Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians
Glad to read this question here, have often wondered about this myself.
User:Emelian1977, an African American PhD student named Brenton Stewart,
conducted a survey of Black American Wikipedians in 2008. I can only find a
short write-up of his study online:
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http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:v_96mBI74-MJ:ocs.sfu.ca/aoir/index.php/ir/10/paper/view/185+%22Brenton+Stewart%22+black+wikipediacd=5hl=enct=clnkgl=uk
Paper 2: Working for Free: Motivations Behind Black Contributions to the
Wikipedia Project
The dirty little secret of the Internet is that it’s built upon free labor.
Internet labor exists in a unique dualism in that the production and
reproduction of web and social networking sites as well as the design of
some computer games and software are manifest as entertainment, leisure or
hobbyist escapism - but not as labor. Greg Downey (2001) argues that this
type of “flexible labor is hard to see” noting that “the commodification of
the virtual serves to mystify the material.” Few entities in the new
digital economy have capitalized upon this form of labour extraction better
than the Wikipedia Project, the world’s first peer-produced online
encyclopedia. However, Wikipedia’s sole reliance on unpaid laborers means
that it reflects the interests and biases of these contributors who are
overwhelmingly homogeneous. This study is a descriptive investigation into
the factors that influence African American contributions to the Wikipedia
project. Situated within Tiziana Terranova’s (2001) social-factory theory
this research seeks to understand the role of racial/ethnic identification
as a motivator, Wikipedia as a space for the extension of black
volunteerism, and the topics most frequently edited by this community of
Wikipedians.
The findings suggest that while these Wikipedians contribute
as a form of entertainment and support for the democratization of
information they are also motivated by their racial/ethnic identity, highly
cognizant of their minority status and tended to view their edits (labor)
as a transgressive act that is ultimately beneficial to the black
community. This research argues the social-factory forms the foundation of
not only Wikipedia but also a multitude of online peer-produced communities
such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. What is most significant about these
communities is that their end product, the cultural knowledge of the
masses, is freely given and results in enormous revenue for their parent
companies. This investigation contributes to diverse literature including
media and library information studies as well as cyber and community
activism.
---o0o---
I'll let that stand there without comment; there are obviously several
ways one can look at that.
I know of at least one African American admin on en:WP, but only a handful
of other black Wikipedians. A while ago I took part in discussions at
[[Ancient Egyptian race controversy]]; my impression was that black editors
there were given quite a hard time -- resistance to including works by
black scholars, because they were deemed unreliable, etc., the standard
POV stuff. I tried to help out for a while, but then got sidetracked.
The influx of Indian editors will be an interesting challenge. I firmly
expect that at some point over the next 10 or 20 years, Indian editors will
have something like numerical parity with Western editors. At the moment,
being in a minority, they have trouble getting their points across.
Look at [[British Empire]] for example, which paints a fairly rosy picture
of colonialism which would be considered ridiculously POV in India, or at
[[Famine in India]], an article written with a more Indian POV, where some
of the same opponents are battling it out. What's NPOV depends on whether
you allow Indian sources or stick to Western sources.
On top of it, an en:WP bureaucrat recently blocked an Indian editor in good
standing without prior warning and without talk page notice, for 2 weeks,
for trolling and pov pushing at British Empire and talk (currently at
AN/I). Same crat also commented to another admin on their talk page,
---o0o---
How the WMF sees India as the new goldmine and is making a big din there
with speaking tours and likes. More like a goldmine of copyvio, ethnic and
religious fundamentalist POV. There will be a flood of dudes like
{{User|X}} if their initiative works, which'll be funny. As you can see on
the mailing list, which is public, all these leaders are queueing, IPL-
style feeding frenzy. X is after me, lol
---o0o---
The other day, the same crat appeared to call another Indian editor a
retarded nationalist in an edit summary, never showed up for the
resulting AN/I thread, and escaped without any sanction whatsoever.
A few mostly Indian editors have recently argued that the article
[[Ganges]] should be renamed [[Ganga]], as that is now the river's official
name in India. Now, to be sure, this is not
Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians
If the Foundation wanted to enquire, or do something about the relative dearth of African American editors, a good person to contact would probably be Henry Louis Gates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Louis_Gates He's a Harvard professor, famous for having been arrested on the front porch of his own house by a white policeman who thought he was a burglar. More saliently, he is noted as the author of Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience He also co-founded The Root, an African American online magazine http://www.theroot.com/ There are lots of search hits for Wikipedia on theroot.com, so it's not like black people don't read it. Andreas ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians
jayen...@yahoo.com wrote: So I think one reason why we don't see more diversity is that the established, predominantly white user base is giving editors from other backgrounds a pretty hard time! You could also add in the photo of the bare chested African adolescent that was proposed as a suitable image for the 'Primate' article. The above aside the problem with a NPOV is that it is really the dominate POV. That maybe OK when talking about a flat earth, but people from other parts of the world can have a fundamentally different POV on may subjects than that found amongst a predominately young white middle class western males. Not least of which will be the concept of 'free culture' perverted by Libertarians. These societies have practised 'free culture' of 100s of years and been exploited by the commercialism of that culture by western elites for the last 150 years. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians
On 22 November 2010 11:10, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com wrote: Glad to read this question here, have often wondered about this myself. User:Emelian1977, an African American PhD student named Brenton Stewart, conducted a survey of Black American Wikipedians in 2008. I can only find a short write-up of his study online: Post of the year. This is incredibly important and I advise forwarding it everywhere. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation Ombudsman
On 22 November 2010 07:26, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: David Gerard wrote: What are some examples of particular current problems that you feel this position would fix? I'm not sure I agree that this position is designed to fix any current problems. The task of fixing the problems lies with those currently in power at the Wikimedia Foundation. However, in order to address problems, problems must be clearly defined. That can be the role of an ombudsman. Like most ombudsman positions, the task inside the Wikimedia Foundation would be to point out the problems and encourage discussion of them (cf. National Public Radio Ombudsman's blog). OK, no particular current problems, but you think that it might be worth putting into place in general. I was thinking in terms of if there's no particular problems in need of solving, then there's no reason to create a new position. But as you point out, there are working examples in other nonprofits that make media, which does make the idea seem more likely to be a useful one. Why is this particular proposed position the tool to fix them? Sometimes it's best to look at how other organizations have addressed an issue and take lessons away from them. There isn't a need to always reinvent the wheel, so to speak. It seems like an accepted practice among reputable organizations to implement an ombudsman position. That's a plausible purpose, yes. Is there a reason you think an ombudsman position would not work at Wikimedia? Not that springs to mind. How do you envision this tool working in your example problems? One proposed idea is to have a Wikimedia fellow fill the position. There are other solutions for implementing this idea, but there are issues of cart and horse order, I think. Looking at existing models would probably be the first thing to do. MOVED: Mzmcbride to assemble report. ;-p The original e-mail was asking if there had been past discussion about this idea or if there any virtue to it. You seem to have not answered either question. :-) I couldn't think of any and I didn't know of any, hence asking for more detail on what you were thinking of. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] What can we do? (was: Copyright terms, again)
On 22 November 2010 03:18, Yann Forget yan...@gmail.com wrote: BTW, I am looking for financial support, or some free hosting solution. My idea was and still is that this project should be managed by a community, not by myself alone. I am open to any proposition. Sounds like something that would fit nicely with Wikimedia Canada. Though could be an independent body. In which case, you will need to start a charity and do nuts-and-bolts organisational work :-) Your About page doesn't say anything about the infrastructure of the project. It may be useful to it to put up details on the site and post them here. Who, where, what it costs to run, how to donate, how to help, etc. I know Project Gutenberg Australia operates separately from PG US for the same purpose, i.e. different works being out of copyright. Perhaps some hints or tips from them. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians
If the Foundation wanted to enquire, or do something about the relative dearth of African American editors, a good person to contact would probably be Henry Louis Gates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Louis_Gates He's a Harvard professor, famous for having been arrested on the front porch of his own house by a white policeman who thought he was a burglar. More saliently, he is noted as the author of Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience He also co-founded The Root, an African American online magazine http://www.theroot.com/ There are lots of search hits for Wikipedia on theroot.com, so it's not like black people don't read it. Andreas The Root is open to broad public participation. And has an active comment section attached to their articles, a good opportunity to add your comment and relate the topic to the Wikipedia article on the subject, see for example: http://www.theroot.com/views/four-loko-hysteria-smack-classism Fred Bauder ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians
On 22 November 2010 05:00, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 22 November 2010 11:10, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@yahoo.com wrote: Glad to read this question here, have often wondered about this myself. User:Emelian1977, an African American PhD student named Brenton Stewart, conducted a survey of Black American Wikipedians in 2008. I can only find a short write-up of his study online: Post of the year. This is incredibly important and I advise forwarding it everywhere. You're right, David. It's a fabulous, informative post that raises important issues. Thanks, Andreas. Sue ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Innovative Chrome extension
For those who miss Jimmy while surfing other sites. https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/idkjdjficifbfjjkdkiimioljbloddpl ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Photo contests in DE and NL
Hello, A coincidence: last weekend, in Germany and the Netherlands both the winners of photo contests were made public. In Germany the Zedler Medaille jury gave no first and second prize, while in the Netherlands the competition Wiki loves monuments honoured quite a number of winners. (In English about the Dutch gathering: http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/2010/11/21/mini-conference-in-utrecht/ ) Maybe the Zedler criteria were not made clear enough to the participants, I don't know. In the Dutch case, I was stunned and positively impressed by the straight forward application of three simple criteria: the picture had to be clear (focused etc.), encyclopedic and beautiful. The Dutch winner is this picture: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestand:Amsterdam_-_Vijzelstraat_27-35_%28halsgevel%29.JPG It may not meet the requirements of a purely technically or esthetically oriented jury. But it has great encyclopedic value. It shows the monument, a 17th century building in Amsterdam, in its actual modern use. On the right, you see an old picture of how the building looked like earlier. The advertisement for light bulb and the gentlemen dressed in modern leisure related fashion fix the picture into our modern times. Kind regards Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians
On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 4:13 AM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 2:05 PM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: For some time I am a bit puzzled by the fact that I don't know any African American Wikimedian. For some time just because I am living in a European country without African population, so everything seemed to me quite normal for a long time. I tried to make a parallel between Roma people and African Americans, but it is not a good one. It is very hard to find a Roma with university degree. At the other side, two former State Secretaries are African Americans and present US president is almost, too. What are the reasons? Why American Wikimedian community is exclusively white? Maybe the answer to that question would give us an idea what should we solve to get more contributors. The short answer: snip this seems like a whole lot of unfounded (and fairly offensive) generalizations? If you're really making a class-based argument, then yes, I think the privileges of having free time, a decent education and good internet access are all class-correlated to some extent and are all likely prerequisites for becoming a Wikipedian -- and that's applicable everywhere. But class cuts across ethnicity and gender; you can make the same arguments about poor white people, or whoever. (For what it's worth, I grew up in a rural area that was lily-white but very poor, and very poorly educated; urban demographics aren't the only part of the U.S. to consider). These generalizations would still apply had we been talking about the Na'vi People. :) What we are discussing is more of a social issue than an inherent systemic bias in the guiding philosophy of the project or the software. The barriers to becoming a long-term Wikipedia contributor are very low for a developed country like the United States viz. education, electricity, computer and an internet connection. On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 3:35 AM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: The short answer: Wikipedia editors are volunteers and African-Americans rarely volunteer. Apart from the evidence Phoebe put up,* it could be that African-Americans do not formally register themselves for volunteering programmes. However, they probably have more pressing needs and priorities than contributing to Wikimedia projects. *http://www.volunteeringinamerica.gov/assets/resources/FactSheetFinal.pdf The medium answer: African-American editors often edit only articles which relate to African-American and do that in a point of view way. I am quite convinced, that is what I have personally witnessed over the last few years. The long answer: large blocks of African-American are oppressed, unemployed, poorly educated, and computer illiterate. Those that are educated and prosperous tend to be too busy, and as said, are not in the habit of volunteering. Absolutely, a large number of African-Americans are very poor and semi-literate; they make up 14% of the US population and receive 37% of its welfare payments. This has got nothing to do with race, first and second generation immigrants from Asia and even black immigrants from countries like Jamaica are relatively better off than African-American families that have been citizens for generations and feeding off welfare without any change in their social circumstances. The culprit is welfarism, not black culture (as some other commentators refer to). Cultures are often a symptom of the political systems they exist in. All that said, we need to be as welcoming as possible, create good Wikipedia editing projects for them to plug into, and reach out when the opportunity arises. Agreed. :) On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 12:14 AM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: Inside of the other private email I've got an interesting data related to Twitter usage. American Twitter population consists 25% of African Americans, which is more than twice more than their population [13]. Contributing to our projects requires more than a computer and lulz. Wikipedia is serious business. :) What I mean to say is that we will tend to attract serious contributors compared to any social networking website that is chiefly used for entertainment. anirudh ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Corporate Social Responsibility
A couple quick points: * Average rent for an apartment in San Francisco is $2,282/month. If you exclude the neighborhoods where you're likely to get shot, it's more like $2500-$3000. * I believe Salary and other compensation includes payment to contractors, of which we currently have about 20-30 (which aren't counted as employees). If you factor those in you may understand why I spend over 50% of my paycheck on rent, commute 45 minutes to work, drive a car from 1973, and eat microwave burritos. Either that or my western, capitalist, materialist and proprietary cultural bias has gone seriously haywire :) Ryan Kaldari On 11/20/10 4:16 AM, Fred Bauder wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 19/11/2010 21:31, Risker wrote: The last one is for the fiscal year ending June 2009, and was filed on 29 April 2010. Link: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/5/54/WMF_2008_2009_Form_990.pdf The section on salaries begins on Page 7. Thank you for the links. I'm consulting the 990 form for 2008-2009 right now [1]. Sadly, I already have questions: Item 15 of page 1 says: Salaries, other compensation, employee benefits: Current year (2008-2009): 2,073,313 dollars. (By the way, the annual report states another number: 2,257,621$. Why?) With 26 employees declared at that time, it gives a mean salary of 6645$ a month for each employee. Isn't it morally a little high for a non-profit organization and unfair towards the current 80 000 volunteers? Also, at page 7, three major compensations are described: Sue Gardner was compensated 175050$ (equivalent to a monthly 14587$ income) Veronique Kessler was compensated 121859$ (equivalent to a monthly 10155$ income) Mike Godwin was compensated 128139$ (equivalent to a monthly 10678$ income). I don't live in the USA, but I'm surprised about these numbers. Frank Bauer estimates that they don't have the money to begin to pay for such services at market rate. The fact that this is legal or traditional is beside my point. Though I'm willing to listen and understand the Foundation's way of thinking, I'd like to express that for the cultural and ethical grounds from where I come, it is unacceptable for someone to profit from volunteers' efforts and from donations aimed at a cause. I'm not saying this is the case, but I would gladly receive insightful answers because I'm currently at loss about what to think of the Foundation. Top law school graduates in the United States are offered salaries in that range for their first job. It is a modest salary for highly experienced counsel as are the other salaries disclosed. Fred Bauder ___ 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] Corporate Social Responsibility
In a message dated 11/22/2010 10:33:53 AM Pacific Standard Time, rkald...@wikimedia.org writes: * I believe Salary and other compensation includes payment to contractors, of which we currently have about 20-30 (which aren't counted as employees). Why so many, and contractors generally make much more than employees. Why not get rid of some of those and hire more employees? I know of a lot of people looking for work. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Commons-l] Wikidata
(also including foundation-l as this isn't really a commons-specific discussion) On 22 Nov 2010, at 21:04, Samuel Klein wrote: A wikidata project could use semantic mediawiki from the outset, and be seeded with data from dbpedia. A lot of existing proposed projects would benefit from a centralised wikidata project. e.g. a genealogy wiki could use the relationships stored on the wikidata project. wikisource and commons could use the central data wiki for their Author and Creator details. +1 Could this be part of dbpedia? dbpedia is about collating the information available on Wikipedia and providing that as a database for others to use. This is about having a central information store that can be edited to add information. Whilst dbpedia could seed wikidata, they're very different projects in the way they would operate. In my opinion, the Wikimedia Foundation should very seriously look into starting something like wikidata. I don't suppose there's a facilitator that could be hired that knows about Wikimedia sufficiently to facilitate an on-wiki discussion and formation of a comprehensive proposal to start this project, including bringing together the various people interested in this project? Mike Peel ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Corporate Social Responsibility
On 11/22/2010 1:08 PM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: In a message dated 11/22/2010 11:31:50 AM Pacific Standard Time, wikipe...@frontier.com writes: On 11/22/2010 10:47 AM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: In a message dated 11/22/2010 10:33:53 AM Pacific Standard Time, rkald...@wikimedia.org writes: * I believe Salary and other compensation includes payment to contractors, of which we currently have about 20-30 (which aren't counted as employees). Why so many, and contractors generally make much more than employees. Why not get rid of some of those and hire more employees? I know of a lot of people looking for work. And I know of some positions they're welcome to apply for if they have suitable qualifications: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings Aside from that, staffing decisions are not simply something that gets flipped around at will. In some cases, Wikimedia contractors have that status because it would be prohibitively difficult to treat them as employees (some staff located abroad, for example). Others are hired for specific time-limited projects which it makes more sense to do on a contract basis (Eugene Eric Kim for the strategy project, for instance). Also, the notion that contractors generally make much more than employees seems to ignore the fact that this bucket is labeled Salary *and other compensation* (meaning things such as health or retirement benefits). How does 20-30 contractors equate to the 10 open positions listed? It seems short to me. I didn't suggest that any of the openings are being used to replace contractors, that was just a response to the comment that you know a lot of people who might be interested in such openings. I don't see what logic there is in stating that having an employee abroad is prohibitively difficult but it's not so if they are a contractor. That makes no sense to me. Many countries tie aspects of their social safety net into employer-employee relationships through various regulations, taxation, and reporting obligations. These systems often differ dramatically between jurisdictions, making it quite burdensome to comply with more than one at a time. Not to mention that a jurisdiction may not accept such a relationship unless both parties are based there, meaning that the foundation would have to set up local subsidiaries in order to make non-US contractors employees. (Incidentally, I apologize to all for my earlier reference to staff working abroad without giving geographic context or simply using better terminology.) At which point, it doesn't really make sense to duplicate the overhead already being assumed by the chapters, some of which have begun hiring staff themselves. Shifting people to chapter employment might address some cases, but it's still a different situation from working directly for the Wikimedia Foundation. If WMF is truly adding wages paid to contractors into the Salary and other compensation bucket I don't think this is G.A.A.P. Wages paid to contractors should not be treated the same as salary paid to employees for the purpose of annual reports like this. That is, they should not be lumped together in this sort of bucket. I thought your complaint was that contractors are being paid too much, not that they are being counted in the wrong place. They aren't - as a member of the audit committee, I have full confidence that the Wikimedia Foundation's tax reports are using the appropriate categories for expenses. Ryan may have been in error about whether payments to contractors were included in the figure quoted (he doesn't work in accounting). That doesn't change the point that the and other compensation includes rather significant expenses beyond simply base salary, which is why hiring contractors involves a different compensation structure. --Michael Snow ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Commons-l] Wikidata
On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 8:24 AM, Michael Peel em...@mikepeel.net wrote: Could this be part of dbpedia? dbpedia is about collating the information available on Wikipedia and providing that as a database for others to use. This is about having a central information store that can be edited to add information. Whilst dbpedia could seed wikidata, they're very different projects in the way they would operate. I agree. In my opinion, the Wikimedia Foundation should very seriously look into starting something like wikidata. I don't suppose there's a facilitator that could be hired that knows about Wikimedia sufficiently to facilitate an on-wiki discussion and formation of a comprehensive proposal to start this project, including bringing together the various people interested in this project? As it is the first new project in quite a long time, having a WMF staff member assigned to it would be brilliant. As this would/should involve the first deployment of semantic mediawiki by WMF, it would be good for that someone to already experienced with semantic medawiki. -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Corporate Social Responsibility
In a message dated 11/22/2010 2:10:05 PM Pacific Standard Time, wikipe...@frontier.com writes: They aren't - as a member of the audit committee, I have full confidence that the Wikimedia Foundation's tax reports are using the appropriate categories for expenses. So auditing is now about confidence ? Something seems wrong with an audit committee who is trusting who they are auditing. Isn't the very point of auditing, to not have trust and blind faith? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Corporate Social Responsibility
On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 5:42 PM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: In a message dated 11/22/2010 2:10:05 PM Pacific Standard Time, wikipe...@frontier.com writes: They aren't - as a member of the audit committee, I have full confidence that the Wikimedia Foundation's tax reports are using the appropriate categories for expenses. So auditing is now about confidence ? Something seems wrong with an audit committee who is trusting who they are auditing. Isn't the very point of auditing, to not have trust and blind faith? I think you misunderstood his point, even though it did not seem unclear. It's perfectly reasonable for someone to have confidence in their own work, which in this case is the work of the audit committee to determine the completeness, accuracy and legal sufficiency of financial reporting. Nathan ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Commons-l] Wikidata
As it is the first new project in quite a long time, having a WMF staff member assigned to it would be brilliant. As this would/should involve the first deployment of semantic mediawiki by WMF, it would be good for that someone to already experienced with semantic medawiki. Agree. Starting using SMW for a brand new project for data could solve all the issues that prevented it to be used until now? Hope it could. it would be extremely helpful for project like Commons and Wikisource (just talking about data now) Aubrey. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Commons-l] Wikidata
On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 5:31 PM, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 8:24 AM, Michael Peel em...@mikepeel.net wrote: Could this be part of dbpedia? dbpedia is about collating the information available on Wikipedia and providing that as a database for others to use. This is about having a central information store that can be edited to add information. Whilst dbpedia could seed wikidata, they're very different projects in the way they would operate. I agree. In my opinion, the Wikimedia Foundation should very seriously look into starting something like wikidata. I don't suppose there's a facilitator that could be hired that knows about Wikimedia sufficiently to facilitate an on-wiki discussion and formation of a comprehensive proposal to start this project, including bringing together the various people interested in this project? +1 Definitely want to see this implemented for Wikimedia. We had a bunch of related strategy proposals calling for us to do something like this: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Data.wikimedia.org http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Data-driven_content http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Structured_Data more... We have our own data like coordinates that would be great to share across projects. Seeing governments and organisations (e.g. http://data.worldbank.org/, http://data.gov, http://data.gov.uk/ ...) jumping in on doing *open* data, we have an opportunity make use of it for infoboxes, charts, etc. Then, there's geodata from OpenStreetMap and elsewhere... -Katie (@aude) As it is the first new project in quite a long time, having a WMF staff member assigned to it would be brilliant. As this would/should involve the first deployment of semantic mediawiki by WMF, it would be good for that someone to already experienced with semantic medawiki. -- John Vandenberg ___ 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] [Commons-l] Wikidata
On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Andrea Zanni zanni.andre...@gmail.comwrote: As it is the first new project in quite a long time, having a WMF staff member assigned to it would be brilliant. As this would/should involve the first deployment of semantic mediawiki by WMF, it would be good for that someone to already experienced with semantic medawiki. Agree. Starting using SMW for a brand new project for data could solve all the issues that prevented it to be used until now? Hope it could. it would be extremely helpful for project like Commons and Wikisource (just talking about data now) Aubrey. SMW would have to be completely redesigned for use in a project with millions of pages and millions of attributes where arbitrary queries are possible. - Brian ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Corporate Social Responsibility
I started this thread to discuss Wikimedia's CSR. Unfortunately, people are now debating salaries for the major part of this thread... ~Abbas. Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2010 17:53:32 -0500 From: nawr...@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Corporate Social Responsibility On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 5:42 PM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote: In a message dated 11/22/2010 2:10:05 PM Pacific Standard Time, wikipe...@frontier.com writes: They aren't - as a member of the audit committee, I have full confidence that the Wikimedia Foundation's tax reports are using the appropriate categories for expenses. So auditing is now about confidence ? Something seems wrong with an audit committee who is trusting who they are auditing. Isn't the very point of auditing, to not have trust and blind faith? I think you misunderstood his point, even though it did not seem unclear. It's perfectly reasonable for someone to have confidence in their own work, which in this case is the work of the audit committee to determine the completeness, accuracy and legal sufficiency of financial reporting. Nathan ___ 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] The Signpost – Volume 6, Issu e 47 – 22 November 2010
News and notes: No further Bundesarchiv image donations; Dutch and German awards; anniversary preparations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-11-22/News_and_notes In the news: Jimbo Wales interviewed and parodied; Wikipedia in politics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-11-22/In_the_news Book review: The Myth of the Britannica, by Harvey Einbinder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-11-22/Book_review WikiProject report: WikiProject College Football http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-11-22/WikiProject_report Features and admins: The best of the week http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-11-22/Features_and_admins Election report: Candidates still stepping forward http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-11-22/Election_report Arbitration report: Brews ohare site-banned; climate change topic-ban broadened http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-11-22/Arbitration_report Technology report: Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-11-22/Technology_report Single page view http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signpost/Single PDF version http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-11-22 http://identi.ca/wikisignpost / https://twitter.com/wikisignpost -- Wikipedia Signpost Staff http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Commons-l] Wikidata
On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 10:17 AM, Brian J Mingus brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Andrea Zanni zanni.andre...@gmail.comwrote: As it is the first new project in quite a long time, having a WMF staff member assigned to it would be brilliant. As this would/should involve the first deployment of semantic mediawiki by WMF, it would be good for that someone to already experienced with semantic medawiki. Agree. Starting using SMW for a brand new project for data could solve all the issues that prevented it to be used until now? Hope it could. it would be extremely helpful for project like Commons and Wikisource (just talking about data now) Aubrey. SMW would have to be completely redesigned for use in a project with millions of pages and millions of attributes where arbitrary queries are possible. What limitations would be useful to get the project off the ground? Some ideas: The data project is initially only used/queried by Wikipedia projects, and then cached on the Wikipedia side The data project is initially limited to only geographic entities. -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Photo contests in DE and NL
Good Job ! We were inspired by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:GerardM who Spoke the freesb.eu conf in Vlore Albania and motivated us to start our own Photo Contest for Kosovo. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/BestPictureOfKosovoForWikipediaContestThere is still alot to do, most of the activity is on Facebook, but we are slowly getting people to free pictures up for commons under a creative commons license. Any who wants to help nominate pictures or review them would be great. thanks, mike On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 5:36 PM, Ziko van Dijk zvand...@googlemail.comwrote: Hello, A coincidence: last weekend, in Germany and the Netherlands both the winners of photo contests were made public. In Germany the Zedler Medaille jury gave no first and second prize, while in the Netherlands the competition Wiki loves monuments honoured quite a number of winners. (In English about the Dutch gathering: http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/2010/11/21/mini-conference-in-utrecht/ ) Maybe the Zedler criteria were not made clear enough to the participants, I don't know. In the Dutch case, I was stunned and positively impressed by the straight forward application of three simple criteria: the picture had to be clear (focused etc.), encyclopedic and beautiful. The Dutch winner is this picture: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestand:Amsterdam_-_Vijzelstraat_27-35_%28halsgevel%29.JPG It may not meet the requirements of a purely technically or esthetically oriented jury. But it has great encyclopedic value. It shows the monument, a 17th century building in Amsterdam, in its actual modern use. On the right, you see an old picture of how the building looked like earlier. The advertisement for light bulb and the gentlemen dressed in modern leisure related fashion fix the picture into our modern times. Kind regards Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- James Michael DuPont Member of Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova and Albania flossk.org flossal.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Ethics (was: Corporate Social Responsibility)
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 What I thought was a simple question has generated a volley of strong answers, even some hostility. This was not the original topic. So I will wrap my intervention and be gone for a while. ==Representation== As far as I know, there is no survey of the wikimedians on what they think about the transparency of the Foundation and about the salaries of the employees. From my side, I always ask people what they think. In my life I listened to people of all ethnics and social classes from any country. So I'm doing an educated guess, based on my eclectic experiences and relationships, about the Foundation (and possibly the Chapters) not representing the consensus of the community (*). But don't throw your stones yet, and answer to yourself three questions: Do you care about what the community thinks? Do you have information about what it thinks? Is your circle of relationships and culture a good sample of the people concerned by the wikipedia project? Apparently, most of the people in this mailing list are living in one of the most expensive microcosmos of the world, with the highest standards of life. In contrast, the drama about having microwaved food and an old car is incomprehensible to 6 billions of people. I do understand it, though, but your views need to be challenged. Instead of explaining how normal, justified and even lowly paid is your way of life, did anyone put things in a bigger perspective? 150 000$ a year puts someone in the 0.33% top of the world [1]. Even 5000$ a month puts you in the 0.91% top. I'm not aiming at any individual in particular but showing the economical elitism of the Foundation in the worldwide context. And by the way, as a contrasting sidenote to the declarations made on this list about the price of legal advising, some associations do it for free [2]. All I'm asking here, is whether this approach was ever considered and tried? ==Ethics== The dozens of thousands of dedicated volunteers prove that the mission of Wikipedia is of an ethical essence. It is thus mandatory for the representatives and leaders to recognize it and share it. Despising or denying the ethical considerations is a mistake which can only end with the disavowing of an informed community. I've been wondering for a while how the dedicated volunteers were keeping faith in their abnegation when some people were getting paid for the same work, or worse, for transforming the volunteer work into money - - which I find discouraging and disturbing. It seems that opacity is one of the answers. Things are done discreetly [3][4] and confidentially [5]. Unless the Foundation aims to transform the Wikipedia into a rich-countries-centered money-making-machine, (and the doubling of the paid staff for a doubling of the fundraising is quite ambiguous to interpret), compliance with legal requirements will not suffice: I don't see other path than ethical consciousness to authentically reach all mankind. I've been asked to suggest concrete proposals. This would be useless as long as there is a majoritary denial. We can't discuss solutions while there is no awareness of the problem. And this lack of perception should be the first problem to be addressed. Having said that, I will retire from the discussion for a while. I need some perspective too. Once again, bear in mind that I mean no offense. (*): and remember that some - or in fact, most - communities are absent, as the current thread about american-africans shows. [1]: http://www.globalrichlist.com/ [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Freedom_Law_Center [3]: What's hidden in this page? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Book [4]: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_thanks_Virgin_Unite [5]: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaannounce-l/2010-October/69.html -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJM62PUAAoJEHCAuDvx9Z6LWIYH/3XapRiU4VvQABdthjFrAPxu NnJa+9kc/xRa/z25xprbrSojjunn4Cp5XyO3ZwQfiQB9xy31EdZxCT7wiXxxKIE6 bno2iS4kMTR8bWSb35/7yAVMDNQ/jrjAsm4k+sJl5V+mTOs5dIVflB6fyrXIPDBS J9gntD4n68PXnyrbozL1NxlFVgUeCnR6knApxXecBsxEdbReEQHZCQARkxWmNAPY t1QaRTveQXSnmzbVCwj0IoeSHhb0W+wal84Zu5Ljx/+DtpFJfTOqe4isM2sYjVmC VzcYm1d4yFQiGxgMTwd/KAPmwRT8iMYy3TwinJLJRcqeIgL1Krgu6zFjtDOQmZ0= =Ghuu -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
