Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion
On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 3:56 PM, Gregory Kohs thekoh...@gmail.com wrote: I would consider it equally trolling to assume or pretend that an unfortunate financial situation did not happen, just because you haven't taken the time or effort to pay attention to when these issues have been discussed in numerous, varied forums across the Internet. Here are at least a dozen for you, Domas: http://www.google.com/search?hl=ensafe=offq=%22%241.7+million%22+technology+wikimedia+%22sue+gardner%22 I wouldn't consider any of those dozen to be credible or reliable sources. Nobody has a responsibility to monitor the entirety of the internet to follow various discussion minutia or unfounded rumors, and it's not trolling to not assume that responsibility for oneself. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion
You said: ... you haven't taken the time or effort to pay attention to when these issues have been discussed in numerous, varied forums across the Internet To which I replied that it isn't Domus' responsibility to monitor the entire internet for rumors, discussions, and idle speculation about this or that nefarious deed. I could really care less about what Sue has to say about the budget, what you think about what she says about the budget, or what slam dunks you think you're making on these issues. On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 4:11 PM, Gregory Kohs thekoh...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, you certainly wouldn't want to click the first returned result: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Foundation_report_to_the_Board,_May_2008 That link doesn't appear on the first page of results when I click your link. Is it just me, or is there a significant amount of cotton stuffed in many ears around here? This coming from a man who refuses to hear or believe that the WMF is not some evil, conspiratorial, criminal organization who commits fraud and deceit at every turn? Who frivolously and malevolently wastes the hard-earned money of it's donors? Who purposefully employs people of substandard moral fortitude and professional capability? Please let me know when the pot is done calling the kettle black, until then I'll be out back laughing until I hurt. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Moderation needed?
On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 8:25 PM, Gregory Kohs thekoh...@gmail.com wrote: Recently, a participant on this list said, I could really care less about what Sue has to say about the budget. I do not care about the budget. I didn't read the budget, don't know anything about it, and am not interested to learn more about it.It isn't a subject that I find any particular interest in. I see no problem with my honesty about this point. Didn't we have some sort of moderation plan, to give time-outs to people when they step over a line into hostile, disparaging commentary that adds no value to the Wikimedia Foundation mailing list? Sue Gardner deserves more respect than that. My email was intended to address what I considered to be a false and inflammatory comment made previously by another participant, and I believe my response added value to the list as a whole. Furthermore, far from being hostile and disparaging, I thought it to be uplifting for people who try to carry on civil conversations on this list despite the persistent presence of trolls and other negative people. The tolerance with which certain trollish posters are tolerated by the productive majority here is quite inspiring to me, although even with all this inspiration I am not always to deal with these negative elements with as much patience myself. I don't feel that this is a personality flaw on my part. If I have violated the rules or norms of this forum, I will be happy to suffer moderation as penance. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing resolution
On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 9:12 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: What are licensing requirements for Wikibooks and Wikisource? Did they require GFDL or would any free license do, as is the case for Commons? Wikibooks is GFDL-only same as WP. WS is, I believe, more focused on PD material (but I seem to remember they would allow GFDL source too). --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing update vote result
On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 2:14 PM, Sue Gardner susanpgard...@gmail.com wrote: I don't know how many people were eligible to vote in the license migration, but I believe there are currently about 150,000 active editors, if active is defined as a registered user who has made more than five edits in the past month. Either Erik (Moeller or Zachte), or Frank, might be able to confirm that. These numbers make sense to me. 10% voter turnout is relatively low when compared to public elections in general. But then again there aren't too many online votes of this size held among volunteers of charitable organizations, so there isn't a lot of direct precedent to compare to. I doubt any of the larger projects ever get to even 10% turnout for their various community discussions, and important decisions are routinely made in the project with far fewer votes then that. --Andrew Whitworth -Original Message- From: Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk Date: Thu, 21 May 2009 18:47:05 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing Listfoundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing update vote result 2009/5/21 Robert Rohde raro...@gmail.com: I think this is a very good result, in particular the turnout looks great to me! Congratulations to all who have worked hard to get to it, and I hope there will be a board resolution soon. As was commented on elsewhere, the 2008 Board Election only had 3019 votes, which also suggests the turnout this time was remarkable. Do we have a rough estimate of qualifying voters who didn't vote? 17000 is pretty good, but it occurs to me I have no idea how large the editing community really is! -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ 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] [Textbook-l] Another #wikibooks meeting: April 09, 2009 21:00 UTC
Excellent job organizing this, Mike. I can make it at 21:00 UTC, although I might be a little bit late. I hope lots of other people can make it too, since it's at a different time. --Andrew Whitworth On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 6:28 PM, Mike.lifeguard mikelifegu...@fastmail.fm wrote: From the feedback regarding Wikibooks' last meeting, it was generally felt to be worthwhile, so I'd like to have another meeting on Thursday April 9 at 21:00UTC. That's 5PM in Philidelphia, for example. Once again, I've started a section on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikibooks/Community-building for this session with 2 topics to discuss: changing FlaggedRevs configuration and coordinating feedback about Collections. Hopefully people will be able to make it, especially those who couldn't last time. We'll be meeting in #wikibooks on irc.freenode.net as usual. Anyone who's interested can come - listen, participate, whatever! See you there -Mike Mike.lifeguard mikelifegu...@fastmail.fm ___ Textbook-l mailing list textboo...@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Attribution survey, first results
On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 1:11 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 1:02 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: Do we really want to only listen to the opinions of those people actually willing to make a fuss if they don't get their way? We should. If someone isn't willing to make a fuss if they don't get their way, they don't really care in the first place, do they? Ah, so the only people who matter are the immature children who throw temper tantrums while the adults are busy with important work? Interesting concept, although I can see how people who believe this would be tempted to act like immature little children, because there's the expectation that such behavior should yield good results. The people who matter here the most are those that are hard-working, productive, helpful. The people who aren't whining like a tired baby on every mailinglist thread that they find disagreeable. This is a group of people that tend not to make their opinions well-known, but scarcity is directly proportional to importance here. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] FW: [Wikinews-l] Increased incivility at wikinews [en] warning: contains rant
On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 9:32 AM, Marc Riddell michaeldavi...@comcast.net wrote: When will you people finally acknowledge that there is something terribly wrong with the deteriorating level of discourse occurring in the Projects? And this trend is certainly not confined to Wikinews. Take a good, objective look at some of the dialogue occurring on the English Wikipedia. The atmosphere is becoming angrier and more hostile by the day. Not all projects. I'd like to take this opportunity to shamelessly plug Wikibooks, which is as close to utopia as we get here in wiki world. We don't fight, there's very little hostility, and a relatively small number of hardworking users are producing a pretty impressive group of free textbooks. /shameless plug. Projects are self-administering. If you feel the projects are not functioning properly it is the fault of the project, not the fault of the foundation. Get your admins to block your trouble users, and if the admins themselves are causing trouble then petition to have them removed. Everybody wants the WMF hand of god to swing down from the sky and deliver relief to various community problems. It won't happen and it can't possibly work anyway. Change and solutions have to come from within, or they won't come at all. And, Erik, when I broached this subject in a private email conversation with you, you never even acknowledged receipt of that email. What would you have done if we were speaking to each other in person - stare at me in silence? That, alone, speaks volumes. And what response do you want from him? This isn't his problem to solve. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] FW: [Wikinews-l] Increased incivility at wikinews [en] warning: contains rant
On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 10:13 AM, Marc Riddell michaeldavi...@comcast.net wrote: I have been trying for over two years to bring this issue to the serious attention of the powers that be in the English Wikipedia. My messages are met either with a there he goes again attitude, or are not acknowledged at all. Where does one go from there if not the Foundation itself? The foundation is not likely to be able to do anything, even if it is willing (which I doubt). It makes some sense to treat them as the authority figure of last resort, but that isn't reality. If a project so large in size and scope as English Wikipedia is having these problems with hostility and incivility, you're maybe seeing a manifestation of problems in human nature itself. See [[w:Dubar's Number]] for more information about large groups like this. If you can't fix the problem from within English Wikipedia, then the problems are likely to be unfixable. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 9:23 AM, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: Very few articles require a page's worth of credit. Remember even the German has an average of 23.65 edits per page and the midpoint is likely much lower. True. Although as a caveat remember that people aren't going to be publishing/printing a bunch of articles that are stubby or immature. The best articles, and the ones most like to be printed and distributed off of Wikipedia will likely be the ones that the most hands have touched. We aren't interested in the average case of all articles. A better metric would be the average number of edits from among the various good or featured articles, since these are the articles that people are going to want to print/distribute. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Sexual Content on Wikimedia
On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 8:41 AM, David Moran fordmadoxfr...@gmail.com wrote: I think perhaps then the most fundamental disagreement we have is the idea that sexual images equal harm. FMF The two are not necessarily equal. There are plenty of people who, upon finding a nude picture of themselves on Wikipedia, won't be too offended or hurt by it. However, there is the potential for harm in many other cases. Do a google search for girlfriend revenge (if you are old enough to be looking at such stuff, NSFW) and you will see my point: People post private nude images of other people on the internet as an act of hate and revenge. It's also along the same lines as the various celebrity sex tapes that get released: People take these videos in private, they get stolen or released by vengeful ex-lovers, and causes extreme embarrassment for some people. Nude images do not necessarily equal harm by themselves, but they have a higher potential to do so if the uploader is being abusive then most other types of images. A picture of a nude 16 year-old and a picture of a nude 18 year-old person may look very similar, although the former would be considered child pornography and the later would not be. An image intended for private viewing in a romantic couple may appear to show a consenting model, but consenting only in the context of that private relationship. I'm certainly anti-censorship, so I don't advocate deleting all or any nude photographs. However, asking uploaders a few basic questions about their uploaded nudes (is the depicted model above the age of consent? is the depicted model aware that this photograph was taken? Is the depicted model aware that this photo is being uploaded here?) could help a lot of people avoid a lot of problems. Remember, it's not just the WMF who risks potential problems (and admittedly as an ISP the WMF's risk is probably very low), it's the people who are being depicted abusively that are going to have the biggest problems with these images. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Agreement between WMF and O'Reilly Media about Wikipedia: The Missing Manual on Wikipedia?
I hate to say it, but it would probably flourish best on Wikipedia, since there are more knowledgable wikipedians on that site with a vested interest to make the book better. The question is more one of appropriateness, does Wikipedia want to host books, even books about Wikipedia? Wikibooks has policies and structures in place already to manage books like this, Wikipedia would have to write some kind of special exception to every rule to allow this book to exist there. Of course, we have to ask what the authors want too, even if we can move the book to Wikibooks under the GFDL, I don't want to do that if the authors or copyright owners are unhappy with it. --Andrew Whitworth On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 10:57 AM, effe iets anders effeietsand...@gmail.com wrote: Maybe a silly question, but nobody is stopping anyone to copy it to Wikibooks. The question is mainly, should it be deleted from Wikipedia. I agree there with Erik, that this is clearly a community decision. Why not just copy it and see where it flourishes best? Best regards, Lodewijk 2009/1/28 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com 2009/1/28 Chad innocentkil...@gmail.com: On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 8:27 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/1/28 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com: Hoi, You are out of your mind. The author of the book, a respected Wikipedian, can relicense it to anything he likes. Of course he can, but unless he relicenses it under CC-BY-SA (which I can't imagine him not doing, but still), it will need to be deleted. Did you consider asking him? No, we haven't even decided if we are going to switch yet. ___ 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] Open Knowledge Foundation
OKFN hosted an open-textbooks meeting on IRC a while back. I attended, and I think one or two other Wikibookians attended as well. I haven't had any contact with them since, but I've wanted to either host or join another similar meeting with them in the future. --Andrew Whitworth On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 6:48 AM, Lennart Guldbrandsson wikihanni...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, I was recently made aware of this organization: http://www.okfn.org/ with their blog at http://blog.okfn.org/ Have any of you had anything to do with them? Best wishes, Lennart -- Lennart Guldbrandsson, chair of Wikimedia Sverige and press contact for Swedish Wikipedia // ordförande för Wikimedia Sverige och presskontakt för svenskspråkiga Wikipedia ___ 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] Re-licensing
On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 11:37 AM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 11:12 AM, Mike Godwin mgod...@wikimedia.org wrote: I'm sorry, Thomas, but until people learn to use jurisprudential concepts such as moral rights properly, I have a moral obligation to point out where they are used mistakenly. You have a moral obligation? I thought you dismissed morality as a religious belief for which there is no evidence in the physical world. Or is it merely the concept that we ought to give credit to authors that you deem to be religious in nature? This discussion has descended far below the threshold of usefulness now. If there's nothing else to talk about besides thinly-veiled ad hominems and I know more philosophy then you mental masturbation, could this discussion please go off-list? --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikia leasing office space to WMF
On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 2:37 PM, Gregory Kohs thekoh...@gmail.com wrote: I submitted a comment to the blog, but over seven hours later, it is still not published, and there is a history of my questions to that blog being ignored or censored. So, I'm going to ask here, and I'll also advise the list moderators that this message is being copied to members of the press. I don't mean to be pugilistic here, but...so? A blog isn't really a publicly accessible forum, even if some people choose to open theirs as such. Also, which members of the press are you forwarding the traffic to? Could we have more detail, please, on the note that Wikia matched the best offer? Were the other ten higher bidders also given the opportunity to match the best offer? Why was Wikia chosen on a second and adjusted offer basis, rather than choosing the good-faith firm that submitted the lowest offer initially? Was the first low bidder given the chance to further discount their rate? If so, what was their response? If not, why not? I'm not sure it matters, the deal with Wikia provides an interesting opporty for a number of reasons, not just the bottom-line financial ones. Wikia has been doing a lot of work with MediaWiki, especially concerning usuability. Also, there is a location issue that's worth considering too. Close proximity to the WMF headquarters, an as-good-as-best cost, and an opportunity to work near other engineers on a similar project is quite a good package deal that isn't really worth second-guessing. Even if the next 10 closest bidders all matched or beat that same price when given a second chance, they probably could not have matched the other benefits of the Wikia offer. Actually, it's not nepotism. And, there are no uniform laws regarding nepotism. It's potentially worse. Self-dealing, which is what this really smacks of, is covered in case law, judicial opinions, and some statutes. It's like when companies hire new people, they like people with significant experience in the same industry. It's not nepotism to say that you want to work with, and to work near, people who are doing similar work as what you are doing. It's also not nepotism if you aren't showing undo favoritism: Wikia matched the best offer and brings additional value to the deal in a number of other ways that I doubt could be matched by any of the other bidders. We know Wikia was recently laying off workers in the economic downturn. Presumably, Wikia now has excess office space per employee. WMF gets a grant, presumably funded by tax-deductible dollars. Expending that grant on office space is served up to an ostensibly open and fair competitive search among 12 candidate landlords. A lowest bid is received. However, a bidder who happens to have strong personnel ties to the Board of WMF and the Advisory Board of WMF, is given the opportunity to match the lowest bid, which they do, since they have empty office space doing them no good empty. Net result: Tax-advantaged dollars will be transferred to a for-profit corporation with an inside track to the decision-making body of the non-profit organization. It strikes me as fishy, to use a gentle word. It's fishy that the WMF choose a bid that was equal to the best bid financially, and had additional non-financial value as well? That's not fishy, that's good business. Fishy would be if the WMF choose to accept Wikia's bid if it was not equal to the lowest bid on the table (and even then, it might still make sense considering the added value of the Wikia bid). That Wikia may be struggling financially is not surprising in this economy either, so I don't know why you even bring that up. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikia leasing office space to WMF
On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 3:31 PM, Gregory Kohs thekoh...@gmail.com wrote: It would appear that nobody is concerned about giving the landlord a leg up on ITS for-profit competitors by supplying them in particular with a ready feed of intellectual capital in the form of the friendly Stanton-funded developers? Lucky for Wikia, Inc.! I mean, assume good faith all you want, but if I were a biotech firm trying to develop a synthetic blood plasma, boy would I love to have the Red Cross' top research scientists parked in my meeting rooms every day. And PAYING me for the privilege, to boot? That's just gravy. Wikia didn't make the decision, the WMF did. The WMF decided to accept Wikia's bid because of the benefits that the deal brought to the WMF. The fact that Wikia also happens to benefit from the arrangement (while, at the same time, receiving the lowest financial compensation of any of the bidders), is just a nice coincidence for them. You're ignoring the fact that this arrangement is the best deal for the WMF, and is the most efficient and most responsible use of it's funds. Of course, If the WMF instead used their money in a less responsible manner by going with a higher bidding landlord, you'd find fault with that too, wouldn't you Greg? It sounds to me that the (reasonable) criteria that ranked proximity to WMF and cognate activities as high as, or higher than, monthly rental rate rather wired this contract to Wikia, Inc. from the get-go. Kudos for putting on the dutiful show of obtaining 12 separate bids, but the outside world is seeing this for what it is -- a show of equanimity to gloss over a pre-determined outcome. Let's recap: Wikia submitted the LOWEST bid. The deal with Wikia is saving the WMF money, and bringing the WMF additional benefits as well. I don't mind people crying wolf when a real misdeed has been committed, but no such misdeed has occured here. The WMF solicited bids, there were two bids that tied for lowest price, and the WMF selected the option that brought the most value with it. This is good business and responsible use of tax-advantaged dollars. As for Master Bimmler's concerns about the fear imposed by mention of the media watching, it's only natural for someone who has recently and historically been censored for asking pertinent questions, to want some sort of back up to assure him he is not living in a digital version of a Kafkaesque nightmare. If your team would stop censoring WP:BADTHOUGHTS, maybe there wouldn't be such a rush to the media? So all this time it's been our fault that we get trolled? Shame on the victim! --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 8:24 AM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: I'd say the key to this whole relicensing debate is that the positions shouldn't be balanced. It is my firm conviction that you ought not violate some individuals' rights for the good of some other (larger) group of individuals. Thus, the arguments about how difficult and onerous it is to give credit fall on deaf ears. It doesn't matter how difficult it is to credit people. People have a right to be credited, and printing a URL in a book or on a T-shirt or at the end of a movie doesn't cut it. This is especially true because *it's the Wikimedia Foundation's fault* that it's so difficult to track authors in the first place. I personally was arguing for more care to be taken in this space and/or an *opt-in* move to a dual licensing scheme (and adoption of the real name field) *over 4 years ago* (yes Mike, I double-checked this one). The fact that these concerns were ignored for so long *is not the fault of the authors*. Our rights should not be violated or balanced away. Questions: 1) Why doesn't a URL to a comprehensive history list cut it? If anything, I would prefer the URL be used instead of a simple list of pseudonyms because the URL will contain the revision history and will display not only who has edited the page, but also the magnitude of those contributions. Also, the URL doesn't cut out only 5 of the authors from the list when a reuser adds a title page (thus removing all credit from the vast majority of contributors). 2) Printing a small list of pseudonyms of the back of a T-shirt is no more helpful then the illegible legal disclaimers on TV commercials. Sure they satisfy the letter of the law but certainly violate it's spirit. A small comma-separated list tacked on to the end of a printed version, or scribbled on the bottom of a coffee cup may satisfy the letter of the attribution clause, but certainly does not satisfy it's spirit. Is it really better to have a list of authors that may be illegible, not-searchable and not-sortable? Wouldn't attribution be better handled by a well-designed web interface? Is it better for reusers to determine what is the best way to give credit, when we can give credit in a very positive and well thought-out way and let reusers simply tap into that? --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 9:58 AM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: As Thomas said, it requires Internet access, which might not be available. I think it's a bit more than that, though. The credit should be part of the work itself, not external to the work. When you're talking about a website, it's hard to define where the work begins and where it ends, clearly a work can span multiple URLs, and it's essentially meaningless whether or not those URLs have different domain names (at least assuming they are both kept nearly 100% reliable). None of these three things are true with books, T-shirts, or movies (for a movie a URL would be especially obnoxious). As a contributor to these 'ere projects myself, I personally would prefer the less reliable but more informative URL for attribution myself. That's a personal preference only, and I don't see any need to push that on others. Frankly, I don't understand the point of printing a Wikipedia article on a T-shirt in the first place. This is a stupid example I include only for the sake of completeness, because others keep bringing it up. Sure they satisfy the letter of the law but certainly violate it's spirit. A small comma-separated list tacked on to the end of a printed version, or scribbled on the bottom of a coffee cup may satisfy the letter of the attribution clause, but certainly does not satisfy it's spirit. How many authors is a coffee cup going to have? Again, I don't understand why coffee cups are even a consideration. Think about any merchandising opportunity where text from an article is used: T-Shirts, mouse pads, coffee cups, posters, etc. We can't have a policy vis-a-vis attribution that only covers cases where its convenient to follow. If we're going to demand that attribution be treated like an anchor around the necks of our reusers, we need to make that demand uniform. Either that, or we need to recognize that the benefit to easy reuse of our content far outweighs the need to repeat gigantic author lists. Our authors contributed to our projects with the expectation that their content would be freely reusable. Requiring even 2 pages of attributions be included after every article inclusion is a non-free tax on content reuse, and a violation of our author's expectations. Demanding that authors be rigorously attributed despite having no expectations for it, while at the same time violating their expectations of free reuse doesn't quite seem to me to be a good course of action. I think reusers should determine what the best way is to give credit. However, if they can't meet a minimal standard, then they ought to not use the work at all. Letting reusers determine what is the best way is surely a pitfall. You're assuming that miraculously corporate interests are going to be preoccupied with providing proper attribution. If the requirements are too steep, people will either misapply them, abuse them, or ignore them completely. People who want to reuse our content will find themselves unable, and authors who could have gotten some attribution (even if not ideal) will end up with none. Requiring more attribution for our authors will have the effect of having less provided. Do you think this is really going to provide a benefit to our contributors? --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 10:56 AM, Sam Johnston s...@samj.net wrote: Please consider this, especially in light of recent research that shows that most Wikipedia contributors contribute from egoistic reasons ;) Wikipedia is a community and those who contribute to it for egotistic rather than altruistic reasons (even if the two are often closely related) are deluding themselves given they were never promised anything, least of all grandeur. What value do they really think they will get from a 2pt credit with 5,000 other authors? If it is relevant to their field(s) of endeavour then they can draw attention to their contribution themselves (as I do) and if they don't like it then they ought to be off writing books or knols or contributing to something other than a community wiki. I have Author at English Wikibooks listed very prominently on my Resume, and often reference it in cover letters I send out. This is especially true for job listings that require good communication skills. My work on Wikibooks, even if it showed nothing more then my proficiency in the English language, helped me get my current job. Part of my current responsibilities involve writing documentation, for which I was considered to be very qualified because of my work on Wikibooks. So I would say that yes, our editors can derive very real benefits from their work on Wiki. I will temper that by saying that it's up to the authors to derive that benefit themselves. We don't send out royalty checks so if authors want to be benefitted by their work here, they need to make it happen and not rely on other people properly applying attribution for them. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 11:03 AM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: I understand that viewpoint and think it is reasonable. How about adding a checkbox to preferences, that says allow attribution by URL? Insofar as this satisfies my personal preference on the matter, I say that this is fine. If we added this checkbox to the software now there would be, of course, an argument about whether the box should be checked by default or not. Keeping in mind that the vast majority of user accounts are now abandoned, whatever we set for the default value of this box would become the de facto standard for attribution anyway. I think it's clear that at least some people expected to be attributed directly in any print edition encyclopedias made from Wikipedia. Do you deny that, or do you just think it doesn't matter? I don't deny it, but I am curious to see some evidence that this preference has indeed been made clear by some of our editors. I can't say that I've ever seen somebody express such a preference on Wikibooks, but then again we have a smaller community and are relatively insulated from discussions like this. To that effect, since people haven't clearly expressed this situation on Wikibooks, I think we could end up in a situation where different projects could handle their attribution requirements differently. The situation over there is sufficiently different for a number of reasons that it's probably not a good parallel anyway. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Re-licensing
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 3:20 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: Thus, forking under GFDL 1.2 only has two distinct advantages: 1) it allows people who consider the benefits of the CC-BY-SA-3.0 license to actually be detriments, to continue to contribute; and 2) it disallows Wikipedia from incorporating these changes, thus reducing the likelihood that third parties will come along and use these changes without attribution. 1) I would suggest that the number of people who care strongly about the particular license used and consider such a switch to be a detriment is small indeed. This isn't to say that this group should be ignored, only that they aren't going to represent a community with enough viability to sustain a project the size of Wikipedia. I guess if you think the legal case is cut and dry those 10% could get together and initiate a class-action lawsuit, or something, but forking is probably easier and more effective. Forking may certainly be easier, but it's hard for me to imagine that a fork of Wikipedia with 10% of it's population (and I posit that to be a high estimate) will be viable. A slogan of knowledge is free, but reusing it is more difficult because of our stringent attitudes towards attribution isn't going to inspire too many donors when fundraising time rolls around. Plus, Wikipedia's database (I assume you only want to fork Wikipedia, and maybe only the English one) is non-negligible and will cost money to have hosted. Fewer people will use the fork and it will grow more slowly, if it grows at all, because of licensing problems with content use and reuse. The fork will progressively become harder to use and will become more out of touch with the rest of the world of open content knowledge. You'll be able to say that at least if nobody is reusing your content that there is no chance they will be violating the attribution requirement as you've defined it. Given the option between two wikipedias, one that is large and easy to use/reuse/incorporate and one that is small and with a difficult licensing scheme, I think you can guess where the new contributors and new donation dollars will be heading. I don't want to threaten or mock here, but I also don't want to see anybody's valuable contributions be wasted. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Re-licensing
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 3:58 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/1/22 geni geni...@gmail.com: So what exactly is the problem with requiring credit reasonable to the medium or means? The fact that we don't seem to be able to agree on what is reasonable. (It would be nice if we could agree it between us rather than having to go to court over it...) Therein lies the problem with using terms like reasonable in a legal document. It's a subjective term, and there are plenty of definitions that are going to work for some people and not others. Arguing over what is and what is not reasonable is a wasted exercise: The best we can do it put the issue to a vote and go with the opinion expressed by the voting majority. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters)
On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 2:24 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com wrote: Wow!, just wow. Would you be okay with one country that was very tiny having two chapters? If the very tiny country had enough active wikimedians to create critical mass for two chapters, and if those two groups found that they absolutely could not work together and that it would be far easier for them to organize separately, then yes that would be okay. The size of the region isn't nearly so important as other factors like activity level. We also cannot pretend that we know how people in country X should organize better then those people do themselves. Organizers will tell us what's right for them, we do not tell them what is right for them (although we can always make thoughtful suggestions). --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters)
On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 9:14 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Andrew, the NYC does not need my approval but given what I know of their activities so far, they are doing great. This does however not mean that the issues that are raised have been answered, far from it. You have not raised any issues, only vague and unsupported statements about the inferiority of the chapter, or it's inability to perform certain activities. This chapter is at no disadvantage, and has no issues that all our other chapters do not have as well. If I have no addressed these issues you mention, it is because they do not exist. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters)
On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 10:44 AM, Ziko van Dijk zvand...@googlemail.com wrote: * Of the organizations Lars mentioned, only ISOC has chapters. I still find it not clear about whether the national organizations are independent or merely national agencies of the center (as it is the case with Greenpeace). IEEE uses the term Sections, to basically describe the same construct. However, IEEE sections are arranged in a way that even we might find strange: They have several chapters in the US alone, and one chapter that covers all of Africa, Asia, and Oceania. The reasons for this are the number and distribution of electrical engineers. * It is also irrelevant whether individuals choose to be member in a chapter that does not belong to the nation state they live in, like nationals of France living abroad (as Florence has explained well), or Belgians who go to the Dutch chapter as long as they don't have own of their own. Some chapters do stipulate in their bylaws that to become a member you must live or work in the chapter's geographic area. I don't know how common it is amongst our existing chapters, but I have seen it on more then one occasion. * If the Wikimedians in the USA did not manage to create a national chapter, it is not my fault. Why can't there be a Wikimedia US? I don't know the reason: Large and ethnically diverse countries have WM chapters, other movements have US chapters... Organizers decide what is best for themselves. If organizers in the USA think it's better to create community-oriented groups, that is their prerogative. It is not you who decides if there will be a Wikimedia US, and it is not me who decides it either: The organizers decide that, and they have decided to pursue locally-based chapters instead of a nationally-based one. There is no fault because there is no problem. * Sub national chapters in the US states make WMF the default Wikimedia US, dealing with American institutions and personalities in a way usually a chapter would. American Wikimedians have no reason to take effort for a WMUS if they see this and that they can have US states chapters. This is perhaps a factor, but then how do you explain situations like Canada and India where organizers have tried unsuccessfully to create a national chapter and are now pursuing sub-national ones instead? * The world is divided into countries, like it or not, and this has consequences for us. And countries are divided into states and provinces and municipalities, like it or not, and this has consequences for us. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters)
On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 4:35 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, What I said was that the NY chapter prevents an USA chapter. It would be obvious to have one such. With one in place, you can organise to your hearts content wherever you like. Thanks, Two answers to this question: 1) WMNYC does prevent the creation of a separate WMUSA chapter. At the moment the rule-of-thumb is that chapters cannot overlap. However, it may be possible in the future if both groups agree to share space, but we haven't had an issue like that and I can't imagine the benefit of doing it that way. 2) It is possible that as participation grows, maybe WMNYC could grow to become WMUSA over time. Maybe there are several sub-national chapters that combine together to form a single national chapter, or maybe the one chapter grows slowly to encompass more area. These are just speculative possibilities, but it's worth noting that sub-national chapters have these kinds of options. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters)
cannot currently overlap. This doesn't mean that the Russian speakers in Estonia have no recourse: The Estonia chapter may decide to create a Section or a Regional Committee to support their fellow Wikimedians. The Estonian chapter could modify it's geographical area to allow a non-overlapping chapter to be created. Or maybe the various Estonians could try harder to ignore their linguistic differences and work together. * When the chapters are going to work together more than now, and are going to elect WMF board members: Will one chapter have one vote? Will there be 50 US chapters with 50 votes, and one French chapter with one vote? Any system we use is going to be inherently unfair and will marginalize at least one group of Wikimedians. If the France chapter has 100 active members who 1000 dollars, and the NYC chapter has 5000 members and raises 50 dollars, should the two chapters have the same number of votes? Should France have more votes because it is a nation, even though it has fewer active members? If France has 100 members, and the US has 10 Chapters each with 10 members, should the two groups have the same total number of votes? If France has 100 members and the US has 10 Chapters each with 100 members, should the US have 10 times more votes then France? We don't just give more votes to nations then we give to sub-nations, because then subnational chapters that are large and successful will be marginalized. Also, small and dysfunctional national chapters will have more importance then large and powerful subnational ones. If we apportion votes based on chapter membership, we marginalize smaller ethnic groups and run the risk that the WMF will be dominated by English-speaking people. * Isn't it much easier for WMF to relate to a limited number of national chapters than with a potentially unlimited number of national, sub national, or super national chapters? Sheer numbers are not the problem, we could be so lucky as to have too many chapters, each raising money and making donations to the WMF, getting more people involved, raising awareness, and improving our projects. Too many really doesn't seem like a problem at all. It might have been better to consider the NYC chapter indeed as a sub chapter, a stand-in until there will be an US chapter. And if there never is a US chapter, Americans can be safely held down as second-class Wikimedians forever? People in other countries who are having trouble organizing at the national level like India and Canada, they also get to be second-class Wikimedians forever? Sure sounds like a lousy solution to me. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters)
On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 9:30 AM, Andre Engels andreeng...@gmail.com wrote: Well, one benefit would be that it avoids strange definitions of chapter boundaries. Suppose that we have a Los Angeles chapter and a Monterey County chapter, and then people from San Jose, Sacramento and a few smaller cities come together to make a chapter, would this then be Wikimedia California except Los Angeles City and Monterey County? Or should it perhaps also be restricted to not include San Francisco, since perhaps there will be a city chapter there, and created the California-except chapter would make such impossible? 5 Friends and their dog cannot make a chapter. To become a chapter, you need to have critical mass: You need enough people to form a board, you need possible members. You need to be able to raise money, and you need to be able to perform activities. If we have a situation where there are enough Wikimedians in Scramento, Los Angeles, and San Jose to each form chapters, we should consider ourselves to be very lucky. More likely, to build the critical mass necessary to start a new chapter, Wikimedians from all these places may need to work together instead of working apart. The smaller the geographical area is, the fewer potential members you have, the less money you are likely to be able to raise, and the fewer outreach activities you will have available to you. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters)
On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 9:33 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: New York City is a city, and France or Germany are nations. In the geopolitical sense, the two are very different. However, in terms of chapters the geopolitical boundaries are meaningless. Chapters are defined and measured by their levels of participation. We don't say that a nation must always be better then a city, we say that one wikimedian is equal to one wikimedian. A Wikimedian in WMNYC who pays dues and participates is equal to a Wikimedian in Wikimedia France who pays dues and participates. To say that one group of our volunteers should be discounted because they represent a smaller area is not a good thing. So would you suggest that votes at chapter meetings, etc., be weighted by membership? That gets rather complicated when you consider that different chapters function in different ways (different membership fees, different responsibilities of members, different classes of membership, etc). If you have one vote per chapter then it becomes completely arbitrary. My only suggestion is that the situation is very complicated, and we cannot always say that national chapters must be more important then sub-national chapters. It's entirely conceivable that WMNYC will have more active members then some national chapters do, so why should it be counted less? Some chapters might be very large and successful, so maybe they should be weighted more. There is no way to make the system completely fair, for reasons you suggest and for others entirely. However, that doesn't mean we should draw a line in the sand and say Wikimedians on this side of the line are more important then Wikimedians on the other side are. I would hate to see Wikimedia Chapters used as a vehicle to disenfranchise certain groups when it comes to global educational initiatives. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters)
On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 9:39 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: It does seem odd to me that there is a New York City chapter rather than a New York chapter. As I understand it, companies in the US are registered at state level. State boundaries are far more clearly defined (yes, I'm sure there is a legal definition of NYC, but it doesn't sound like the chapter are using it). The state of New York isn't overly large compared with the area under the remit of other existing chapters. So why doesn't this chapter represent the whole of the state? I really can't see any reason for it not to. Consider it a case of bad naming: The bylaws say that the chapter covers the entire state (and several neighboring states). However, the working name of the group is New York City because that's where their organizational focus is located. I personally live in Philadelphia and plan to become a member of WMNYC soon. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters)
On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 10:11 AM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, At some stage you get used to it. Some people call the language committee the language sub-committee. This while the committee it should be a sub off does not even exist any more. While I do think that the New York sub chapter will do great things and will even do better then some chapters, it does not represent a country. It will not negotiate national commercial deals ... or will it ? Thanks, GerardM 1) Not a sub chapter. Please don't use that term anymore because it is incorrect and misleading. 2) What national commercial deals? 3) It does not represent a country. It also doesn't represent a language or a religion or a skin color. These are not important to us. It does represent a group of active Wikimedians, and this IS important to us. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters)
On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 10:15 AM, Andre Engels andreeng...@gmail.com wrote: That doesn't change my point, it's just a matter of scale... Suppose there's a chapter in Georgia, and one for Kentucky and Tennessee. Then some people come around and start on a chapter for the southeast. That's going to be a quite strange assortment of states they're going to represent. So it's a problem if a chapters geographical area is strange? Or maybe the biggest concern is that a chapter may be named in such a way that's confusing to non-members? If these are our biggest problems concerning the hypothetical development of subnational chapters, then I am relieved. If we are lucky enough to have 4 active chapters in the south east region of the USA, then this is quite a good problem to have! --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters)
On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 3:25 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: When the right five friends come together, they do not need their dog to make a successful organisation. Five people are enough to make a bored, five people are enough to raise money. It takes dedication and a lot of effort. 5 people is not critical mass, and I cannot imagine that the chapcom would approve a potential chapter that has only 5 members. 5 people can do many wonderful things, but that does not make them a chapter. Ting ruled out the existence of an USA chapter because of the existence of the New York chapter. It is equally clear that the WMF organisation does not want to fulfill the role of an USA chapter. When Dan asks me and Anthere not to use the sub-chapter word, he is right in that the board names them a chapter, but the issue of the New York chapter having fewer abilities and responsibilities is conveniently swept under the carpet in this way. This is all blatantly false. What abilities and responsibilities are not available to WMNYC that our other national-level chapters have? Besides the fact that the WMF itself is based on the USA and therefore is more able to enter into business agreements with companies here then in other countries, I see no limitation on this or any other subnational chapter. Do not assume that this group is at any disadvantage compared to our other national chapters. In fact, this chapter is in BETTER shape then some of our national chapters are, having already sponsored a number of outreach projects, creating working relationships with other organizations, and soliciting high-profile donations from museums and other content repositories. We have national chapters that have not had as much activity in the last year that WMNYC has had in the last two months. The prefix sub indicates that it is less then the norm. For me it is obvious that some great five or more people will make the NYC a success. What I want to learn is in what way the national concerns that I expect a functional chapter to take care off will be handled for the USA. This is the crucial bit of thinking, information that is missing. And as long as this is not clear, the NYC is a sub-par to me. WMNYC does not need to impress you, and does not need your approval Gerard. Their success will be measured in volunteers, donation dollars, and media contributed to our projects. What national concerns do you expect that they will not be able to address? Our sub-national nomenclature indicates only that they are smaller in size then the country that contains them, nothing more. If I called them a super-municipal chapter or a regional chapter, would your opinion of them improve? If I called our current chapters sub-global or sub-continental, would that change your opinion of them too? --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Why is the software out of reach of the community?
On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 5:00 PM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: Why are so few community-developed mediawiki extensions used by the Foundation? It's an issue of scale. Do you have any idea how big the foundation projects are? Inefficient code could cripple our donation-supported infrastructure. It's not that people don't want to use the newest and coolest toys, it's that in order to keep the sites running at all the foundation really needs to aim for a functional level of minimalism. Why do developers have such priviledged access to the source code, and the community such little input? In my experience, this is the way that most open source projects operate. You can download and play with the source code to your heart's content, but typically only a handful of committers have access to modify the code. Average joe user like you and me can submit patches if we see fit. Through patches we could build trust among the developers and eventually become committers. I would be very interested to hear about other successful open source projects that didn't use any kinds of safeguards like this. Why must the community 'vote' on extensions such as Semantic MediaWiki, and yet the developers can implement any feature they like, any way they like it? well, the core software does improve and grow through normal development effort. We wouldn't want a situation where improvements could not be implemented without community approval. Foundation projects run on MediaWiki software, and updates to the software are reflected in the projects. It's not like they're installing things as big and pervasive as Semantic MediaWiki without community approval. Why does the Foundation need 1 million for usability when amazing tools continue to be ignored and untested? And who says that money isn't going to be used to test existing tools? Without money, our developers are all volunteers, and they will do the testing they want to do when they have time to do it. Let me ask, are you doing any testing of potentially useful MediaWiki extensions yourself? Why has the Foundation gone ahead and approved the hire of several employees for usability design, when the community has had almost zero input into what that design should be? Whatever the design turns out to be, I'm sure we're going to need developers to implement it. Plus, there are tons of existing usability requests at bugzilla, and not enough development hands to even implement the things the community has already asked for. Plus, there are all those cool pre-existing community-developed extensions that need to be tested by developers. Why is this tool not being tested on Wikipedia, right now? http://wiki.ontoprise.com/ontoprisewiki/index.php/Image:Advanced_ontology_browser.gif Why would it be, has the community requested it? Again, it's economy of scale: Wikipedia is too huge to serve as a beta test for all sorts of random extensions. A smaller website like Wikibooks would be a much better place to do extension testing, and in fact has been used in the past as a beta test site for new extensions. You can't load just any software onto Wikipedia and expect the servers to handle it well. Wikipedia is simply too huge for that kind of avant garde management. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Why is the software out of reach of the community?
On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 5:33 PM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: In order to solicit community feedback on this very important issue, I suggest the Foundation put up a multi-language banner on all Wikipedia's soliciting input via a survey. Are you willing to make the translations and the banner? Are you willing to make the survey, administer it, and interpret results? Most of the Foundation are volunteers who can't put multilingual banners all over the place every time somebody would like to know some vague something about the software. *How can Wikipedia be more usable?* I also suggest the Foundation put up a We're Hiring banner. In tough global economic conditions, and for the amount of money the Foundation has been given, they could afford to hire 20 best in class developers who are otherwise out of work. 800,000 / 30,000 = 26. Is that not a fair wage? If the Foundation only plans to hire three developers to work on this project then it must be spending the money on something else entirely. First off, I'm a professional software developer and I would not work for $30K. For 800K/year, you're looking at more like 10-15 developers at the most, and that's under the assumption that you're only hiring them for a single year. You're going to spend a lot of up-front time training them, so the better investment by far is 3-5 developers for several years. This is not to mention cost increases for hardware and hosting that will come from adding more software to the backend and a prettier frontend. The community also deserves a usability lab, and a full assessment of how Semantic MediaWiki, Semantic Forms, and Project Halo could contribute to usability. I predict they will find that, while they do not cover every problem, the main issue that needs to be worked on is scaling them. This is something that the core developers are experts at. They are not experts on usability. If our core developers are not experts in usability (and I wouldn't necessarily agree with that point anyway), then it makes sense to hire people who are good with usability. If you look at the job postings, you'll see that it's exactly what is intended. Setting up some kind of usability lab has already been done, see https://en.labs.wikimedia.org. This is the exact clearinghouse where the Collections extension and FlaggedRevs extension were tested. I would like to make clear that I believe the usability issue has largely been solved, and the community is just waiting for the core developers, who have kept a tight lock and key on the source code, to recognize that. The issue most certainly hasn't been solved. It's not just about finding pretty tools, but about scaling them to fit Wikipedia (which is no trivial task), and ensuring that they meet the needs of our users. These things don't happen by insulting our developers or making demands on a mailing list alone. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] and what if...
On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 9:01 AM, Judson Dunn cohes...@sleepyhead.org wrote: Not a response to your email, but the reaction in general strikes me as very inconsistent. With China they have been censored, they try and use TOR, and we block them, and say for years that there is regrettably nothing we can do about this situation. UK gets blocked for a day and we are talking about changing our IP based block systems? I know the technical details of the block are a little different, but not *that* different. Maybe the people that are saying this though have always opposed this system, and this is just more reason in their minds. I hope that's the case. :) I agree that there is a certain incongruity here, but the UK is not a focused source of spam and vandalism in the same way that anonymized TOR nodes are. It's very unfortunate that the majority of Chinese citizens are blocked from editing Wikipedia, but opening up a few back channels for them to use at the expense of increasing our flow of spam and vandalism is really not a great solution to any problems. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] and what if...
On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 10:50 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: Long-time ago, I suggested adding a short-duration cookie whenever a block was triggered that would allow the software to detect the most obvious IP jumping vandals (asumming they used the same browser on the same machine each time). It doesn't get at the bulk of Tomek's criticism, but it does fall in the other-things-we-could-do category. Deleting cookies is far easier than changing IP addresses. I think we're all overestimating the problem here. If a vandal is absolutely determined and has enough technical savvy, no measures that we take are going to keep them out indefinitely. We can take reasonable measures to combat the most common types of vandalism, but we need to realize that no measures we take will be perfect and the more we do to try to combat individual determined vandals the more collateral damage we are going to sustain. If vandals aim to disrupt the project, then sweeping range blocks on IPs is victory for them. No solution is perfect, and the best we can do is to eliminate the most common cases in a reasonable way. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Sexual images of questionable provenance
On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 10:22 AM, David Moran [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't think it's helpful or useful to classify images that aren't currently being used in an article somewhere as second class, or more readily deletable. There are, I think it safe to say, TONS of images on Commons that aren't being used anywhere. So what if we have male nudes far in excess of what would ever need to be used in one article? The point of commons isn't as a hosting substitute for Wikipedia's article, it is as a repository of free images. For most purposes, people will only need one image out of a group, but offering a variety from which they can choose can only be beneficial. If the free-ness of an image can be reasonably disputed, fine, go ahead and delete it, but don't start setting up separate standards for deletion based on an image's use. It's also worth considering hypothetical books at Wikibooks or courses at Wikversity that teach the art of nude portraits, for which a large wealth of such images would be needed as examples. A simple search on Amazon for nude photography returns many such books [1]. Just because the nudity-related articles on Wikipedia can't use all of these types of images doesn't mean that they are useless to our projects. Obviously non-free images are a different topic entirely, and if these images are unacceptable for other reasons then they should be handled accordingly. However, deleting an image just because it is not currently used at Wikipedia is awfully short-sighted. [1] http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Dapsfield-keywords=nude+photographyx=0y=0 --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 80% of our projects are failing
On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 11:22 AM, Amir E. Aharoni [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Getting empowered is not equal to learning English. The two are not equal, to be sure. But, at the risk of sounding pugilistic, I will say that there probably is a positive correlation between knowing a more popular language and knowledge empowerment. Even if this is true, the foundation is more interested in getting people involved (which means targeting native languages) then in trying to convert people to more popular (and possibly more empowering) languages. To do the second task we would still want to create projects in small languages so we could write learning resources to teach people the big languages. --Andrew Whitworth ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
