok, so if you want to do censorship, that would be the cleanest possible way to do so. We already do what we can to help Muslims censor themselves. See [[Talk:Muhammad]], faq 4. Dang. All this censorship makes me feel a lot dirtier than the smut it is censoring. sigh sincerely, Kim Bruning -- [Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment] gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key FEF9DD72 5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A 01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Hello Milos, Milos Rancic wrote: By my opinion, the only urgency which WMF should do is to support Erik to fill a lawsuit against Larry Sanger ASAP. Also, if it is not possible to sue Fox and Larry Sanger on the basis of spreading lies about WMF in United States, I am sure that it is fully possible to sue them in Germany or France. Without being a lawyer I am very sure that any German court will reject such a sue because the court is not responsible (german: nicht zuständig). The accusation is not conducted in Germany and neither party is a legal person registered in Germany or German citizen. John Vandenberg proposed a good solution, involving Internet Content Rating Association [1] methods. It is in relation to your proposal. Please, consider it. Yes, considerations and discussions are in this or similar direction. Thank you very much for point it out to me / us. BTW, as mentioned before, Jimmy didn't make some false decisions, but he made a small amount of right decisions and destroyed work of many volunteers. (There are complex problems related to recovering categorizations.) I am quite sure that there will be post mortems on the event, both in the community as well as in the board. My hope is that the most important thing is we endly move forward, and if there were damages done they get corrected again. Greetings Ting ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Jimbo Wales acting outside his remit
The foundation appears to be of the impression that Jimbo is merely attempting to encourage scrutiny, and removing clear cases. This is not true. Jimbo has speedy deleted, without discussion, historical artworks and diagrams, often edit warring with admins to keep them deleted, and has made a statement that he refuses to discuss his deletions until after he has finished deleting them all, which would only compound the problem. Examples: Artworks from the 19th century, by notable artists: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undeletetarget=File%3AF%C3%A9licien_Rops_-_Sainte-Th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se.png- Wheelwarred with three different admins to try and keep it deleted. http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undeletetarget=File%3AFranz_von_Bayros_016.jpg- Wheelwarred with two admins this time. Diagrams intended to illustrate articles on sexual subjects, in wide use on Wikipedia projects for that purpose: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undeletetarget=File%3AWiki-fisting.png- Edit warred with three admins http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undeletetarget=File%3AWiki-facial.svg Further, when challeged on these, he said that he refused to engage in any discussion on the deletion of artwork *until he was done deleting all of them* From http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJimbo_Walesaction=historysubmitdiff=38891861oldid=38891748 I have redeleted the image for the duration of the cleanup project. We will have a solid discussion about whether Commons should ever host pornography and under what circumstances at a later day - June 1st will be a fine time to start.--[[User:Jimbo Wales|Jimbo Wales]] ([[User talk:Jimbo Wales#top|span class=signature-talktalk/span]]) 17:31, 7 May 2010 (UTC) How are such images to be found, after's he's gone and deleted them all? Are we really to sift through every single deletion several months later, to find the things that shouldn't have been deleted in the first place, and which, thanks to the Commons Delinker bot, have been automatically removed from the articles they were used in? Out of Jimbo's deletions, at the very least a third of the deletions related to diagrams and historical artwork in wide use on Wikipedia projects. This despite his initial claim ( http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJimbo_Walesaction=historysubmitdiff=38820363oldid=38819608) that he'd only be dealing with things that violated the law that started the controversy. If the board are not aware, there was, about a year ago, a controversy related to images of Muhammed, in which Muslim readers - for whom such are horribly offensive, due to rules against depiction of the prophet - were politely informed that we could not delete material simply because it offended someone, as Wikipedia sought to show all of the world's knowledge. Jimbo's actions make that consensus deeply problematic. There is a petition for Wales' founder flag to be removed, which has gained widespread support since his actions. ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Remove_Founder_flag ) -A. C. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 1:12 PM, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: Milos Rancic wrote: By my opinion, the only urgency which WMF should do is to support Erik to fill a lawsuit against Larry Sanger ASAP. Also, if it is not possible to sue Fox and Larry Sanger on the basis of spreading lies about WMF in United States, I am sure that it is fully possible to sue them in Germany or France. Without being a lawyer I am very sure that any German court will reject such a sue because the court is not responsible (german: nicht zuständig). The accusation is not conducted in Germany and neither party is a legal person registered in Germany or German citizen. Without being a lawyer, my point was: Find a way where and how to sue Fox and Larry for making public lies about WMF, which in turn affects its funds (and reputation) :) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Ting Chen wrote: it depends. Please point to me what you mean so that I can give you my opinion on the cases. http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALogtype=deletepage=File:F%E9licien%20Rops%20-%20Sainte-Th%E9r%E8se.png http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALogtype=deletepage=File%3AFranz+von+Bayros+016.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALogtype=deletepage=File%3AWiki-fisting.png David Levy ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] inadequate frame Re: Statement on appropriate educational content
Wow, I go offline for half a day and all commons breaks loose... Why have in-use artworks been deleted? Even the strongest versions of the proposed policy that Jimbo started at Commons:Sexual_content explicitly supports art and illustrations. On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 6:31 PM, Kim Bruning k...@bruning.xs4all.nl wrote: On Fri, May 07, 2010 at 12:30:18PM -0700, Michael Snow wrote: Having said that, the Wikimedia projects are intended to be educational in nature, and there is no place in the projects for material that has no educational or informational value. In saying this, we don't intend to create new policy, but rather to reaffirm and support policy that already exists. We encourage Wikimedia editors to scrutinize potentially offensive materials with the goal of assessing their educational or informational value, and to remove them from the projects if there is no such value. I'm reading this fairly carefully. Is this the entirety of the board position? Yes. I am sure that more discussion, largely public, is forthcoming; this conversation has ramped up pretty quickly over the past two days from a few talk pages on Commons. This statement by itself is not sufficient to create the frame that Jimmy Wales would require to be able to operate the way he is doing on wikimedia commons at this moment in time. Jimmy Wales is a very public figure. I would recommend that we either redefine the existing frame , so that it is more in line with Jimmy Wales' actions, or Jimmy Wales needs to bring his actions in line with the existing frame. Somewhere in-between those two options: If Jimmy Wales were to switch to promoting a PROD-like approach for commons, this would make a lot of people a lot happier. (commons rules get changed, jwale's behaviour changes, a reasonable compromise is reached, and people can get to work) +1. Jmabel has also posted a sensible summary and suggestion of how to proceed on Commons. More help is needed to revise policy there and work out new processes. As you say, images in use on other projects should not be deleted speedily, if at all. Images that are in wide use on various Projects are clearly valuable for an educational purpose, and should be respected accordingly. SJ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
David, This is an excellent list of principles, which I strongly support. Projects generally have standards of notability, which is equivalent to significant informative or educational value, otherwise they fill up with cruft. A lack of sufficient notability standards for media not in use on any Project seems to be one of the issues in question on Commons. SJ On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 5:18 PM, David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com wrote: Is there anyone who disagrees that we need to hold to the policies: 1. that the WMF projects as a whole contains only material --of any sort , on any topic-- with informative or educational value, and judges that by community decision in the relevant project 2. that no WMF project contain material that it can not legally contain. 3. that if there is legal material that is objectionable to some people but that does have informative or educational value, the guiding principle is that we do not censor, and that the specific interpretation of that is guided by community decision in the relevant project. 4. That no individual whomsoever possesses ownership authority over any part of any WMF project. 5. That Commons acts as a common repository of free material for the various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation. The opinions of particular projects about what content there to use does not control the content, nor does the opinion of the commons community control other projects. How recent actions ca be judged in this light is to me obvious, but it is clear that some responsible opinions differ. I have expressed my own personal opinion elsewhere. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 4:56 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, There is a board message about this that is completely in line with what Jimmy mentioned. When you consider that because of many of those images that should have remained private the whole Wikmedia domain has been blogged, we really have to consider how we deal with this issue. The first priority is what our aim is for our WMF projects, the brinkmanship with a shit load of inappropriate content is hurting what we stand for. Is preventing us from furthering our aims. This is what is at issue. Thanks, GerardM http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaannounce-l/2010-May/08.html On 7 May 2010 22:42, Amory Meltzer amorymelt...@gmail.com wrote: This is nuts. Literally, nothing has changed. Stuff on Wikimedia sites needs to be either educational or aimed at furthering the goals of the project and the foundation. We don't host articles about my her breasts or his penis, and we don't need to host images of them either. Arguing otherwise is just looking for a webhost. ~A ___ 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 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Marcus writes: I try to understand what happened... * Larry Sanger informs media about us alleging Wikimedia of hosting porn. [unaffirmed] He just made a lot of noise, and some media picked it up. * The (conservative) TV station FOX reports about Wikimedia and contacts many important companies that have donated money for Wikimedia in the past whether they want to comment on the allegations. [affirmed] * The companies are contacting Wikimedia to ask what's going on. [unaffirmed] Mainly they contacted us to say fyi, Fox wants to cause trouble. It was clear what was going on. * The board worries about losses in donations and either sends Jimbo to Commons or Jimbo unilaterally decides to handle the case. [unaffirmed] We're doing well with donations, the vast majority of which come from specific grants or small donors -- not likely to be affected by Fox. (considering our supporter base, a major campaign by them might simply raise more money.) We're not worried about that. The drama on Commons is related to people honestly being worried about the negative impact of hosting uneducational but controversial media -- can a scare campaign drive away good contributors? are we already driving away contributors, as Sydney Poore suggests, by creating an uncomfortable atmosphere? * Without mentioning the previous developments Jimbo starts to delete all files that are porn (in his opinion, not sparing PD-old artworks etc.). Even engaging in edit-warring and ignoring input from the Commons community and ignoring community policies. [affirmed] * The Commons community condemns Jimbo's actions but has no power at all to stop the Founder-flagged berserk. [affirmed] How can you call this 'affirmed'? Jimbo has made strong suggestions, but it is the Commons community that must create and enforce its own policies. The founder flag is an indication of respect, and provides 'crat rights on all projects, but doesn't provide any more 'power' over the project than any bureaucrat has. The real power on wikis is social, not technical -- and where there is a vacuum without local consensus, Jimbo is often persuasive and effective at providing guidance. However once the community decides how to proceed, it should do so with confidence. On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 6:50 PM, Marcus Buck m...@marcusbuck.org wrote: We do not need 10,000 close-ups of penises. But we need some penises. Small, medium, big, from different ethnicities, crooked, shaved and unshaved, with jewelry, with diseases etc. pp. We will never reach a state where the number of our penis images is low enough to make conservative agenda makers happy without leaving medical articles or articles on sexuality unillustrated (which would lower their informativeness and thus their educational value). Right. We had discussions on sexual content before. I proposed to use a technical solution in which images are tagged with tags that give detailed information about the form of explicit content present... Creating a technical solution like that is the task of the foundation. The _real_ task of the foundation. Let's have a meaningful discussion about this over the coming weeks. I'm not sure how I feel about this -- my reflex is to be opposed to the idea of internal tagging beyond Categories -- but there's a lot of momentum around the idea, and if the community decides it is the right thing the do, the Foundation would certainly support creating such a solution. SJ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 10:07 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: How can you call this 'affirmed'? Jimbo has made strong suggestions, but it is the Commons community that must create and enforce its own policies. The founder flag is an indication of respect, and provides 'crat rights on all projects, but doesn't provide any more 'power' over the project than any bureaucrat has. The real power on wikis is social, not technical -- and where there is a vacuum without local consensus, Jimbo is often persuasive and effective at providing guidance. However once the community decides how to proceed, it should do so with confidence. Let's talk about Jimmy's role, then. What happens now is that he has unlimited technical power over all projects, and everybody is of the impression that they are not permitted to remove or limit it, lest it be restored and their access similarly or more harshly curtailed. Community efforts to reverse actions taken by Jimmy with the assistance of his technical power have been immediately reversed by him without any further explanation, and occasionally threats or actual retaliation made against those reversing his actions. This isn't an ideal situation. We should have a situation in which Jimmy's technical power derives from the authority of the board of trustees or from a community mandate, or we should have a situation in which Jimmy does not have unlimited technical power. -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo Wales acting outside his remit
Adam, As long as you do comments like this [1] (Fuck you) I would like you to abstain from discussing until your mood has changed. Ziko [1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons_talk:Sexual_contentdiff=nextoldid=38893870 2010/5/8 Adam Cuerden cuer...@gmail.com: The foundation appears to be of the impression that Jimbo is merely attempting to encourage scrutiny, and removing clear cases. This is not true. Jimbo has speedy deleted, without discussion, historical artworks and diagrams, often edit warring with admins to keep them deleted, and has made a statement that he refuses to discuss his deletions until after he has finished deleting them all, which would only compound the problem. Examples: Artworks from the 19th century, by notable artists: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undeletetarget=File%3AF%C3%A9licien_Rops_-_Sainte-Th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se.png- Wheelwarred with three different admins to try and keep it deleted. http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undeletetarget=File%3AFranz_von_Bayros_016.jpg- Wheelwarred with two admins this time. Diagrams intended to illustrate articles on sexual subjects, in wide use on Wikipedia projects for that purpose: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undeletetarget=File%3AWiki-fisting.png- Edit warred with three admins http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undeletetarget=File%3AWiki-facial.svg Further, when challeged on these, he said that he refused to engage in any discussion on the deletion of artwork *until he was done deleting all of them* From http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJimbo_Walesaction=historysubmitdiff=38891861oldid=38891748 I have redeleted the image for the duration of the cleanup project. We will have a solid discussion about whether Commons should ever host pornography and under what circumstances at a later day - June 1st will be a fine time to start.--[[User:Jimbo Wales|Jimbo Wales]] ([[User talk:Jimbo Wales#top|span class=signature-talktalk/span]]) 17:31, 7 May 2010 (UTC) How are such images to be found, after's he's gone and deleted them all? Are we really to sift through every single deletion several months later, to find the things that shouldn't have been deleted in the first place, and which, thanks to the Commons Delinker bot, have been automatically removed from the articles they were used in? Out of Jimbo's deletions, at the very least a third of the deletions related to diagrams and historical artwork in wide use on Wikipedia projects. This despite his initial claim ( http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJimbo_Walesaction=historysubmitdiff=38820363oldid=38819608) that he'd only be dealing with things that violated the law that started the controversy. If the board are not aware, there was, about a year ago, a controversy related to images of Muhammed, in which Muslim readers - for whom such are horribly offensive, due to rules against depiction of the prophet - were politely informed that we could not delete material simply because it offended someone, as Wikipedia sought to show all of the world's knowledge. Jimbo's actions make that consensus deeply problematic. There is a petition for Wales' founder flag to be removed, which has gained widespread support since his actions. ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Remove_Founder_flag ) -A. C. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content
On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 11:30 PM, Michael Snow wikipe...@verizon.net wrote: Having said that, the Wikimedia projects are intended to be educational in nature, and there is no place in the projects for material that has no educational or informational value. I'd like to point out that we already have a project where most information has no educational value. It's called Wikisource and materials there are primarily of artistic value, not educational or information one. Since I basically support the idea that one of Wikimedia Commons aims is to collect as much notable works of art as possible, I view it as a Wikisource for visual arts and music. Should we expect Wikisource to be cleaned up as well? Does Foundation feel need to host such highly disputed works as [1] or [2]? --vvv [1] http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lady_Chatterley's_Lover [2] http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Fanny_Hill:_Memoirs_of_a_Woman_of_Pleasure ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] inadequate frame Re: Statement on appropriate educational content
Samuel Klein wrote: Wow, I go offline for half a day and all commons breaks loose... Why have in-use artworks been deleted? Even the strongest versions of the proposed policy that Jimbo started at Commons:Sexual_content explicitly supports art and illustrations. I think the clearest edge case was a Decadent Movement artist, whom Jimbo the art critic decided was after all just old porn. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 8:13 AM, Andrew Garrett agarr...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 10:07 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: How can you call this 'affirmed'? Jimbo has made strong suggestions, but it is the Commons community that must create and enforce its own policies. The founder flag is an indication of respect, and provides 'crat rights on all projects, but doesn't provide any more 'power' over the project than any bureaucrat has. The real power on wikis is social, not technical -- and where there is a vacuum without local consensus, Jimbo is often persuasive and effective at providing guidance. However once the community decides how to proceed, it should do so with confidence. Let's talk about Jimmy's role, then. What happens now is that he has unlimited technical power over all projects, and everybody is of the impression that they are not permitted to remove or limit it, lest it be restored and their access similarly or more harshly curtailed. Community efforts to reverse actions taken by Jimmy with the assistance of his technical power have been immediately reversed by him without any further explanation, and occasionally threats or actual retaliation made against those reversing his actions. You have a point, and threats and retaliation aren't helpful or needful in such circumstances. But where local communities persist, reversions are often let stand, in my experience (and looking at some of the recent image deletions on Commons). This isn't an ideal situation. We should have a situation in which Jimmy's technical power derives from the authority of the board of trustees or from a community mandate, or we should have a situation in which Jimmy does not have unlimited technical power. I don't think this is a technical issue at all. Considering how flexible and reversible wiki-actions are, it seems eminently appropriate to me for the project founder to have 'unlimited technical power' on the projects -- just as you and all of our developers do, at a much higher level. English Wikipedia has addressed this fluidly over the years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Role_of_Jimmy_Wales I'm not sure anyone has tried to address the role of developers through policy ;-) SJ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo Wales acting outside his remit
Well, do you need a picture to explain a dildo? File:Franz von Bayros 016.jpg is more or less art, but File:Félicien Rops - Sainte-Thérèse.png which is used on three Wikipedias to illustrate the use of a dildo has some real problems with being offensive to Catholics (Of course Japanese or Chinese Catholics don't matter, but they do). Much better to use a photo of the woman using a dildo or at least an eye-witness report published in a reliable source. The image could, of course, be used appropriately to illustrate an article on caricatures or something about anti-catholicism. Fred Bauder The foundation appears to be of the impression that Jimbo is merely attempting to encourage scrutiny, and removing clear cases. This is not true. Jimbo has speedy deleted, without discussion, historical artworks and diagrams, often edit warring with admins to keep them deleted, and has made a statement that he refuses to discuss his deletions until after he has finished deleting them all, which would only compound the problem. Examples: Artworks from the 19th century, by notable artists: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undeletetarget=File%3AF%C3%A9licien_Rops_-_Sainte-Th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se.png- Wheelwarred with three different admins to try and keep it deleted. http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undeletetarget=File%3AFranz_von_Bayros_016.jpg- Wheelwarred with two admins this time. Diagrams intended to illustrate articles on sexual subjects, in wide use on Wikipedia projects for that purpose: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undeletetarget=File%3AWiki-fisting.png- Edit warred with three admins http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undeletetarget=File%3AWiki-facial.svg Further, when challeged on these, he said that he refused to engage in any discussion on the deletion of artwork *until he was done deleting all of them* From http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJimbo_Walesaction=historysubmitdiff=38891861oldid=38891748 I have redeleted the image for the duration of the cleanup project. We will have a solid discussion about whether Commons should ever host pornography and under what circumstances at a later day - June 1st will be a fine time to start.--[[User:Jimbo Wales|Jimbo Wales]] ([[User talk:Jimbo Wales#top|span class=signature-talktalk/span]]) 17:31, 7 May 2010 (UTC) How are such images to be found, after's he's gone and deleted them all? Are we really to sift through every single deletion several months later, to find the things that shouldn't have been deleted in the first place, and which, thanks to the Commons Delinker bot, have been automatically removed from the articles they were used in? Out of Jimbo's deletions, at the very least a third of the deletions related to diagrams and historical artwork in wide use on Wikipedia projects. This despite his initial claim ( http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJimbo_Walesaction=historysubmitdiff=38820363oldid=38819608) that he'd only be dealing with things that violated the law that started the controversy. If the board are not aware, there was, about a year ago, a controversy related to images of Muhammed, in which Muslim readers - for whom such are horribly offensive, due to rules against depiction of the prophet - were politely informed that we could not delete material simply because it offended someone, as Wikipedia sought to show all of the world's knowledge. Jimbo's actions make that consensus deeply problematic. There is a petition for Wales' founder flag to be removed, which has gained widespread support since his actions. ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Remove_Founder_flag ) -A. C. ___ 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] Jimbo Wales acting outside his remit
Zazo: I see you have ignored all the content of my messages, focusing on a single pair of words, in which I express my frustration at Jimbo, who had, just previously, told me on IRC that artworks would not be spared, that he refused to limit such deletions, and that any such opinions to the contrary would not be heard until after all deletions had taken place, and reaffirmed that he refused point blank to even consider other positions but that extreme one. You are engaging in nothing but a distraction tactic: The users are upset! Therefore, we can ignore them, because they're just upset. No need to consider their points! ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo Wales acting outside his remit
On 5/8/10 12:12 PM, Adam Cuerden wrote: and has made a statement that he refuses to discuss his deletions until after he has finished deleting them all, which would only compound the problem. To the contrary, I have been very active in discussions both on the wiki, in email, and in irc. Pretending that I'm not a reasonable person open to discussion and debate is not going to be very persuasive to anyone who knows me. :-) --Jimbo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo Wales acting outside his remit
On 5/8/10 1:43 PM, Adam Cuerden wrote: I see you have ignored all the content of my messages, focusing on a single pair of words, in which I express my frustration at Jimbo, who had, just previously, told me on IRC that artworks would not be spared, that he refused to limit such deletions, and that any such opinions to the contrary would not be heard until after all deletions had taken place, and reaffirmed that he refused point blank to even consider other positions but that extreme one. Adam, that is not an honest representation of my position. -- Jimmy Wales Please follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/jimmy_wales ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Jimbo Wales acting outside his remit
I, of course, agree that the Félicien Rops image is offensive, and we have no reason to needlessly offend by putting it in articles where less-offensive images are equally encyclopedic. However, it's also by a notable artist, and, as such, can be used to illustrate his work, the subjects you mention, and other similar cases and thus shouldn't be permanently deleted. without discussion, as part of an effort to make Commons entirely child friendly which has little support outside of Jimbo himself. The point is not whether images should or shouldn't be used to illustrate specific articles, the point is that Wales has decided, on his own, that all images that are at all pornographic should be deleted, and has gone about deleting images by notable artists, and when challenged, stonewalled completely by saying that no discussion of his actions would be heard until he had finished his disruption, and all the images were already gone. I'm not one of Wikipeda's porn editors. I didn't know these images existed in advance. But I worried that the new policy would be used to censor art, and, it turns out, was completely and totally correct. -Adam. Well, do you need a picture to explain a dildo? File:Franz von Bayros 016.jpg is more or less art, but File:Félicien Rops - Sainte-Thérèse.png which is used on three Wikipedias to illustrate the use of a dildo has some real problems with being offensive to Catholics (Of course Japanese or Chinese Catholics don't matter, but they do). Much better to use a photo of the woman using a dildo or at least an eye-witness report published in a reliable source. The image could, of course, be used appropriately to illustrate an article on caricatures or something about anti-catholicism. Fred Bauder ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Where things stand now
Much of the cleanup is done, although there was so much hardcore pornography on commons that there's still some left in nooks and crannies. I'm taking the day off from deleting, both today and tomorrow, but I do encourage people to continue deleting the most extreme stuff. But as the immediate crisis has passed (successfully!) there is not nearly the time pressure that there was. I'm shifting into a slower mode. We were about to be smeared in all media as hosting hardcore pornography and doing nothing about it. Now, the correct storyline is that we are cleaning up. I'm proud to have made sure that storyline broke the way it did, and I'm sorry I had to step on some toes to make it happen. Now, the key is: let's continue to move forward with a responsible policy discussion. -- Jimmy Wales Please follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/jimmy_wales ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Jimbo Wales acting outside his remit
Really, Mr. Wales? Let's review what you actually wrote. http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJimbo_Walesaction=historysubmitdiff=38891861oldid=38891748 I have redeleted the image for the duration of the cleanup project. We will have a solid discussion about whether Commons should ever host pornography and under what circumstances at a later day - June 1st will be a fine time to start.--[[User:Jimbo Wales|Jimbo Wales]] ([[User talk:Jimbo Wales#top|span class=signature-talktalk/span]]) 17:31, 7 May 2010 (UTC) For the duration of the cleanup project, at a later day, etc. And that is not your only statement in that line. jwales I think that'll be a great one to discuss re-introducing after we determine whether or not Commons should host pornographic files at all - IRC message on the Bavros art. I'm sure one could sift through and find many other examples of you insisting that we cannot discuss keping erotic artworks until after you're done deleting all of them. On 5/8/10 12:12 PM, Adam Cuerden wrote: and has made a statement that he refuses to discuss his deletions until after he has finished deleting them all, which would only compound the problem. To the contrary, I have been very active in discussions both on the wiki, in email, and in irc. Pretending that I'm not a reasonable person open to discussion and debate is not going to be very persuasive to anyone who knows me. :-) --Jimbo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Jimbo Wales acting outside his remit
Further, Mr. Wales: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJimbo_Walesaction=historysubmitdiff=38935852oldid=38935659 Here, you remove about four pages of requests that you stop your behaviour without commenting on them, saying you know better than the community. You're a dsigrace. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo Wales acting outside his remit
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 9:00 AM, Adam Cuerden cuer...@gmail.com wrote: I, of course, agree that the Félicien Rops image is offensive, and we have no reason to needlessly offend by putting it in articles where less-offensive images are equally encyclopedic. However, it's also by a notable artist, and, as such, can be used to illustrate his work, the subjects you mention, and other similar cases and thus shouldn't be permanently deleted. without discussion, as part of an effort to make Commons entirely child friendly which has little support outside of Jimbo himself. The point is not whether images should or shouldn't be used to illustrate specific articles, the point is that Wales has decided, on his own, that all images that are at all pornographic should be deleted, and has gone about deleting images by notable artists, and when challenged, stonewalled completely by saying that no discussion of his actions would be heard until he had finished his disruption, and all the images were already gone. I'm not one of Wikipeda's porn editors. I didn't know these images existed in advance. But I worried that the new policy would be used to censor art, and, it turns out, was completely and totally correct. -Adam. Well, do you need a picture to explain a dildo? File:Franz von Bayros 016.jpg is more or less art, but File:Félicien Rops - Sainte-Thérèse.png which is used on three Wikipedias to illustrate the use of a dildo has some real problems with being offensive to Catholics (Of course Japanese or Chinese Catholics don't matter, but they do). Much better to use a photo of the woman using a dildo or at least an eye-witness report published in a reliable source. The image could, of course, be used appropriately to illustrate an article on caricatures or something about anti-catholicism. Fred Bauder Adam can you please stop starting a new thread for every new point you wish to make. More threads just increases noise. -Chad ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Where things stand now
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 5:08 PM, Jimmy Wales jwa...@wikia-inc.com wrote: We were about to be smeared in all media as hosting hardcore pornography and doing nothing about it. Do you understand that not all images you deleted were hardcore pornography? What was the reason of wheel warring on them? --vvv ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo Wales acting outside his remit
Let me expand on that: Immediately after or before Wales saying that he's always willing to discuss things, he deleted four pages of discussion which had sprung up about his behaviour overnight. So, he's claiming he's always willing to discuss things - at the *exact same time* as he's very publicly refusing to discuss things. On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 2:13 PM, Adam Cuerden cuer...@gmail.com wrote: Further, Mr. Wales: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJimbo_Walesaction=historysubmitdiff=38935852oldid=38935659 Here, you remove about four pages of requests that you stop your behaviour without commenting on them, saying you know better than the community. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo Wales acting outside his remit
You hadn't commented on this list when I wrote that. It's a reply to Zazo. On 5/8/10 1:43 PM, Adam Cuerden wrote: I see you have ignored all the content of my messages, focusing on a single pair of words, in which I express my frustration at Jimbo, who had, just previously, told me on IRC that artworks would not be spared, that he refused to limit such deletions, and that any such opinions to the contrary would not be heard until after all deletions had taken place, and reaffirmed that he refused point blank to even consider other positions but that extreme one. Adam, that is not an honest representation of my position. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo Wales acting outside his remit
Note however, We were about to be smeared in all media as hosting hardcore pornography with zero educational value and doing nothing about it. Fred Bauder Further, Mr. Wales: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJimbo_Walesaction=historysubmitdiff=38935852oldid=38935659 Here, you remove about four pages of requests that you stop your behaviour without commenting on them, saying you know better than the community. You're a dsigrace. ___ 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] Where things stand now
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 11:08 PM, Jimmy Wales jwa...@wikia-inc.com wrote: ... I'm sorry I had to step on some toes to make it happen. You mistook people's toes for porn, three times, and you're sorry? https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/w/index.php?title=Special:Logpage=File%3AF%C3%A9licien+Rops+-+Sainte-Th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se.png I'd rather have a factual story about the problem on Commons than a muddled story that includes our leader being heavy handed in order to censor the Commons. -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Where things stand now
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 You clearly missed the point do you? Nobody has the power to declare policy at commons but the community and the board. You are neither. You have behaved like a vandal, and every other user would have been blocked ad infinitum. This is not about porn, this about you abusing your status in the most evil way anyone could have imagined. If you had followed the correct procedure, instead of going on a deletion spree, everything would have been settled and most images would have been deleted anyway. This is unacceptible behaviour and is inexcusable. Delete first and discuss later is not the way commons works and it has never worked that way. You say you are proud? Well, you can be proud. You have destroyed all confidence people had in you, and frankly, you don't deserve any better. If you think stepping toes is the right way to do it, perhaps you should state instead of an encyclopaedia everyone can edit a site that is run in accordance with the whims and fancies of the former owner. A disgruntled former Commons admin. - - Much of the cleanup is done, although there was so much hardcore pornography on commons that there's still some left in nooks and crannies. I'm taking the day off from deleting, both today and tomorrow, but I do encourage people to continue deleting the most extreme stuff. But as the immediate crisis has passed (successfully!) there is not nearly the time pressure that there was. I'm shifting into a slower mode. We were about to be smeared in all media as hosting hardcore pornography and doing nothing about it. Now, the correct storyline is that we are cleaning up. I'm proud to have made sure that storyline broke the way it did, and I'm sorry I had to step on some toes to make it happen. Now, the key is: let's continue to move forward with a responsible policy discussion. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJL5WeaAAoJEPw1DReD38njrbMP/RBP+oF7cHc26IVRaIaBH3Gh I9rPvKa4jjCROEmXTvVTNfVVaqrk/2F4RXuJxw3EDUWEGcwUDYz7nmT5RaXBF3iN UwMfU8i59D8D0Dq6GqEYUtKA505hpOe9RJ1AFgWPXAtzD2A4uihOOo35o6TeZOJf 7zQ9Y6qD2glgK239kUcUrGZA9k49S0vLnVKUe4AseoaqXrhzjYzVcEav+36mjP/D IQRFzsV3wrLmnGrsuy0NF/4Ku+jKi0GDpPf+I72BdNzLLDi7baSLdJGGir9MaqmI Elq13KTwl4vIN1g3MKZrjsJD1VGpJHzFRQWFD4CxmqPitAZK03nE9ZVkg7y3YQSD G3gchKfFtRUPUPNiWfnCaRVFYblEGiw5NLWcFZvL8dScd6aDXP2olD0O3U1d9Wl6 LIGoPlOlUB1WWsGLNxIaKOn28ZayAWp8kpDQI6yCAMEoDCt0Q8h86azzF1KPvAKz MW8ueEbSXDDyu7JQGlsXnFnnSVJYep0wTArSAmHDNUsGfExvvsMBN+fvrkwOkm6i Cm2CHXXl4rOlXE0P7XGJ57NXTSGNRM/O9FmN6LcARt3PhOY6djdV6xDjCpSDx223 vvcp5/FYJPmrOEXZViJBJuJvsyaqSiXIsO9rK4o4SN3PgxmSW1eX5icOVdOgVCNF ZBhl8StacA8QuZoPWZBx =V1NQ -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 74, Issue 28
The correct storyline is that Mr. Wales caved to the slightest bit of media pressure and engaged in full-out censorship of artworks and diagrams, showing that anyone who wants to get something removed from Wikipedia just has to threaten Mr. Wales. This was a disgraceful action, made all the more disgraceful by you not being honest as to the reason for your actions up until now. You kept the media pressure secret from the community, and claimed it was a legal issue. Disgraceful! Date: Sat, 8 May 2010 17:19:58 +0400 From: Victor Vasiliev vasi...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Where things stand now To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: aanlktin0avroxmvcuaootprnjxkglfjb2darvcekm...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 5:08 PM, Jimmy Wales jwa...@wikia-inc.com wrote: We were about to be smeared in all media as hosting hardcore pornography and doing nothing about it. Do you understand that not all images you deleted were hardcore pornography? What was the reason of wheel warring on them? --vvv -- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l End of foundation-l Digest, Vol 74, Issue 28 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Where things stand now
Dear mr Wales, I don't understand you, I really don't You are saying you want to clean up Commons from hardcore porn but you are deleting art work or pictures that doesn't even show boobs. Did you just nuke or did you look at what you did? -- Huib Abigor Laurens Tech team www.wikiweet.nl - www.llamadawiki.nl - www.forgotten-beauty.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
Samuel Klein wrote: Marcus writes: I try to understand what happened... * Larry Sanger informs media about us alleging Wikimedia of hosting porn. [unaffirmed] He just made a lot of noise, and some media picked it up. If you consider a false report to the FBI reasonably characterised as just made a lot of noise, sure. * The (conservative) TV station FOX reports about Wikimedia and contacts many important companies that have donated money for Wikimedia in the past whether they want to comment on the allegations. [affirmed] * The companies are contacting Wikimedia to ask what's going on. [unaffirmed] Mainly they contacted us to say fyi, Fox wants to cause trouble. It was clear what was going on. This is an important clarification, and I commend you for it. On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 6:50 PM, Marcus Buck m...@marcusbuck.org wrote: We had discussions on sexual content before. I proposed to use a technical solution in which images are tagged with tags that give detailed information about the form of explicit content present... Creating a technical solution like that is the task of the foundation. The _real_ task of the foundation. Let's have a meaningful discussion about this over the coming weeks. I'm not sure how I feel about this -- my reflex is to be opposed to the idea of internal tagging beyond Categories -- but there's a lot of momentum around the idea, and if the community decides it is the right thing the do, the Foundation would certainly support creating such a solution. Not to disagree with your personal inclinations at all, I just want to clarify a point of fact. Lot of momentum around the idea, is currently most persistently promoted by the same precise individual who began the ethical breaching experiment project on the English Wikiversity, and created the previous to last wiki-fracas. The suggestion has certainly been a perennial one, Uwe Kils and his Wiki-Vikings may have been the first one to down in flames. [[WP:TOBY]] (might still survive as a historical page, and as a warning to passersby. These kind of schemes no matter how they are flavored have always been soundly rejected by the community. I am like Buridans ass stuck between whether to refer to them as the third rail, or a lead balloon. If you however imply there is impetus to have anything of this sort implemented on the foundation side, my personal prediction would be that it would be a train wreck to make this current commons fracas look like a leisurely picnic by the Seine. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sat, May 08, 2010 at 08:33:49AM -0400, Samuel Klein wrote: I don't think this is a technical issue at all. Considering how flexible and reversible wiki-actions are, it seems eminently appropriate to me for the project founder to have 'unlimited technical power' on the projects -- just as you and all of our developers do, at a much higher level. 3 points: * Commons: ** Image deletion on commons is less flexible and reversible, while the commons delinker bot is running (the normal state of affairs) ** Shutting down the commons delinker bot just to accomodate Jwales disrupts a lot of other commons activity * I am worried about the [[Founder Effect]], in the negative sense. sincerely, Kim Bruning -- [Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment] gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key FEF9DD72 5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A 01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 74, Issue 28
Frankly, the news story I want right now is Jimbo Wales stripped of all priviledges on Wikipedia projects. On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 2:29 PM, Adam Cuerden cuer...@gmail.com wrote: Way to go. You pulled a media stunt and alienated your volunteers who actually do the work, because you care more about an extremely conservative television station in America than the worldwide audience Wikipedia serves and which is the primary source of donations to the project. On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 2:28 PM, Adam Cuerden cuer...@gmail.com wrote: The correct storyline is that Mr. Wales caved to the slightest bit of media pressure and engaged in full-out censorship of artworks and diagrams, showing that anyone who wants to get something removed from Wikipedia just has to threaten Mr. Wales. This was a disgraceful action, made all the more disgraceful by you not being honest as to the reason for your actions up until now. You kept the media pressure secret from the community, and claimed it was a legal issue. Disgraceful! Date: Sat, 8 May 2010 17:19:58 +0400 From: Victor Vasiliev vasi...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Where things stand now To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: aanlktin0avroxmvcuaootprnjxkglfjb2darvcekm...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 5:08 PM, Jimmy Wales jwa...@wikia-inc.com wrote: We were about to be smeared in all media as hosting hardcore pornography and doing nothing about it. Do you understand that not all images you deleted were hardcore pornography? What was the reason of wheel warring on them? --vvv -- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l End of foundation-l Digest, Vol 74, Issue 28 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 74, Issue 28
Sorry, left this out: Frankly, the news story I want right now is Jimbo Wales stripped of all priviledges on Wikipedia projects. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Remove_Founder_flag#For_removal - As does the majority of the users. On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 2:33 PM, Adam Cuerden cuer...@gmail.com wrote: Frankly, the news story I want right now is Jimbo Wales stripped of all priviledges on Wikipedia projects. On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 2:29 PM, Adam Cuerden cuer...@gmail.com wrote: Way to go. You pulled a media stunt and alienated your volunteers who actually do the work, because you care more about an extremely conservative television station in America than the worldwide audience Wikipedia serves and which is the primary source of donations to the project. On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 2:28 PM, Adam Cuerden cuer...@gmail.com wrote: The correct storyline is that Mr. Wales caved to the slightest bit of media pressure and engaged in full-out censorship of artworks and diagrams, showing that anyone who wants to get something removed from Wikipedia just has to threaten Mr. Wales. This was a disgraceful action, made all the more disgraceful by you not being honest as to the reason for your actions up until now. You kept the media pressure secret from the community, and claimed it was a legal issue. Disgraceful! Date: Sat, 8 May 2010 17:19:58 +0400 From: Victor Vasiliev vasi...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Where things stand now To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: aanlktin0avroxmvcuaootprnjxkglfjb2darvcekm...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 5:08 PM, Jimmy Wales jwa...@wikia-inc.com wrote: We were about to be smeared in all media as hosting hardcore pornography and doing nothing about it. Do you understand that not all images you deleted were hardcore pornography? What was the reason of wheel warring on them? --vvv -- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l End of foundation-l Digest, Vol 74, Issue 28 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 74, Issue 28
Adam, You've made your point. I and other list readers don't need my email box stuffed full with dozens of new posts from the same person saying substantively the same thing, with different subjects. If anyone had confusion about where you stand on this issue, it was clarified long ago. Continued repetition is utterly unhelpful. -Dan On May 8, 2010, at 9:29 AM, Adam Cuerden wrote: Way to go. You pulled a media stunt and alienated your volunteers who actually do the work, because you care more about an extremely conservative television station in America than the worldwide audience Wikipedia serves and which is the primary source of donations to the project. On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 2:28 PM, Adam Cuerden cuer...@gmail.com wrote: The correct storyline is that Mr. Wales caved to the slightest bit of media pressure and engaged in full-out censorship of artworks and diagrams, showing that anyone who wants to get something removed from Wikipedia just has to threaten Mr. Wales. This was a disgraceful action, made all the more disgraceful by you not being honest as to the reason for your actions up until now. You kept the media pressure secret from the community, and claimed it was a legal issue. Disgraceful! Date: Sat, 8 May 2010 17:19:58 +0400 From: Victor Vasiliev vasi...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Where things stand now To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: aanlktin0avroxmvcuaootprnjxkglfjb2darvcekm...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 5:08 PM, Jimmy Wales jwa...@wikia-inc.com wrote: We were about to be smeared in all media as hosting hardcore pornography and doing nothing about it. Do you understand that not all images you deleted were hardcore pornography? What was the reason of wheel warring on them? --vvv -- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l End of foundation-l Digest, Vol 74, Issue 28 ___ 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] Where things stand now
Hello Jimmy, 2010/5/8 Jimmy Wales jwa...@wikia-inc.com Much of the cleanup is done, although there was so much hardcore pornography on commons that there's still some left in nooks and crannies. Some deleted images are certainly not hardcore pornography. I'm taking the day off from deleting, both today and tomorrow, but I do encourage people to continue deleting the most extreme stuff. But as the immediate crisis has passed (successfully!) there is not nearly the time pressure that there was. I'm shifting into a slower mode. We were about to be smeared in all media as hosting hardcore pornography and doing nothing about it. Now, the correct storyline is that we are cleaning up. I'm proud to have made sure that storyline broke the way it did, and I'm sorry I had to step on some toes to make it happen. Now, the key is: let's continue to move forward with a responsible policy discussion. Jimmy Wales Some cleaning may be needed regarding sexual content, but the way you did it is hardly the good way to do it. Many contributors are pissed off and upset. This is certainly not the best way to start a meaningful discussion on a controversial topic. I think the Commons community is well suited to take a decision regarding sexual content. Your input on this subject would certainly have been regarded with the most careful consideration. But acting under external pressure is not a good think. Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo Wales acting outside his remit
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 9:43 PM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: Well, do you need a picture to explain a dildo? Well, at least it is helpful for foreign readers to some extent to have an illustration, File:Franz von Bayros 016.jpg is more or less art, but File:Félicien Rops - Sainte-Thérèse.png which is used on three Wikipedias to illustrate the use of a dildo has some real problems with being offensive to Catholics (Of course Japanese or Chinese Catholics don't matter, but they do). but, as a Japanese and orthodox-church goer, so more or less out of conflict of interest, I agree it is unnecessarily offensive to create such images. Just for illustration in general, it wasn't necessary to render an existing figure. Of course, I don't support to delete artworks specially hundred older ones as porns, used on projects for illustration in particular. . Much better to use a photo of the woman using a dildo or at least an eye-witness report published in a reliable source. The image could, of course, be used appropriately to illustrate an article on caricatures or something about anti-catholicism. Fred Bauder The foundation appears to be of the impression that Jimbo is merely attempting to encourage scrutiny, and removing clear cases. This is not true. Jimbo has speedy deleted, without discussion, historical artworks and diagrams, often edit warring with admins to keep them deleted, and has made a statement that he refuses to discuss his deletions until after he has finished deleting them all, which would only compound the problem. Examples: Artworks from the 19th century, by notable artists: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undeletetarget=File%3AF%C3%A9licien_Rops_-_Sainte-Th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se.png- Wheelwarred with three different admins to try and keep it deleted. http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undeletetarget=File%3AFranz_von_Bayros_016.jpg- Wheelwarred with two admins this time. Diagrams intended to illustrate articles on sexual subjects, in wide use on Wikipedia projects for that purpose: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undeletetarget=File%3AWiki-fisting.png- Edit warred with three admins http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undeletetarget=File%3AWiki-facial.svg Further, when challeged on these, he said that he refused to engage in any discussion on the deletion of artwork *until he was done deleting all of them* From http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJimbo_Walesaction=historysubmitdiff=38891861oldid=38891748 I have redeleted the image for the duration of the cleanup project. We will have a solid discussion about whether Commons should ever host pornography and under what circumstances at a later day - June 1st will be a fine time to start.--[[User:Jimbo Wales|Jimbo Wales]] ([[User talk:Jimbo Wales#top|span class=signature-talktalk/span]]) 17:31, 7 May 2010 (UTC) How are such images to be found, after's he's gone and deleted them all? Are we really to sift through every single deletion several months later, to find the things that shouldn't have been deleted in the first place, and which, thanks to the Commons Delinker bot, have been automatically removed from the articles they were used in? Out of Jimbo's deletions, at the very least a third of the deletions related to diagrams and historical artwork in wide use on Wikipedia projects. This despite his initial claim ( http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJimbo_Walesaction=historysubmitdiff=38820363oldid=38819608) that he'd only be dealing with things that violated the law that started the controversy. If the board are not aware, there was, about a year ago, a controversy related to images of Muhammed, in which Muslim readers - for whom such are horribly offensive, due to rules against depiction of the prophet - were politely informed that we could not delete material simply because it offended someone, as Wikipedia sought to show all of the world's knowledge. Jimbo's actions make that consensus deeply problematic. There is a petition for Wales' founder flag to be removed, which has gained widespread support since his actions. ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Remove_Founder_flag ) -A. C. ___ 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 -- KIZU Naoko http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese) Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo Wales acting outside his remit
On 8 May 2010 14:43, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: Well, do you need a picture to explain a dildo? Well, do you need a picture to explain a cloud? Do you need a picture to explain a wall? A door? A mobile phone? An aeroplane? And I could go on, until I would have totally disproved the usage of Commons following that logic. So answer me, what does make a picture of a cloud better than a picture of a dildo? More people have seen a cloud than people who have seen a dildo. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 8:33 AM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 8:13 AM, Andrew Garrett agarr...@wikimedia.org wrote: This isn't an ideal situation. We should have a situation in which Jimmy's technical power derives from the authority of the board of trustees or from a community mandate, or we should have a situation in which Jimmy does not have unlimited technical power. I don't think this is a technical issue at all. Considering how flexible and reversible wiki-actions are, it seems eminently appropriate to me for the project founder to have 'unlimited technical power' on the projects -- just as you and all of our developers do, at a much higher level. For what purpose? The purpose for which the developers have this technical power is obvious - they can't possibly do their work without it. With Wales, it's a power with no explicit purpose other than anachronistic deference. English Wikipedia has addressed this fluidly over the years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Role_of_Jimmy_Wales So long as the power of the founder flag includes control over that very page, anything written on that page can't possibly be taken seriously. (BTW, shouldn't Larry Sanger have a founder flag too?) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Time to reset the 'founder' flag-- Jimbo is no longer a viable king.
After his initial deletion spree, there were widespread objections from the community. In many different forums, hundreds of users registered their objections. By the time Jimbo returned, nearly 100 users had signed a statement calling for his Founder Flag powers to be removed. In response, Jimbo: • Did not apologize, but expressed pride in his earlier actions • Encouraged other admins to mimic his actions • Deleted the entirety of his talk page, which had filled with concerns. At this point, discussing the original issue (porn) is really besides the point. This behavior is not acceptable. I propose: 1. Jimbo does not have the confidence of the community. 2. The founder status needs to be removed to reflect that. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo Wales acting outside his remit
Svip wrote: On 8 May 2010 14:43, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: Well, do you need a picture to explain a dildo? Well, do you need a picture to explain a cloud? Do you need a picture to explain a wall? A door? A mobile phone? An aeroplane? And I could go on, until I would have totally disproved the usage of Commons following that logic. So answer me, what does make a picture of a cloud better than a picture of a dildo? More people have seen a cloud than people who have seen a dildo. I totally agree. Even the venerable BBC proudly displayed a travelling dildo set from a century or more back, when it was auctioned off at a fairly steep price by a premium auction house, as a valuable collectible. I forget what the technical term for it was, but it was fairly unpronouceable, and definitely unspellable (by me at least). Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 10:33 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 8:13 AM, Andrew Garrett agarr...@wikimedia.org wrote: This isn't an ideal situation. We should have a situation in which Jimmy's technical power derives from the authority of the board of trustees or from a community mandate, or we should have a situation in which Jimmy does not have unlimited technical power. I don't think this is a technical issue at all. Considering how flexible and reversible wiki-actions are, it seems eminently appropriate to me for the project founder to have 'unlimited technical power' on the projects -- just as you and all of our developers do, at a much higher level. Perhaps I should have written Exercised unlimited technical power. I'm referring to the general idea that Jimmy does what he feels like, and communities have no recourse except to the Foundation and to the Board. As you rightly point out, developers and staff have the same powers, but none of us make a habit of using them deliberately for large-scale content deletion. -- Andrew Garrett http://werdn.us/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Where things stand now
I recognize that the issue is more about the point and process of the whole thing, and that it's not just Wales who deleted images, but I think some perspective is useful. Jimbo deleted 71 images. That doesn't call for outright rage. ~A ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo Wales acting outside his remit
On Sat, May 08, 2010 at 01:47:52PM +0100, Jimmy Wales wrote: On 5/8/10 12:12 PM, Adam Cuerden wrote: and has made a statement that he refuses to discuss his deletions until after he has finished deleting them all, which would only compound the problem. To the contrary, I have been very active in discussions both on the wiki, in email, and in irc. Pretending that I'm not a reasonable person open to discussion and debate is not going to be very persuasive to anyone who knows me. :-) This does not compute: I actually back-checked that with the commons community, with exact times and dates. You failed to take into account specific key concerns (to wit: in-use images), _after_ you were informed of them. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Sexual_content#Jimbo_the_vandal specifically: Did these actions happen before, or after I talked with [Jimbo Wales] on irc today? (this was at 12:50) --Kim Bruning (talk) 19:38, 7 May 2010 (UTC) After kim, way after. TheDJ (talk) 19:44, 7 May 2010 (UTC) Before 12:50, I could have said you pulled an Ed Poor [1]. After 12:50, I would say that yes, you were demonstrably unreasonable. I do understand how high profile actions can go wrong in the heat of the moment. I've made mistakes too in the past (and have enemies to show for it). One of the things one needs to do to turn mistakes into lessons is to listen carefully to key concerns, once they are raised. As long as one demonstrably learns from mistakes, community support is (mostly) assured, and one can carry on to achieve ones objectives. Failure to learn is potentially fatal to the project at hand, if not one's wiki-career. The correct course of action -once you were informed- would have been to either leave in-use images alone for a 2nd pass, or mark them with a PROD(like) tag. Sj is currently doing damage control on Commons, bless him! :-) sincerely, Kim Bruning [1] I have often defended Ed Poors actions, and I admired the way he dealt with mistakes. Of course, after a while he got a little too cocky, and thought he could sweet-talk his way out of *anything* (oops), but other than that, he's a good model to learn from. For those of us who don't know who Ed Poor is/ was: This is the man who ALMOST got away with deleting Votes For Deletion on a whim one day. -- [Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment] gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key FEF9DD72 5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A 01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Time to reset the 'founder' flag-- Jimbo is no longer a viable king.
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 10:02 AM, Alec Conroy alecmcon...@gmail.com wrote: I propose: 1. Jimbo does not have the confidence of the community. 2. The founder status needs to be removed to reflect that. I think that's a little harsh to say that he doesn't have the confidence of the community. I think a *better* reason to remove the founder status would be so that he's not carrying out actions himself (it's all about checks-and-balances). He can participate in discussions and make a decision as godking, but then why does he need to carry the decision out himself? With the position of godking, he can just ask a local user or steward to carry out the decision instead of doing it himself with a founder flag. -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Where things stand now
On Sat, May 08, 2010 at 10:29:45AM -0400, Amory Meltzer wrote: I recognize that the issue is more about the point and process of the whole thing, and that it's not just Wales who deleted images, but I think some perspective is useful. Jimbo deleted 71 images. That doesn't call for outright rage. *Nod.* I agree that a lot of the rage is due to it being blown out of proportion, in part, this is due to inadequate communication and followup from the side of Jwales. factors: * he could have taken commons delinker into account. It might take a little while to fix images that shouldn't have been deleted. He was informed of the issue of in-use images, but chose to ignore it. * He shouldn't have encouraged others to follow his example without being more clear about what that example entailed * He could have gotten almost the same bang for his buck (and a lot less smoke) by being just a little smarter about things, and following up with people 1:1 * We sort of expect Jimbo Wales to have a bit more clue about how to do things. Even if just displaying clue without necessarily deviating from the course. Yeah it sucks, but for political reasons it's kind of important to shoot first and ask questions later, for now. And it's only for these 71 images, you see, not much work to restore just the few we mess up sincerely, Kim Bruning -- [Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment] gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key FEF9DD72 5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A 01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Time to reset the 'founder' flag-- Jimbo is no longer a viable king.
On Sat, May 08, 2010 at 10:37:15AM -0400, Casey Brown wrote: On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 10:02 AM, Alec Conroy alecmcon...@gmail.com wrote: I think that's a little harsh to say that he doesn't have the confidence of the community. I think a *better* reason to remove the founder status would be so that he's not carrying out actions himself (it's all about checks-and-balances). He can participate in discussions and make a decision as godking, but then why does he need to carry the decision out himself? With the position of godking, he can just ask a local user or steward to carry out the decision instead of doing it himself with a founder flag. Seconded. That's what I do too! [1] sincerely, Kim Bruning [1] Except for the part about being the Godking. ;-) -- [Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment] gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key FEF9DD72 5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A 01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 10:28 PM, Victor Vasiliev vasi...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 11:30 PM, Michael Snow wikipe...@verizon.net wrote: Having said that, the Wikimedia projects are intended to be educational in nature, and there is no place in the projects for material that has no educational or informational value. I'd like to point out that we already have a project where most information has no educational value. It's called Wikisource and materials there are primarily of artistic value, not educational or information one. Since I basically support the idea that one of Wikimedia Commons aims is to collect as much notable works of art as possible, I view it as a Wikisource for visual arts and music. Just in case anyone is seriously considering nixing any project which is not educational, let me point out that Wikisource does have a lot of educational content. e.g. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/EB1911 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/DNB http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Copyright_law Should we expect Wikisource to be cleaned up as well? Does Foundation feel need to host such highly disputed works as [1] or [2]? [1] http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lady_Chatterley's_Lover [2] http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Fanny_Hill:_Memoirs_of_a_Woman_of_Pleasure or: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catullus_16 (this was/is our 32st most viewed page) perhaps we should also remove the translation from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_16 -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content
Commons, Wikiquote and Wikisource has by themselves no educational value. They gain their educational value in the way that they provide repositories for the other WMF projects. Wikisource is the library of Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wikiversity and Wikispecies. The volumes collected in it should be judged with the same principle as the media files in Commons. Ting Victor Vasiliev wrote: On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 11:30 PM, Michael Snow wikipe...@verizon.net wrote: Having said that, the Wikimedia projects are intended to be educational in nature, and there is no place in the projects for material that has no educational or informational value. I'd like to point out that we already have a project where most information has no educational value. It's called Wikisource and materials there are primarily of artistic value, not educational or information one. Since I basically support the idea that one of Wikimedia Commons aims is to collect as much notable works of art as possible, I view it as a Wikisource for visual arts and music. Should we expect Wikisource to be cleaned up as well? Does Foundation feel need to host such highly disputed works as [1] or [2]? --vvv [1] http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lady_Chatterley's_Lover [2] http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Fanny_Hill:_Memoirs_of_a_Woman_of_Pleasure ___ 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] Statement on appropriate educational content
On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 12:45 AM, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: Commons, Wikiquote and Wikisource has by themselves no educational value. They gain their educational value in the way that they provide repositories for the other WMF projects. Wikisource is the library of Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wikiversity and Wikispecies. The volumes collected in it should be judged with the same principle as the media files in Commons. Excuse me. Wikisource is a library, consisting of any published works that are able to be included as free content. And you think that has no educational value, in and of itself? -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Where things stand now
On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 12:29 AM, Amory Meltzer amorymelt...@gmail.com wrote: I recognize that the issue is more about the point and process of the whole thing, and that it's not just Wales who deleted images, but I think some perspective is useful. Jimbo deleted 71 images. That doesn't call for outright rage. Jimmy wheel-warred to force a number of perfectly acceptable images to stay deleted. And nobody felt comfortable blocking him for what would have resulted in a quick block if it was anyone else going crazy and refusing to listen to other admins. Combined, that is what people are outraged about at the moment. And this is not the first time that he has gone overboard. -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 7:05 AM, Kim Bruning k...@bruning.xs4all.nl wrote: We already do what we can to help Muslims censor themselves. See [[Talk:Muhammad]], faq 4. Dang. All this censorship makes me feel a lot dirtier than the smut it is censoring. sigh Huh? You're against giving people the choice to self-censor things that they don't want to see? =/ -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content
Hi, 2010/5/8 Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de: Commons, Wikiquote and Wikisource has by themselves no educational value. They gain their educational value in the way that they provide repositories for the other WMF projects. Wikisource is the library of Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wikiversity and Wikispecies. The volumes collected in it should be judged with the same principle as the media files in Commons. I beg to disagree about the educational value of WS and Commons. I think that historical documents, wheiher they are texts, images, videos or sounds, have an educational value in themselves, whatever happens on other projects. Ting Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 6:45 PM, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: Commons, Wikiquote and Wikisource has by themselves no educational value. They gain their educational value in the way that they provide repositories for the other WMF projects. What about Wikinews? What educational value does it have? --vvv ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content
On Sat, May 08, 2010 at 10:57:52AM -0400, Casey Brown wrote: On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 7:05 AM, Kim Bruning k...@bruning.xs4all.nl wrote: We already do what we can to help Muslims censor themselves. See [[Talk:Muhammad]], faq 4. Dang. All this censorship makes me feel a lot dirtier than the smut it is censoring. sigh Huh? You're against giving people the choice to self-censor things that they don't want to see? =/ I am not against people abusing drugs, eating badly, self-censoring, etc. It's their mind in their body, and they may use or abuse it as they see fit. This doesn't mean I have to feel good about it, of course :-/ . And I'm not sure I'm obligated to assist them... ;-) sincerely, Kim Bruning -- [Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment] gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key FEF9DD72 5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A 01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 37-01--10 03:59 PM, Samuel Klein wrote: This isn't an ideal situation. We should have a situation in which Jimmy's technical power derives from the authority of the board of trustees or from a community mandate, or we should have a situation in which Jimmy does not have unlimited technical power. I don't think this is a technical issue at all. Considering how flexible and reversible wiki-actions are, it seems eminently appropriate to me for the project founder to have 'unlimited technical power' on the projects -- just as you and all of our developers do, at a much higher level. The difference is that they don't use their access in ways that affect the editor communities so directly. Sure, a software update might get botched for a few minutes, or maybe some people don't like Vector so much. But system administrators aren't deleting content en masse in cases that are really *really* unclear. That's where the difference lies. If Jimbo's going to be a figurehead, I think we can live with him having essentially unlimited technical access on the wikis. If he's going to actually use it, he needs a community mandate. Recall, he *didn't* found all the wikis, and he *doesn't* edit most of them regularly. Recall that English Wikipedia is in a special position (whether you think that is good or bad) in that he actually did start that wiki, and he hangs around the wiki sometimes. Not so for most of the Wikimedia universe. It shouldn't be surprising that those other wikis are less tolerant of his derisive attitude towards disagreements they may have with this actions - - either the means or the ends. - -Mike -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkvlgkwACgkQst0AR/DaKHsGmgCfd6apPpIOOMO1cm8+NFzH7Bso y8AAn2aPD1mtzIGN6eEGwO4v6FkdDSEd =/uxv -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo Wales acting outside his remit
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 37-01--10 03:59 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote: To the contrary, I have been very active in discussions both on the wiki, in email, and in irc. Pretending that I'm not a reasonable person open to discussion and debate is not going to be very persuasive to anyone who knows me. :-) --Jimbo News flash: Not that many people know you. Not these days. Not outside the wiki you founded. Pulling stunts like this is a sure-fire way to become known for stunts like this. Pro-tip: It makes us look guilty, and it makes you look like a tyrant. Whether either of those is actually true is probably immaterial outside the Wikimedia community. - -Mike -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkvlglIACgkQst0AR/DaKHsxdgCdFTcHeZnhDBWfiHFcLeRJzuSl 29AAoNHwARe2soUxI2UlXerxX8TOdYJX =21A9 -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Where things stand now
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 37-01--10 03:59 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote: We were about to be smeared in all media as hosting hardcore pornography and doing nothing about it. Now, the correct storyline is that we are cleaning up. I'm proud to have made sure that storyline broke the way it did, and I'm sorry I had to step on some toes to make it happen. I think that's fairly naive, actually. I'd rather suspect the story Fox (which seems to be your main concern) will go with is We were right all along, they *were* hosting kiddie porn! Just look, they deleted it all after we exposed their filthy secret. As I said earlier, your actions make us look guilty when we're not. If we had had a reasoned discussion about it instead of you wildly flailing at the delete button, then we could have actually pointed at [[Category:Pedophilia]] to demonstrate that we *don't* actually host illegal materials. On this, I am in complete agreement with Greg Maxwell. There *is* cleanup to do. And there *is* PR to worry about. But your actions have been counterproductive on both issues. Give Jay a pat on the back for me next you see him. - -Mike -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkvlhXsACgkQst0AR/DaKHvPXgCeIUTB7R9gliULGJtKULcIdm4Y YSgAoM9WHrNHPsATesa2Pz3sYmkpPfS5 =Q8qc -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Reflections on the recent debates
I want to write personally -- not speaking on behalf of the Foundation but instead as a longtime participant in online communities who has worked extensively on free-speech issues -- to offer my perspective on a couple of themes that I've seen made in threads here. The first is the claim that Jimmy's actions represent a collapse in the face of a threat by Fox News (and that this threat was somehow small or insignificant). The second is the idea that the proper focus of the current discussion ought to be focused on Jimmy (and anger against Jimmy's taking action, or against particular aspects of the actions he took) to the effective exclusion of discussion of whether Wikimedia Commons policy should be revisited, refined, or better implemented. First, my belief as a former journalist is that Fox News is not a responsible news organization. This means that they get too many stories wrong in the first place (as when they uncritically echo Larry Sanger's uninformed and self-interested assertions), and it also means that when their mistakes are brought to their attention, they may redouble their aggressive attacks in the hope of somehow vindicating their original story. This I believe is what Fox News (or at least its reporter and her editors) were trying to do. If the media culture in the United States were such that Fox News had no influence outside itself, we could probably just ignore it. But the reality is that the virulent culture of Fox News does manage to infect other media coverage in ways that are destructive to good people and to good projects. I disagree with the suggestion that it would have been better for Fox to have gone with the original story they were trying to create rather than with the story Jimmy in effect created for them. Jimmy's decision to intervene changed the narrative they were attempting to create. So even if you disagree with some or all of the particulars of Jimmy's actions, you may still be able to see how Jimmy's actions, taken as a whole, created breathing space for discussion of an issue on Commons that even many of Jimmy's critics believe is a real issue. The question then becomes whether we're doing to discuss the issues of Commons policy or discuss whether Jimmy's actions themselves signify a problem that needs to be fixed. You may say we can discuss both, and technically you'd be right, but the reality of human discourse is that if you spend your time venting at Jimmy, you won't be discussing Commons policy, and you'll be diverting attention from Commons policy. My personal opinion is that this would be the waste of an opportunity. I think it's also worth remembering that when an individual like Jimmy is given extraordinary cross-project powers to use in extraordinary circumstances, this more or less guarantees that any use of those powers will be controversial. (If they were uncontroversial, nobody would need them, since consensus processes would fix all problems quickly and effectively.) But rather than focus on whether your disagreement with the particulars of what Jimmy did means that Jimmy's powers should be removed, you should choose instead, I believe, to use this abrupt intervention as an opportunity to discuss whether Commons policy and its implementation can be improved in a way that brings it more into line with the Wikimedia projects' mission. Once this discussion happens, it would not surprise me if the result turned out to be that some of the material deleted by Jimmy will be restored by the community -- probably with Jimmy's approval in many cases. To the extent that Jimmy's intervention has triggered a healthy debate about policy, I think the powers he used, and the decisions -- not individually but taken as a whole -- that he made are justified. (Like many of you, I would probably disagree with some of his particular decisions, but I recognize that I'd be critical of anyone's particular decisions.) It is not the case, after all, that Jimmy routinely intervenes in projects these days -- it is mostly the case that he forbears from intervening, which is as it should be, and which I think speaks well of his restraint. It should be kept in mind, I think, that Jimmy's intervention was aimed at protecting our projects from external threat and coercion, precisely to give breathing space to the kind of dialog and consensus processes that we all value and believe to be core principles of Wikimedia projects. I hope that rather than venting and raging about what was done in the face of an imminent and vicious threat gives way to some forward-looking discussion of how things can be made better. This discussion is best focused on policy, and not on Jimmy, in my view, since Jimmy's actions represent efforts to protect the Wikimedia projects and movement. That's where our efforts should be focused too. --Mike ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe:
Re: [Foundation-l] Where things stand now
*I think that's fairly naive, actually. I'd rather suspect the story Fox (which seems to be your main concern) will go with is We were right all along, they *were* hosting kiddie porn! Just look, they deleted it all after we exposed their filthy secret. *What you're saying is that Fox News would have ran a negative story about us either way. And if that's really the case, I'm glad it was a negative story the community was actively doing something about, rather than a negative story we did nothing about. FMF ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Time to reset the 'founder' flag-- Jimbo is no longer a viable king.
*He can participate in discussions and make a decision as godking, but then why does he need to carry the decision out himself? * I'm not sure I see what the distinction would be. You want him to write policy by fiat, but not to actually click the save button himself? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Where things stand now
Jimmy Wales wrote: We were about to be smeared in all media as hosting hardcore pornography and doing nothing about it. Now, the correct storyline is that we are cleaning up. I'm proud to have made sure that storyline broke the way it did, and I'm sorry I had to step on some toes to make it happen. So you created this much disruption as a public relations stunt? Now, the key is: let's continue to move forward with a responsible policy discussion. No. The key is that you're willfully ignorant, willfully aloof, or some horrible combination of the two. How many people have to say YOU'RE FUCKING UP before you'll listen? Nobody had an issue with the deletion of some of the hardcore, homemade, bad porn that you deleted. But, like a bull in a china shop, you simply couldn't stop yourself, could you? And when people pointed out your errors, rather than say I'm sorry and restore the images, you re-deleted and continued your rampage. Anything for a headline? What a jackass you are. MZMcBride ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Time to reset the 'founder' flag-- Jimbo is no longer a viable king.
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 12:00 PM, David Moran fordmadoxfr...@gmail.com wrote: I'm not sure I see what the distinction would be. You want him to write policy by fiat, but not to actually click the save button himself? *If* people still wanted him to hold some kind of godking position, then he could make decisions on tough issues and ask others to do, but those others would be able to review and confirm things for themselves before taking sudden, unilateral actions. You also wouldn't have to worry about Jimmy desyopping you if blocked him for wheel-warring, for instance. -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Reflections on the recent debates
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 37-01--10 03:59 PM, Mike Godwin wrote: I disagree with the suggestion that it would have been better for Fox to have gone with the original story they were trying to create rather than with the story Jimmy in effect created for them. I assume that's a reply to my saying that Fox is likely to use the mass deletions as proof of a guilty mind, yes? I'd be really interested in having you expand on this. Perhaps I simply misunderstand how irresponsible and influential Fox news is, but I would have thought that being able to show that the images aren't illegal while also showing that we're having a reasoned discussion about whether we want the legal ones or not would have been an effective counter to the negative PR Fox is creating. It isn't clear to me that sacrificing our values and the story They're guilty because they just deleted a bunch of images we called them out for is better than not sacrificing our values and the story We still think they're hosting child porn but which could be countered. Still, the main issue for me is what this means outside the current firestorm. After all, isn't insulation from exactly this sort of inappropriate outside influence exactly what Sue was touting as a *major* strength of Wikimedia projects just last December at the Dalton Camp lecture? And here we see that Jimbo is vulnerable to this kind of influence, and has the ability to alter content radically. If we believe, as Sue does, that this protection against outside influence is a good thing, then Jimbo is a weak link so long as he can enact the changes some outsider wants of his own accord. Indeed, he can apparently even make changes that don't have traction among the community. At least if Fox got to some other editor or admin they'd have to limit what changes they made, lest they be too far outside the community's comfort zone - but Jimbo can get away with just about anything. Perhaps we're not so insulated as Sue thought. I regard this as a problem, do you not? - -Mike -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkvljUgACgkQst0AR/DaKHtpsACfdgKD5e7CdKzHcPm6koeyyR1Y 23kAn3TBiJ+rMIaPV7qCclwMm7L6DPFF =yp3u -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Where things stand now
Hello, 2010/5/8 David Moran fordmadoxfr...@gmail.com: *I think that's fairly naive, actually. I'd rather suspect the story Fox (which seems to be your main concern) will go with is We were right all along, they *were* hosting kiddie porn! Just look, they deleted it all after we exposed their filthy secret. *What you're saying is that Fox News would have ran a negative story about us either way. And if that's really the case, I'm glad it was a negative story the community was actively doing something about, rather than a negative story we did nothing about. The fact that the actions are done following pressure from such a biased entity as Fox News is bad in itself, independently of the (wrong) way the deletions were done. FMF Regards, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Where things stand now
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 And when people pointed out your errors, rather than say I'm sorry and restore the images, you re-deleted and continued your rampage. That sounds eerily reminiscent of what Mike Godwin said about Fox news: when their mistakes are brought to their attention, they may redouble their aggressive attacks in the hope of somehow vindicating their original story. - -Mike -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkvljh8ACgkQst0AR/DaKHtuTQCcDgMO5mzbMU9+GsntrL5fi+xg 4U4AoMDwOKRo1YSCRbQJu+2NceXkpQMZ =+Dws -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Reflections on the recent debates
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 9:11 AM, Mike.lifeguard mike.lifegu...@gmail.comwrote: On 37-01--10 03:59 PM, Mike Godwin wrote: I disagree with the suggestion that it would have been better for Fox to have gone with the original story they were trying to create rather than with the story Jimmy in effect created for them. I assume that's a reply to my saying that Fox is likely to use the mass deletions as proof of a guilty mind, yes? I'd be really interested in having you expand on this. It wasn't a response -- I hadn't read your comment yet. But when I did see your comment, I thought it missed the point that Fox was always going to congratulate itself on its story, regardless of what we did or didn't do in response. I've been dealing with media strategy, both as a reporter and as someone who has to respond to media, for nearly three decades now. The issue isn't whether you can persuade Fox of anything -- Fox is not the kind of organization you can have a discussion with. Perhaps I simply misunderstand how irresponsible and influential Fox news is, but I would have thought that being able to show that the images aren't illegal while also showing that we're having a reasoned discussion about whether we want the legal ones or not would have been an effective counter to the negative PR Fox is creating. I promise you, this would almost certainly not be an effective counter. If we believe, as Sue does, that this protection against outside influence is a good thing, then Jimbo is a weak link so long as he can enact the changes some outsider wants of his own accord. I believe you misunderstand both what Jimmy was trying to do, and what the consequences of it are. I could elaborate on this, and will be happy to do so privately, but as I said, I think focusing on Jimmy means missing an opportunity to do something constructive. --Mike ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Reflections on the recent debates
Mike Godwin wrote: I think it's also worth remembering that when an individual like Jimmy is given extraordinary cross-project powers to use in extraordinary circumstances, this more or less guarantees that any use of those powers will be controversial. Given is an odd word choice if you look at the history of his user rights and the eroding mandate surrounding them. Once this discussion happens, it would not surprise me if the result turned out to be that some of the material deleted by Jimmy will be restored by the community -- probably with Jimmy's approval in many cases. Most of the egregiously bad deletions were quickly overturned, and Jimmy was the one re-deleting the images. Now that he has agreed to stop, most of the poor deletions have been re-reversed. I doubt Jimmy approves; there's absolutely nothing in his actions over the past few days to suggest that he does. To the extent that Jimmy's intervention has triggered a healthy debate about policy, I think the powers he used, and the decisions -- not individually but taken as a whole -- that he made are justified. Huh. I never thought I'd see the day that Mike Godwin would be supporting an attack on free speech and free ideas through censorship. I don't say censorship, lightly: Jimmy deliberately deleted historical pieces of art and illustrations in his rampage. And you think this is a good thing? And at what cost? What do you call a leader with no followers? Just a guy taking a walk. He's alienated or pissed off most of his supporters, on Commons and elsewhere. The people backing him the most at this point are the ones who have a direct financial stake in his ability to generate publicity (that would be the Wikimedia Foundation). Mike, it looks like you've compromised your ideals in favor of toeing the party line, and for that, I'm pretty disappointed. MZMcBride ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Reflections on the recent debates
On 8 May 2010 17:21, Mike Godwin mnemo...@gmail.com wrote: I believe you misunderstand both what Jimmy was trying to do, and what the consequences of it are. I could elaborate on this, and will be happy to do so privately, but as I said, I think focusing on Jimmy means missing an opportunity to do something constructive. There isn't one. Oh if you wait about 6 months when things calm down a bit there might be an opportunity but if you look at previous such attempts when someone has just tried the brute force approach is never a good time. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Reflections on the recent debates
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 11:48 AM, Mike Godwin mnemo...@gmail.com wrote: I want to write personally -- not speaking on behalf of the Foundation but instead as a longtime participant in online communities who has worked extensively on free-speech issues -- to offer my perspective on a couple of themes that I've seen made in threads here. The first is the claim that Jimmy's actions represent a collapse in the face of a threat by Fox News (and that this threat was somehow small or insignificant). The second is the idea that the proper focus of the current discussion ought to be focused on Jimmy (and anger against Jimmy's taking action, or against particular aspects of the actions he took) to the effective exclusion of discussion of whether Wikimedia Commons policy should be revisited, refined, or better implemented. First, my belief as a former journalist is that Fox News is not a responsible news organization. This means that they get too many stories wrong in the first place (as when they uncritically echo Larry Sanger's uninformed and self-interested assertions), and it also means that when their mistakes are brought to their attention, they may redouble their aggressive attacks in the hope of somehow vindicating their original story. This I believe is what Fox News (or at least its reporter and her editors) were trying to do. If the media culture in the United States were such that Fox News had no influence outside itself, we could probably just ignore it. But the reality is that the virulent culture of Fox News does manage to infect other media coverage in ways that are destructive to good people and to good projects. I disagree with the suggestion that it would have been better for Fox to have gone with the original story they were trying to create rather than with the story Jimmy in effect created for them. Jimmy's decision to intervene changed the narrative they were attempting to create. So even if you disagree with some or all of the particulars of Jimmy's actions, you may still be able to see how Jimmy's actions, taken as a whole, created breathing space for discussion of an issue on Commons that even many of Jimmy's critics believe is a real issue. The question then becomes whether we're doing to discuss the issues of Commons policy or discuss whether Jimmy's actions themselves signify a problem that needs to be fixed. You may say we can discuss both, and technically you'd be right, but the reality of human discourse is that if you spend your time venting at Jimmy, you won't be discussing Commons policy, and you'll be diverting attention from Commons policy. My personal opinion is that this would be the waste of an opportunity. I think it's also worth remembering that when an individual like Jimmy is given extraordinary cross-project powers to use in extraordinary circumstances, this more or less guarantees that any use of those powers will be controversial. (If they were uncontroversial, nobody would need them, since consensus processes would fix all problems quickly and effectively.) But rather than focus on whether your disagreement with the particulars of what Jimmy did means that Jimmy's powers should be removed, you should choose instead, I believe, to use this abrupt intervention as an opportunity to discuss whether Commons policy and its implementation can be improved in a way that brings it more into line with the Wikimedia projects' mission. Once this discussion happens, it would not surprise me if the result turned out to be that some of the material deleted by Jimmy will be restored by the community -- probably with Jimmy's approval in many cases. To the extent that Jimmy's intervention has triggered a healthy debate about policy, I think the powers he used, and the decisions -- not individually but taken as a whole -- that he made are justified. (Like many of you, I would probably disagree with some of his particular decisions, but I recognize that I'd be critical of anyone's particular decisions.) It is not the case, after all, that Jimmy routinely intervenes in projects these days -- it is mostly the case that he forbears from intervening, which is as it should be, and which I think speaks well of his restraint. It should be kept in mind, I think, that Jimmy's intervention was aimed at protecting our projects from external threat and coercion, precisely to give breathing space to the kind of dialog and consensus processes that we all value and believe to be core principles of Wikimedia projects. I hope that rather than venting and raging about what was done in the face of an imminent and vicious threat gives way to some forward-looking discussion of how things can be made better. This discussion is best focused on policy, and not on Jimmy, in my view, since Jimmy's actions represent efforts to protect the Wikimedia projects and movement. That's where our efforts should be focused too. --Mike I
Re: [Foundation-l] Board members positions toward Jimmy's last action
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 3:14 AM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: By now, just two Board members explicitly stated what do they think about Jimmy's action: Jan-Bart de Vreede and Ting Chen (who explained his position in details). According to not precise Board's statement I may guess who supports Jimmy's action and who doesn't. However, I don't want to guess. As a member of community who directly or through the chapters elects five Board members and other four through the delegation given to the previous five members, I want to know positions of other Board members. Well, we as a community don't require such individual statements about any other issue; I realize this may be a personal dealbreaker for you but it doesn't seem like the single most important issue of our day. I'd much rather hear what individual board members think about strategy or the budget, which is of much more lasting import for how the foundation gets run. I do wish that there were a better way for board members to participate as community members in discussions and explore issues without their every move getting scrutinized as a potential board statement; that goes for Jimmy, too. Our board members are all smart, well-respected people and I'd like to hear their opinions more often about everything, but I think that the fact of having to draft and present consensus positions to an often-critical community hampers them. I'm not sure if there's a good answer to this problem. -- Phoebe ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board members positions toward Jimmy's last action
On 8 May 2010 17:29, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: Well, we as a community don't require such individual statements about any other issue; I realize this may be a personal dealbreaker for you but it doesn't seem like the single most important issue of our day. I'd much rather hear what individual board members think about strategy or the budget, which is of much more lasting import for how the foundation gets run. It's board members directly asserting control over content. Of course it's a major issue. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Reflections on the recent debates
On 8 May 2010 16:48, Mike Godwin mnemo...@gmail.com wrote: To the extent that Jimmy's intervention has triggered a healthy debate about policy, I think the powers he used, and the decisions -- not individually but taken as a whole -- that he made are justified. Perhaps, but that is a very small extent. Most of the debate has been about Jimmy, not about Commons policy on non-educational images. The same thing happens whenever Jimmy intervenes like this - it draws attention away from the issue that needs discussion (and I can't think of any time when Jimmy has intervened on a completely non-issue, there is always something worth discussing) and distracts everybody with lots of discussion about the extent of Jimmy's powers. You are right that Jimmy wouldn't be intervening if the issue wasn't controversial, but clearly the way Jimmy handles these things doesn't work since it causes much more drama than the intervention is worth. I think part of the problem is that it is very unclear what powers Jimmy actually has. These issues could be much better dealt with by an individual or small group that has been explicitly given the necessary powers (which Jimmy never was, he started out with ultimate power as founder and these are just the powers he has left) and is clearly accountable in some way (which Jimmy isn't - in fact, he thinks he is even less accountable than I think he is). Ideally, those powers should be given by the community, but they could be given by the board. It will be a real test of the maturity of the community - will we be willing to give someone the extensive powers that somebody needs to have? The community doesn't like giving individuals power, it goes against our entire ethos, but it has to be done. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Reflections on the recent debates
On 8 May 2010 17:27, Sydney Poore sydney.po...@gmail.com wrote: I fully endorse every aspect of Mike Godwin's comment. The Boards statement makes it clear that their view is that Community discussion is needed to find long term solutions to the issue. And that not censored should not be used to halt discussions about the way to manage content. It hasn't been. With previous attempts you are being a [[WP:DICK]] go away (okey generally with less explicit phrasing) has been used to halt the discussion. Not censored or otherwise /is/ the discussion. The clean up project initiated by Jimmy on Commons has brought much needed attention to a long standing problem. Useful attention is a subset of attention. We've not got much of that subset right now. Now is the time for the Community to focus on cleaning up Commons and writing a sensible policy about managing sexual content. The community doesn't answer to you. -- geni ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content
True, some people read news sources for titillation by tabloid contents, but most read to learn about current events, which is certainly one important role of education David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 11:02 AM, Victor Vasiliev vasi...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 6:45 PM, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: Commons, Wikiquote and Wikisource has by themselves no educational value. They gain their educational value in the way that they provide repositories for the other WMF projects. What about Wikinews? What educational value does it have? --vvv ___ 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 members positions toward Jimmy's last action
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 9:31 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 8 May 2010 17:29, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: Well, we as a community don't require such individual statements about any other issue; I realize this may be a personal dealbreaker for you but it doesn't seem like the single most important issue of our day. I'd much rather hear what individual board members think about strategy or the budget, which is of much more lasting import for how the foundation gets run. It's board members directly asserting control over content. Of course it's a major issue. I don't disagree, but I meant what I said about *single* most important issue! And I'm not sure that's how I'd frame it. The board statement seemed pretty clear; reaffirming existing policy. I guess it depends a bit on what capacity you think Jimmy was acting in; this is not the first time in the last decade that he's used bold action to get us to rethink content policies. -- phoebe ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content
Hi, On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 7:45 AM, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: Commons, Wikiquote and Wikisource has by themselves no educational value. They gain their educational value in the way that they provide repositories for the other WMF projects. Wikisource is the library of Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wikiversity and Wikispecies. Excuse me? -- Guillaume Paumier [[m:User:guillom]] ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Reflections on the recent debates
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 9:24 AM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Most of the egregiously bad deletions were quickly overturned, and Jimmy was the one re-deleting the images. Now that he has agreed to stop, most of the poor deletions have been re-reversed. I doubt Jimmy approves; there's absolutely nothing in his actions over the past few days to suggest that he does. I think you do Jimmy a disservice if you think he did not anticipate precisely this result. To the extent that Jimmy's intervention has triggered a healthy debate about policy, I think the powers he used, and the decisions -- not individually but taken as a whole -- that he made are justified. Huh. I never thought I'd see the day that Mike Godwin would be supporting an attack on free speech and free ideas through censorship. You're misunderstanding what I wrote here. The words not individually were chosen for a reason. Let me put it this way -- sometimes a police officer has to use physical force to stop further violence from having. If you inferred from this statement that that I favor police intervention as a first resort, or that I favor physical force, you would properly be criticized as misrepresenting my views. Similarly, I don't favor attacks on free speech -- but like Nat Hentoff and other free-speech theorists, I recognize that free speech depends on active intervention and rule-making sometimes. I know you are trying to be provocative, but what you write here suggests that you don't actually understand much of the nuance of free-speech principles. I don't say censorship, lightly: Jimmy deliberately deleted historical pieces of art and illustrations in his rampage. And you think this is a good thing? No. Mike, it looks like you've compromised your ideals in favor of toeing the party line, and for that, I'm pretty disappointed. It is inconceivable to me that you have ever not been disappointed in me. I'm familiar with your other writings, after all. It is your nature to be disappointed. --Mike ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo Wales acting outside his remit
And we are about to be presented in all responsible free culture media as having acted as if such false accusations were true. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 9:24 AM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: Note however, We were about to be smeared in all media as hosting hardcore pornography with zero educational value and doing nothing about it. Fred Bauder Further, Mr. Wales: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AJimbo_Walesaction=historysubmitdiff=38935852oldid=38935659 Here, you remove about four pages of requests that you stop your behaviour without commenting on them, saying you know better than the community. You're a dsigrace. ___ 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] Reflections on the recent debates
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 9:34 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: On 8 May 2010 16:48, Mike Godwin mnemo...@gmail.com wrote:Most of the debate has been about Jimmy, not about Commons policy on non-educational images. So fix it. --Mike ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Reflections on the recent debates
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Sydney Poore sydney.po...@gmail.com wrote: I fully endorse every aspect of Mike Godwin's comment. The Boards statement makes it clear that their view is that Community discussion is needed to find long term solutions to the issue. And that not censored should not be used to halt discussions about the way to manage content. The clean up project initiated by Jimmy on Commons has brought much needed attention to a long standing problem. Now is the time for the Community to focus on cleaning up Commons and writing a sensible policy about managing sexual content. I think the question weighing heavily on everyone's mind is why Wikimedia didn't simply ask for this first before taking such direct and hasty intervention? I've not personally seen _too much_ of the not censored being used to halt discussion, commons does mostly have a working understanding that there are compromises— though the compromises have largely fallen too far to one side in my opinion. Simply re-emphasizing educational resource and not a porn host would probably have been enough to spur action at commons, even though that wouldn't be enough to move some of the less well functioning communities, and it would avoid the current drama, and the disruption and damage to the projects as in-use images were deleted out from under them. On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 12:40 PM, Mike Godwin mnemo...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 9:34 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: On 8 May 2010 16:48, Mike Godwin mnemo...@gmail.com wrote:Most of the debate has been about Jimmy, not about Commons policy on non-educational images. So fix it. Moreover, Jimmy specifically directed us not to discuss these deletions until June 1st. This is hardly a good way to assist in writing a sensible policy. On the subject of a sensible policy, Sydney, perhaps you could direct us to the EnWP policy that makes short work of this issue? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Reflections on the recent debates
On 8 May 2010 17:40, Mike Godwin mnemo...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 9:34 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: On 8 May 2010 16:48, Mike Godwin mnemo...@gmail.com wrote:Most of the debate has been about Jimmy, not about Commons policy on non-educational images. So fix it. I'm flattered that you think I have that level of influence, but I don't. We can't have a good discussion about policy until people aren't being distracted by Jimmy, and I can't do anything about that. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Reflections on the recent debates
on 5/8/10 12:21 PM, Mike Godwin at mnemo...@gmail.com wrote: I believe you misunderstand both what Jimmy was trying to do, and what the consequences of it are. I could elaborate on this, and will be happy to do so privately, but as I said, I think focusing on Jimmy means missing an opportunity to do something constructive. Mike, please stop and listen. The Community, which is the heart and soul of this very Project, is ventilating, and making some extremely important points. Please stop trying to control, and re-direct, this dialogue in a more Foundation-comfortable direction. Listen and Learn. Marc Riddell ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content
Disagreed. Those free licensed (or sometimes public domain) content on Commons, Wikiquote and Wikisource are not only cited on Wikimedia wikis but on third parties' publifications: from websites to books and magazines. They help to spread a sum of human being knowledge per se, not just repositories to other wikimedia wikis. On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 11:45 PM, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: Commons, Wikiquote and Wikisource has by themselves no educational value. They gain their educational value in the way that they provide repositories for the other WMF projects. Wikisource is the library of Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wikiversity and Wikispecies. The volumes collected in it should be judged with the same principle as the media files in Commons. Ting Victor Vasiliev wrote: On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 11:30 PM, Michael Snow wikipe...@verizon.net wrote: Having said that, the Wikimedia projects are intended to be educational in nature, and there is no place in the projects for material that has no educational or informational value. I'd like to point out that we already have a project where most information has no educational value. It's called Wikisource and materials there are primarily of artistic value, not educational or information one. Since I basically support the idea that one of Wikimedia Commons aims is to collect as much notable works of art as possible, I view it as a Wikisource for visual arts and music. Should we expect Wikisource to be cleaned up as well? Does Foundation feel need to host such highly disputed works as [1] or [2]? --vvv [1] http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lady_Chatterley's_Lover [2] http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Fanny_Hill:_Memoirs_of_a_Woman_of_Pleasure ___ 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 -- KIZU Naoko http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese) Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board members positions toward Jimmy's last action
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 12:37 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: I don't disagree, but I meant what I said about *single* most important issue! And I'm not sure that's how I'd frame it. The board statement seemed pretty clear; reaffirming existing policy. I guess it depends a bit on what capacity you think Jimmy was acting in; this is not the first time in the last decade that he's used bold action to get us to rethink content policies. This depends on which us you're speaking about. Jimmy is basically unheard of on commons, except by the English speaking audience that knows him via English Wikipedia. He has never intervened on commons, as far as I know, — he only had some 30 edits or so at the time this began. Likewise for most of the other Wikipedias which this event has impacted. As far as which capacity, I think Jimmy's own statements make this abundantly clear regardless of what the PR spin says: I am fully willing to change the policies for adminship (including removing adminship in case of wheel warring on this issue)., I am in constant communication with both the board and Sue Gardner about this issue, and Some things are simply going to be non-negotiable. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
