Re: [Foundation-l] Chapters
rom: phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, August 12, 2011 8:13 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Chapters On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 10:13 PM, Michael Snow wikipe...@frontier.comwrote: On 8/11/2011 7:08 PM, phoebe ayers wrote: Anyway, thanks for raising the importance of decentralization. The Board agrees: there's a reason it was first in our list of principles. To my mind decentralization is important raises a whole bunch of other important questions: is decentralization more important than efficiency as a working principle? I think it is, at least up to a point. We need to have a diversity of tools and actors involved in fundraising, and decentralization should help that if done well. Also, we do not have an obligation to maximize revenue, so efficiency is not necessarily a cardinal virtue. I don't mean that we should disregard efficiency, but we can choose to sacrifice a bit of efficiency if, as a tradeoff, this benefits some other value we think is important like decentralization. One thing that struck me about reviewing chapter financials was that there are 20+ chapters that don't directly receive donations and haven't applied for many grants to date, and thus have little to no money to support program work. Though mostly outside the scope of the Board's letter, this is for instance one part of our model that I would like to see change -- Wikimedians everywhere should have better access to resources to get things done. On this specific point, I do disagree with Birgitte -- I think a well-developed grants program [and it's true we're not there yet, but want to be soon] could actually help us decentralize faster, in that to obtain money needed for program work chapters or other groups wouldn't have to develop the (increasingly difficult) infrastructure needed to directly fundraise with all the attendant legal and fiduciary concerns. I like the sound of this, but with a note of caution about a well-developed grants program. In many contexts, as grants programs develop and mature, grantees end up needing to develop increasingly complex infrastructure to secure and manage grants. At that point, it may not be any more helpful to these objectives than the model we are trying to move away from. --Michael Snow Fair point. By well-developed I just meant something that works well. One of the criteria of working well could be low overhead... Again, the idea of supporting grants is not exclusive to the WMF: I am so pleased to see the expansion of the WMDE program, as well. -- phoebe I can't help but point out that is begging the question. [1] It is a logical fallacy to say in answer to concerns that a grants program won't work well that you are supporting well-developed grants program (defined as something that works well). It is just wishful thinking. BirgitteSB [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Chapters
From: Jimmy Wales jwa...@wikia-inc.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, August 11, 2011 7:49 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Chapters On 8/10/11 7:22 PM, birgitte...@yahoo.com wrote: As for the rest I encourage you to exercise your moral duty by helping the chapters fulfill the reporting requirements, implement the financial controls, and operate transparently. You have been through this all before. You were the chairman of the board when WMF was struggling with all of these items, so why not use your experience directing WMF through being out of compliance with such things to mentor those chapter which are struggling? Of course. My past experiences are what allow me to approach these difficult issues without blaming anyone, and I think that the chapters should not feel blamed. Growing from a barely functioning chapter - usually just a group of people who made a proposal and did all the hard work to get through the chapter approval process - into a successful, effective nonprofit organization with strong financial controls, transparency, training, oversight is really hard work. Delphine has spoken eloquently about it. A model which dumps too much money/responsibility onto a chapter before they are ready for it is not a valid service to anyone. A model which allows chapters to go off the rails with little or no recourse other than some kind of disastrous legal battle or something would also not be a valid service to anyone. When I look at the track record of many chapters to date, I see that we've asked too much, too soon, and it's not causing happiness. I think the new approach, if thoughtfully pursued with lots of good-faith input and collaboration by all, can really make a huge difference. I hope no one makes the mistake of thinking my position is that there should be no change at all in fundraising. I responded early on, I believe to Stu's message, that I found the existing incentives to perverse and think that they have harmed the ability of new chapters to form and become successful. I do believe changes are needed. However, I have deep doubts about the chances of chapters succeeding under the specific proposal of funding a large majority of the chapter operations with a grant from WMF. I have been hoping that those supporting the proposal might respond to my sharing these doubts with some information about the model that inspired the proposal. That they might know of some organizations funded in a similar way and be able to consider my concerns by re-examining those organizations for any validity to them. So far the response has simply been to try and reassure me that the proposed changes will have no unintended consequences on the simple basis no one wants anything to change except the accounting ledger. While I don't doubt the accuracy of such statements regarding people's desires, I can't find such assertions convincing. I don't wish to upset people further by my lack of faith that intentions matter very much. I have raised all of the major considerations I would like people to think about. I really hope for a good outcome, whether anyone chooses to give credit to my concerns and advice or not. There no real need for any of you to convince me and I am as tired of repeating myself as am sure many of you are of hearing my repetitions. So lets just agree to disagree about the issue. BirgitteSB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Chapters
- Original Message - From: Yaroslav M. Blanter pute...@mccme.ru To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: Sent: Tuesday, August 9, 2011 10:48 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Chapters It is true however that many chapters do important work for the local projects, and serve their local needs in the sense of activities, press contacts and fundraising in a more effective way (less culturally challanging, more sensitive to what works locally and better in touch with other activities and situations). Not all chapters do this in the same extent, and not all do it similarly good. But that is the idea of a chapter - it is not a fanclub organizing beer events only to have fun. Best regards, Lodewijk Right, I know that the Chapters are doing some very useful stuff (in fact, I even want to help the Dutch chapter with the project on taking pictures of State Monuments - it would be very helpful if someone mails me offlist or indicates on my Wiki page if there is any information on what is needed), but I believe that to say, as Brigitte does, that the Chapters should lead the movement is to stretch it way over the limits. It is not so much that I believe chapters should lead the movement as that I am certain WMF cannot successfully lead the movement. It seems to me that these changes are about making chapters more into franchises. Which I find to be exactly backwards. Chapters in my mind should be diverse entities. Embracing whatever is most effective in their little slice of the world. I think they should be ambitious in seeking out what inspires local population to embrace our movement. The way to encourage innovation is to push self-direction and refrain from being too judgmental so long as there is trending improvement. I believe that franchises will not be well received and will by and large fail. Maybe I am wrong about the direction people are pushing, maybe I am right about the direction but wrong about the poor outcome. I certainly can't have much of an effect on things. I have really tried to share the underlying basis that leads me to think this is a poor idea so people can consider the information and comes to their own conclusions. Although I know some of it is hard for me to articulate clearly. If you think my conclusion is stretches way over the limits I would like to understand which underlying concept I have drawn on is the poorest foundation. I sincerely would like to correct my understanding if I have the wrong idea or placed a disproportionate amount of importance on something. Really I am open to changing my opinion if someone has convincing information. BirgitteSB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] roadmap for WM affiliation ; a name for self-identified affiliation
- Original Message From: James Heilman jmh...@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Fri, July 15, 2011 10:39:14 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] roadmap for WM affiliation ; a name for self-identified affiliation I agree something like Open Knowledge Project would be a more suitable term. Do they have any decals like those of Health on the Net that people could add to their websites? Should there be different degree of inclusiveness depending on non commercial or commercial reuse? I see this as the first step towards a greater sharing of content between sites. Open Knowledge Project only works for content creators or relatively new projects that can still restrict their intake of content like Commons has. We don't want dilute Open Knowledge and the issue is existing GLAM organizations that want to affiliate with the movement. Some is needed more along the lines of Dedicated to Emancipating Culture - we are committed the licensing all internally owned copyrights under [favorite free license] and to forthrightly advertising the most accurate copyright information we can on all the content we curate. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] roadmap for WM affiliation ; a name for self-identified affiliation
- Original Message From: Nathan nawr...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Fri, July 15, 2011 2:07:33 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] roadmap for WM affiliation ; a name for self-identified affiliation On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 2:27 PM, Birgitte SB birgitte...@yahoo.com wrote: - Original Message From: James Heilman jmh...@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Fri, July 15, 2011 10:39:14 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] roadmap for WM affiliation ; a name for self-identified affiliation I agree something like Open Knowledge Project would be a more suitable term. Do they have any decals like those of Health on the Net that people could add to their websites? Should there be different degree of inclusiveness depending on non commercial or commercial reuse? I see this as the first step towards a greater sharing of content between sites. Open Knowledge Project only works for content creators or relatively new projects that can still restrict their intake of content like Commons has. We don't want dilute Open Knowledge and the issue is existing GLAM organizations that want to affiliate with the movement. Some is needed more along the lines of Dedicated to Emancipating Culture - we are committed the licensing all internally owned copyrights under [favorite free license] and to forthrightly advertising the most accurate copyright information we can on all the content we curate. Birgitte SB Not sure I follow - GLAM institutions are still about disseminating knowledge at low or no cost, so it seems like the name would still apply. Anyway, I think debating the name is a bit cart before horse - the idea is that these organizations seem to share common ideals, and could cooperative in mutually beneficial ways with some sort of formal vehicle. A GLAM institute doesn't necessarily own the copyrights to all the content they have. A project that contains copyrighted material would not be able to use an Open Content badge. Open Content has to be restricted to places where it is allowable to make derivatives works for commercial purposes from the content. Yet it would be nice to have a way to notice a hypothetical GLAM that doesn't attempt to claim copyright on PD works they have merely digitized, freely licenses the derivative materials produced by employees, and makes detailed copyright info on their content accessible. There is a significant difference between an organization who might make such an effort and one that tends to stamp All material Copyright of [GLAM] everywhere (whether that claim could possibly be true or not). It would be nice to notice those organizations which are doing what they can with the rights they do control rather than saying It's shame you accepted those donations of materials 50 years back without securing full copyright control, but with that content you can't join our club. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Privacy concerns
A notarized statement wouldn't need to contain all the personal info. Just a name and something else to distinguish common names (I suggest an address as the snail mail method pretty often will include a return address anyway). The rest of the info like age, nationality, race, identification numbers, etc. is only seen by the notary who puts a seal on the document to verify that the signature was made by the person with that name. Birgitte SB - Original Message From: Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: r...@slmr.com Sent: Mon, July 11, 2011 6:50:57 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Privacy concerns I am not sure if that would solve any of the problems that some people have with the current situation. Still the notarized statement (which includes all personal data) would end up with an individual if I understand correctly. It would only add quite a lot of costs... 2011/7/11 Peter Gervai grin...@gmail.com On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 02:28, Robin McCain ro...@slmr.com wrote: I'd say that if you've blocked someone who is a sockpuppet or other abuser the burden of validating such a person should be on them, not the wiki staff. At least a notary (or other public official) would have to look at an identity document - verify its validity as well as see that it indeed matches the person in question - then sign a document to that effect. This completely removes the wiki staff from the need to access the validity of a copy. I guess it is nice to offer the blocked people this alternative, privacy-enhanced method along the old one. I'm sure current poster would be pleased, and I guess the dutch wikigods could accept that solution, too. -- byte-byte, grin ___ 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] Wikimedia Storyteller job opening
- Original Message From: MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Mon, March 7, 2011 6:47:35 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Storyteller job opening SNIP If someone has the time to break this report down more completely, I'd certainly appreciate it and I imagine others would as well. I really do understand what your concerns about the possible worst case scenario are. However it would be nice if you took a crack at the kind of research you are suggesting and post any concerns you have on find specific items in the report that you can not correlate to the open discussion. Posting a generalization about how bad the worst case scenario could be and asking people to prove to you that this worst case scenario hasn't happened isn't very helpful. Negatives are difficult prove. So if avoid asking people to prove they haven't incorporated any ideas that were absent from the strategy wiki and switch to asking for more information on the origins of particular ideas you haven't been able to find the origin of would lead to an all around a better discussion. Right now it seems to me like you are asking people to prove to you that the sky isn't falling. I think there is a lot of exaggeration on both sides of this discussion. Defending the strategy process as if it were a dream come true and deriding it as setting aside the values of openness and transparency are both largely inaccurate. Of course the whole process could have been better, more engaging, better documented and produced clearer results. That statement will *always* be true. The last time I can recall that there was a concerted effort to clarify WMF priorities and strategy involving paid facilitation was the 2006 retreat in Frankfurt involving about 21 Wikimedians. [1] The more recent effort on developing the WMF five year plan is much more open and transparent than that one around five years ago. I hope that five years from now we will see another significant improvement in the process. The recent effort was neither poor, nor was it ideal. It was a very nice step forward, which is right about where I believe we all should set our expectations. I find the whole it was practically perfect vs. it was in opposition to our very values nature of this thread quite problematic. Birgitte SB [1] http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/73086?search_string=report%20frankfurt;#73086 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser
- Original Message From: SlimVirgin slimvir...@gmail.com To: fredb...@fairpoint.net; Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Mon, March 7, 2011 10:03:48 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser Why is there a feeling alienation? Because the Foundation is raising millions of dollars from people who read our articles, but isn't spending the money on helping to increase the quality of the articles, or make life easier for the volunteers. It's all about moving to San Francisco (how did that help?), opening new offices overseas, employing new fundraisers, etc. Let me apologize here if that sounds too cynical or unfair. I'm just giving a worm's eye view, which I accept may be uninformed, but it's what things look like from down here in the mud. :) I think you have to consider the context of the timing of the move to SF before declaring the decision as blatantly unhelpful. It was before the financial meltdown. Attracting and keeping talent, especially given the stress of having the quality their work and even the basic decision to pay someone to their job regularly attacked, was a big concern. For historical accuracy think what Danny dealt with (or search foundation-l archives if you weren't around) and forget anything recent that may or may not be such an attack. I thought Danny was absolutely crazy to work at WMF, and I work in a family business where task-irrelevant stress and a complete lack of boundaries make corporate jobs seem fabulously pampered. Asking people to relocate to some random place when they were probably already worried about whether they will be able to handle working under that kind of strain was going to be quite difficult in what was it; 4.7% unemployment? SF has a big internet and tech base. It has always made sense to me that WMF would be able to both find likely candidates already in SF and attract better candidates to SF where the obvious back-up plans for a WMF job not working out seemed rather palatable to the sort of people WMF would want. Given how the larger world events turned out, those concerns seems less relevant. 8.9% unemployment leaves good candidates sitting around just about everywhere. But seriously it's 2011, can we be stop discussing the move to SF. Is anyone seriously complaining about funds from the 2006 fundraiser? Who should be brought to account for SF being a sub-optimal location? The staff who were not yet employed by WMF? The board which includes more people who where not board members when that decision was made than where involved in the decision? What is the point of bring this up? WMF is located in San Francisco. Not in Boston, London, New York, DC, St. Pete, nor in any city that was never even under consideration. Can we please count this point as a given and consider those people who were alienated from WMF back in 2007 as below the threshold of relevance at this point in time. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Moral rights
- Original Message From: Teofilo teofilow...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Fri, March 4, 2011 5:05:11 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Moral rights 2011/2/27 Birgitte SB birgitte...@yahoo.com: No one wants to attack French moral rights, or the attack the idiosyncrasies of any particular legal jurisdiction. What we want to do is curate a large international collection of free content that will remain free content 300 years from now after all of us are dead and can no longer be personally vigilant regarding those who might try to restrict the descendants of our collected content from others. What is it that you want to do? Birgitte SB No one ? I would not say so. I would rather say that 75.8% (1) want to attack moral rights, which are not French only (3), and, as I showed in my previous mail, are a value taken into account in Wikimedia projects in such documents as http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/COM:OTRS#Declaration_of_consent_for_all_enquiries s It might have become a core value of the Wikimedia communities. But if community leaders lead the community into the wrong way... you end up with a 75.8 majority going into the wrong way. It is not reasonable to believe the underlying desire there is to make an attack French moral rights. Please try to be accurate and stop making such spurious accusations. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Storyteller job opening
From: MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, March 1, 2011 3:24:37 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Storyteller job opening Zack Exley wrote: But there is one important purpose of that job that may be a bit hidden in between the lines: For this position, I'm looking for someone who can help free us from dependence on The Jimmy Letter in fundraising. I think part of my confusion (maybe the biggest chunk of it) comes from terminology and naming. I guess you're not really trying to hire a storyteller, you're trying to hire a public relations (fundraising) person. One title is obviously a bit more poetic, but also a lot more confusing, I think. The other aspect to this that's confusing to me is the underlying purpose of the Community Department. Best as I can tell, it's largely focused on fundraising. Is there a description of the current Community Department that clarifies what it does (other than fundraising)? I'm not saying that Wikimedia shouldn't have a team devoted to fundraising, but I don't really understand why it's named the way it is. Is there something wrong with it being named the Fundraising Department? I can't imagine I'm the only one confused about this. It makes sense to me that there would be a lot of overlap on the ground delivering the two messages We are a worthwhile project and you can join us and contribute on our websites and We are a worthwhile project and you can donate some money to the supporting Foundation. Ambiguity is only a bad thing when someone knows exactly what they want and they choose to be unclear about it rather than when is someone aware of a general need while being somewhat open-minded about how might be filled. This situation strikes me as the latter, advertising for a writer to develop public relations material for fundraising would probably bring in a much more narrow set of applicants and would also make it harder to get the new employee to take the other duties that are desired seriously. I don't know how much hiring you have done, but it is not uncommon for people to get their minds set as to what their job is early on and getting them to put a lot of effort into things they believe are not what they were hired to do is difficult. So if you want a new employee to have a wide range of duties, you should advertise describing a more open-ended position. People that have narrow mindsets are less likely to apply for vague jobs, and everyone wins because good hiring is all about fit. Narrow and well-settled duties = detailed description of opening. Wide-ranging and uncertain duties = ambiguous description of opening. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Storyteller job opening
From: Birgitte SB birgitte...@yahoo.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, March 1, 2011 4:46:10 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Storyteller job opening From: MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, March 1, 2011 3:24:37 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Storyteller job opening Zack Exley wrote: But there is one important purpose of that job that may be a bit hidden in between the lines: For this position, I'm looking for someone who can help free us from dependence on The Jimmy Letter in fundraising. I think part of my confusion (maybe the biggest chunk of it) comes from terminology and naming. I guess you're not really trying to hire a storyteller, you're trying to hire a public relations (fundraising) person. One title is obviously a bit more poetic, but also a lot more confusing, I think. The other aspect to this that's confusing to me is the underlying purpose of the Community Department. Best as I can tell, it's largely focused on fundraising. Is there a description of the current Community Department that clarifies what it does (other than fundraising)? I'm not saying that Wikimedia shouldn't have a team devoted to fundraising, but I don't really understand why it's named the way it is. Is there something wrong with it being named the Fundraising Department? I can't imagine I'm the only one confused about this. It makes sense to me that there would be a lot of overlap on the ground delivering the two messages We are a worthwhile project and you can join us and contribute on our websites and We are a worthwhile project and you can donate some money to the supporting Foundation. Ambiguity is only a bad thing when someone knows exactly what they want and they choose to be unclear about it rather than when is someone aware of a general need while being somewhat open-minded about how might be filled. This situation strikes me as the latter, advertising for a writer to develop public relations material for fundraising would probably bring in a much more narrow set of applicants and would also make it harder to get the new employee to take the other duties that are desired seriously. I don't know how much hiring you have done, but it is not uncommon for people to get their minds set as to what their job is early on and getting them to put a lot of effort into things they believe are not what they were hired to do is difficult. So if you want a new employee to have a wide range of duties, you should advertise describing a more open-ended position. People that have narrow mindsets are less likely to apply for vague jobs, and everyone wins because good hiring is all about fit. Narrow and well-settled duties = detailed description of opening. Wide-ranging and uncertain duties = ambiguous description of opening. Birgitte SB Also you have to remember that the purpose of http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings/Storyteller is not to explain the job to curious community members. The only purpose that should be considered in writing a job opening is to attract people who may be a good fit for the job and inspire them to apply, while repelling people who would be a bad fit for the job. The target audience of the job opening is job seekers. The only useful measure to judge if a job opening was good is whether it resulted in lots of applicants that you would like to find out more about and few applicants that are an obviously poor fit. Wasting your time processing the applications of obviously unsuitable people is nearly as bad as not producing an interview pool filled with equally great applications. And the former has become the more likely scenario these past few years. So if you personally find that a job opening turns you off, it may just be working quite well. A good job opening should turn off a fair number of people. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Genisis of WMF Identification policy?
From: THURNER rupert rupert.thur...@wikimedia.ch To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sat, February 26, 2011 7:48:36 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Genisis of WMF Identification policy? On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 23:58, Birgitte SB birgitte...@yahoo.com wrote: From: Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: Birgitte SB birgitte...@yahoo.com Sent: Fri, February 25, 2011 3:51:50 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Genisis of WMF Identification policy? It should be clear and transparant why the WMF is collecting this information, and what they intend to do with it. If they want to be able to sue people - fine, but then just say that. Then people know what they are up against, and what the reasoning is. That way alone volunteers can make their rational decision. But also chapters, because it might have quite some legal complications if the WMF wants to force a chapter to submit private data about one of their members because they want to sue this person. The problem with is that none of us can imagine all the future possibilities that could occur. The WMF can't know what they could be up against. So how can they possibly tell you what they can't know? You seem to suggest the WMF suing someone is an extreme thing. But what is really extreme is asking WMF to vow *not* to sue anyone. Lets say they do this and imagine if a checkuser User:Foobar publishes private information on their blog obtained as a checkuser. Someone whose privacy was violated identifies who User:Foobar was through their blog; sues them and wins. User:Foobar sues WMF claiming something frivolous about not protecting them from the situation and loses. Because of the vow WMF cannot counter-sue User:Foobar for lawyer fees and court costs even though WMF does not even need to the recorded identification provided through the policy in this case because User:Foobar identified themself in the lawsuit they filed against WMF. Also the privacy policy is a joke without the identification policy. Say checkuser User:Foo breaches the privacy policy and rightly loses checkuser rights. There is no record available to WMF identifying RealName as User:Foo. So RealName retires User:Foo and registers User:Bar who is then able to become a checkuser. Is this truly a responsible privacy policy when there is no way of preventing those who have abused their access to private data from once again obtaining access to private data? As I said in my first email. There are valid concerns about the identification policy that must be resolved. However, deciding to indefinitely give unidentifiable people access to private data can not be an option. It just too irresponsible. This is *my* private data you are all playing with. I won't get to have *your* private data in return, but you can at least give it the WMF to act as a responsible party protecting *my* interests. I understand that you need some safeguards about security at WMF Office or WMF Chapters. However if you won't be comfortable with any possible procedure where they could keep *your* private data, then stay away from *my* private data. how many people do have access to private data? rupert. That is one of the questions that still needs to be resolved. But there seems to wide agreement that checkusers and oversighters at least qualify. Considering that I have seen people's real names, phone numbers, and addresses oversighted and the general attitude towards the privacy of IP information, this seems accurate to me. I personally have never taken on any of these roles being discussed as possibly having access to private data. So I really don't have a lot of confidence in what sort of private data people think any of of the other roles have access too. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Genisis of WMF Identification policy?
From: David Gerard dger...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sat, February 26, 2011 9:55:48 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Genisis of WMF Identification policy? On 26 February 2011 22:58, Birgitte SB birgitte...@yahoo.com wrote: I think we really need the actual threat and threat model detailed. Expanding the identification policy without a thorough grounding risks it turning into worse security theatre - a completely lost purpose.[1] I have no objection in principle to providing my identification to WMF. But the rationale needs to be bulletproof. What's it for, what verification is used, how to deal with documents from countries that are not like the US ... this is all important and needs to be laid out in full and explicit detail. It really hasn't been so far. I don't know what a threat model is but surely it is the current privacy policy with identifications being record which the piece of theatre. Where the threat model with full and explicit detail that explains why checkuser are give access to *my* private data? Say checkuser User:Foo breaches the privacy policy and rightly loses checkuser rights. There is no record available to WMF identifying RealName as User:Foo. So RealName retires User:Foo and registers User:Bar who is then able to become a checkuser. Is this truly a responsible privacy policy when there is no way of preventing those who have abused their access to private data from once again obtaining access to private data? Is that situation not plausible to you, or merely non-threatening? I mean such people that fit the first part of the situation exist right now, how do suggest they are prevented from having another account reach checkuser? The communities are particularly weak in this area. As I said before, I understand that there are issues to resolve about the identification policy before it can be implemented. However you need to understand that the privacy of many more people than those few with access to private data is put at an unacceptable level of risk while this remains unsettled. I understand that those who are being asked to identify want to protect their data. Please understand that I want someone to protect my data as well. And frankly the having communities electing checkusers is not good enough protection as people with a past of abusing their access to private data can win such elections. Holding out and risking the privacy of all the users of WMF sites until everything is bulletproof or perfectly to your satisfaction is quite arrogant. If you can not be satisfied short of that, then resign the positions which give you access to my private data and let things move forward so my data can be given a reasonable amount of protection. That is all I am looking for a reasonable amount of protection for both your(trusted volunteer) data and my(regular user) data. But when people start demanding impossible future-predicting protection for volunteer data, then the other group is left with inadequate protection. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Moral rights
No one wants to attack French moral rights, or the attack the idiosyncrasies of any particular legal jurisdiction. What we want to do is curate a large international collection of free content that will remain free content 300 years from now after all of us are dead and can no longer be personally vigilant regarding those who might try to restrict the descendants of our collected content from others. What is it that you want to do? Birgitte SB From: Teofilo teofilow...@gmail.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sun, February 27, 2011 11:02:15 AM Subject: [Foundation-l] Moral rights French authorship rights law: Article L121-1 An author shall enjoy the right to respect for his name, his authorship and his work. This right shall attach to his person. It shall be perpetual, inalienable and imprescriptible. It may be transmitted mortis causa to the heirs of the author. Exercise may be conferred on another person under the provisions of a will. http://195.83.177.9/code/liste.phtml?lang=ukc=36r=2497 perpetual, inalienable and imprescriptible means that they cannot be waived. It also means that they are enshrined in French law as dearly as human rights. In my opinion, the people who want to attack this, are on a sloppery slope where the next step is when they request you to waive your human rights. ___ 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] Genisis of WMF Identification policy?
From: Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: Birgitte SB birgitte...@yahoo.com Sent: Fri, February 25, 2011 3:51:50 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Genisis of WMF Identification policy? It should be clear and transparant why the WMF is collecting this information, and what they intend to do with it. If they want to be able to sue people - fine, but then just say that. Then people know what they are up against, and what the reasoning is. That way alone volunteers can make their rational decision. But also chapters, because it might have quite some legal complications if the WMF wants to force a chapter to submit private data about one of their members because they want to sue this person. The problem with is that none of us can imagine all the future possibilities that could occur. The WMF can't know what they could be up against. So how can they possibly tell you what they can't know? You seem to suggest the WMF suing someone is an extreme thing. But what is really extreme is asking WMF to vow *not* to sue anyone. Lets say they do this and imagine if a checkuser User:Foobar publishes private information on their blog obtained as a checkuser. Someone whose privacy was violated identifies who User:Foobar was through their blog; sues them and wins. User:Foobar sues WMF claiming something frivolous about not protecting them from the situation and loses. Because of the vow WMF cannot counter-sue User:Foobar for lawyer fees and court costs even though WMF does not even need to the recorded identification provided through the policy in this case because User:Foobar identified themself in the lawsuit they filed against WMF. Also the privacy policy is a joke without the identification policy. Say checkuser User:Foo breaches the privacy policy and rightly loses checkuser rights. There is no record available to WMF identifying RealName as User:Foo. So RealName retires User:Foo and registers User:Bar who is then able to become a checkuser. Is this truly a responsible privacy policy when there is no way of preventing those who have abused their access to private data from once again obtaining access to private data? As I said in my first email. There are valid concerns about the identification policy that must be resolved. However, deciding to indefinitely give unidentifiable people access to private data can not be an option. It just too irresponsible. This is *my* private data you are all playing with. I won't get to have *your* private data in return, but you can at least give it the WMF to act as a responsible party protecting *my* interests. I understand that you need some safeguards about security at WMF Office or WMF Chapters. However if you won't be comfortable with any possible procedure where they could keep *your* private data, then stay away from *my* private data. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Licenses' biodiversity : my big disagreement with the Wikimedia usability initiative's software specifications
The license can only call upon the law. Any attempts to plaster over the underlying deficits in the law are just that:plaster. We often seem to pretend the licenses are all smooth and perfect, but just because they can't be substantially smoothed and perfected any further doesn't mean that people who can feel slight cracks in them are hallucinating. Perfectly rational licensing which works universally well is not an really option. There just isn't a rational schema of copyright law for such a license to call upon. But I think the CC licenses work well enough; as well as we can realistically hope for. Birgitte SB - Original Message From: Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wed, February 23, 2011 7:10:44 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Licenses' biodiversity : my big disagreement with the Wikimedia usability initiative's software specifications If that is the case (As I understood this has never yet been tested in court, but I would appreciate any links to any jurisprudence, although we probably should start a new thread) then the point I tried to make still stands: a license should work in every medium. Whether the uploader makes restrictions to the applicability of the license does not matter, we should just avoid that merely because of the license the work cannot be used in a certain medium. I hoped to direct the discussion a bit into a helpful direction, but I guess my email is only leading to different side tracks. Best regards, Lodewijk 2011/2/23 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com Hoi, If a copyright holder makes something available under a particular license, it is made available in a particular way. Yes you can for instance print or do whatever with what is provided, but you cannot claim the same right on the same object in a higher resolution. A license is given for what is provided in the way it is provided. What you can or cannot do with is depends on the license. Thanks, GerardM On 23 February 2011 11:08, Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org wrote: Just to make a clarification: If you have copyright on a thing (with the lack of a better word) in one medium, you also have it in another. If a text or image is copyrighted in print, it is copyrighted online. That is what I meant with universal in this context, sorry if I was confusing. Therefore, a license should apply to all mediums to make the content truly re-usable. It should not matter what you do with the content to publish it - print it, shout it on the street or for all I care you take an airplane and draw it in the air: the same free license should apply. Of course I am aware of all kinds of problems in copyright legislation and how it sucks, I know that countries have different laws, one worse than the other. But solving that would probably be slightly over stretching ourselves. Best, Lodewijk 2011/2/23 Birgitte SB birgitte...@yahoo.com I don't want get into the splitting hairs on licenses that is the rest of this thread. However you basic assumption is wrong. Copyright is not universal. Copyright is a kludge. A very ugly kludge. It works because in the normal work-a-day copyright world people just take for granted that it would all make sense if they put it under a microscope. And in the controversial copyright world people pay larges sums of money (i.e. out of court settlements) to avoid having to face how ugly it is under the microscope. Copyright is a set widely applicable laws sometimes written by people with narrow interests and sometimes based on ancient traditions that translate poorly into our modern world. It is not in any way universal. Not internationally speaking. Not over time. Not across mediums. Birgitte SB - Original Message From: Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, February 22, 2011 5:02:05 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Licenses' biodiversity : my big disagreement with the Wikimedia usability initiative's software specifications I don't get it. Copyright is universal, so should copyright licenses be. There are numerous exceptions to come up with, and we can discuss on this list into eternity about those where Geni can come up with wonderful examples and Teofilo will come up with reasons why they fall outside his scope. Doesnt the whole fact that we have this discussion proof the point already and remove the necessity of such? The point is that GFDL has impracticalities
[Foundation-l] Genisis of WMF Identification policy?
of discussion about getting back to the tenet of assuming good faith. Here is as a good a place to start that journey as any. On the tabled issue we are still left at least two important questions that need resolution through an open discussion that succeeds in convincing those volunteers who may be affected: *How can volunteers be made be confident in the security of their identification as records are being collected, recorded, and stored? How can this confidence be maintained changes occur at WMF? Do these concerns merit the expense of security audits? *What tools that volunteers use in order to do the work of WMF will require them to become a subject of the Identification Resolution? As new tools are developed, who will be responsible for keeping track of their existence and seeing that it is determined whether or not those who will be given access to them will need to become a subject of the Identification Resolution? Birgitte SB [1] http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/74095#74095 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Licenses' biodiversity : my big disagreement with the Wikimedia usability initiative's software specifications
I don't want get into the splitting hairs on licenses that is the rest of this thread. However you basic assumption is wrong. Copyright is not universal. Copyright is a kludge. A very ugly kludge. It works because in the normal work-a-day copyright world people just take for granted that it would all make sense if they put it under a microscope. And in the controversial copyright world people pay larges sums of money (i.e. out of court settlements) to avoid having to face how ugly it is under the microscope. Copyright is a set widely applicable laws sometimes written by people with narrow interests and sometimes based on ancient traditions that translate poorly into our modern world. It is not in any way universal. Not internationally speaking. Not over time. Not across mediums. Birgitte SB - Original Message From: Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, February 22, 2011 5:02:05 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Licenses' biodiversity : my big disagreement with the Wikimedia usability initiative's software specifications I don't get it. Copyright is universal, so should copyright licenses be. There are numerous exceptions to come up with, and we can discuss on this list into eternity about those where Geni can come up with wonderful examples and Teofilo will come up with reasons why they fall outside his scope. Doesnt the whole fact that we have this discussion proof the point already and remove the necessity of such? The point is that GFDL has impracticalities to some people. Whether you also have these impracticalities does not really matter, as long as some people experience them as such, because it limits re-use. The question is, should Wikimedia Commons favor one license over the other, or even discourage the use of some subset of free licenses? I think that offering a default license is great - it is a major simplification of the upload process and increases the odds that someone will make an upload. Because be honest: most authors don't care, they want their content uploaded to Wikipedia. If that requires them to release some rights they won't commercialize anyway, they are likely willing to do so. No matter the conditions. If they would be required to make a silly dance through walkthrough license schemes, they will just get frustrated and cut off the process. Of course we can have an advanced upload scheme where people like Teofilo can pick all complicated licenses they like or even type their own personal release which then can be judged by the community - but please don't bother the regular uploader with that. Best, Lodewijk 2011/2/21 Teofilo teofilow...@gmail.com 2011/2/21 geni geni...@gmail.com: (...) I was thinking about a Powerpoint presentation. Well yes thats rather the problem. There are also slideshows with actual physical slides. I've got some around somewhere. -- geni People who work with actual physical slides are unlikely to incorporate contents from Wikipedia. Wikipedia is online. If they bother to create a physical slide out of content from Wikipedia, they must have a computer with an internet connection, so it is not difficult for them to upload the equivalent of the slide they created at Wikimedia Commons, or on imageshack if it is not an educational content. ___ 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] Huge soapbox on foudantion-l tl; dr at bottom (was: Criticism of employees (was VPAT)
- Original Message From: David Gerard dger...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Fri, February 18, 2011 3:36:59 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Huge soapbox on foudantion-l tl; dr at bottom (was: Criticism of employees (was VPAT) On 18 February 2011 01:25, Birgitte SB birgitte...@yahoo.com wrote: interests being trampled without much thought was David Gerard's posting his take on the copyright considerations at en.WS with regard to the UK law prohibiting Fox Hunting link to the foundation-l archives. Of course everyone at en.WS thought he was someone kind of official from the foundation, that the Fox hunting? I have *no* idea what you're talking about here. - d. That is because it wasn't you. Some other David. In fact was a bit on a conflation of three seperate rounds of copyright discussions over a year and a half. And the first one regarding the work I mentioned was actually very uncontroversial; although it was quite incorrect. Strangely someone actually pointed out the correct argument against deletion in that first (and as far as I can tell only the first) discussion but that explanation wasn't absorbed and was treated as and novel revelation two years later leading to restorations. I am an idiot for posting such specific recollections of something that happened *six* years ago without researching it. I spent about an hour thinking five more minutes of revising and then I going to bed and will read it again in the morning and five minutes thinking Forget it; I am not reading this one more time And of course the latter thought was implemented. I am sorry for involving your name so carelessly (and obviously incorrectly). As they say competence will excuse almost anything, but even if it had been accurate I would still have been wrong to be so careless. Sorry Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Criticism of employees (was VPAT)
- Original Message From: Dan Rosenthal swatjes...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Wed, February 16, 2011 11:07:04 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Criticism of employees (was VPAT) On Feb 17, 2011, at 12:00 AM, MZMcBride wrote: snip A few Wikimedia employees are part of the Community Department, and there should be a higher level of expectation with them (Christine is among them, though she's working as a contractor until the end of February). From what I can tell, she has a pretty tough skin, but that doesn't mean that overly harsh criticism is necessary or warranted. It does mean that she has a responsibility to be as open as possible. (And this kind of sidesteps the issue of her in particular discussing MediaWiki) It's not about assuming that Wikimedia's positions are wrong, that's a bad and unfair characterization. But Wikimedia has a tendency, as an organization, to not be as transparent as it sometimes likes to think it is. Looking at the long view, more and more decisions _are_ being made privately among Wikimedia staff rather than with community consultation (or even notification). That's the reality, but to blame this shift (and the resulting skepticism from the community) on foundation-l is a red herring. MZMcBride ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l I'm not referring to a single incident. I'm referring to a broader trend; there have been recent incidents on other mailing lists as well, including ones where staff subscriptions are more prevalent than foundation-l (although I'm going to disagree with you and suggest more than just a handful of WMF employees and contractors are subscribed to this list. It's still the main public list we have.) You have a perfectly valid point about transparency, but that's not the issue here. The issue is the unwarranted criticism that is starting to become commonplace. That IS foundation-l (or more specifically, certain posters) fault. I don't know that could agree that *it is stating to become commonplace*It has always been this way. Back when volunteers made the sorts of decisions (or by default failed to make the decisions) that staff now make; they were heavily criticized (much more than I felt warranted given the comparative lack of resources). Let's ask Anthere how supportive she remembers foundation-l being during the working board days. The very first staffers dealt with this as well and it simply continues on today. Historically heavy criticism has even made by people who now happen to be employed as staff (I am thinking of you Erik :) ) Certainly the former mailing list dissidents that are now employed by the WMF should be explain to the rest of the staff and prospective staff what to expect from mailing list dissidents. Erik could honestly put together quite the portfolio for such a course. Of course *most* of the staff shouldn't have to deal with this sort of thing at all, MZMcBride makes a good separation of expectations regarding different kinds of staff. Those who are hired to deal with community issues, however, will have to learn how to deal with community issues in the framework of how the community exists and has historically operated, not how to the deal with communities when the communities finally learn to stop operating in the manner they have always operated in. Comments like earlier ones that staff may just stopping posting on foundation-l if you guys aren't nicer miss the point. That would be WMF's loss much more than foundation-l's. WMF will be able to do much more that it *wants to do* if it can successfully engage with the communities. The communities will be able to do a large majority of what they want to do with or without WMF. WMF only makes the communities more efficient not inherently viable. The reverse is not true. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Huge soapbox on foudantion-l tl; dr at bottom (was: Criticism of employees (was VPAT)
histories and verify things. I do not mean to suggest my viewpoint on these incidents is the authoritative account of what happened. I have merely described one of, surely, many valid viewpoints of these events; the viewpoint that most deeply influenced me. I know people had good intentions and no one set out to cause the any harm. I don't mean for anyone to be embarrassed if they recognize themselves at all. I don't know if I should have taken out your name, David. I thought about it after I realized I never recalled as much detail about the other examples. But I left it because I am so certain that you are thickly skinned. I guess just natural that you remember your first rude-awakening to some discrepancy between the world as you initially imagined itt and, as I have seen on blogger name it, Objective Fucking Reality much more strongly than the incidents where the discrepancy is repeatedly confirmed. Even if the other incidents are more egregious. tl;dr WMF making use of foundation-l to develop upcoming positions gains all parties an early warning of problems and a chance for thoughtful people who care about the big picture to help make mutually beneficial adjustments. . . Merely announcing fixed decisions makes it more likely the WMF will commit itself to some deeply flawed framework which the communities will fail to ever flesh out, . . And hands the dialogue directly to the elements of the communities who have quick, strong, and negative reactions to the decision . . . And empowers misguided Wikimedians who are confident in their desired result and blinded by short-term considerations to damage unfamiliar communities that do things differently than such Wikimedians would prefer.. Plus this copied from above For the record how things really work, when things are working successfully, is as follows. There is valid process. All stakeholders understand the methods of this process and have access to those who are responsible for implementing the chosen method. The issues working their way through the process are consistently advertised and updated through the same reliable channels. In order for the process to be a valid process all advertised outcomes are possible results. (i.e. if anyone could truly know the result before the process is applied then it is not a valid process). Whether that options are that all content classified as Foo is prohibited or accepted or accepted after special review, that Bar is banned from Wikiland inclusive overriding local communities or not, or that X number of WMF offices will be opened in cities within either A, B, or C. No results that WMF is unwilling to accept can be offered as part of the process and no results that win through the process can refused by WMF. If that process is that everyone has three weeks to privately email Sue Gardner their thoughts on five different proposals and then she sits down on Friday morning with her notes and picks and announces whichever proposal she judges best by noon; that is a valid process. Having a valid process doesn't mean having a poll or a public discussion or losing control over the decision. Just setting up basic expectations and conforming to them. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Changes to the identification policies and procedures
- Original Message From: Steven Walling steven.wall...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thu, February 3, 2011 10:03:58 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Changes to the identification policies and procedures snip Demanding answers on Foundation-l is a lot different than the news about an upcoming change trickling out into the community prior to an official announcement. The latter does no harm. The former can derail a productive discussion about a delicate issue before it's ready for public comment. I could not disagree more strongly. The thing that derails productive discussions and inflames delicate issues is gossip trickling about variably and the distortions that are inevitable when third hand information is being repeated. Not an open discussion on Foundation-l. If it at all seems otherwise, it is only because the more common practice among Wikimedians is to only bring discussions to Foundation-l *after* they have been well-worked over by the gossip network. I take issue with the implication that you would not object to someone spreading this news over IRC, but find it objectionable to it being spread here. I imagine MZMcBride's inquiries have so often been slanted as though they had originated from a hardened negative opinion, because he gets his information from the gossip network rather than the WMF. I think I am so often ignorant because I do the opposite. It seems to me, that MZMcBride has been taking pains for sometime to change the tone of his messages. I personally have noticed a continual incremental improvement on his part. It bothers me that despite what I would rate as his success in crafting a neutral and reasonable message, he is still characterized as demanding answers and chided for bringing up the issue altogether. Whatever anyone else thinks MZMcBride, I have noticed your efforts and I appreciate them a great deal. Introspection and change are hard things to do; thank you. The main reason foundation-l is less useful than it could be is because is not because people are *capable* of accusing WMF of wrongdoing in an aggressive tone on an open list. It is because they are *encouraged* to do so by the trend of responses from those connected with WMF. Asking reasonably neutral questions leads to silence or being shut down completely, while accusations of wrongdoing in an aggressive tone provokes snide answers. One of these methods of seeking information on foundation-l turns out to be more effective than the other. Of course, gossiping is most effective of all. But I for one, care enough about the long-term health of the Wikimedia community and it's ability to integrate newcomers as to prefer ignorance. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Changes to the identification policies and procedures
- Original Message From: Steven Walling steven.wall...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Fri, February 4, 2011 2:50:11 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Changes to the identification policies and procedures I would agree with you Birgitte, except that MZ talked to Christine and Philippe about the issue beforehand and was specifically asked not to post about it here until Philippe is back and any questions can be answered. Meh. It is not as though he is bringing up some pet issue in which the timing is entirely at his discretion. I would imagine the issue is coming forward at this particular time because of the time-frame chosen someone @ WMF. However mere animosity to his timing would not have prompted me to respond. My real, huge, jaw-hitting-the-floor, issue with your response is that you preferred the news about an upcoming change trickl[e] out into the community prior to an official announcement (gossip) over a posting to foundation-l. You just don't get it. Micheal Snow suggested gossip is just human nature. Ni modo. But there is a huge difference between stopping it (which I have never suggested doing) and endorsing it as a more valid channel than foundation-l. That gossip could be endorsed to any degree by someone that has a staff position in the Community department says a great deal that is not at all positive about the level of understanding and/or leadership in that department. Gossip destroys trust. Gossip inhibits transparency. Gossip excludes those that are new. Gossip excludes those who socialize differently (in different languages, tolerate different kinds of humor, at different times, etc.) Gossip deteriorates the quality/accuracy of information. Gossip reduces the quantity/detail of information in circulation. Gossip doesn't scale. Every single one of these values should be a significant concern of the Community department given the current state of things. [1] Gossip is inevitable and won't ever be stopped. But people can personally try to become gossip black-holes and/or work to shift the substance of the gossip to the appropriate channel. And WMF staff can certainly encourage the advertising of issues through more valid (i.e. any other) channels. At the very least, they should refrain from opposing the use of more valid channels in place of gossip. Birgitte SB [1]To be complete I feel I need add in some values where gossip rated positively. Just to prevent anyone who has never given the issue much thought from jumping ahead from what I have said above to Gossip=Evil. Gossip an organic component of human communities (No installation required). Gossip is probably the most grossly inexpensive informational network (If you few resources or the information is rather binary making quality losses insignificant). Gossip very efficient at spreading the information that is more passionately cared about faster and wider than information that people care less strongly about (No need to spend time evaluating information for relevancy before distribution). Gossip is better than nothing in short-term considerations. (Temporary communities will rarely find the drawbacks relevant) Gossip != Evil Gossip can be very good when a crowded theater catches fire. Gossip is simply not an informational network that is compatible with the goals of the Wikimedia movement. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Template Overkill
- Original Message From: Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thu, December 30, 2010 2:16:55 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Template Overkill What project are you speaking of? At en.WS the entire navigation structure of how to move between Chapters within a book is encoded in templates. I can't imagine how they could be scapped. Birgitte SB [[Moby Dick, chapter 2]] might work. Fred Bauder No it wouldn't. You might actually wish to examine any random main namespace page on any language version of Wikisoure and gain a clue of what I am talking about. For one thing such links would break every time a work had to be moved for dismbiguation purposes. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Template Overkill
- Original Message From: Stephanie Daugherty sdaughe...@gmail.com To: fredb...@fairpoint.net; Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thu, December 30, 2010 2:55:28 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Template Overkill Where there exists a clean elegent technical solution to a social problem then it wasnt really a social problem to begin with. Where it comes to something like ws maybe a tool to do an outline grouping a large multiarticle document into a single coherent one is whats really needed. Any solution that calls for endless templates is a bad one socially as well as technically, and at the point where you even consider something on that scale you should probably be consulting developers for a better way, like a way to do parent!child relationships. snip That suggestion just makes my jaw drop. Do you realize how may months we wait for a very simple bug fixes to go live? How many years do think that the entire work of the community should be stalled while developers revamp the entire idea of how MediaWiki works? We have great developers, that are an integral part of our community, who put time and thought into writing coded solutions for Wikisource, but they can't even get the developers with authority to review and implement their code into MediaWiki. So we are left with JS hacks for ages. And you really think we should have sat around waiting for entirely new code that is not even started instead of making the project actually work with templates? Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Template Overkill
What project are you speaking of? At en.WS the entire navigation structure of how to move between Chapters within a book is encoded in templates. I can't imagine how they could be scapped. Birgitte SB - Original Message From: wjhon...@aol.com wjhon...@aol.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, December 28, 2010 9:46:56 PM Subject: [Foundation-l] Template Overkill Most of the templates in our project, imho are just more clutter. The number of people who know how to use any particular template, can probably be counted with a box of marbles. However when others see the templates, they just shy away, they don't bother to try to learn them. If we want to make things easier for editors, we should scrape templates entirely. What they add to the project is not worth, what they detract. W ___ 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] About WM private policy
- Original Message From: MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Fri, December 24, 2010 2:57:54 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] About WM private policy Liam Wyatt wrote: The Wikimedia Foundation does not require that individuals create a user account in order to make any kind of editing. However, the local project community (in this discussion - English Wikipedia) decides on what can and cannot be done without a user account. Many (most?) language editions of Wikipedia allow anonymous users to create articles but the English Wikipedia does not allow it. This decision on English Wikipedia was taken primarily as a deterrence against SPAM - not taken for privacy policy reasons. Also, it was taken by the Wikipedia community, not by the Wikimedia Foundation. This decision could be changed in the future if the English Wikipedia community formed consensus amongst themselves to do so. With all due respect, you're talking out of your ass. (A less polite way of saying citation needed.) Anonymous page creation was disabled by decree on the English Wikipedia following the Wikipedia biography controversy.[1][2][3] It had nothing to do with spam (though you could arguably say it had to do with vandalism, I suppose) and it was not a decision made by the English Wikipedia community. There was a subsequent Requests for comment in 2007 on the English Wikipedia.[4] All of this information and history is readily available with a few quick searches, so I'm confused as to why you're posting the nonsense that you're posting. Simple confusion, I assume. Your assertion that it's a simple matter of local community consensus in order to change this configuration setting on the English Wikipedia is also dubious given the current political realities. It is a simple matter of local community consensus as opposed an imposition of the WMF privacy policy. If changing policy by consensus is no longer simple is in some local communities; I would imagine that the issue is systematic to the local community and not particular to this issue. I am not sure if the OP was complaining about this practice existing at en.WP at all; or if they are concerned about the en.WP template here being imported into zh.WP under the guise of a requirement from WMF. It might be rather simple to determine consensus at zh.WP. Self-dertermination of local communities further promotes the experimentalist ideology which is what has brought the projects such great success. We succeed because we are so tolerant of failure. There is no reason bring general policies in line across local communities and we can learn a great deal from being able to compare the results of divergent approaches. So if the complaint is that this policy existing at en.WP should be seen as a failure of openness, I wouldn't worry too much. There are lots of failures out there and this is not among the very few types failures which cannot be tolerated. As MZMcBride shows above this practice began as a reaction to the failure to protect Living Persons from defamation which happens to be one of the few types of failures which cannot be tolerated. If it does in fact turn out to be overreaction, I imagine it will be adjusted sooner or later. There are good reasons to be tolerant of local overreactions; it is not as though we can judge which practice will fail of the cost/benefit equation without trying it on for some time. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wiki[p/m]edia
- Original Message From: wjhon...@aol.com wjhon...@aol.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Fri, December 10, 2010 10:35:07 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wiki[p/m]edia In a message dated 12/10/2010 6:52:05 AM Pacific Standard Time, zvand...@googlemail.com writes: It is difficult to say how many people refuse to donate to Wikimedia because they want to donate to Wikipedia. People should know that you can't donate to a website itself but only to the institution behind it. You also can't sue Ebay the website, only Ebay the company. However like all fund-accounting, you can donate to a fund set-aside exclusively for items related to WikiPedia, and not for any other WikiMedia activity. I would be very surprised if a non-profit were not using fund accounting as their accounting system. W ___ 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] should not web server logs (of requests) be published?
- Original Message From: J Alexandr Ledbury-Romanov alexandrdmitriroma...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, November 30, 2010 11:27:03 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] should not web server logs (of requests) be published? I can guarantee that I myself, one of the three foundation-l list moderators, am not an absent landlord. I read every post with care and attention. Whilst there have been some posts on various threads of late than have been to my mind sub-optimal, there have not, in my opinion, been any egrarious personal attacks or trolling. Moderation is not something we take lightly. Indeed, when we recently reluctantly took the decision to ban one member, there were cries of censorship. There were some who cried censorship at the most Peter Damian's moderation, but I for one cried out that there were too few people moderated. I don't why you are equating moderation with banning. Moderation should be taken more lightly than banning at least. You seem to be using them interchangeably above. There are people on my ignore list who consistently and over a period of many years send egrarious personal attacks to the list and troll the naive and the flustered. And like everyone who contributes to this list, they also send other messages to the list that are useful or contribute a perspective that would otherwise be absent from the list. They should definitely not be banned, but it is clear that trolling and personal attacks do not bring about moderation. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] should not web server logs (of requests) be published?
- Original Message From: wjhon...@aol.com wjhon...@aol.com To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, November 30, 2010 1:26:55 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] should not web server logs (of requests) be published? In a message dated 11/30/2010 11:11:10 AM Pacific Standard Time, birgitte...@yahoo.com writes: And like everyone who contributes to this list, they also send other messages to the list that are useful or contribute a perspective that would otherwise be absent from the list. They should definitely not be banned, but it is clear that trolling and personal attacks do not bring about moderation. Trolling seems to be defined however any person wishes to define it. I've been accussed of trolling simply because I espouse a point-of-view that is critical. To me critcism is not trolling. Trolling would be, when you do not actually believe what you're saying, but you say it only to generate some dramatic effect. People who believe their own criticism are critics, and are one of the cornerstones of our society, without whom, we would sink into the morass of stagnancy. Personal attacks to me, are attacks against the character of a person, not the character of their argument. If I say you are being foolish, that is not the same thing as saying you are a fool. The Troll attack is launched, from my experience, whenever a person espouses a line of argument, with which you not only don't agree, but you find offensive in some manner to your ideals. That is not a troll, that is a critic. Trolling wasn't my choice of words, but in the section you snipped, AlexandrDmitri suggested that it would lead to moderation. The term is ambiguous, but I can hardly read his mind rephrase it more definitively for him. Your recent postings have definitely been foolish. You seem to be going out of the way to misinterpret everyone's words in the worst possible light. Why should you assume the phrase donor is meant to be restricted to monetary donations? Why must you approach responses that are not full agreement with you as combat? You obviously aren't on my ignore list, but frankly I am not sure how representative this thread is of your general behavior. I guess I will know in a year or so. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Greg Kohs and Peter Damian
From: Austin Hair adh...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, October 19, 2010 12:35:07 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Greg Kohs and Peter Damian On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 6:40 PM, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: If it pleases the moderators, might we know on what basis Greg was banned and Peter indefinitely muzzled? Greg Kohs was banned for the same reason that he's been on moderation for the better part of the past year—namely, that he was completely unable to keep his contributions civil, and caused more flamewars than constructive discussion. Peter Damian is only on moderation, and we'll follow our usual policy of letting through anything that could be considered even marginally acceptable. We really are very liberal about this—otherwise you wouldn't have heard from Mr. Kohs at all in the past six months. I'm sure that my saying this won't convince anyone who's currently defending him, but nothing about the decision to ban Greg Kohs was retaliatory. I'll also (not for the first time) remind everyone that neither the Wikimedia Foundation Board, nor its staff, nor any chapter or other organizational body has any say in the administration of this list. I hope that clears up all of the questions asked in this thread so far. It is not about defending anyone but about the fact that the I know bannable when I see it theory of moderation is unconstructive and leads to dramafests. The next ban is the one that will likely cause a real flame war. I suspect *more* people would be on moderation if any sort of objective criteria were being used. The lack of explanation over this bothers me so much because I suspect that you *can't* explain it. It seems to be the sort of gut-shot that hasn't been thought through. Moderate more people based on real criteria, rather than how you feel about them. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Greg Kohs and Peter Damian
- Original Message From: Austin Hair adh...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Sun, October 17, 2010 7:05:18 PM Subject: [Foundation-l] Greg Kohs and Peter Damian Hi guys, After extensive discussion among the list administrators, we've enacted, for the first time, a permanent ban of a mailing list member. Greg Kohs is no longer welcome to participate on Foundation-l. Peter Damian has also been moderated once again, and will remain on moderation for the indefinite future. Austin You guys really need to get out of the echo chamber. You don't even bother to try and articulate what you are trying to accomplish with moderation any more. Obviously everyone involved has written Greg Kohs off as inherently evil, so I won't waste my time with nuance on that subject. But you might want to actually define your goalposts to prevent the predictable dramafest that will occur in the near future when someone who has not been labeled as evil begins grappling with them. The foundation-l forum obviously has a broader population than wherever the adminstrators extensively discuss these things and none are mind readers. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Help Beat Jimmy! (The appeal, that is....)
Happy to respond to questions raised in a constructive setting at a later time, e.g. IRC Office Hours. -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Please explain why it is constructive to respond to questions when asked on IRC and not constructive to respond to questions on a mailing list? If it merely a bad time, there is no reason that you can't respond on the mailing list in a week or two. I always thought offering IRC office hours were about offering different forums to reach more people who will tend to have different comfort levels for different forums. Not cutting off other forums. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Pending Changes development update: September 27
Without having formed in opinion either way to what has come out of the trial or the straw polls, I don't understand why there is such importance placed on *technically* disabling the feature. If en.WP doesn't want to use it, why don't they not just move all the articles back to semi-protection? Empty out the pending changes from the on-wiki interface. This would likely have to be done *before* disabling it anyways. Just because the extension is installed doesn't mean it has to be used. I can see no reason why Erik or Danese should be being asked to determine consensus. I get that this is an important political issue for various people. I don't get why the devs are being focused on. Please let the devs out of the argument. I can't imagine why any of them would want to touch that button with a ten-foot pole until you have clearly decided. Especially as it isn't really necessary for them to be involved in achieving a negative result. Birgitte SB --- On Tue, 9/28/10, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: From: Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Pending Changes development update: September 27 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Tuesday, September 28, 2010, 4:42 PM 2010/9/28 Risker risker...@gmail.com: Ummm, no, Erik. The objective was to have consensus to KEEP it on, not consensus to turn it off, and that was always the agreement. There was never, until the lack of consensus to keep it on became clear, a direct suggestion that we'd be stuck with it. Anne, there are no obvious answers here. Two thirds of the community told us Please keep this feature enabled, some of whom said we should expand this to all (BLP|high-risk articles|whatever). Jimmy posted interpreting this as direction-setting for continued testing and development, and asking us to provide a development timetable, which we did. Had we then said Oh, sorry, no consensus for anything, we'll just turn it all off for now, we'd have a different set of people heaping blame on WMF right now. At the end of the day it's just a feature that we're continuing to improve, and it's up to the enwiki community to figure out how/why/where it wants to use it. We have no stake in this, other than wanting to support the project as best we can. -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Pending Changes development update: September 27
--- On Tue, 9/28/10, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote: From: Risker risker...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Pending Changes development update: September 27 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Tuesday, September 28, 2010, 5:22 PM On 28 September 2010 18:10, Birgitte SB birgitte...@yahoo.com wrote: Without having formed in opinion either way to what has come out of the trial or the straw polls, I don't understand why there is such importance placed on *technically* disabling the feature. If en.WP doesn't want to use it, why don't they not just move all the articles back to semi-protection? Empty out the pending changes from the on-wiki interface. This would likely have to be done *before* disabling it anyways. Just because the extension is installed doesn't mean it has to be used. I can see no reason why Erik or Danese should be being asked to determine consensus. Nobody was asking Erik or Danese to determine consensus. They were asked to give their word that our consensus would be respected after the polling of the community following a second trial. Consensus doesn't mean majority rule, as has always been very clear on this project. It's now on record that any further trials are moot, and that the tool is going to be left in place with absolutely no intention of disabling it regardless of the wishes of the project. And how should they know what the consensus is which they should promise to respect without determining it? They can't very well just turn off an extension while it is use on hundreds of articles. If the consensus is so clear (that Danese and Erik would not be required to make a judgment call) that en.WP doesn't want to use Pending Changes, then why are en.WP users *still using it*? I get that this is an important political issue for various people. I don't get why the devs are being focused on. Please let the devs out of the argument. I can't imagine why any of them would want to touch that button with a ten-foot pole until you have clearly decided. Especially as it isn't really necessary for them to be involved in achieving a negative result. The developers were being focused on because they have been the face of this project from Day One, and all communication with the community has been through them. And since it has worked so very well, you think it best continue with that pattern? Seriously, do whatever you want to about Pending Changes on en.WP. You are complaining about WMF not respecting en.WP decisions. You don't need some formal announcement of respect. Just make your own decisions without asking WMF to approve. That is what real respect is. Is something you give to yourself by having confidence enough in your decisions to move forward with them. Asking others to promise to approve of your decisions undermines respect. There is a giant gap between not interfering with a decision and endorsing it. And respect is only about the former. WMF doesn't need and shouldn't have to go around endorsing decisions made on each of the wikis. In this aspect, en.WP has failed to mature to the level of most of the other wikis for far to long. Self-governing means doing it yourself. I don't think you realize how absolutely disrespectful tone of the entire en.WP wants to trial run an implementation of Flagged Revisions has come across to me as someone who is associated with other WMF wikis. From the very beginning and still continuing with your recent posts; and I even edit en.WP significantly. Do you realize the development man-hours that have been put into adapting the extension to the very specific set of requirements that en.WP demanded on having before you all were even willing to even talk about whether you might permanently use it? And the entire time you all constantly complained about what was taking the devs so long to fulfill your detailed demands? (It was at some phases comparatively quick or at the very worst normal) I frankly hope you all decide to stop using Pending Changes and to forget about ever further testing it. Maybe then some developer will find some time to work on Lilypond. Or *any* somewhat functional way to do musical notation. I am not picky at all, because what there is now is NOTHING. And that is Bug 189; as in it was the one-hundred and eighty ninth bug placed on Bugzilla back in 2004. And even if not Bug 189, there may more be time for one of the numerous other development issues which is not even a blip on en.WP's political radar. Just hopefully, at the very least, it will be something that can possibly be used somewhere else in WMF land *in addition* to en.WP. Birgitte SB Here is a challenge for anyone else on the list who is as turned-off as I am about how many of the en.WP editors have approached this whole issue from Day 1: Let's make an effort only to respond
[Foundation-l] How far off-topic can a thread go Was: Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?
Obviously the original e-mail belonged on wiki-en-l and was off-topic for foundation-l. But I can't understand why so many different people think it is a good idea to respond to off-topic posts in kind. Please stop participating in the off-topic contests. Birgitte SB --- On Tue, 9/14/10, Phil Nash phn...@blueyonder.co.uk wrote: From: Phil Nash phn...@blueyonder.co.uk Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005? To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Tuesday, September 14, 2010, 6:44 PM Ryan Kaldari wrote: I thought you were awarding the post a score of 0 :) It would be all too cheap a jibe to attribute to a self-proclaimed philosopher an ignorance of scientific method and assert that blind adoption of the continuity principle is contrary to that method; however, it is fair to say that his interests largely lie in medieval philosophy and may not reach as far as the works of Karl Popper, let alone the Renaissance. So I will not level that accusation. ___ 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] Partecipation in Wikimania 2011
--- On Wed, 8/11/10, wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote: From: wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Partecipation in Wikimania 2011 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wednesday, August 11, 2010, 1:27 PM Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote: Isn't there supposed to be a boycott? http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2006/jun/20/internationaleducationnews.highereducation ___ This is bullshit. There are always people who for instance never take an air flight - should we also complain that they do not have an opportunity to travel to Wikimania which is on a different continent? OH I was just pointing out that there is an academic boycott of Israel, of course one is at liberty to break or not participate in such, just like those who turned up at Sun City. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artists_United_Against_Apartheid One has to decide where one stands on such issues, does one not? There seem to regularly be similar issues. Boston there was people from some countries who could not get visas - People have suggested Wikmania never be held in US because not everyone would be allowed to enter Taipei there were diffculties for some PRC residents. Alexandria there were boycotts/ethical issues over the executions of LBGT Egytians - People suggested Wikimania never be held in a country where LBGT folks are persecuted These issues are not really good arguments for never having Wikimania in certain countries. They are good arguments for rotating Wikimania amoung a large variety of different sorts of countries. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to FoundationWebsite
--- On Thu, 7/1/10, David Goodman dgoodma...@gmail.com wrote: The basic reason why doing things by staff rather than volunteers is wrong is that it decreases one of the motivations for volunteering--the knowledge that one can participate significantly in not just the work but the decisions, and become influential in whatever activity within the project that one chooses. There is a danger in doing things by staff rather than volunteer but I cannot agree that it is always wrong. Volunteers do not always emerge. There are real logistical and cultural barriers that prevent the proven template of projects wholly launched and directed by self-selected volunteers from succeeding in the global south. Should we just say that it is too bad that they can't get with our program? Or should we experiment with another template that might make those wikis succeed? I don't think that using staff there to be a bad idea. I don't think staff replacing what volunteers are doing to be a big problem with WMF. Mostly they seem to be doing things that volunteers are *not* doing. I do understand your point about volunteers needing to be influential and empowered in order for the model to work. But frankly I think your concern is based on an assumption that the WMF is more influential than it really is. I don’t think that WMF’s failure to engage better with volunteers is harmful to the motivation of the volunteers, but rather it is harmful to the WMF. If the WMF is often an outside party to the volunteers for all practical purposes, at least is an outside party well aligned with goals of the volunteers. And if that ever fails to be true it is not the volunteers that I think would be driven away. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to FoundationWebsite
--- On Wed, 6/30/10, Veronique Kessler vkess...@wikimedia.org wrote: From: Veronique Kessler vkess...@wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to FoundationWebsite To: susanpgard...@gmail.com, Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wednesday, June 30, 2010, 3:53 PM Thanks everyone for your comments thus far (and for the thank yous too :)). As we progress through accomplishing the goals of the strategic plan, we will have a better idea of what level our operating budget will need to be to make everything happen and be sustainable. We will have done some experimentation with initiatives like geographic investments and the addition of more roles to support chapters. We don't know what our optimal operating level will be and what fundraising level we can sustain. We have made some predictions based on a lot of factors and we will be able to respond appropriately to new information, changes in circumstances, etc. as we progress through this fiscal year and future years. For the endowment, Eugene really summed up the endowment issue well. I want to point out that typically endowments do not fund the ongoing annual expenses of an organization. A portion of the annual earnings on the endowment may be allocated to help support operations but it is usually a small percentage. In the past, one could estimate 8-10% earnings each year and then allocate some to operations and roll the rest back to the endowment to continue to grow it. Alas, these days, 8-10% returns are hard to come by. Just to put it into perspective, if we were to support a $20 million budget with 5% earnings from an endowment, we would need $400 million dollars. Endowments can be very useful and we will continue to analyze this option for the future but it is unlikely that an endowment would ever provide our entire operating budget each year. I don't think anyone would expect an endowment to fund all that is being done in the current budget. I have always thought of the endowment issue as being about always keeping the lights on. Ensuring that the content will remain accessible in some worst case scenario. Access is probably the weakest link in the whole copyleft paradigm. I think most of us can name examples of how contract law has locked up what copyright law couldn't touch. WMF has not always been as stable as it is right now. Maybe it is hard for all the people who joined the movement during this upswing of stability to understand quite how some of the earlier adopters feel about the endowment. I think it is about people feeling that the work that we have all done is secure. Since the WMF is not moving in the direction of an endowment right now, it would be nice if they could highlight some other things that secure what has already been accomplished. The endowment is not about just about funding, I think it is probably also symbolic of endurance to many people. There is a worry about the content remaining available in the long term. If there is not an endowment to donate towards, I think people could use something else to symbolize a commitment to the future endurance of the content that has been gathered. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Self-determination of language versions in questions of skin?
--- On Mon, 6/28/10, Martin Maurer martinmaure...@gmail.com wrote: From: Martin Maurer martinmaure...@gmail.com Subject: [Foundation-l] Self-determination of language versions in questions of skin? To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Monday, June 28, 2010, 6:11 PM Hello, I posted this yesterday at wikitech-l and was told to ask this question here at foundation-l. I'm a member of the German language Wikipedia community and have a question that no-one could give me a definite answer to so far. I hope someone here can answer it, or point me to where I should go to get a definite answer. The question is, what level of self-determination do the 260 language versions of Wikipedia have as to the design of their user interfaces (skins)? Can individual wikis choose independently modifications of their skins, and which of the available skins to use as the default for unregistered users, or is this controlled centrally by the Foundation? For backgrund, this question arose after the German language Wikipedia (de.wikipedia.org) was switched from Monobook to Vector as the default skin on the 10th of June 2010, resulting in considerable criticism from the community. On the more sober side of the debate, it was asked whether it would be theoretically possible to return to Monobook as the default skin, at least for some time until the biggest known issues with Vector have been fixed. Under the theoretical scenario that a majority voted for a return to Monobook as the default skin, would it be possible at all to switch it back? Or would the Foundation not permit that? The question seems to be a very fundamental one and I would also appreciate insights into the big picture. How independent are the language versions? To what degree can they govern themselves and to what degree are they bound by decisions made centrally by the Foundation? I don't think you have quite the right question in framing the Foundation as other. Rather, what degree do should the wikis present a cohesive movement to the world? What issues are so important to you that you might really say, Forget the unified movement we mean to have our way in this.? I am serious there; I know I have my own issues. Mostly about things that I believe that would harm the Wikimedia movement in the long run if not pursued. One of my pet issues is even the self-governance of the wikis (Sister projects as well as languages). It is a well-known proof of independence that some wikis accept fair-use images and others forbid them. But these breaks in unity are not without a price and shouldn't be pursued lightly. I am sure there are still many strong feelings and barriers to collaboration over the fair use issue even after all this time. I believe one the more important debates I have pursued in the past was convincing a wiki to decide through their local process to conform to what the larger community of wikis was promoting. The best thing that came out of that situation, in my opinion, was that we never had to test the bounds of self-governance. Certainly wikis working out local compromises which then make acceptable the adoption of changes that support unity through the WMF is the best case scenario. If you accept the local wiki's as being own decision-makers, you also must expect them to consider the larger benefit to Wikimedia in their decisions. In other words, the wikis are not so independent that they should feel correct in only considering their local community’s preferences when making decisions. You ask how far they are bound by the decisions made centrally by the Foundation, but I would say instead that they bind the Foundation with their decisions and should see this as an important responsibility. Several wikis could easily destroy the ability of the Foundation to create anything useful by each pulling in separate directions due to too much focus on local preferences. And though each wiki might count that as a win for their pet issue, alot of possibility would be lost. The whole mission to reach out to every person on the planet cannot survive by Anglophones catering only to Anglophones any more than by de.WP thinking only of what the de.WP community wants. Self-governance is the only option for running the wikis, but it will only serve the mission of WMF if they can each remember to govern themselves as an individual collaborator in a larger project. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy one language - one Wikipedia
--- On Fri, 6/25/10, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: From: Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy one language - one Wikipedia To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Friday, June 25, 2010, 1:07 PM On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 7:11 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: But, to be fair, do we ask such questions of our other projects? I do not recall being asked if I was a trained encyclopedia writer or a trained journalist when I joined Wikimedia :) Perhaps we should ask these kinds of hard questions of a new project, but also realize that we may not be able to predict all of the answers ahead of time. My first answer is that Wikipedia is good enough for children and that we do not need a Wikipedia fork with dumb language. If you think differently, please find or make relevant research which would prove your position. This type of project is original research per se. (Making an image, movie or educational game is OR. Making rules for language usage is POV and OR. Saying that Wikipedia is not good for children is POV and OR.) And we have to be extremely careful with any kind of original research. We have two opposing projects in way of handling OR: Wikinews, which handles it very well and Wikiversity, which doesn't. And if we are not able to drive well project with educational courses for adults, I can say that Wikijunior would be a disaster after just a couple of months of independent life. The problem with such projects is that they are usually a field for self-proclaimed experts to promote their ideological agenda. As it is about child education, it will be full of very stupid explanations, like that children are not able to understand this or that or that children mustn't hear something because it would kill them. Such strong labeling of the goals and make-up of this group wishing to work on a Medical Encyclopedia for Children really needs to be supported by some evidence. Especially as I don't believe they are participating in this conversation and therefore unable to clarify. I am afraid I don't speak German, but I would like to see what I can gather from machine translation if you would please direct me to the proper links. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikisource and PGDP
--- On Thu, 6/24/10, James Forrester ja...@jdforrester.org wrote: IME, PGDP's processes are /seriously/ heavy-weight, burning lots of worker time on 2nd or even 3rd-level passes, and multiple tiers of work (Proofreading, Formatting, and all the special management levels for people running projects). The pyramid of processes has grown so great that they have seemed to crash in on themselves - there's a huge dearth of people at the higher levels (you need to qualify at the lower levels before the system will let you contribute to the activities at the end). It's generally quite unwiki. I think Wikisource's model is a great deal more light weight that PGDP's - and that we really don't want to push Wikisource down that route. :-) Unfortunately I think that this means linking the two up might prove challenging - and there's also a danger that people may jump ship, damaging PGDP still further and making them upset with us. I definitely wouldn't want to see Wikisource move to a more heavy weight structure. Right now it is easy for anyone completely unfamiliar to the nuts and bolts of setting up a text to show up at the Proofread of the Month and validate a single page and then have nothing further to do with the text. Seldom do you even need to deal with formatting when you are validating an already proofread page. I think that this is important to keep this very simple. I would really encourage anyone who has never participated to try it out [1] Of course, we don't really have any push to focus on a finished release like PGDP must have. And this eventualism has the usual results even as it keeps the structure lightweight. Linking up with PGDP texts is mostly avoided at en.WS because it is so often impossible to match their texts with a specific edition, which we are looking for to attach scanned images. It has become easier to just start from scratch with a file we can more easily put through the Proofread Page extention. Their more rigid structure makes edition verification after release unnecessary for them, but it is very important for us since our structure is so open. It is difficult to see how we might help one another given such basic incompatibilities in structure. Birgitte SB [1]http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:Frederic_Shoberl_-_Persia.djvu Click on any yellow highlighted number. Validate the wikitext against the image. Edit the page to make changes (if necessary) and to move the radio button to validated. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy one language - one Wikipedia
--- On Thu, 6/24/10, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: From: Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy one language - one Wikipedia To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thursday, June 24, 2010, 6:06 PM On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 12:26 AM, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: as if we were dumb. I have heard (and I am not an expert) from many people the idea that you will get what you give, meaning that if you treat an adolescent as if they were a criminal, they will often become a criminal; it seems to me that if we treat children as dumber versions of adult human beings, they will grow up to be just that. (again, I'm not an expert) A kind of virtuous circle and vicious circle. Dumb adults are creating dumb articles because they think that their children are dumb, which in turn transforms children into dumb adults ;) I think you all are getting rather sidetracked over the details of content of some proposed project that I do not believe you are actually interested in joining. Surely any detailed decisions as exactly how to approach writing medical articles for children would be an internal conclusion. The real issue here is what merits the creation of a new wiki versus some specific project being setup as subset of an existing wiki. I have come the conclusion the biggest factor leading to success of a new wiki is a large enough community with a strong sense of a separate mission. If all you have is a small group of hard core content editors you will be more successful as subset of an existing wiki, if one is so kind enough to make room for you. One thing that happens in a small wiki is all the happy energy which was geared towards the content must be siphoned off into seemingly endless administration tasks. It takes a while for the community to grow enough to overcome that deficit. I would not recommend anyone to be in a hurry to make their own new space. The longer you can use an existing wiki to experiment with the your project the stronger you can grow your community, and maybe you can find a way to permanently fit within the existing scope while meeting the needs of your specific mission. If you can it do that it will greatly improve your ability to work on content. I would advise this group that as exciting as having their own Wikipedia must sound, they might be more successful as a project within de.WP or de.WB And even if they are dead-set on an independent wiki, they will benefit from starting within an existing structure to grow a good sized proof of concept. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Community, collaboration, and cognitive biases
--- On Wed, 6/9/10, Rob Lanphier ro...@wikimedia.org wrote: One undertone that I've witnessed everywhere is that people in open source communities that have a clear organizational owner is that there is a very uneven distribution of people who want a peer-to-peer relationship versus a customer-vendor relationship. This makes it really difficult to work out in the public, because some people seem to prefer the trappings of a peer-to-peer relationship (let me in on your early thinking, publish your roadmaps, work in the fishbowl), where others prefer the trappings of the customer-vendor relationship (the customer is always right, the customer is the boss). Some will even go so far as to want a customer-to-peer relationship, which is clearly not sustainable. To be really clear here, most of my impressions on this topic come from my previous work experience (been doing the corporate open source thing for a while), and only in a limited way with this community, but I've seen hints that the WMF=community relationship has some of the same traits. From the vantage point of the vendor in this case, the problem is compounded by the cognitive bias Erik pointed to (belief that the group you're a member of is diverse, whereas other groups are not). The net result of different expectations in the community is that, from the vendor point of viewer, it looks like the community is demanding a customer-to-peer relationship, since that is the average opinion of a pretty large and diverse group. That's why I'm generally pretty careful about using the term the community, because for those not used to working out in the open, it's really scary to get mixed up in public conversations. One thing to consider about the IBM example is that IBM is a company of about 400,000 employees, and was probably in the middle of their we're spending $1 billion/year on Linux year when they instituted that policy. They could probably stand to be a little inefficient in the name of insinuating themselves in the community. We're not working with that sort of cushion. As someone who currently works from Seattle (and worked on a distributed team in my last job), I also know that long distance collaboration (even in the same timezone as SF) has its disadvantages from an efficiency perspective. Most people have a strong preference for face-to-face communication for collaboration for good reason...it's high bandwidth. Even people who are really good at doing it take some time to figure out how to be effective using only email and IRC; forcing people who aren't good at it is really a productivity hit. My recommendation is to strive to make it incredibly compelling for WMF staff to work out in the community. That means adhering to WP:BITE and WP:GOODFAITH in spades, and reminding each other that we're all on the same team here. It means making sure that it actually feels like it's increasing our productivity to do it, rather than feeling like a drag. That's not to say the burden needs to be solely on you all, but I think forcing employees to work in the community is some customer-vendor thinking at play. Don't get me wrong: I think it's an incredibly good idea for us to figure out how to all work together better, and clearly a big part of that is going to be strengthening our working relationship with non-employees. It wasn't that long ago I was a non-employee Wikipedian, and may be one again soon. I share your goal. We have an amazingly diverse community with (very importantly) a fantastic volunteer work ethic, and I think we should be able to figure this out. I think you are conflating two very seperate issues here. There is a peer-to-peer relationship between developers (staff and volunteer) and a customer-vendor relationship between the larger non-technical consensus that is formed and developers (both staff and volunteer). Although I don't think I would describe it as the customer is always right; technical vetos by developers are common. The suggestion here is to eliminate the barriers between two groups of developers. There will always be some kind of barrier between the largely non-technical community and developers. There are a alot of rough edges to that customer-vendor relationship, but the volunteer developers have had alot of experience with the pitfalls there and can help staff developers navigate them. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
--- On Mon, 6/7/10, Victor Vasiliev vasi...@gmail.com wrote: From: Victor Vasiliev vasi...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Monday, June 7, 2010, 8:55 AM On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 5:42 AM, Michael Snow wikipe...@verizon.net wrote: If you don't know the history of racial issues in the US, you might not realize just how serious a subject lynching is. In that cultural context, it is not something to be joked about. Your post is a brilliant example of agressive disrespect of other cultures where lynching is merely a verb which means execution by mob (I think if you told someone in Russia that lyniching is an offensive verb, he would most probably belive you said something silly). Bear in mind that only 0.55 % of the world population are sensitive about lyncing. That post can only being seen as an example of agressive disrespect of other cultures by people who think happening to be born in the USA is an agressive disrespect of other cultures. Americans are people too! Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] The state of Foundation-l (again) was: Recent firing?
--- On Mon, 11/2/09, wjhon...@aol.com wjhon...@aol.com wrote: From: wjhon...@aol.com wjhon...@aol.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Recent firing? To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Monday, November 2, 2009, 4:55 PM Personally, I process about two or three hundred emails per day (yes per day), so the small amount of noise the Foundation list creates is negligible to me. If someone is so annoyed by a thread, that they can't even bother to DWR (delete without reading) based merely on the subject title, I would think we need to question whether that person has the right temperament for the internet whatsoever. I delete at least two or three dozen emails every day without reading them, if I already know the subject is not going to be of interest to me. I would submit the real issue here, is not that people are doing that or could, but rather that they have a compulsion to *keep reading* the thread. Sort of a, I don't want to be left out, or I want to keep watching the train wreck or something. I'm not a psychologist. I do know however, that the entire issue of let's close this thread, let's moderated these people, this is too noisy and so on, is endemic to the entire email world. Not merely this list. I can't think of any list I'm on (and I'm on a few dozen), where the issue does not come up with regularity. It is merely part of the way internetlife is, in my opinion. The right temperment for the interner? Maybe you would have a point if this was and email list targeted at people who spend every waking hour plugged into the internet. I realize some of come close to that. But that is not the target audience of this email list. Nor the Wikimedia movement. And if those of you who have the temperment and lifestyle for such participation do not control yourselves enough so that this forum might succeed in included more than just those participants similar to yourselves, Wikimedia will be sorrier for it. On a personal note, last week I have gone to having the responsibilities of three people jobs, instead of only those two I have been handling for most of the past year. Maybe I will resubscribe when I can hire people again. Good luck with making sure this list is worth re-subscribing too. I truly hope you all succeed with that. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Announce: Brion moving to StatusNet
--- On Mon, 9/28/09, Brion Vibber br...@wikimedia.org wrote: From: Brion Vibber br...@wikimedia.org Subject: [Foundation-l] Announce: Brion moving to StatusNet To: Wikimedia developers wikitec...@lists.wikimedia.org, Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org, MediaWiki announcements and site admin list mediawik...@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Monday, September 28, 2009, 1:32 PM I'd like to share some exciting news with you all... After four awesome years working for the Wikimedia Foundation full-time, next month I'm going to be starting a new position at StatusNet, leading development on the open-source microblogging system which powers identi.ca and other sites. Congratulations on you new job! I am excited for you and to learn more about ident.ca. I appreciate the effort you are committing to the prolonged transition. Thank you for all you have done; your commitment to Wikimedia will be a hard act to follow. I hope I will still see you around here (foundation-l). Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Moderate this list
--- On Fri, 9/11/09, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: From: Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Moderate this list To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Friday, September 11, 2009, 1:49 PM On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 1:14 PM, effe iets anders effeietsand...@gmail.com wrote: I think we're talking about two groups of people and thinking here: 1) a group of people who have the principle be bold in their coat of arms and love to say anything that comes to mind, no matter whether that might be rude or not. 2) the people who see discussion more as a social process which is helped by involving more people. At an IRL meeting, one of these two groups sets the atmosphere. Either the bold group can discuss loudly and the social people feel not at home and they leave. Either the social people are nice and are disturbed by the rude behaviour of the bold people, and tell them to be nice or shut up. I tend to prefer the second group, since I sincerely believe that it is important and even crucial to allow people to discuss, and allow many people to discuss. By telling that people who don't like the shouting even though they have a delete button, by saying that people should just grow a thick skin, you clearly say that you belong to the first group, and you are not interested enough in their opinion to change your behaviour, even though you don't even have a clou how big that group is and who's in it. I would even go as far as to say I find that quite asocial and rude, and strikes me in the same way as when I go to a cafe, people spit on me and shout at me, and if I complain about that, I'm just told that I should go home and not bother, because that is just the way they behave in that cafe... (Answering to Gerard's mail, too.) It is important to have calm atmosphere during discussions. But, it is important to have bold/impudent persons in the discussion, because it is more probable that they'd say to you what do they think and what do others think, but don't want to say. While they are constructive. And I may list a number of reasons why do I think that Antony, Thomas Dalton and even Gregory Kohs *are* constructive (if anyone wants, I'll make the list). As someone who does not think heavy-moderation is a good answer to the problem, I think you are missing the point. These bold/imprudent sort of people have useful contributions in sharing their positions. It is the way they ridicule others who have different positions that is the problem. BTW this is not limited only to those generally critical of WMF, there are supporters of WMF that have the same problem. The end result of this behavior is that there less participation from people not comfortable with the ridicule. And the people who are less likely to participate because of this is not equally spread across cultures. So it hurts our outreach and it hurts our general purpose because we end up hearing thoughts from a much less diverse group than we might. Two examples of the tone I find to be such a problem http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-August/054235.html http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-August/054159.html I honestly believe that as long as this sort of tone continues to be a regular feature here; the overwhelming majority of participants here will be Western men. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Use of moderation
moderation out to be more than it was. I thought we were using it as a tool to bring him around to the acceptable tenor of conversation on this list. I still hope that those initial thoughts were correct and there been merely an error of execution in this case. But I am now concerned that this moderation was to be applied as Mr. Maxwell describes above rather than as I explained to Mr. Kohs off-list. Mr. Kohs has shared with me that a message he sent to the list was rejected by the moderators with No reason given (I suppose this what the program generates when the field is left blank). And despite his request for clarification he assures me that he still has not been given any information by the moderators about how they mean to judge his e-mails as acceptable to be sent on to the list. So he has been left blindly guess what they might find appropriate enough to send through. Whether it might be his tone (which I found so problematic), or the subject, or perhaps even the position taken on a subject. Moderation can be useful tool, when those who cross the lines are given adequate information on what we find acceptable and how we expect them to change. It is an inappropriate tool to use to suppress anyone's contributions without explanation and requires better communication than has happened here. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] FlaggedRevs on Hungarian Wikipedia still not working
I checked on it today and saw that this bug is marked resolved. Tisza, is it working to hu.WP's satisfaction now? Birgitte SB --- On Fri, 8/28/09, Tisza Gergő gti...@gmail.com wrote: From: Tisza Gergő gti...@gmail.com Subject: [Foundation-l] FlaggedRevs on Hungarian Wikipedia still not working To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: wikitec...@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Friday, August 28, 2009, 6:24 PM The autoreview feature for FlaggedRevs does not work in the Hungarian Wikipedia because of a configuration problem with a group name. This causes a lot of extra work for the patrollers, and a lot of extra waiting for everyone else for their edits to appear. It has been about forty days since I filed a bug about this; in the meantime, I asked twice for help on wikitech-l (not to mention the several personal emails and IRC messages I and other Hungarian editors sent). After my first wikitech-l mail, there was a short and unsuccessful attempt to fix the problem without actually understanding what we asked for; before and after, in those seven weeks, nothing happened. This is very disappointing. To fix the bug, one would need to replace all occurrences of 'confirmed' with 'trusted' in the huwiki flagrev config file - that takes about 20 seconds. If one wanted to be thorough about it and move users from the old group to the new, one would need to construct an appropriate SQL query - maybe 5 more minutes. There are about a hundred patrollers on hu.wikipedia (including admins). If we suppose they only have to work one extra minute a day each (a very unrealistic lower estimation), that adds up to about sixty hours. Which is about a thousand times twenty seconds. Is staff time really a thousand times more valuable than volunteer time, so that no one can be bothered to make this trivial fix, even if many hours of other people's time could be spared? I'm aware it is summer, and Wikimania is going on, and everyone has a lot on their hands, but even so I can't believe none of the people with shell access can find a minute to make the fix.. Letting the time of the most active community members go to waste like this is not only very discouraging them, and not only does it undermine their trust in the revision flagging system (which proved to be a very valuable anti-vandalism tool, but it was always hard to get enough people involved), it also creates a rift between WMF and the local community. People perceive that the foundation does not respect their volunteer work at all, and it is only quick when it is creating problems (their previous contact with WMF was when someone shot down the statistics script that ran with community consensus, without as much as a question or comment), and not when it should be solving them. If you want to broaden participation and involve more people into meta-projects, start with actually caring about issues like these. And now please, please find someone to finally fix bug 19885. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundatio...@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] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
--- On Thu, 8/27/09, Kropotkine_113 kropotkine...@free.fr wrote: From: Kropotkine_113 kropotkine...@free.fr Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thursday, August 27, 2009, 7:53 AM Thank you very much all of you (Brigitte SB, Ting Chen, Mickael Snow and others). To close my participation in this thread I just add three points : - My question about the wikimedia membership criterion wasn't very important, but just-to-know ; thanks for your explanations. - The communication process on this whole story has been disastrous ; this, added to the fact that Wikis, QA and help pages are not up-to-date or are confused, tranforms a maybe-good-decision (I have my own opinion on this point ;)) in a too-weird-to-be-good-decision ; the NOMCOM disapearance in vacuum is a good example. It doesn't worth 10Mo discussion threads, I think you are aware of this. I agree. Inward facing communication has long been a problem for WMF. At times there have been board members that took more leadership in this area regarding various issues, but I can't remember a time when this hasn't been an issue. I think it is mostly a problem of WMF not setting up the expectations accurately. In my personal opinion when communicating with the community; surprises are bad. Even good surprises are bad. Fulfilling expectations on the other hand is good. It seems to be better received by the community when WMF fulfills a modest expectation than when it reveals a wonderful surprise. - Even more important point is the cultural gap between Foundation's intentions and communication, which are very north-american slanted (I don't know how to say that), and its perception by a very multicultural community. The gap is particularly large concerning financial/executive power relations. You have to be very careful about this and to be very pedagogic when you report such decisions, because when the story will appear in french village pump (for example) it will be hard tuff for chapter's members to explain it correctly (if possible). The answer often used is : It's not evil, it's just the way american people deal with it every day.. Just let me tell you that's not a sufficient answer for many people (like me ;)). I think that a non-used but very efficient solution would be to share informations before the official report and to work closely with local chapters ; but this is a more wide problem and slightly out-of-the-scope of this thread. I don't completely understand what you are talking about here. What is the american way ? And what do you mean by pedagogic? Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation
I will confirm Ting's explanation here regarding NomCom. There was no list for 2009 appointments. So it is true that Matt was not on the 2009 list. No one was. Matt was interviewed by Micheal and Sue, who as members of Nomcom, were aware of our decision to focus on finding expertise in both fundraising and 501(c)(3) organizations for the vacant seats. I find Matt to be a great fit for WMF with the sort of experience we have been most anxious for. Personally I wish that Nomcom could have located Matt a year ago and presented him as part of a Oct 15 2008 list and that he would have been able to share is experience with WMF throughout this year instead of just this short interm. This of course did not happen, but it should not seen a fault of Matt's that it was not the case. Birgitte SB --- On Wed, 8/26/09, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: From: Ting Chen wing..phil...@gmx.de Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wednesday, August 26, 2009, 3:44 PM Hello Kropotkine_113, since I am on the NomCom I will answer your questions. Kropotkine_113 wrote: Has Matt Halprin been designated to the Board by the Nominating Commitee (NOMCOM) ? This is explicity required if I read correctly this page : http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees/Restructure_Announcement_Q%26A This is not correct. Essentially the NomCom should nominate the board members, and should do this at the end of last year. But it didn't worked out. There are multiple reasons for that. Basically that was the first time that we worked how it can work and how not. We are simply lack of experience. So, it didn't work out last winter. We should have four nominated candidates appointed to the board by the begin of 2009 but we had only two by that time. According to the bylaw of the Foundation IV 6 the board can appoint trustees because of vacancy, this is the case. So Matt was not on the NomCom list. But we had informed the NomCom though about this process. After Wikimania the NomCom would resume its work and make suggestions for next year. So Matt would be included by NomCom in its list that it would suggest to the board by December or would drop out. Does he fulfill the Nomitanig Commitee selection criterion : Membership in the Wikimedia community ? http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nominating_Committee/Selection_criteria#General_needed_traits Where is the list of the other candidates designated by the NOMCOM ? The list of NomCom is not published because of privacy. It is a very simple thing. If someone is suggested on the list and he is not selected or he declined, in either cases can it can both be embarassing for the person as well as for the Foundation. So the NomCom had decided on its first meeting that the list would not be published and should be kept confidential. This would also be the case for the coming years. Could we see the discussions and the recommandations of the nominating commitee ? Because of the nature of the confidenciality of the NomCom the discussion are kept internal. But there are meeting minutes and the mailing list is archived. The NomCom published a status report which is published here: [1] Is it possible to know which member of the Board of Trustees agree this appointment ? Or at least juste the repartition support/against in the Board ? The discussion about this assignment and the voting about it would be published as one of the topics of the August board meeting. I want to respect the secratory offices role here and don't make any announcements prior of Kat's publication of the minutes. What I can say at this point is that I voted for Matt for the following reasons: First of all Jimmy and Michael interviewed and talked with Matt. Both of them had recommended him as a valuable plus for the board. The board had interviewed Matt in Buenos Aires, had discussed all the problems that may be raised or values that may be added. According of all these evaluations I feel no problem as voting for him. We worked with Matt in Buenos Aires during our strategic planning session and I feel that our positive evaluation was confirmed as Matt had inputted a lot of insights out of his experiences about procedures and measurements of success. Ting [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nominating_committee ___ 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] Wikipedia Policy Interlingual Coordinationn - WP:NOT
--- On Sat, 8/8/09, Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote: From: Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Policy Interlingual Coordinationn - WP:NOT To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Saturday, August 8, 2009, 1:31 AM Birgitte SB wrote: I don't know that it is useful to make a general policy for exceptions. I think it is better just to watch out for such problems to pop up and try to direct attention to them when they are noticed. I think it is a better use of time and energy to wait and react to the sorts of extreme situation you suggest, rather than to seek to proactively verify that no wikis are in danger of developing such situations. Not that I would stop anyone form volunteering to take such task on. It is just that it is very tricky. It probably would be more effective to wait till the locals complain and ask for help than to try and step in and accuse admins, who likely have put the most time and edits into the wiki, of mismanagement. Oftentimes locals that even have disagreements with the admins will be inclined to oppose your interference on the principal of solidarity, the devil you know, etc. It is very touchy situation that leans towards misunderstandings even when everyone speaks the same language. As much as I have always supported project autonomy, I know from experience on Wikisource that certain malevolent individuals like Pathoschild will leave no facts undistorted to achieve their ends. I found what happened there deeply offensive. I did ask for help here. You asked then that I move the discussion back to the project, and out of respect for you I did. That accomplished nothing. I suggested mediation, and you effectively refused. Bureaucrats should have enough experience, stature and impartiality to be able to step into these situations and bring people to a common understanding instead of burying their heads in the sand and pretending that there is no problem. A community like the one at Wikisource is obviously too small to have a formal arbitration process, so we should be able to expect better leadership from the bureaucrats. So perhaps it is time for some kind of system outside the project that can look at these personality problems more objectively. Ec I have been offline since Friday and just read this message. I am too angry at your mis-characterization of me to trust myself to respond in any depth. But I cannot allow anyone, including you, to mistake my silence is any sort of agreement. I failed to resolve things to your satisfaction, but I approached you in good faith. When I was not able to help you; you could have approached others or returned the issue to the list then. Instead you wait months to spin things in a false light and label people malevolent. You have lost touch with the fact that we are all acting in good faith towards what we each believe the best path for the projects. When we find ourselves at odds it is not because one side is evil and the other good; but because we rank different values as more important than others. Leave my name out of your future emails. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Policy Interlingual Coordinationn - WP:NOT
There are always extreme situations that merit exceptional treatment. ja.WP, however, has a great deal more than 3 active users. Birgitte SB --- On Thu, 8/6/09, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: From: Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Policy Interlingual Coordinationn - WP:NOT To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thursday, August 6, 2009, 7:45 PM Alright, but what about the case of a Wiki where there are perhaps 3 active users, and the administrator is imposing their will? It is the Foundation that gave the admins the power in the first place. I do believe that _most_ issues people want the Foundation to get involved in are best dealt with locally, but I feel there are some that should be dealt with at a higher level. Simply letting a megalomaniac run a Wiki as if it were their own personal fiefdom seems unacceptable to me. Mark On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 1:52 PM, Birgitte SBbirgitte...@yahoo.com wrote: --- On Thu, 8/6/09, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: From: Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Policy Interlingual Coordinationn - WP:NOT To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thursday, August 6, 2009, 12:38 PM This problem of one or two strong-willed admins enforcing their will over others is not an uncommon problem at smaller Wikis. In many cases, uncommon or strange orthographies, nonstandard dialects, or strange editing rules have been enforced; people who complain are often ignored and referred back to the Wiki by foundation people because it's a local matter. The problem of a user dissatisfied with the actions of local administrators is not uncommon on any wiki. When people dissatisfied with local enforcement of non-foundation issues complain here they are often properly informed that it is a local matter and that the each wiki is self-governing. Frankly the autonomy of the wikis is hardly a choice, if you honestly consider the logistics of it. Birgitte SB ___ 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] Wikipedia Policy Interlingual Coordinationn - WP:NOT
I don't know that it is useful to make a general policy for exceptions. I think it is better just to watch out for such problems to pop up and try to direct attention to them when they are noticed. I think it is a better use of time and energy to wait and react to the sorts of extreme situation you suggest, rather than to seek to proactively verify that no wikis are in danger of developing such situations. Not that I would stop anyone form volunteering to take such task on. It is just that it is very tricky. It probably would be more effective to wait till the locals complain and ask for help than to try and step in and accuse admins, who likely have put the most time and edits into the wiki, of mismanagement. Oftentimes locals that even have disagreements with the admins will be inclined to oppose your interference on the principal of solidarity, the devil you know, etc. It is very touchy situation that leans towards misunderstandings even when everyone speaks the same language. Birgitte SB --- On Fri, 8/7/09, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: From: Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Policy Interlingual Coordinationn - WP:NOT To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Friday, August 7, 2009, 3:41 PM I'm talking about more general policy, not ja.wp in particular. On 8/7/09, Birgitte SB birgitte...@yahoo.com wrote: There are always extreme situations that merit exceptional treatment. ja.WP, however, has a great deal more than 3 active users. Birgitte SB --- On Thu, 8/6/09, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: From: Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Policy Interlingual Coordinationn - WP:NOT To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thursday, August 6, 2009, 7:45 PM Alright, but what about the case of a Wiki where there are perhaps 3 active users, and the administrator is imposing their will? It is the Foundation that gave the admins the power in the first place. I do believe that _most_ issues people want the Foundation to get involved in are best dealt with locally, but I feel there are some that should be dealt with at a higher level. Simply letting a megalomaniac run a Wiki as if it were their own personal fiefdom seems unacceptable to me. Mark On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 1:52 PM, Birgitte SBbirgitte...@yahoo.com wrote: --- On Thu, 8/6/09, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: From: Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Policy Interlingual Coordinationn - WP:NOT To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thursday, August 6, 2009, 12:38 PM This problem of one or two strong-willed admins enforcing their will over others is not an uncommon problem at smaller Wikis. In many cases, uncommon or strange orthographies, nonstandard dialects, or strange editing rules have been enforced; people who complain are often ignored and referred back to the Wiki by foundation people because it's a local matter. The problem of a user dissatisfied with the actions of local administrators is not uncommon on any wiki. When people dissatisfied with local enforcement of non-foundation issues complain here they are often properly informed that it is a local matter and that the each wiki is self-governing. Frankly the autonomy of the wikis is hardly a choice, if you honestly consider the logistics of it. Birgitte SB ___ 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 -- skype: node.ue ___ 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] Wikipedia Policy Interlingual Coordinationn - WP:NOT
--- On Thu, 8/6/09, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: From: Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Policy Interlingual Coordinationn - WP:NOT To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thursday, August 6, 2009, 12:38 PM This problem of one or two strong-willed admins enforcing their will over others is not an uncommon problem at smaller Wikis. In many cases, uncommon or strange orthographies, nonstandard dialects, or strange editing rules have been enforced; people who complain are often ignored and referred back to the Wiki by foundation people because it's a local matter. The problem of a user dissatisfied with the actions of local administrators is not uncommon on any wiki. When people dissatisfied with local enforcement of non-foundation issues complain here they are often properly informed that it is a local matter and that the each wiki is self-governing. Frankly the autonomy of the wikis is hardly a choice, if you honestly consider the logistics of it. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Dispute resolution mailing list
--- On Fri, 7/24/09, stevertigo stv...@gmail.com wrote: From: stevertigo stv...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Dispute resolution mailing list To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Friday, July 24, 2009, 2:56 PM On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 12:54 PM, Chadinnocentkil...@gmail.com wrote: I'm speaking as a volunteer: go away, and take your thread with you. It is /not/ appropriate for foundation-l, period. It is obvious to everyone that this thread exists for solely one reason: for you to bitch and moan when you didn't get what you wanted on your timetable. This is also not appropriate for foundation-l, period. I think this violates DBAD, actually. CIVIL, too. Do these even apply at the foundation level? -Steven The foundation is not really like en.WP bumped up another level. We rarely get into policing such issues on this mailing list and that is nowhere near past tolerance levels, because of among other things features in this medium that are absent from the wikis. You see everyone's email program has some form of blacklist. If someone is bothering you, you only need to place them on ignore. If they say something super important someone more reliable will certainly reply to it bring it to your attention. All kinds of little annoyances are solved by this ignore feature, especially people who don't seem to understand what issues belong on this list. Why I have two . . . or now I should say three people on ignore for that reason alone. It saves a great deal of argument. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Donation Button Enhancement : Part 2
Donate Now Every donation helps us to keep free for everyone. Donate Now Keep Wikipedia free for everyone. Is no one else concerned by the use of the word free in the message options being tested. I wouldn't want these ambigous messages like these on the site no matter if they beat out the no message option by 10 to 1. Why can't we test messages that are actually clear and honest? Wikipedia will still be free for everyone if not a single further donation is ever made. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing resolution
--- On Sat, 5/23/09, effe iets anders effeietsand...@gmail.com wrote: From: effe iets anders effeietsand...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing resolution To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Saturday, May 23, 2009, 4:00 AM 2009/5/23 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com 2009/5/23 Mike.lifeguard mikelifegu...@fastmail.fm: I have been keeping an eye on what content got imported on English Wikibooks. If there has been anything imported from offsite GFDL-only sources I'm not aware of it. To be honest though, that's not saying much - we often have contributors bring us whole books they wrote elsewhere - but that's not a violation since they'd be the copyright holder and can relicense it however they want. I doubt there are any similar cases which do violate the terms, but I'd love some help checking that. What are licensing requirements for Wikibooks and Wikisource? Did they require GFDL or would any free license do, as is the case for Commons? depends on the language you're talking about :) en.WS is like commons. I imagine most WS are. The editors are not the copyright holders 95% of the time there, so the license is not up to them. The background stuff on the site and any notes written by editors to introduce the texts, will be relicensed I suppose. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Proposals re : sexual content on wikimedia
--- On Thu, 5/21/09, private musings thepmacco...@gmail.com wrote: - I'm particularly keen at the moment to try and discern whether or not it's possible to move forward in any way on this issue, or whether or not we're sort of stuck in the bed we've made to date all thoughts and ideas most welcome... :-) Your are not likely to move forward with the shotgun approach. What is the underlying issue that is most important to you? What is most common existing situation out there in practice that is exemplifies this issue? Work on that. Study it. Get numbers on it. Be sure you understand exactly how and why the problem exists and where it's boundaries are. Then work up a proposal to deal with it. Ignore all the somewhat relevant but tangential issues. Put them in a file for later if you can't ignore them, but don't talk about them publicly. That is your best chance to actually move forward on anything. It still takes months, but you really don't have a hope of getting people to help you until focus on one thing of a manageable size. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia is not the Karma Sutra, was Re: commons and freely licensed sexual imagery
Your really didn't address my question. Why do you think WMF resources are best used to create and support a mirror for people who are disgusted by sexuality rather than making easier for third-parties to create mirrors for *any* of different of audiences in the world that find various different things unacceptable? Birgitte SB --- On Thu, 5/14/09, Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com wrote: From: Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia is not the Karma Sutra, was Re: commons and freely licensed sexual imagery To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thursday, May 14, 2009, 4:59 PM Anyone who thinks Wikipedia isn't censored because it allows pictures of penises is fooling himself. Wikipedia is absolutely censored from images its editors find disgusting. snip sexuality rant On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 5:23 PM, Birgitte SB birgitte...@yahoo.com wrote: I think our efforts would be better focused making all of our content better suited for re-usability by different tastes and then letting third-party work out exactly which tastes need to be targeted. Rather than creating a mirror ourselves for No Nudity and leaving the whatever existing stumbling blocks are in place for general re-purposing of the content. It would definitely be a good start to create a hierarchy of categories for the use of private parties who would like to censor their own Internet access, or that of those they have responsibility for. The way to go would be neutral designations like Category:Pictures containing genitals, Category:Pictures containing breasts, Category:Depictions of Muhammad, and so on. This strictly adds value to the project. Then we would pick a set of categories to be blocked by default. Blocked images wouldn't be hidden entirely, just replaced with a link explaining why they were blocked. Clicking the link would cause them to display in place, and inline options would be provided to show all images in that category in the future (using preferences for users, otherwise cookies). Users could block any categories of images they liked from their profile. To begin with, we could preserve the status quo by disabling only very gory or otherwise really disgusting images by default. More reasonably, we could follow every other major website in the developed world, and by default disable display of any image containing male or female genitalia, or sex acts. Users who wanted the images could, again, get them with a single click, so there is no loss of information -- which is, after all, what we exist to provide. Wikipedia does not aim to push ideologies of sexual liberation. ___ 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] Wikipedia is not censored (was Wikipedia is not the Karma Sutra, was Re: commons and freely licensed sexual imagery
discussion (on Wikipedia at least). What makes a sexuality concept notable? I don't think advocating that censorship should be promoted is a practical approach however much it might stir people up. I don't think repeatedly mailing this list with a the latest image that someone believes is unacceptable is going to produce results. In fact the next thread that PM starts about a particular image that is *an example of a problem* rather than a thread about a proposal to address a problem is going to put him on my personal ignore list. Because I am finding the unproductive sensationalist approach very annoying. List traffic is not predictive of results. It might even be inversely related, after a certain level. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia is not the Kama Sutra, was Re: commons and freely licensed sexual imagery
--- On Fri, 5/15/09, Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com wrote: From: Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia is not the Kama Sutra, was Re: commons and freely licensed sexual imagery To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Friday, May 15, 2009, 1:26 PM On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 9:33 AM, Birgitte SB birgitte...@yahoo.com wrote: Your really didn't address my question. Why do you think WMF resources are best used to create and support a mirror for people who are disgusted by sexuality rather than making easier for third-parties to create mirrors for *any* of different of audiences in the world that find various different things unacceptable? I don't, and I'm not sure why you think I do. I explicitly stated that I favored a categorization system whereby users can filter out whatever content they personally find objectionable, and display whatever they don't. I also never said WMF resources should be spent on anything, and I definitely don't support creating entire mirrors just for the sake of image content when you could just hide or display the images inline. So I'm not sure what you mean at all. Well you now snipped it all, but someone suggested creating mirror under a different domain name for schools. I replied to that saying how I thought resources were best spent. Then you replied to me. If you weren't replying to me to disagree with me, I have no idea what you intended. But I thought disagreement with me was a pretty safe assumption from the tone of your message. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia is not censored (was Wikipedia is not the Karma Sutra, was Re: commons and freely licensed sexual imagery
--- On Fri, 5/15/09, Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com wrote: From: Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia is not censored (was Wikipedia is not the Karma Sutra, was Re: commons and freely licensed sexual imagery To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Friday, May 15, 2009, 1:46 PM On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 1:44 PM, Birgitte SB birgitte...@yahoo.com wrote: I think this email really shows a misunderstanding of Wikipedia is not censored is about; so I am starting a new thread to discuss the issue. Well, for my part, I think the entire Wikipedia is not censored policy completely misunderstands what censorship is and why it's bad. It's being used as an epithet, like calling someone a Nazi if they propose more regulation. The policy as implemented today is IMO partly a matter of pushing libertarian social values on all viewers whether they like them or not. Well I think that is more of an argument against misuse of the charge of censorship than an argument that censorship should be embraced. I agree people misuse it, rather than have a meaningful discussion. But to reply that Wikipedia *is* censored just plays into the hand of the those who do not want to discuss the issue. Censorship is deciding to withhold information for the purpose of keeping people (in some cases particular groups of people like children or non-members) uninformed. It is not simply choosing the least offensive image of human feces to use from equally informative options. Absolutely. The key characteristic of censorship is that it keeps people uninformed of things they want to know about. It's therefore not censorship to permit people to not read things they *don't* want to see, and it's not censorship to ask for confirmation before showing people something. Censorship would be if I advocated the deletion of offensive images. I don't. I advocate making them one extra click away for people who don't want to see them inline. This is something I said on-wiki years ago during a particular clash between Wikipedia is not censored and a group of people being offended: I never take an action for the purpose of causing offense. However I am certain people can be offended for a number of reasons by things I have done or said. I find this to be unfortunate but unavoidable. As far as Wikipedia goes it, there are a number of policies and guidelines here which help us navigate different cultural norms. I do my best to rely on these as well as precedent here over my own gut instinct of what I find personally acceptable. When WP norms lead to people being offended; I do think we should try to mitigate this as much as this is possible without compromising the core principle of providing *free encyclopedic content*. In this case little can done unless another freely licensed image is found. I would very much prefer to see these garments on a dress form or mannequin rather than live models. Not because the models offend me personally, but because I think live models make the photo more offensive to Mormons without adding anything encyclopedic over the same picture on a dress form. I think we agree on this, but perhaps I go a little further than you. The key point is that if we can avoid offending people *without* reducing the information available in the encyclopedia, that's a worthy goal. If a Chinese partisan is offended by [[Tiananmen Square protests of 1989]] because it portrays the Chinese government in a negative light, then too bad -- the facts require that we portray it in a negative light. If a Christian is offended by [[Penis]] because it contains a picture of a penis, on the other hand, accommodation is possible without compromising our mission. For instance, we might choose to put all images of penises below the fold, and post a warning at the top. The amount of information actually *lost* is zero. It becomes marginally harder to access, but only very slightly, so if we can avoid offending a lot of people, it would be worth it. But this idea is generally rejected on enwiki because it's censorship. I haven't seen any reasonable justification for why this form of censorship (which it isn't by the common definition of the word) is actually a bad thing. I can agree with your point here. But the problem is that censorship, by it's true definition, is a real issue. We can't dismiss the real issue, just because some people conflate it with inconvenience. The key concept behind Wikipedia is not censored is that Wikipedia provides free encyclopedic content. So long as that underlying goal of providing encyclopedic information is met then we are not censoring. When we decide that certain information should simply not be available to people we are censoring. When we decide that a particular image does not inform people
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia is not the Kama Sutra, was Re: commons and freely licensed sexual imagery
--- On Fri, 5/15/09, Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com wrote: From: Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia is not the Kama Sutra, was Re: commons and freely licensed sexual imagery To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Friday, May 15, 2009, 1:49 PM On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 2:40 PM, Birgitte SB birgitte...@yahoo.com wrote: Well you now snipped it all, but someone suggested creating mirror under a different domain name for schools. I replied to that saying how I thought resources were best spent. Then you replied to me. If you weren't replying to me to disagree with me, I have no idea what you intended. But I thought disagreement with me was a pretty safe assumption from the tone of your message. The beginning of my post was directed toward the general thread, and wasn't replying to anyone. I don't normally top-post on mailing lists. The part after the quote was replying to your specific point, and was supportive (It would definitely be a good start . . ..). I didn't see that there was anything besides the top-posted part. I am sorry for being careless about it and then making it a big deal :P Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia is not censored (was Wikipedia is not the Karma Sutra, was Re: commons and freely licensed sexual imagery
--- On Fri, 5/15/09, Birgitte SB birgitte...@yahoo.com wrote: From: Birgitte SB birgitte...@yahoo.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia is not censored (was Wikipedia is not the Karma Sutra, was Re: commons and freely licensed sexual imagery To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Friday, May 15, 2009, 2:17 PM --- On Fri, 5/15/09, Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com wrote: From: Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia is not censored (was Wikipedia is not the Karma Sutra, was Re: commons and freely licensed sexual imagery To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Friday, May 15, 2009, 1:46 PM On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 1:44 PM, Birgitte SB birgitte...@yahoo.com wrote: That said I am certain that there are articles on Wikipedia that are censored, just as there are biased articles and false articles. Wikipedia has never been perfect in the application of it's ideals. Does that imply that you believe [[Goatse.cx]] should in fact have an above-the-fold illustration of its subject matter, or not? If not, how is that any different from [[Penis]]? And if so . . . well, I think you're in the minority here. In all honesty, I don't really know. I generally find the argument over non-free content to be not worth having, because it takes the long-range mission out of the picture. I am frankly, apathetic about whether Wikipedia even has an *article* on goatse.cx and other internet memes. I wouldn't create the article or add to it. But I wouldn't argue to remove the image if we had either. I would much rather formulate guidelines over the articles the are more inherently meaningful to more people. Like STD's or even [[Kama Sutra]]. Then evaluate [[Goatse.cx]] by those guidelines and see where it falls. I think focusing on what is meaningful rather than sensational will leads to better results. Birgitte SB To be clear here. I don't want to look at goatse. However I came to the conclusion back in 2006 that Birgitte SB's gut reaction as to what is acceptable is an invalid criteria to use for what is included on Wikipedia. And while there is strong consensus as to what is acceptable for Wikipedia to include in the face of religious or political feelings. The situation on sexual sensitivities is less solidified. Until it is solidified I don't know what criteria should be used to make a decision on goatse. I do know that I don't want the criteria to evaluate articles covering important information to be based on feelings about goatse. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia is not the Karma Sutra, was Re: commons and freely licensed sexual imagery
--- On Thu, 5/14/09, Chad innocentkil...@gmail.com wrote: From: Chad innocentkil...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia is not the Karma Sutra, was Re: commons and freely licensed sexual imagery To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thursday, May 14, 2009, 4:04 PM On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 4:50 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/5/14 Sage Ross ragesoss+wikipe...@gmail.com: I don't have much to add, but I want to voice my strong agreement. Some sort of serious effort to reach out to the many users who don't share the outlook of our more-libertarian-than-the-general-population community is long overdue. Schools Wikipedia, or similar distributions. What you're talking about with reach out is limiting the contents of the live working site. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l Which have shown time and again that forks/fractures/split offs/new versions of Wikipedia don't work. They may find usage in a small niche, but they'll never be a huge deal. OTOH, the WMF saying Hey parents/teachers/etc, we've got a version with all the nudity removed so you can show your kids/students/etc would be massively popular. If there is a massive market for this, then why hasn't such a mirror already been created? I am serious here. Is there something that acting as a stumbling block to a third-party creating a SafeForKidsPedia mirror? Our content is supposed to be easily reused by groups with different target audiences than Wikipedia, so why isn't it happening? What can we do to make the content more easily re-usable for different purposes? I think our efforts would be better focused making all of our content better suited for re-usability by different tastes and then letting third-party work out exactly which tastes need to be targeted. Rather than creating a mirror ourselves for No Nudity and leaving the whatever existing stumbling blocks are in place for general re-purposing of the content. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] NPOV as common value? (was Re: Board statement regarding biographies of living people)
--- On Wed, 4/22/09, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: From: Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] NPOV as common value? (was Re: Board statement regarding biographies of living people) To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wednesday, April 22, 2009, 6:11 AM Hallo Brianna, NPOV is mainly a principle of Wikipedia, later also used by Wikibooks and Wikinews. There is at least one project (Wikiversity) which explicitely allow participants not to follow NPOV, but the Disclosure of Point of Views in Wikiversity follow in principle the ideal of NPOV: It tells the reader and participants that the content has a point of view and thus gives the reader and participants to be aware of this and accordingly to adjust their judgement in reading and writing the content. The question here is about projects like Commons or Wikisource. Mainly they collect free content and serve as a shared repository for other projects so that these other projects can use these content. The content themselves may have POV, that's for sure, and we don't make edits or comments in these sources to make them NPOV. But we do category them. And at least here we do make sort of comment in the source. Let me take an example that actually happend on Commons. It makes a diffrence if we categorize a caricature of an israeli bus in form of a coffin to the very neutral Category:Bus or to more commentary category Category:Political caricature or to the very strong commentary category Category:Anti-israeli caricature. It makes very big difference how Commons categorize such images. And I am in these cases more for the implementation of a similar policy like Wikiversity's Disclosure of Point of View: A source with a very strong bias of point of view should be accordingly categorized. With that we do nothing else as to hold our principle ideal of NPOV on projects like commons. I don't think of NPOV as being a common value, but rather I think NPOV as being Wikipedia's answer to the common value of avoiding editorial bias. Wikipedia has much more fine-grained editorial input than Wikisource or Commons. Wikisource and Commons must avoid editorial bias in the presentation of the works we host, rather than within the works themselves. Wikisource for example does not allow excerpts of published works (as opposed to published excerpts). While we host biased material, we aim to avoid biased presentations of material. So far it seems to have been successful, even where there have been initial accusations of bias or inaccuracy to be worked out. I think the people who are saying NPOV is a common value, are just using this acronym as shorthand. If you really examine how NPOV is defined; it simply doesn't hold up for other projects. The real value behind this issue if the sum of all human knowledge. Bias in the form that excludes other information or interpretations is taboo, yet bias itself is not excluded. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Moderation? (was: Board statement regarding biographies of living people)
Are all your emails showing up at http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-April/author.html Birgitte SB --- On Wed, 4/22/09, Gregory Kohs thekoh...@gmail.com wrote: From: Gregory Kohs thekoh...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of living people To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org, wikipe...@verizon.net Date: Wednesday, April 22, 2009, 2:09 PM Am I on moderation? On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 9:23 AM, Gregory Kohs thekoh...@gmail.com wrote: Says Michael Snow: The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees urges the global Wikimedia community to uphold and strengthen our commitment to high-quality, accurate information ++ So, the community is urged to do this work at the request of the Board, but the Board itself is going to do virtually nothing (other than this collection of words that urges the community to work harder) to strengthen the commitment to high-quality, accurate information. How many Board members were in attendance in Berlin, and what was the mean travel distance of the Board attendees for this excursion? -- Gregory Kohs ___ 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] Principle and pragmatism with nudity and sexual content
--- On Mon, 4/20/09, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: From: Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Principle and pragmatism with nudity and sexual content To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Monday, April 20, 2009, 3:39 AM On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 1:19 AM, private musings thepmacco...@gmail.com wrote: Here's a few questions about the foundation's role in ensuring the projects are responsible media hosts - Can the foundation play a role in discussing and establishing things like what it means to be 'collegial' and 'collaborative' on the various projects? Can the foundation offer guidance, and dare I say it 'rules' for the boundaries of behaviour? Is there space, beyond limiting project activities to legality, to offer firm leadership and direction in project governance? I'm hoping the answer to all of the above is a careful 'yes'. I believe the answer to the above, as worded, may be a careful 'no'. These are important decisions, and should be made and improved over time, but I believe it is the community's role to make them - and the foundation's to help provide interface or infrastructure to support the community's resolutions. Feel free to elaborate if you disagree. A strong and sustainable group within the community can absolutely work towards and establish the definitions and guidance you suggest. Past discussions have generally been useful, and not spiteful, but never pushed through to a resolution at least on meta and en:wp. I second this. Does anyone really believe it is even possible to set one standard of what it means to be 'collegial' and 'collaborative' for all cultures? These things are not absolute values and each community needs to work out what standards are most pragmatic for it's members. There is no shortcut or appeal to authority that can solve this for en.WP. en.WP has to do the work and find these answers from within. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Problems with the new license TOS
--- On Tue, 4/14/09, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: From: Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Problems with the new license TOS To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Tuesday, April 14, 2009, 12:13 PM the archives are mostly useless as a knowledge base. This is false and you know it. Several of these questions *have* been debated here and with a few simple searches you could be well on your way to reading the discussions. The archives are horribly messy and line breaks don't always happen. It is much better to use something like: http://markmail.org/search/?q=cc-by-sa#query:cc-by-sa%20list%3Aorg.wikimedia.lists.foundation-l+page:1+state:facets Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Foundation policy on linking to website that violates copyright
--- On Tue, 4/14/09, Ilya Schurov ilya.schu...@noo.ru wrote: Yes, it's clear. Nobody is going to require editors to do copyvio investigation of third-party resources before linking them. It's a conflict resolution matter: e.g. one editor claim that some site violates copyright and therefore we shouldn't link there, while the other editor try to put this link into the article and argue that copyright issues are not important here. ArbCom believes that the site under consider indeed violates copyright. Should we consider this as an argument to remove such link, or just ignore it? Do you acknowledge that what you are suggesting would be immoral? Or is one of those situations were you believe the copyright claim is immoral itself and see the legal situation as some technicality based on a corruption of government? I know Russian copyright has a few areas that defy common sense. Either way it would probably be best to follow to the rule of law, even when on stupid corner cases. Because in the long run different groups will have a different opinions on which cases qualify as stupid corner cases and always following the law is easier for the entire community to accept without fracturing. But those are my personal thoughts. You probably won't get an actual straight answer here. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Compulsory policies for all Wikipedias
--- On Thu, 4/9/09, Jaska Zedlik jz5...@gmail.com wrote: From: Jaska Zedlik jz5...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Compulsory policies for all Wikipedias To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thursday, April 9, 2009, 2:25 PM On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 21:27, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: The question was about a list which should exist somewhere (at Meta). Thank you, but not obligatory a list. I meant any form, even a number of rules written on this mailing list. Otherwise we (may) have a situation when, for instance, a user puts some inflammatory or divisive content on their user page and administrators are unable to delete it, until a policy which regulates this is adopted locally. NPOV and Wikimedia Founding principles regulate only articles and other encyclopedic content and can't be applied in this case. Or even further, community could adopt a policy when divisive content is allowed on user pages. NPOV is not violated, Founding principles are not violated as well. So everything depends only on a local community. I don't think this is a common thing, but maybe it worth thinking about this now rather when we face this problem. Those are not situations which would be covered by any Compulsory policy across projects. Community governance does depend only on the local community. That is a feature not a bug. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Court: Congress can't put public domain back into copyright
--- On Mon, 4/6/09, Chad innocentkil...@gmail.com wrote: From: Chad innocentkil...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Court: Congress can't put public domain back into copyright To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Monday, April 6, 2009, 11:09 AM On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 11:54 AM, GerardM gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, This is of sufficient merit that I do it this way. Thanks, GerardM Aan u verzonden door GerardM via Google Reader: Court: Congress can't put public domain back into copyright via Ars Technica door n...@arstechnica.com (Nate Anderson) op 6-4-09 In 1994, Congress jammed a batch of foreign books and movies back into the copyright closet. They had previously fallen into the public domain for a variety of technical reasons (the author hadn't renewed the rights with the US Copyright Office, the authors of older works hadn't included a copyright notice, etc.) and companies and individuals had already started reusing the newly public works. Did Congress have the right to put a stop to this activity by shoving the works back into copyright? On Friday, a federal court said no. Traditional contours of copyright 1994's Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) brought US intellectual property law in line with that of other countries. Section 514 of URAA better aligned US copyright law with the international Berne Convention, one of the earliest international intellectual property treaties. Though Berne had first been signed back in 1886, the US hadn't joined up until a century later, in 1988. Click here to read the rest of this article Dingen die u vanaf hier kunt doen: - Abonneren op Ars Technica met Google Reader - Aan de slag met Google Reader om eenvoudig al uw favoriete sites bij te houden ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l The URL, for those wanting the rest of the story: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/court-congress-cant-put-public-domain-back-into-copyright.ars While this is definitely encouraging news, we might want to hold off on changing our evaluation of URAA restorations. The tenth circuit doesn't include Florida. I don't know exactly what the next level of appeals would be, but we might want to wait for a ruling that covers WMF servers before we act on it. I hope these restorations continue to be struck down in the courts. It will be much simpler to determine copyright if they go away. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Court: Congress can't put public domain back into copyright
--- On Mon, 4/6/09, Chad innocentkil...@gmail.com wrote: From: Chad innocentkil...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Court: Congress can't put public domain back into copyright To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Monday, April 6, 2009, 11:09 AM On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 11:54 AM, GerardM gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, This is of sufficient merit that I do it this way. Thanks, GerardM Aan u verzonden door GerardM via Google Reader: Court: Congress can't put public domain back into copyright via Ars Technica door n...@arstechnica.com (Nate Anderson) op 6-4-09 In 1994, Congress jammed a batch of foreign books and movies back into the copyright closet. They had previously fallen into the public domain for a variety of technical reasons (the author hadn't renewed the rights with the US Copyright Office, the authors of older works hadn't included a copyright notice, etc.) and companies and individuals had already started reusing the newly public works. Did Congress have the right to put a stop to this activity by shoving the works back into copyright? On Friday, a federal court said no. Traditional contours of copyright 1994's Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) brought US intellectual property law in line with that of other countries. Section 514 of URAA better aligned US copyright law with the international Berne Convention, one of the earliest international intellectual property treaties. Though Berne had first been signed back in 1886, the US hadn't joined up until a century later, in 1988. Click here to read the rest of this article Dingen die u vanaf hier kunt doen: - Abonneren op Ars Technica met Google Reader - Aan de slag met Google Reader om eenvoudig al uw favoriete sites bij te houden ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l The URL, for those wanting the rest of the story: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/court-congress-cant-put-public-domain-back-into-copyright.ars While this is definitely encouraging news, we might want to hold off on changing our evaluation of URAA restorations. The tenth circuit doesn't include Florida. I don't know exactly what the next level of appeals would be, but we might want to wait for a ruling that covers WMF servers before we act on it. I hope these restorations continue to be struck down in the courts. It will be much simpler to determine copyright if they go away. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Court: Congress can't put public domain back into copyright
--- On Mon, 4/6/09, Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk wrote: From: Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Court: Congress can't put public domain back into copyright To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Monday, April 6, 2009, 12:39 PM 2009/4/6 Birgitte SB birgitte...@yahoo.com: While this is definitely encouraging news, we might want to hold off on changing our evaluation of URAA restorations. The tenth circuit doesn't include Florida. I don't know exactly what the next level of appeals would be, but we might want to wait for a ruling that covers WMF servers before we act on it. I hope these restorations continue to be struck down in the courts. It will be much simpler to determine copyright if they go away. Somewhat tangentially, do we still need to worry about Florida? I was under the impression we'd moved wholesale, servers and all, to California, so we were in the ninth circuit jurisdiction... -- I remember once asking about this during the move. At the time I was concerned about the weird and unpalatable 9th Circuit Ruling in Twin Books v. Walt Disney [1]. The response was that the servers were remaining in Florida. Please someone correct if I am mistaken. Birgitte SB [1] http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2006/12/bambis-twin-copyright-horrors.html ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Non-free content on Commons
--- On Tue, 3/31/09, Pedro Sanchez pdsanc...@gmail.com wrote: From: Pedro Sanchez pdsanc...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Non-free content on Commons To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Tuesday, March 31, 2009, 9:48 PM On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 8:45 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: This is a (predominantly) English-language mailing list, so using those traditions used in the English-speaking world seems to make sense to me. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l Of course, wasting resources on april 1st is very sensical. And who cares about purported reach to the whole world and all that fancy words let's bother them with our idiotic pranks becuase we are majority and thereforewe have the right to do so Very good attitude on the wikimedia foundation list (I don't care if you do so on english wikipedia list) Right, it obviously the pompous English majority conspiring here because you received a prank from every English speaker on the list. If the list were in Spanish so every immature youth in Latin America with too much time on their hands could access it without scholarship, you would be unable to spare the rest of us on Dec 28. Follow David's example and ignore those who actually choose to waste your time and spare the rest of us your stereotyped rant. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Non-free content on Commons
--- On Wed, 4/1/09, Marcus Buck m...@marcusbuck.org wrote: From: Marcus Buck m...@marcusbuck.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Non-free content on Commons To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wednesday, April 1, 2009, 10:16 AM Birgitte SB hett schreven: Right, it obviously the pompous English majority conspiring here because you received a prank from every English speaker on the list. If the list were in Spanish so every immature youth in Latin America with too much time on their hands could access it without scholarship, you would be unable to spare the rest of us on Dec 28. Follow David's example and ignore those who actually choose to waste your time and spare the rest of us your stereotyped rant. Birgitte SB Cultural imperialism is not confined to societies. It can be done by individuals too. And Pedro's critical remarks are aimed at individuals. No need to feel offended as a member of the English majority (except you support imposing your own cultural sillynesses on other people, in that case, feel offended). The main problem with just ignore them is: If you don't know the custom of April's Fool day, you won't know that it's a joke. And even if you know the custom you can still fall for the jokes. I am fully aware, that there will always be idiots, who don't know how to behave in an intercultural environment, but only if we tell them that they are idiots, awareness can arise for the idioticy of this behaviour. If you hadn't snipped it would be clear the rant was not directed at any individuals. The foundation list and it's English majority were all that was given not idiotic pranksters. While one need not feel offended about it, neither does one need to feel annoyed with April Fools pranks. But such an attitude is offensive to me and I don't think it belongs here any more than the annoying pranks do. I am afraid you misunderstood my suggestion as well as misquoted me.. I have no issue with singling out people, and didn't mean to suggest they must be ignored without comment. More like placed on the ignore emails from X function of your Inbox. So that they won't bother him in the future.. I suggested following David's example, which was singling a prankster out and publicly announcing that he was ignoring him. So I never intended to suggest that he just ignore [the pranks]. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Flagged revs poll take 2
-- On Tue, 3/31/09, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: From: Nathan nawr...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Flagged revs poll take 2 To: English Wikipedia wikie...@lists.wikimedia.org, Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Tuesday, March 31, 2009, 7:50 PM Well, the poll was closed with 80% support. It probably should have been extended, if for no other reasons than that votes continued to come in at a pretty good clip and there is no pressing reason to close it on deadline. If I were a developer or a WMF executive, I might pause at implementing a proposal for quite significant change on the English Wikipedia based on a poll with only 320 participants. I am afraid this one is serious. Asking Foundation staff to overrule a community decision is not going find support here. However vaguely you phrase it. Sort it out on en.WP. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing transition: opposing points of view
--- On Mon, 3/23/09, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: From: Nathan nawr...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing transition: opposing points of view To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Monday, March 23, 2009, 2:47 PM Introducing the terms of service, or anything other than the license itself, confuses it for me too. The questions it brings to my mind are: 1) Which controls attribution, the license or the TOS? 2) For importation, which determines compatibility - the license or the TOS of the original site (if applicable)? 3) (A restatement of 1) If the license and the TOS conflict, which controls? 4) If the intended form of attribution is seen as being allowed via the TOS, does the TOS then constitute the actual license (as opposed to GFDL 1.2)? A lot of this is deeply technical. I'm not clear on who is right, but wrt to writing and debating skill alone the pro-transition folks are clearly at an advantage. What I'd like to see is calmly argued and defined opposition; without recourse to You're an idiot, and I know phrase X means Y because I said so. When Erik, Mike Godwin and Michael Snow make concise and well written arguments, and get replies in the form of short inline comments along the lines of No, you're wrong it doesn't help anyone get a good picture of what the problems here are supposed to be. 1) The license controls attribution to a degree. Within what is allowed by the license a TOS contract in effect where the content is created could be more restrictive but not less. 2)For importation to a WMF. The licenses must be compatible, but there could legal ramifications for an editor who breached the TOS of an external website by copying the material to a Wikimedia site. I don't think there would be legal ramifications for WMF. 3)License controls the content wherever it shows up. A TOS is a contract which can only bind the people who agree to this contract. Using a website to varying degrees may or may not qualify as agreeing to a contract in different cases, but it certainly can qualify as such. So the license always controls the content, but a TOS may control what a particular person can to with the content. If the content is only available from one website with a strong TOS, it is possible for the TOS to control the content completely by binding every single person who has access to the content. This situation actually exists, most commonly with rare public domain content only available through subscription services sold to universities. 4) No the TOS is a contract only binding to people who agree to it and is attached to those people not the content. A license is a waiver of copyright in specified situations that is attached the content generally so long as it remains copyrightable. But none of this was exactly the concern I raised. My concern was that the TOS proposed for WMF site would restrict authors to using to certain facet of the CC-by-SA license that is not commonly used. This would generally prevent anyone who was not an author from importing externally published CC-by-SA material which likely relies on a more common facet of the license (naming the author by name). This is because such non-authors would have no right to agree to the more restrictive WMF TOS on behalf of authors who simply released their work as CC-by-SA. Regarding the rest A partial solution to deal with unhelpful responses is to ignore emails from the people who have a habit of such responses. Of course other people invariably take the bait and you end up reading them anyways. But at least you only get one email instead of two. Of course to describe this as pro-transition vs anti-transition is misleading. It really is more a matter of the transition forcing to light all sorts of issues we did not spend time thinking on before even though they existed. The arguments that are anti-transition are really arguments against the status quo as well. And the pro-transition camp contains a great variety of opinions as to exactly how we should transition. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Pissed off at en:Wikisource
--- On Thu, 3/12/09, Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote: From: Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Pissed off at en:Wikisource To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thursday, March 12, 2009, 3:03 AM Birgitte SB wrote: Sorry but there is no reason to have a RFC on Meta for anything remotely like this situation. And I would say that if were regarding any wiki (I am sure I have said that for similar situations on other wikis in the past). The wikis are autonomous on these issues. If someone has reason why en.WS adminship rules are incompatible with the general purposes of the project, then please share. Otherwise discuss in the proper forum which is en.WS. I have since the very beginning been a strong supporter of project autonomy, and have usually been very critical of anyone who tries to impose the rules of other projects in Wikisource. Last summer, when another de-sysop process happened, I also spoke strongly against allowing ourselves to be overly influenced by that person's overly bad behaviour on other projects; I conservatively concurred with what happened based solely on events at wikisource. In the course of the discussion about me, I considered coming here at an early stage, but decided that I would let things play out on wiki first. I did not raise the issue here until a few days after the decision was closed and implemented. If I had not commented on events here, would you have noticed it, and would it even have crossed your mind to comment as you did above? I don't follow exactly what you mean. I often comment here that some new thread is an internal issue and not a Foundation one. If you had commented on-wiki, I would have responded there. If you hadn't commented about the situation at all, I wouldn't have commented either. Given the still relatively small community at en:ws, where does one turn for a calmer and more objective analysis from someone who is not a part of the apparent piling on? You can approach community members who were not part of the apparent piling on and ask them for such an analysis. You can ask someone who is not part of the community and that you respect for generally giving calm and objective analysis to share their opinion on en.WS. I am not against people from out of the community helping out with this. I just don't believe either such a wide announcement nor having the opinions being placed outside of en.WS should be encouraged. If the result of raising the issue here is a fairer discussion on wiki, I can't complain about that. There should always be a place for off-wiki safety valves. I see that you have asked a question on my talk page, so I will address more specific matters there shortly. Ec Thank you for bringing the specifics back on-wiki.. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Biographies of Living People: a quick interim update
--- On Mon, 3/9/09, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org wrote: From: Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Biographies of Living People: a quick interim update To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Monday, March 9, 2009, 4:59 PM 2009/3/8 Nathan nawr...@gmail.com: On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 5:12 PM, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org wrote: 1) There is a big unresolved question around whether, if marginally-notable people ask to have their articles deleted, that request should be granted. My sense -both from the discussion here and other discussions elsewhere- is that many Wikipedians are very strongly protective of their general right to retain even very marginal BLPs. Presumably this is because notability is hard to define, and they are worried about stupid across-the-board interpretations that will result in massive deletionism. However, other people strongly feel that the current quantity of BLPs about less-notable people diminish the overall quality of the encyclopedia, reduce our credibility, and run the risk of hurting real people. There seems to be little consensus here. Roughly: some people seem to strongly feel the bar for notability should be set higher, and deletion requests generally granted: others seem to strongly feel the current state is preferable. I would welcome discussion about how to achieve better consensus on this issue. I would quibble with this statement a little bit. There is a difference in my mind between raising the notability bar and granting weight to subject requests for deletion. There seems to be a growing agreement that marginally notable subjects make for bad biographies and greater risk; there is very little appetite for beginning deletion discussions or deleting articles upon subject request. So these two issues need to be separated, because indeed they are quite separate. Totally agreed, yes - thanks Nathan. In future I will separate these two points. One asks whether the subject of an article (be it a person, corporation, or any other entity with living representatives) should be afforded some control over encyclopedia content, even as little as the ability to request a deletion nomination; most Wikipedians would be against this, I believe. Hm. That's interesting. As a basic principle, that makes sense to me - that article subjects shouldn't have control over the content of the encyclopedia. But -perhaps this is a little bit of hair-splitting- OTOH I don't think we should take deletion requests any _less_ seriously than complaints from disinterested observers. In other words - someone saying the article about me is awful and shouldn't be in an encyclopedia should be taken equally as seriously as someone saying that article about X is awful and doesn't deserve to be in an encyclopedia. In both instances, the article needs be assessed on its own merits. I say this because sometimes I think people may be tempted to refuse deletion requests _because_ they come from the article subject. If that indeed happens, I believe it's a mistake. That is why I think we should process deletion requests by the subject without any special notice if they have a chance being deleted. And if they are obvious cases where they will be kept, simply tell the person we don't delete on request. Putting these articles at AfD with a note that the subject requested deletion is going to make things worse most of the time. It will attract people to the discussion who are interested in putting on a show for the announced audience and who would not show up at a basic AfD. I don't think listing an AfD as a subject request will change the overall result of the discussion, but just make the path to that result more difficult for the subject. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people
--- On Tue, 3/3/09, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org wrote: From: Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Tuesday, March 3, 2009, 2:17 AM 2009/3/2 philippe philippe.w...@gmail.com On Mar 2, 2009, at 5:48 PM, private musings wrote: basically there's a sensible three stage plan to follow to help drive quality and minimise 'BLP' harm; 1) Semi-protext all 'BLP' material 2) Allow an 'opt-out' for some subjects (eg. non public figures, or those not covered in 'dead tree sources' for example) - note this is more inclusive than a simple higher threshold for notability 3) 'Default to delete' in discussions about BLP material - if we can't positively say that it improves the project, it's sensible and responsible to remove the material in my view. As a general rule, I think pm has given us a common-sense place to begin discussions about how to cleanup existing BLPs. There will always be situations that don't fit within this, but as a starting point for guidelines, I support these. It seems obvious to me from the conversation on this thread that part of the reason the German Wikipedia seems better able to manage its BLPs (assuming that is true - but it seems true) is because there is a smaller number of them. Presumably a smaller number of BLPs = fewer to maintain and problem-solve = a higher quality level overall. (And possibly also, OTRS volunteers who are less stressed out, resulting in a higher level of patience and kindness when complaints do get made.) Assuming that's true, allowing BLP subjects to opt-out seems like it would have a direct positive increase on the quality of remaining BLPs, in addition to eliminating some BLPs entirely. Clearly, there would still be a notability threshold above which people would never be allowed to opt out - there will always be articles about people such as Hillary Clinton and J.K. Rowling and Penelope Cruz. But a decision to significantly raise that threshold, as well as default to deletion upon request, seems like it would have a positive effect on quality. Can I ask: does anyone reading this thread 1) think raising the notability threshold is a bad idea, 2) believe defaulting to deletion upon request is a bad idea, or 3) disagree with the notion that other Wikipedias should shift closer to the German Wikipedia's generally-less-permissive policies and practices, particularly WRT BLPs? 1) Raising the notability threshold is not an intrinsically bad idea, but it is hard to agree without knowing the new threshold. 2) Defaulting to delete should be for all BLPs or none. I disagree that it be any different because it was requested. It will only lead to false hopes and greater disappointment if we have a special rule for per request. Personally I support defaulting to delete on all BLPs 3) I disagree with the notion that other Wikipedias should shift to follow anyone's policy or practices. They need to work out what will work best in the culture of their own community. Although the goal of protecting living people from being harmed by Wikipedia needs to be universal, I don't that it should be put in terms of de-style or en-style. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people
--- On Tue, 3/3/09, Aude audeviv...@gmail.com wrote: From: Aude audeviv...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Tuesday, March 3, 2009, 2:52 AM On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 2:25 AM, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote: Back to BLP. Personally I think that the policies we have related to BLPs are enough, but maybe we should be put more resource in the inforcement of these policies. The meetings Philipp mentioned in Germany are a very good start point. Perhaps the foundation can help organize such OTRS-training-meetings in the US (because the lack of a US chapter) and other countries, just as a beginning. Later we maybe we can see how we can expand this to more regions and countries. We should also encourage more people to work and help on OTRS and give them due support. Ting Regarding putting more resources into enforcement of BLP policies, what resources are you talking about? I have seen problems reported to the BLP and other noticeboards, with no response or inadequate responses from admins and editors. One problem I encountered is that the BLP noticeboard on en.WP is regularly archived by date, whether or not a thread has been resolved. I frankly don't do much work in this area, but I occasionally stumble across something and report it there. The lack of feedback about whether the issue I reported was significant is discouraging. I imagine casual reporters who do not see the issues they report resolved nor get feedback on why the issues is not a concern simply stop making reports there. Birgitte SB ___ 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, 2/5/09, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com wrote: From: George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] FW: [Wikinews-l] Increased incivility at wikinews [en] warning: contains rant To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thursday, February 5, 2009, 3:56 PM On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 12:20 PM, Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.ukwrote: You can see the results we've had: viz, not a lot. It's not like we can put our foot down and say play nice, now, guys and things get better. If we could solve this problem easily, we'd have done it years ago. To be fair - we're playing really nice with offenders, rather than playing nasty hardball. We could politely play nasty hardball, and squash a few people under our polite polished jackboots of propriety. It wouldn't necessarily be a self-contradiction to use excessive force to try and impose politeness. That said, the ultimate problem is community interaction issues that incivility and abuse cause, and abusive admin responses make *that* worse even if we help the incivility problem, so it's probably not a wise approach. That said, making more of the civility blocks stick would be helpful. The sense of the community that some of the problematic contributors are more worth having than asking to leave is probably a mistake. Personally I think that is the wrong approach. It would be most effective to move the center. There are always going to be people who feel the need to be shocking. If we can get the people who are only occasionally rude or who are just crossing the line of civility to follow consistently higher standards, then I think that extreme cases will improve also. That sort of approach should be more successful than making blocks stick for the extreme cases. Birgitte SB ___ 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, 1/20/09, Ziko van Dijk zvand...@googlemail.com wrote: By the way, this word chapter is unfamiliar for me, a German. I did not hear it before I became a Wikimedian. What does this English word mean? Any sub division of an organisation, or is it rather associated to a city than to a country? The word local in German (lokal) means: related to a city. What does it mean when English speaking Wikimedians talk about local chapters? Shouldn't it be national chapters? I consider Germany as a national, not a local entity... Ziko In my experience a chapter means a organization that is associated with a larger organization with serperate officers from from the larger organization, but the key feature is that it manages it's own memebership. The larger organization is usualy more closely tied to chapters than in the case of WMF. But chapters are generally run independently and the larger organization which enforces it's requirements or morals with threats to cut ties with the chapter rather than any direct managment of chapter activities. Normally chapters are put on probation and given a chance to correct things before being cut off completely. Chapters are most recognizable to me in social soiceties and advocay groups. But I think the it would normal for unions and charity organizations use them too. de.WP has an article on Freemasonary, the lodges within that are should very similar to use of chapters of a greek letter society as that was all modeled on freemasonary. I don't if there is a general concept in German for the way lodge is used in Freemasaonary, but in English chapter applies to this concept. Birgitte SB ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
