Re: [Foundation-l] [Fwd: [Wikitech-l] Planned 1.17 deployment on February 8]
But a few of us at Wiktionary seem to have many non-functioning templates. On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 1:45 PM, Peter Coombe thewub.w...@googlemail.comwrote: Latest word is that 1.17 deployment is postponed until at least tomorrow, whilst the remaining issues are tackled. http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2011/02/1-17-deployment-postponed/ Pete / the wub On 8 February 2011 17:35, Guillaume Paumier gpaum...@wikimedia.org wrote: Le mardi 08 février 2011 à 22:48 +0530, Bartol Flint a écrit : Now I see this on the main page : Our servers are currently experiencing a technical problem. This is probably temporary and should be fixed soon. Please try again in a few minutes. Yes. The second attempt was aborted as well, because of other issues. Is there someplace I can follow what the status is - like on twitter?? A public status dashboard is available at http://status.wikimedia.org Technical details are automatically pushed to identi.ca and twitter: http://identi.ca/wikimediatech http://twitter.com/wikimediatech -- Guillaume Paumier Product manager - Wikimedia Foundation Support free knowledge: http://donate.wikimedia.org ___ 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 -- Dennis C. During Cynolatry is tolerant so long as the dog is not denied an equal divinity with the deities of other faiths. - Ambrose Bierce http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cynolatry ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Foundation-l
Are you saying that one can't disclose correspondence to any third-party without consent of both parties? In what jurisdictions? On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 4:53 AM, K. Peachey p858sn...@yahoo.com.au wrote: He is also a bit miffed about you forwarding the message to the list, as you are probably aware, emails are still copyrighted. -Peachey -- Dennis C. During ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Foundation-l
I would have thought almost any copying (such as what the software routinely does on, say, this very e-mail) would be at worst fair use. COPYVIO follows On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 10:41 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: On 27 June 2010 15:29, Aphaia aph...@gmail.com wrote: In a certain jurisdiction, only creative expression can be under protection of laws. I have no comment, since I don't follow the whole discussion, if it is related to the mail in question. Sure, but I think creative expression is usually interpreted very broadly. It doesn't have to be artistic or anything, just something more than raw facts presented in the same way anyone else would present those facts. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l COPYVIO ENDS -- Dennis C. During Cynolatry is tolerant so long as the dog is not denied an equal divinity with the deities of other faiths. - Ambrose Bierce http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cynolatry ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Everything okay?
I'm guessing that the habit has been broken. It will probably come back. On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 10:18 PM, MZMcBride pub...@mzmcbride.com wrote: No posts in over half a day. Is everyone simply scared? MZMcBride pub...@mzmcbride.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Dennis C. During Cynolatry is tolerant so long as the dog is not denied an equal divinity with the deities of other faiths. - Ambrose Bierce http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cynolatry ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] WMF seeking to sub-lease office space?
Perhaps you could direct me to the WP article that explains why should they handicap themselves in any negotiations by making a public commitment to a future action. Maybe the landlord has pledged not to peek at this list? Or maybe the cunning folks at WMF have so many sock-puppet floating different stories that the landlord no longer pays any attention. (See *Bodyguard of Lies*.) On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 1:38 PM, Gregory Kohs thekoh...@gmail.com wrote: Gerard Hoi Meijssen writes: ++ What would be more obvious then looking for other premises when the current ones are no longer sufficient.. Gee.. hiring new premises .. with sufficient elbow room for some time ?? I wonder.. Gee Gregory, you already mentioned that ... are they really looking for something new ? Then again, I am not asked to answer your query am I .. Thanks, GerardM ++ Sometimes, Gerard, your inability to comprehend even the most basic of principles, such as how a sub-lease works, is amusing and endearing. This may help you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublease I'm afraid there's no Simple English Wikipedia article to assist you further. It may be in your own best interest to refrain from any further commentary on this thread and leave discussion to those of us who understand basic property management fundamentals. Another possible explanation for what's happening at the WMF HQ is that the whole operation is preparing to move to new digs, and rather than break their lease, they're seeking to find a subtenant to avoid some financial penalty for early exit. I sort of set that aside, because I would have expected an open and transparent organization such as the WMF to have announced at some point that they were looking for an entirely different office home. We'll have clarification when Sue or Jimbo or Michael or Erik or Kat or some other WMF'er responds. Probably best that we just wait for some official explanation, rather than continue speculating about elbow room, which is what seems to be a problem, not a benefit. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Dennis C. During Cynolatry is tolerant so long as the dog is not denied an equal divinity with the deities of other faiths. - Ambrose Bierce http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cynolatry ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] 31 august, 20 years of our national holiday Our romanian language in Moldova, mo.wikipedia still in cyrillic !
On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 1:18 AM, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: It's more complex than that I think. mo was deleted from the list of ISO codes relatively recently; when the Wiki was created it was a valid ISO code. Like I said, it is a complex issue. Also, from what I have heard (and this may be incorrect), the US Library of Congress deleted the MO code without consulting with any Moldovan authority which seems inappropriate. Imagine the outcry if those experts were to delete SR, HR, and BS codes in favor of SH without consulting any local authority? Mark Funny you should mention deleting SR, HR, and BS. At Wiktionary this very issue was voted on. An inside group favored the eliminations based on the linguistic argument that the various overlapping dialects (which don't correspond well to national borders) and on the valuable contributions in other areas of the principal admin advocating the elimination. A great deal of nastiness accompanied the vote, which failed due to the participation of new Wiktionary contributors. These contributors have now made sure that they have made 50 edits so as to qualify under proposed new voting qualification rules also under vote. The issue has been somewhat divisive. The point is that it in some cases language is an aspect of national identity. We are very lucky when an international authority (the ISO) makes a decision which we can choose to rely on instead of getting involved in matters generating such anger. There does seem to be a clear trend in some places for wikipedia and wiktionary to become national rather than linguistic in their focus. I have noted the very low influence of Indian English contributors on Wiktionary despite their being one of the largest groups of English speakers and having some distinct vocabulary and distinct grammatical details to their variety of English. The situation contrasts with that for, say, Australia. I wonder whether that is attributable to a similar phenomenon -- Dennis C. During Cynolatry is tolerant so long as the dog is not denied an equal divinity with the deities of other faiths. - Ambrose Bierce http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cynolatry ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Lack of research on Wikipedia
What is most remarkable in many ways is that there has been as much progress on quality and on meeting user needs despite a lack of measurements connected with those. Perhaps that it attributable to the contributor population being a reasonably good match with the user population so that honest contributor introspection was almost as good as a usability study. As WMF pushes on it seems unlikely that the same fortunate conditions will continue. We have higher barriers to contribution by newer contributors and a richer mix of persons of academic orientation who seem to treat the projects as platforms for ersatz scholarly publication. In any event such folks are not a good model for the user base that the projects serve. Without some devices to get a greater focus on user needs, I fear a steady narrowing and deadening of the projects. The absence of information about how well the projects are serving user needs (those that we would want to serve) is part of what has led to the obsession with the crudest of measures about the product. IOW, you may not find so much information as you might want about how good a job the projects are doing. And therein may lie some of your recommendations. On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 6:12 PM, Fowler, John john.fow...@bridgespan.orgwrote: Hi all, I stumbled across this thread when I was browsing through some past foundation-l posts. My name is John Fowler, and I'm with the Bridgespan Group, working with the Wikimedia Foundation during the strategic planning process to develop a fact base to inform future work. We're trying to pull together all available research currently on Wikimedia's strategic planning site. You can find these preliminary fact bases at http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fact_base. There's good data here on article count, number of contributors, quality of articles, and the demographics of readers/contributors. This may be of some use to the discussion regarding the availability of research on Wikipedia, but any additional information would be a huge help--especially given how much knowledge seems to be passed back and forth on this mailing list. Best, John -Original Message- From: Gerard Meijssen [mailto:gerard.meijs...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 2:22 PM To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Lack of research on Wikipedia Hoi, I wrote articles on all the fish of the Benelux. I cheered when I was done.. Nobody else did. What we need is to celebrate something that has meaning to all. Articles do that better then anything I know. The thing with news is that it needs to be told. That is why I blog for instance, how else do I explain that a GLAM is not about getting images for Wikipedia but that they provide the basis for the credibility of the illustrations we use. Compare that to article numbers, there is the suspense of the numbers rising to this magical number... It is a great show, and while it may have limited meaning, it gives a more universal sense of accomplishment. Thanks, GerardM 2009/8/20 Ziko van Dijk zvand...@googlemail.com Hi Gerard, Indeed, people need news. But they can be produced also with more sence having accomplishments: All mayors of our capital have an article, the 50 most important folk singers, great illustrated articles on the fauna and flora of our region... Kind regards Ziko 2009/8/20 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com: Hoi, For some of our smaller projects, the number of articles are the only milestones available. It is necessary to celebrate progress. It is meaningful when the Swahili Wikipedia becomes the biggest African language Wikipedia. It is meanigful when you compare it with most of the other African language projects that have no life in them. I agree that on many levels the numbers game is of little relevance however it becomes relevant when there is a need for the celebration of progress in a project. A need to be motivated to go on with the gigantic task that is writing a Wikipedia. Thanks, GerardM 2009/8/20 Ziko van Dijk zvand...@googlemail.com I couldn't agree more, Erik. Not paying attention to milestones is the first and best step; Wikipedia:Signpost should start with it. Ziko 2009/8/20 Erik Zachte erikzac...@infodisiac.com: I concur wholeheartedly. Focusing on rising article counts gave us a thrill for many years, and now it is difficult to kick the bad habit. On a small wikipedia (at least most of them) there is simply not enough of a community to drive this semi automated article creation process. I think it would help if we discouraged any bragging on the 4th millionth article in the English Wikipedia at all and downplayed any inquiries from the media. ___ foundation-l mailing list
Re: [Foundation-l] Positive mention of Wikimedia sites in a web privacy study:
I would so much like it if we had aggregate statistics about our users and their behavior while retaining our exemplary privacy culture. At Wiktionary it seems to me that the absence of statistics about users, especially anons, seems to lead us to a culture of serving ourselves rather than users, not in the largest matters, but in countless small matters of entry layout, subsidiary entries, help etc. This is not to evil motives. It is mostly due to the active editors defaulting to using themselves as models of the typical user. The ability of experienced users to customize makes the practice quite ridiculous. Our efforts to solicit feedback give us a view of users the bias of which is uncalibrated. On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 6:03 PM, Brion Vibber br...@wikimedia.org wrote: On 8/11/09 2:13 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote: Kudos to the WMF for avoiding gratuitous reader tracking. Other people *are* paying attention to the privacy implications of this kind of user-invisible behavior. Yay! Quick note: the only sort of user tracking that we would be interested in doing is to get aggregate information about activity habits. We wouldn't want to record which pages a given visitor sees, but it could be very useful to know that X% of visitors click on N pages per session, or that Y% of folks tend to give up if a page takes more than Z seconds to load. As long as we can do this without creepy big-brother databases of Everything You Do, this shouldn't infringe on anybody's privacy. Of course the default assumption with any sort of long-term tracking cookie is going to be that Evil Is Afoot(TM), so we'd want to keep things looking squeaky clean as well: if we use tracking cookies for statistical purpose they're more likely to be per-session cookies, not permanent ones, and we would never use sneaky techniques to hide them from users. -- brion ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Dennis C. During Cynolatry is tolerant so long as the dog is not denied an equal divinity with the deities of other faiths. - Ambrose Bierce http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cynolatry ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How was the only people who averaged two edits a week in the last six months can vote rule decided?
Right on. I detect ageism supplementing the recentism. But seriously folks, if fraud were the issue then confirmed identify would overcome the problem. The number-of-recent-edits criterion has two effects that bother me. 1. It effectively puts the vote firmly in the hands of producers not consumers. 2. It effectively discriminates against those with RSI or who are otherwise impaired The first phenomenon is basic. We know damned lilttle about our users and often seem to care less. Perhaps having a little more representation would tilt toward responsiveness to the user base. As important as editors are, I can see at the project level how their interests just don't seem very responsive to users I have been appalled at some of the displays of attitude toward users (imbeciles etc.) The default set up of our wikis limits the ability of many with content knowledge or enthusiasm to contribute in any satisfying way. To entrench those who have encouraged keeping projects as sandboxes they share with the like-minded seems very pernicious to Wikimedia as a movement. I think the Bolsheviks need to have less influence. On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 8:15 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote: 2009/7/31 Steven Walling steven.wall...@gmail.com: For me, the analogy is simple: just because you get a driver's license once doesn't entitle you to drive for the rest of your life. Unless you actively do something wrong and get disqualified, yes it does. The analogy works for not letting banned editors vote, it doesn't work for not letting lapsed editors vote. (And there is the obvious flaw from the fact that we don't require people to take a test to edit.) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Dennis C. During Cynolatry is tolerant so long as the dog is not denied an equal divinity with the deities of other faiths. - Ambrose Bierce http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cynolatry ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics
It is not entirely a matter of recruitment. To me the problem appears in the form of how welcoming the projects are to the different types of contributors and types of contributions. That, in turn relates to the value system and cognitive and social biases of those who control the projects. As we have more to protect (formatting, layout, content organization, stylistic unity) there is a negative attitude toward anyone who might jeopardize it through clumsy attempts at improvement. I sometime notice and feel a tendency to be more cooperative and patient with someone I perceive as being older. I'm pretty sure that younger contributors sense my efforts to communicate with them as, um, adult. This provides a bias against younger would-be contributors. Facilitating contributions by newbies is part of what might help make for an easier induction of all new users, which provides a modest tendency to favor the young without disfavoring the old. Having a bit more structure to new user induction seems to be the inevitable direction to go to elicit breadth on the projects. Out existing low-structure approaches need to be supplemented with attractive more-structured paths. Perhaps inviting structured feedback (eg article ratings with links to article talk pages) to draw folks into low risk-of-damage active involvement would enable us to get more from those a little less bold and motivated. On Sun, Jul 26, 2009 at 11:26 PM, Robert Rohde raro...@gmail.com wrote: Bleh. When did this become an either-or proposition? You go recruit retired professionals. I'll go recruit young people. Someone else can recruit soccer moms, and yet another person can go after teachers. Everybody wins. The only way to lose is if either: A) You believe one of these groups should not be participating in Wikipedia or B) You believe efforts to recruit professionals will actually interfere with my efforts to recruit young people, etc. If you believe A) then frankly I believe you are out of touch with the ethos of the projects. Different groups may need a different amount of guidance before they are prepared to contribute, but there is no group of people we should be categorically shutting out or discouraging. If you believe B) and somehow think that recruiting one group somehow interferes with recruiting other groups, then I'd like to see an explanation of that. It seems unlikely in most cases. Besides which, there are many things we can be doing (such as improving the editing interface and documentation) that should widely benefit most groups of potential new editors. -Robert Rohde ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Dennis C. During Cynolatry is tolerant so long as the dog is not denied an equal divinity with the deities of other faiths. - Ambrose Bierce http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cynolatry ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics
The retired academics trend is apparent at en.wikt too. There are many valuable depth and quality contributions that they can make and few others can. It might be possible to rely on a population of academics as contributors but there needs to be a mechanism to make sure that the needs of our actual users have appropriate weight in decision making From the point of view of a major content contributor, a wiki is largely a free resource on which they can build what they want within broad limits. A community of academics will tend to build a resource for academics. It may be cloaked in education, but the absence of any pressure to respond to or anticipate the actual needs of actual users will cause major drift away from making a useful resource for a broader population. The difficulty I perceive is that the wiki concept de facto depends on contributors being not too dissimilar from users. There are many design and presentation considerations (especially at wikt) for which contributors have no good model of user behavior other than introspection and a little anecdotal experience with others. The life experience of academics does not make them the perfect behavioral model for the young portion of the user base and may give them an excessively controlling or dismissive attitude toward newbies and people not educated to their preferred standard. Below is an excerpt from a recent discussion at en.wikt that betrays some of the attitudinal tendencies that concern me: Uhm sorry but I don't think it's acceptable to confine ourselves with the user vulgaris, which is by definition semi-literate imbecile :) Our target audience are primarily reasonably intelligent people who'd be using Wiktionary as an educational resource, and are willing to spend something like max 5 minutes learning how to effectively use the structure of the entries, and language-specific policy pages. I.e. *not* the type of folks who come by Google searches and leave comments such as I can't find the definition [http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Wiktionary:Feedbackdiff=6632516oldid=6632209 On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 9:24 AM, Henning Schlottmann h.schlottm...@gmx.netwrote: Milos Rancic wrote: In all cases we need to think seriously how to educate younger generations about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. Thanks for all the data and the number crunching. But I think you are wrong in your assumptions and therefore in your analysis at least regarding de-WP. Here we are not looking at 15 year olds, we are looking at retired academics as the future of our user base. Quite frankly, a 15 years old can't contribute to de-WP anymore. Not even 20 years olds can. De-WP has reached a level where undergraduates can do vandal fighting and stuff like that, but writing and improving articles needs access to academic literature and experience in academic writing. 25 to 45 years olds usually have other priorities, they build a career and a family. It is the logical step to look for retired academics, because they have the expertise needed. The demographics in the 15-35 range therefore are completely irrelevant for de-WP. Ciao Henning ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -- Dennis C. During Cynolatry is tolerant so long as the dog is not denied an equal divinity with the deities of other faiths. - Ambrose Bierce http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cynolatry ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics
Just to clarify: The passage below was one I quoted and was requoted by Nikola. It was from another en.wikt admin, NOT ME. Moreover it is not en.wikt policy and got negative response, but not as much as I would have hoped, from those I believe to be retired and active academics and graduate students. On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 10:08 AM, Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.yuwrote: Dennis During wrote: Uhm sorry but I don't think it's acceptable to confine ourselves with the user vulgaris, which is by definition semi-literate imbecile :) Our target -- Dennis C. During Cynolatry is tolerant so long as the dog is not denied an equal divinity with the deities of other faiths. - Ambrose Bierce http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cynolatry ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Usability: Is our vocabulary SNAFU?
I am enormously skeptical that there is any realistic possibility of getting anyone let alone unpaid volunteers to forego the use of abbreviations or useful jargon. OTOH (LOL), I believe that there are MediaWiki software extensions (which I enjoy using at Wiktionary) that allow a window to pop up when a highlighted word is clicked. Inmy expereine the content is from Wiktionary. Wiktionary has all of the menioned terms and special characters defined (except for the open-source movement terms) and would be a possible source for definitions. (At present, it explicitly exclude terms that are solely WikiJargon from the main dictionary and relegate them to an Appendix page. ) Alternatively enwikt could be used as a source for a special-purpose glossary that served as the target for the extension. FWIW. On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 9:55 AM, Ziko van Dijk [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: About usability: I believe that one significant barrier for new Wikimedians is the jargon in the Wikimedia projects, mostly in discussions, but also in help pages: * Expressions from computer science: IP, bug, URL * Expressions from the Open Source movement: fork, stable version * Expressions from the net culture: imho, :D, lol, @ (directed to a person in a discussion) * For non native speakers of English: SNAFU, dude Jargon (sometimes specialist's language) cannot be totally avoided, and it is good for community cohesion. But it would be a good step towards usability thinking before using jargon: is it really necessary here, is it comprehensive to everybody, even if help:glossary mentions it? Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde -- Dennis C. During But then arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions ? -- Charles Darwin ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
