Re: [Foundation-l] Lack of research on Wikipedia

[John at Darkstar]

> My argument is that there is a lack of research on Wikipedia, Wikipedia as a
> whole would benefit from research and indeed where the English Wikipedia's
> growth is slowing down, there is plenty of room for growth elsewhere of
> standard encyclopaedic information in the other projects. This in turn will
> bring up many subjects that en.wp does not cover. The existence of articles
> on subjects not covered in en.wp are indicative of a bias and once en.wp
> starts to cover these subjects it will improve its neutral point of view..
> Consequently ALL our Wikipedias including en.wp will benefit from research
> on the "other" Wikipedias.
> Thanks,
>   GerardM
> _

I would guess that the most important reason why english wikipedia is
slowing down is because of the other language projects gets the
attention of the editors. perhaps it would be possible to get some
numbers on the total influx of content and how it is distributed among
the projects?

John

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Re: [Foundation-l] So, scientists tell us what do we know for some time...

[John at Darkstar]

It ssems like the a mouth of vandalism has changed and that this could
be the main reason why the a mouth of reverts has gone up. Previously
there was also a larger a mouth of smaller articles and then any edit is
a valid contribution. Now there is a larger number of bigger articles
and not every edit fit in. In addition newer tools makes it easier to
spot errors and this leads to a situation whereby a few script operators
do a larger part of the reverts, while previously much more was done by
random readers finding an error.

John

Milos Rancic wrote:
>>From Slashdot article [1]:
> 
> "The Guardian reports that a study by Ed H Chi demonstrates that the
> character of Wikipedia has changed significantly since Wikipedia's
> first burst of activity between 2004 and 2007. While the encyclopedia
> is still growing overall, the number of articles being added has
> reduced from an average of 2,200 a day in July 2007 to around 1,300
> today while at the same time, the base of highly active editors has
> remained more or less static. Chi's team discovered that the way the
> site operates had changed significantly from the early days, when it
> ran an open-door policy that allowed in anyone with the time and
> energy to dedicate to the project. Today, they discovered, a stable
> group of high-level editors has become increasingly responsible for
> controlling the encyclopedia, while casual contributors and editors
> are falling away. 'We found that if you were an elite editor, the
> chance of your edit being reverted was something in the order of 1% —
> and that's been very consistent over time from around 2003 or 2004,'
> says Chi. 'For editors that make between two and nine edits a month,
> the percentage of their edits being reverted had gone from 5% in 2004
> all the way up to about 15% by October 2008. And the 'onesies' —
> people who only make one edit a month — their edits are now being
> reverted at a 25% rate.' While Chi points out that this does not
> necessarily imply causation, he suggests it is concrete evidence to
> back up what many people have been saying: that it is increasingly
> difficult to enjoy contributing to Wikipedia unless you are part of
> the site's inner core of editors. Wikipedia's growth pattern suggests
> that it is becoming like a community where resources have started to
> run out. 'As you run out of food, people start competing for that
> food, and that results in a slowdown in population growth and means
> that the stronger, more well-adapted part of the population starts to
> have more power.'"
> 
> I think that this analysis has point and that we should think about
> consequences. Today WM RS had meeting in Novi Sad and we talked about
> this issue, too: How to attract new contributors to stay at Wikipedia.
> 
> [1] - 
> http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/08/13/1310228/Wikipedia-Approaches-Its-Limits?from=rss
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] GLAM-WIKI report

[John at Darkstar]

Aggregated statistics for a complete GLAM is interesting, but it seems
like they ask about usage stats and metadata about individual items.

For example it is _very_ interesting that a otherwise rather anonymous
photo from 1890 from the GallriNOR-collection is used in an article
about Oat that has 1100 page views each day at English Wikipedia. (From
memory, hopefully the correct article) This is probably several orders
more than their own traffic on that photo.

John

Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> Combine this with aggregated statistics for a particular GLAM and do this
> for any GLAM we have material for. This is not to show the most important
> GLAM but it is to  help them realise and recognise for themselves and for
> their sponsors that we contribute to their social relevance. It helps us
> argue why improved annotations will increase traffic to their website.
> 
> It is absolutely important not to make a competition out of these statistics
> because GLAMS cannot be compared. What is important is that we contribute to
> the visibility of a GLAM and its collection. It is obvious why these
> statistics have to be double checked, because it will be a vital argument in
> releasing material to us and in building a relationship.
> Thanks,
>   Gerard
> 
> 2009/8/13 John at Darkstar 
> 
>> I stumbled upon this too during discussions with institutions in Norway,
>> it seems like the number of times some material is accessed is a very
>> interesting selling point. It is although not necessary to store the
>> image any specific place for this, it is the actual statistics that is
>> interesting.
>>
>> John
>>
>> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>>> Hoi,
>>> Not necessarily. One acronym I learned was KPI, when a GLAM has as a key
>>> performance indicator the number of times a picture is actually accessed,
>> it
>>> may affect the amount of subsidy they get. There is no reason why an
>> image
>>> cannot be made available to the people who want that image on their hard
>>> drive.
>>>
>>> So I mean really there may be more to it.
>>> Thanks,
>>>   GerardM
>>>
>>> 2009/8/12 David Gerard 
>>>
>>>> 2009/8/12 Kat Walsh :
>>>>
>>>>> I'm not sure what the technical challenges you had in mind are, but I
>>>>> can think of plenty of reasons to argue against hotlinking and I don't
>>>>> want to let the point slip by. A few:
>>>> The ones who want hotlinking want it as a way of making the images not
>>>> free. l mean, really.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> - d.
>>>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] GLAM-WIKI report

[John at Darkstar]

I stumbled upon this too during discussions with institutions in Norway,
it seems like the number of times some material is accessed is a very
interesting selling point. It is although not necessary to store the
image any specific place for this, it is the actual statistics that is
interesting.

John

Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> Not necessarily. One acronym I learned was KPI, when a GLAM has as a key
> performance indicator the number of times a picture is actually accessed, it
> may affect the amount of subsidy they get. There is no reason why an image
> cannot be made available to the people who want that image on their hard
> drive.
> 
> So I mean really there may be more to it.
> Thanks,
>   GerardM
> 
> 2009/8/12 David Gerard 
> 
>> 2009/8/12 Kat Walsh :
>>
>>> I'm not sure what the technical challenges you had in mind are, but I
>>> can think of plenty of reasons to argue against hotlinking and I don't
>>> want to let the point slip by. A few:
>>
>> The ones who want hotlinking want it as a way of making the images not
>> free. l mean, really.
>>
>>
>> - d.
>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] GLAM-WIKI report

[John at Darkstar]

> 1. What about our mirrors and forks and reusers; do they get the same
> rights? How about users who want to download media dumps?

This is at least two different problems, one is reuse when the content
is free and the other is reuse when the content is free due to an
agreement. For the moment there is a lot of material we can't use
because images are handled as separate from the articles.

> 2. What about when they decide to change around their naming
> schemes/take works offline/otherwise restructure their websites, and
> us with millions of links? Any change of theirs would cause serious
> disruption.

I would say mirror images and link to the original. That way the work is
on the external website to keep the links. In addition make a lot better
APIs for sharing metadata. The metadata should include identifiers used
at the external site. Also consider if the external site should be able
to make additional hotlinked information available about the image.

Think mashups of metadata, don't think "my metadata" (or WMFs mtadata).
We have become at least as protective as the GLAM institutions in some
respects.

John

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Re: [Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics

[John at Darkstar]

The most enjoyable dialogue this morning.
Keep up the good work to both of you!
John =D

Mark Williamson wrote:
> Ray, I appreciate your honesty. I'll agree with you that I was not a
> very pleasant presence on the ML. Reading archives from, say, 2005
> makes me cringe. I'm glad that people were not as heavy-handed as they
> could (should?) have been in dealing with me at the time. I learned a
> great deal about people from this community although I think the bulk
> of the "growing up" I've done (so far!) had to be done In Real Life. I
> did definitely learn some lasting lessons though and I'm sure I
> wouldn't be who I am today without WM although I'm not so active
> anymore.
> 
> Mark
> 
> skype: node.ue
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 5:45 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>> Mark Williamson wrote:
>>> This is precisely one of the problems that is holding us back.
>>>
>>> Individual prejudices against younger individuals may have scared
>>> younger users away from the project.
>>>
>>> All in all, I feel that we should basically treat all users the same,
>>> regardless of age. If a 15 year old makes good contributions to an
>>> article on particle physics but they need a little fixing up, it
>>> should be treated the same way as if a 30 year old made the same
>>> contribution - fix it.
>>>
>>>
>> When I first encountered you you showed a great capacity to be a pain in
>> the ass.  You shared that ability with a few others who were already
>> well passed their teen years.  Your tenacity through all this has been
>> commendable, and your continuing presence has had a mellowing effect on
>> you.  At Wikimania-Frankfurt you were one of the two people that I most
>> regretted not having the chance to meet.
>>
>> Ec
>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] strategy.wikimedia.org soft-launch

[John at Darkstar]

Probably a separate wiki will isolate the content from the community and
 make it less accessible for for other users.

John

Brian wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 1:55 PM, Casey Brown  wrote:
> 
>> On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 3:29 PM, Brian wrote:
>>> I recall convincing arguments on this list that meta was the appropriate
>>> place for this, rather than fragmenting into a new wiki. This is because
>>> previously created wikis succumb to wiki rot and eventually link spam.
>> Why
>>> were those arguments rejected?
>> Did you see Erik's comment by any chance?
>> 
>>
>> --
>> Casey Brown
>> Cbrown1023
>>
> 
> No I hadn't, thank you.
> 
> It doesn't cover the most important case in my mind: meta is where people
> actually are! A new wiki is not a magic recipe for an insta-community and
> its hard to guarantee that everyone who would be interested in the content
> there will end up seeing it.
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Re: [Foundation-l] How do we approach newcomers (Was: Analysis of statistics)

[John at Darkstar]

One thing I like with the stable versions is that it is possible to keep
one version stable while discussions about a future version goes on.
This makes it possible to have a discussion with the contributors about
how to solve a problem without reverting them, and to let them
experiment with the articles. To further aid in this it should be
possible to set a future action when no further work is done on the
article. Such a future action could be "mark for inspection if not
edited in 12/24/48/72 hours". Within this timeframe the contributor can
use the article as a sandbox, and when he leaves the new version will be
inspected before becoming the new stable version.

Another thing we could do is to add some kind of method to place markers
on articles without interfering with the ongoing edits. Usually when
someone writes on an article and some admin places a template in the
text the newcomers will be scared off. It would be better if such
markers was more like reminders for the contributors and didn't lead to
an edit conflict.

A third thing we should do is to make something like the chat feature in
Facebook, but instead of organizing it around users communicating with
other users we should organize them as chatrooms about the articles.
This chatroom could give more specific information about the reminder
and also let the user speak to the admin who posted the reminder.

Instead of an admin yelling to a newcomer in big letter after an edit
conflict the user gets a reminder and an option to talk to the admin.
This opens dialog and understanding. Add in the stable versions and we
get a lot more flexibility and an environment that supports education of
new editors instead of a very hostile environment that punish everyone
that makes trivial mistakes.

Of course we shall not allow trolling, but it is not necessary to revert
every change that may be a newcomer that tries to edit an article.

John

Pavlo Shevelo wrote:
> John,
> 
> Thanks a lot - you made my Saturday! ;)
> 
>> Is it somehow possible to let newcomers write articles together with
>> oldtimers until they learn the most basic things?
> 
> But why (?) we suggest that it's impossible?
> If we will put that as (realized) aim this is very possible - we
> should just to embody in Wikipedia community such thing as
> apprenticeship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship . Isn't it
> sorta funny that Wikipedia contain guidelines which seems to be
> ignored by project community? ;)
> 
>> How
>> can we change this, both at a human level and with technical solutions?
> ...
>> Perhaps it is possible
>> to make personal sandboxes where they can get some guidance before the
>> dogfight starts?
> 
> Some people believe that it's good for newcomer to put him/her into
> the middle of dogfight from the day1. I'm not really supporter of
> that approach - there will be more than enough dogfights in future.
> So it's really important (mission-critical in terms of Wikipedia
> mission) what happens before the first dogfight.
> 
> We have some stuff (RSS-feeds, personal sandboxes etc.) to assist both
> grossmeister and apprentice, but sure we should develop some more.
> 
> On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 12:49 PM, John at Darkstar wrote:
>> How the new contributors are approached by the community is very
>> important and it seems like they face a very hostile environment. How
>> can we change this, both at a human level and with technical solutions?
>> Is it somehow possible to let newcomers write articles together with
>> oldtimers until they learn the most basic things? Perhaps it is possible
>> to make personal sandboxes where they can get some guidance before the
>> dogfight starts?
>>
>> John
>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics

[John at Darkstar]

> Finally, we can not ignore the potential benefits of large scale
> contributions coming from specific communities, specially from
> educational institutions at all levels. The potential applications of
> Wikipedia to learning environments has been also a matter of research,
> and some authors have shown that direct contribution approaches may
> have negative consequences for both the quality of content and the
> willingness of young authors to continue to contribute if the get
> strictly negative responses to their first revisions. All the same,
> semi-controlled strategies like providing a final version of the
> contribution, may have better effects for both the quality of content
> and maintaining the implication of young contributors. In this regard,
> providing special tools for highlighting these contributions could
> facilitate the work of experienced Wikipedia authors, who could then
> provide more focused comments.
> 

How the new contributors are approached by the community is very
important and it seems like they face a very hostile environment. How
can we change this, both at a human level and with technical solutions?
Is it somehow possible to let newcomers write articles together with
oldtimers until they learn the most basic things? Perhaps it is possible
to make personal sandboxes where they can get some guidance before the
dogfight starts?

John

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Re: [Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics

[John at Darkstar]

I asked a source if they may grant us access to some statistics on users
behaviour within social media. The time series starts well before Nupedia.

John

Felipe Ortega wrote:
> --- El vie, 24/7/09, Milos Rancic  escribió:
> 
>> De: Milos Rancic 
>> Asunto: Re: [Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics
>> Para: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" 
>> Fecha: viernes, 24 julio, 2009 5:25
> 
>> Whatever means in the official statistics. It would be good
>> to have numbers about newcomers and those who made 10 or 100 edits,
>> so we may compare how do we attract attention through the time.
>> However, I think that those numbers are relatively stable in the past   > 
>> couple of years (let's say, from 2005 or so).
>>
> 
> You can check more precise figures and graphs in my thesis about general 
> statistics for survivability for all logged editors and core editors (the top 
> 10% most active editors in each month), from the beginning until Dec. 2007, 
> in the top-ten language versions (at that time).
> 
> http://libresoft.es/Members/jfelipe/phd-thesis (page)
> http://libresoft.es/Members/jfelipe/thesis-wkp-quantanalysis (doc)
> 
> As for the percentages of users by age, education level, etc. my impression 
> is that opinions from experienced community members are often well oriented. 
> But they're only opinions. Until we get the results of the general survey, we 
> won't have a clear picture of the current "recruitment" targets for all 
> versions.
> 
> Nevertheless, according to our updates, it seems that the situation is not 
> getting better from Jan 2008 onwards.
> 
> Best,
> Felipe.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 
>   
> 
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] strategic planning IRC office hours

[John at Darkstar]

Small wikis need a lot more administrative work per articles than larger
wikis. If there isn't any clear real reason then simply don't make a new
wiki.

John

phoebe ayers wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 7:42 AM, Eugene Eric Kim wrote:
>> On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 7:07 PM, Samuel Klein wrote:
>>> * Could you please help update the meta page on the process with your
>>> thoughts and ideas?   [[m:Strategic planning 2009]]  What's your current
>>> rough timeline for the coming 12 months?
>> We'll start seeding Meta with what we know (and probably quite a bit
>> of what we don't) today, and I'll look forward to reading other
>> people's thoughts.
>>
>> On creating a new Wiki: I hear you. I'm constantly fighting Wiki-creep
>> with some of my other communities and clients. Creating new Wikis is
>> often knee-jerk, and knee-jerk is usually not the best thing.
>>
>> There's a tradeoff between starting with a blank slate and the need to
>> re-establish a community and a set of norms. My gut tells me that a
>> blank slate is better for this project, but I'm open to other
>> feedback.
> 
> Re: creating a new wiki --
> I talked to Eugene about this briefly last week and agreed at the time
> that a new wiki would be useful (for starting the project fresh with a
> blank slate) -- but the more I think about it, and reading Angela's
> and Mike's posts, sticking to meta for now seems like the best route.
> It's practical, as there is already a community of spam fighters,
> translators and template builders ready to go, and many of the people
> who will be interested in strategic planning are already there (and in
> many cases are already active meta editors); and it's fitting with the
> role of meta, which is meant to be a multi-lingual place to discuss
> the Foundation ... which sounds like strategic planning to me. And I
> suspect many of the ideas that will be brought up in the planning
> process will have already been discussed somewhere on meta at some
> point, and can be linked to and integrated in easily from there.
> 
> Anyway, an open to-do list for things that need doing -- whether it's
> building out meta or anything else -- would be great too, to help give
> guidance to people who want to help out but don't quite know what's
> going on.
> 
> -- Phoebe
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Attribution on small interactive devices and systems

[John at Darkstar]

The domain is not mine, nor does it belong to Wikimedia Norway, it is
another wikipedian from Norway who owns the domain. Wikimedia Norway has
been in contact with him about the domain and the future use of the
service, and another wikipedian has also made inquiries.

John Erling Blad
Wikimedia Norway

Andrew Turvey wrote:
> Seems like a very useful service. Would the Foundation be interesting in 
> taking ownership of this URL? If so, would Blad be willing to give/sell it to 
> them? If so, could it be incorporated into a sidebar link similar to 
> "permanent link"? 
> 
> - "John at Darkstar"  wrote: 
>> From: "John at Darkstar"  
>> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"  
>> Sent: Friday, 17 July, 2009 20:38:09 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, 
>> Portugal 
>> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Attribution on small interactive devices and 
>> systems 
>>
>> This is a wikipedian from Norway. 
>>
>> John Erling Blad 
>> Wikimedia Norway 
>>
>> Chad wrote: 
>>> On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 12:19 PM, Philippe 
>>> Beaudette wrote: 
>>>> On Jul 17, 2009, at 8:25 AM, Chad wrote: 
>>>>
>>>>> Does anyone know the guy who owns enwp.org? 
>>>>>
>>>>> That being said, enwp.org/?oldid=1234 does work :) 
>>>>>
>>>>> -Chad 
>>>>
>>>> (Asked whois.pir.org:43 about enwp.org) 
>>>>
>>>> Domain ID: D148943548-LROR 
>>>> Domain Name: ENWP.ORG 
>>>> Created On: 23-Aug-2007 14: 33: 18 UTC 
>>>> Last Updated On: 21-Sep-2008 00: 28: 40 UTC 
>>>> Expiration Date: 23-Aug-2009 14: 33: 18 UTC 
>>>> Sponsoring Registrar: ASCIO Technologies Inc. - Denmark (R76-LROR) 
>>>> Status: OK 
>>>> Registrant ID: AT9622172-051 
>>>> Registrant Name: Thomas Kjoerberg 
>>>> Registrant Street1: Groennevollen 14 
>>>> Registrant Street2: 
>>>> Registrant Street3: 
>>>> Registrant City: Bergen 
>>>> Registrant State/Province: -- 
>>>> Registrant Postal Code: 5016 
>>>> Registrant Country: NO 
>>>> Registrant Phone: 47.99298989 
>>>> Registrant Phone Ext.: 
>>>> Registrant FAX: 
>>>> Registrant FAX Ext.: 
>>>> Registrant Email: tl-lo...@hotmail.com 
>>>>
>>>> Admin ID: AT4607819-051 
>>>> Admin Name: Hostmaster Funktionen 
>>>> Admin Organization: One.com A/S 
>>>> Admin Street1: Kalvebod Brygge 45 
>>>> Admin Street2: 
>>>> Admin Street3: 
>>>> Admin City: Copenhagen V 
>>>> Admin State/Province: 
>>>> Admin Postal Code: 1560 
>>>> Admin Country: DK 
>>>> Admin Phone: 45.46907100 
>>>> Admin Phone Ext.: 
>>>> Admin FAX: 45.70205872 
>>>> Admin FAX Ext.: 
>>>> Admin Email: hostmas...@b-one.nu 
>>>>
>>>> Tech ID: AT9622194-051 
>>>> Tech Name: Hostmaster Funktionen 
>>>> Tech Organization: One.com A/S 
>>>> Tech Street1: Kalvebod Brygge 45 
>>>> Tech Street2: 
>>>> Tech Street3: 
>>>> Tech City: Copenhagen V 
>>>> Tech State/Province: 
>>>> Tech Postal Code: 1560 
>>>> Tech Country: DK 
>>>> Tech Phone: 45.46907100 
>>>> Tech Phone Ext.: 
>>>> Tech FAX: 45.70205872 
>>>> Tech FAX Ext.: 
>>>> Tech Email: hostmas...@b-one.nu 
>>>>
>>>> Name Server: NS1.B-ONE.NU 
>>>> Name Server: NS2.B-ONE.NU 
>>>> Name Server: NS3.B-ONE.NU 
>>>> Name Server: 
>>>> Name Server: 
>>>> Name Server: 
>>>> Name Server: 
>>>> Name Server: 
>>>> Name Server: 
>>>> Name Server: 
>>>> Name Server: 
>>>> Name Server: 
>>>> Name Server: 
>>>>
>>>>  
>>>> Philippe Beaudette 
>>>> Facilitator, Strategic Plan 
>>>> Wikimedia Foundation 
>>>>
>>>> pbeaude...@wikimedia.org 
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in 
>>>> the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! 
>>>>
>>>> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate 
>>>>
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>>> I did the whois too, but I don't know him. I was asking if 
>>> (in general) we know the guy who runs it :) 
>>>
>>> -Chad 
>>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] National Portrait Gallery

[John at Darkstar]

Forget direct funding, its not practical. The interesting thing is, we
do have "sales organization" that is very important for
GLAM-institutions, and it is probably so interesting that a conflict
with us is simply to damaging. How do we turn this around to make it
even more interesting for them?

Imagine this, if a gallery or museum has a painting of some "Leonard van
der Olsen-Mozart" (he don't exist, hopefully..) then this museum should
make sure there is a bio for the person and of his painting of "The
fallen Madonna with the big bottom", and those should link back to the
galleries own pages. At those pages the gallery should make available
any high res copies, uv-scans, scientific works, etc, about the painting
and the painter. We should be "the yellow pages for the
GLAM-institutions". It should be so important for them to have a
presence on Wikipedia that it should raise questions from the government
if they don't have a sufficient presence.

Now, how do we make this possible? Forget direct funding, that is simply
not interesting. Making the material available is interesting because
this creates further use, not to forget visitors.

John

geni wrote:
> 2009/7/18 Yann Forget :
>> geni wrote:
>>> 2009/7/18 Durova :
 Put me in touch with instructors at art schools and I'll incorporate
 restoration into their curriculum.  You'll be surprised how scaleable this
 is, particularly if we work out exhibition opportunities.

 -Durova
>>> Restoration isn't the problem for the most part. The English part of
>>> the National Monuments Record contains about 10 million items (mostly
>>> photos I think). Wales and Scotland ad few million more.
>>>
>>> That includes a fairly complete public domain aerial survey of the UK
>>> from the 1940s.
>>>
>>> We do not have the capacity to support digitalization on that scale.
>> Well, who's your "we"?
>>
>> In the case of the NPG, it is quite clear that the cost of the
>> digitalization is small compared with the potential benefit.
>> There are people and organisations willing to pay to have a copy of
>> these famous portraits. The issue is how to collect the funds without
>> puting a copyright on the images. For this, we need a new business
>> model. Think about how donations was raised to free up Blender.[1]
>>
>> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)#History
> 
> €100,000 is not a significant amount of money when dealing with trying
> to digitalize the various UK archives.
> 
> 

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Re: [Foundation-l] National Portrait Gallery

[John at Darkstar]

Sorry, I don't follow you on this one. If the existing business model
don't work and it should be changed, then work with them to change it
and make the alternate options viable.

John

David Gerard wrote:
> 2009/7/17 geni :
> 
>> Not really. Remember there are a bunch of other collections. Many will
>> be looking to use the NPG's business model. National maritime museum,
>> Imperial war museum, British library, Various national archives. Can't
>> afford to buy them all off.
> 
> 
> It's worth noting that governments often expressly tell their
> galleries to be more "businesslike" and expressly require them to
> squeeze every penny from the (public domain) works they own. And to
> hell with the mission statement.
> 
> So it'll be the usual mix of gentle one-at-a-time persuasion, luring
> people in, working under the radar, shifting paradigms, changing the
> culture, warping reality to a better shape, speaking softly and the
> occasional burst of action. Nothing we're not used to.
> 
> 
> - d.
> 
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[Foundation-l] National Portrait Gallery

[John at Darkstar]

If we forget about politics and who-did-what, what is the common grounds
between "us" and "them"? To me it seems like they want us to use their
material, but that they are scared to let go of a possible income. This
seems fairly similar to the Galleri NOR -case.

Would it be possible for us to define an acceptable resolution that is
also acceptable for them? They have a lot more material available and to
me the whole thing seems to be less than optimum for both parties. They
want to get the material known, but also have the option to sell high
resolution versions. We want to illustrate articles, but have no need to
sell our copies, neither do we need highres versions - we infact
downsample the versions.

John

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Re: [Foundation-l] Attribution on small interactive devices and systems

[John at Darkstar]

This is a wikipedian from Norway.

John Erling Blad
Wikimedia Norway

Chad wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 12:19 PM, Philippe
> Beaudette wrote:
>> On Jul 17, 2009, at 8:25 AM, Chad wrote:
>>
>>> Does anyone know the guy who owns enwp.org?
>>>
>>> That being said, enwp.org/?oldid=1234 does work :)
>>>
>>> -Chad
>>
>>
>> (Asked whois.pir.org:43 about enwp.org)
>>
>>  Domain ID: D148943548-LROR
>>  Domain Name: ENWP.ORG
>>  Created On: 23-Aug-2007 14: 33: 18 UTC
>>  Last Updated On: 21-Sep-2008 00: 28: 40 UTC
>>  Expiration Date: 23-Aug-2009 14: 33: 18 UTC
>>  Sponsoring Registrar: ASCIO Technologies  Inc. - Denmark (R76-LROR)
>>  Status: OK
>>  Registrant ID: AT9622172-051
>>  Registrant Name: Thomas Kjoerberg
>>  Registrant Street1: Groennevollen 14
>>  Registrant Street2:
>>  Registrant Street3:
>>  Registrant City: Bergen
>>  Registrant State/Province: --
>>  Registrant Postal Code: 5016
>>  Registrant Country: NO
>>  Registrant Phone: 47.99298989
>>  Registrant Phone Ext.:
>>  Registrant FAX:
>>  Registrant FAX Ext.:
>>  Registrant Email: tl-lo...@hotmail.com
>>
>>  Admin ID: AT4607819-051
>>  Admin Name: Hostmaster Funktionen
>>  Admin Organization: One.com A/S
>>  Admin Street1: Kalvebod Brygge 45
>>  Admin Street2:
>>  Admin Street3:
>>  Admin City: Copenhagen V
>>  Admin State/Province:
>>  Admin Postal Code: 1560
>>  Admin Country: DK
>>  Admin Phone: 45.46907100
>>  Admin Phone Ext.:
>>  Admin FAX: 45.70205872
>>  Admin FAX Ext.:
>>  Admin Email: hostmas...@b-one.nu
>>
>>  Tech ID: AT9622194-051
>>  Tech Name: Hostmaster Funktionen
>>  Tech Organization: One.com A/S
>>  Tech Street1: Kalvebod Brygge 45
>>  Tech Street2:
>>  Tech Street3:
>>  Tech City: Copenhagen V
>>  Tech State/Province:
>>  Tech Postal Code: 1560
>>  Tech Country: DK
>>  Tech Phone: 45.46907100
>>  Tech Phone Ext.:
>>  Tech FAX: 45.70205872
>>  Tech FAX Ext.:
>>  Tech Email: hostmas...@b-one.nu
>>
>>  Name Server: NS1.B-ONE.NU
>>  Name Server: NS2.B-ONE.NU
>>  Name Server: NS3.B-ONE.NU
>>  Name Server:
>>  Name Server:
>>  Name Server:
>>  Name Server:
>>  Name Server:
>>  Name Server:
>>  Name Server:
>>  Name Server:
>>  Name Server:
>>  Name Server:
>>
>> 
>> Philippe Beaudette
>> Facilitator, Strategic Plan
>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>
>> pbeaude...@wikimedia.org
>>
>>
>> Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
>> the sum of all knowledge.  Help us make it a reality!
>>
>> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
>>
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> 
> I did the whois too, but I don't know him. I was asking if
> (in general) we know the guy who runs it :)
> 
> -Chad
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] A heads up

[John at Darkstar]

If I understand you correctly this is a term base with fixed terms used
to describe the images. Such term bases are very common in archives, and
often they are standardized.

Often it is possible to translate between two sets of terms, that is
some terms will match with our categories, but if this is not possible
it is better to be able to search the terms as they are. If the terms
are in Dutch they will not be available for searching in the language of
choice for the most users.

There will be a very moderate a mouth of work to run the term base
through Google translate and manually check the result, and then make a
script to translate the term base into alternate languages. This will
greatly extend the availability of the images.

It is not unlikely the term base already relates to some other public
term base, perhaps it is a good idea to check it out. It would anyhow be
interesting to make provisions to map term bases from Dublin Core and
IPTC, probably also others, as an integral part of Commons.

John

Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> Why should the term base be translated ? Is it not more important to be
> gained by getting all this material in the public domain ??
> 
> I do however agree with you. All the material that is about Indonesia should
> be translated to Indonesian. For them it is very much the opening up of
> material that is part of their cultural history. Translating it into English
> does not make it easier for Indonesians to find this material.
> Thanks,
>   GerardM
> 
> 2009/7/15 John at Darkstar 
> 
>> At least the term base should be translated.
>> John
>>
>> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>>> Hoi,
>>> I have been in discussion with the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam about making
>>> their material available on Commons. The Tropenmuseum has an important
>>> collection on the colonial past of the Netherlands and contains a rich
>>> collection on Suriname and Indonesia. The initial talks are about 100.000
>>> images.
>>>
>>> The annotations of this material is all in Dutch. It will come with
>> unique
>>> identifiers back to the physical object in the Tropenmuseum and it will
>> come
>>> with the termbase for the images; this termbase is as I understand it the
>>> equivalent of our categories. Some of the material has a partial
>> translation
>>> in English and, this can be provided to us as well.
>>>
>>> The key issue I want to raise is that there are hundreds of museums in
>> the
>>> Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname all using Dutch there are more museums
>> in
>>> Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Lichtenstein who speak German  While
>> we
>>> aim to improve our front end to allow for easy uploads, we do not provide
>>> language support. Language support will help people find pictures in
>> their
>>> language and will help the matching of categories into other languages.
>>> Thanks,
>>>   GerardM
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Re: [Foundation-l] A heads up

[John at Darkstar]

At least the term base should be translated.
John

Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> I have been in discussion with the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam about making
> their material available on Commons. The Tropenmuseum has an important
> collection on the colonial past of the Netherlands and contains a rich
> collection on Suriname and Indonesia. The initial talks are about 100.000
> images.
> 
> The annotations of this material is all in Dutch. It will come with unique
> identifiers back to the physical object in the Tropenmuseum and it will come
> with the termbase for the images; this termbase is as I understand it the
> equivalent of our categories. Some of the material has a partial translation
> in English and, this can be provided to us as well.
> 
> The key issue I want to raise is that there are hundreds of museums in the
> Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname all using Dutch there are more museums in
> Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Lichtenstein who speak German  While we
> aim to improve our front end to allow for easy uploads, we do not provide
> language support. Language support will help people find pictures in their
> language and will help the matching of categories into other languages.
> Thanks,
>   GerardM
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[Foundation-l] Whishlist from the National Library in Norway

[John at Darkstar]

I got an email from National Library in Norway and it has some
interesting points. My comments are after the bulleted points. The
bulleted points are my writeup from their comments, the original email
was in Norwegian. Hopefully it is understandable.. :D

* Backlinks to the museums themselves is important, especially so the
museums can serve high resolution images or alternate images.

Note that in this context there could be images with extremely high
resolution, or processed images that could be part of some continued
work. Imagine a 2D image of a viking helmet that really are a 3D scan,
the 2D visualization is really a simplification and the 3D scan can be
refined with new processing. The viking helmet is an example and is
located at Kulturhistorisk museum.[1] Medium resolution images are by
one source described as images in the range 800-1000px across longest
axis. High resolution images could be 25Mpx and higher, one source was
talking about 150Mpx. A 3D building scan combined with photographic
textures could be very much more than this.[5]

This is also important for us, how can we tell our users that the
museums can provide additional services? To post a template isn't very
dynamic, yet it somehow solves the problem. What would be very
interesting is to make some kind of API that makes it possible to get
additional information directly from external sites. Probably something
like this should go through a white list of some kind or be sufficiently
laundered to make it safe in our environment.

* Send a message to a contact if a specific image is used on Wikipedia,
probably also containing metadata.

This kind of service probably should be some kind of RSS feed with an
additional option of en email notice. Probably it should be possible to
follow a RSS feed for a whole category, like "Images from National
Library of Norway" or "Photos by Axel Lindahl".[2] Such a RSS feed
should probably be available in a daily or weekly digest mode. But what
if there is some sub category, what should then be sent as a message -
"This category and 1, 2, 3 levels below?"

* Geotag from Wikipedia should be available through Commons, and
additional tools for adding geotags are important.

Probably geotags from Wikipedia should be available through some kind of
API for Commons, but this should not be confused with geotags added to
the actual image itself. Changes to the Geotags should be available
through some kind of RSS feed too. It seems like tools to geotag an
image through features in the image is important, but I don't know if it
is feasible to do that today. I know about a few algorithms that can do
this, at least if they have some clue about where the photo comes from.
A wild guess "Norway" will most likely fail, but it isn't unlikely that
a general area of a municipality and a few additional features like the
location of a church and a couple of hilltops is sufficient. I know
Riksantikvarsembetet in Sweden and ABM-utvikling in Norway have talked
about this, so some interest definitely exist outside our community.

* Users should be able to give comments about an image or tag it, and
this should be reported back to the owner. This should be independent of
the use of the image at Wikipedia.

This I guess is two different thing. One thing is use of the image in
mashups, use in blogs, etc. For now you has to transfer the image to be
able to tag it on a blog, but what they say its interesting to get the
actual tagging on Commons and then the image should be mashable. The
other thing they talk about are comments on the image itself, which I
guess is simply an RSS feed from the talk page. They make an example
about Flckr.com, but I guess Expono.com is a better example. They said
that the total information from a wiki are probably more interesting for
them than Flickr.

Automatic tagging due to reuse is very interesting. How can we do this?
It works like trackback in blogs, but would probably mean that we allow
reuse of images through mashups. Imagine buttons like "post this on
flckr" and similar sites, and make the information about where the image
is reused available.

* They wonder how and if uncategorized images could be utilized somehow.
They make an example of several thousand photos taken by a German
soldier during WW2 in Norway, and this is about the only thing they know
about the images.

Perhaps we need some statistics on usage of the uploaded archives from
the German museums? Some of the images did not have sufficient
information for localizing them, yet they were later located. One
example is a photo from Mehavn. [3][4] I've been wondering if a service
like Expono is better suited and that we can transfer images when there
are something about them that makes them interesting for us. As long as
we have no information it is difficult for us to utilize the image, but
when we do utilize them we need to add a lot of information and that
isn't easy to do in an external interface.

As a side note, what if we make a d

[Foundation-l] GLAM and "why use Wikimedia Commons"

[John at Darkstar]

Is it possible to find some common grounds on why and how a
GLAM-organization should use Wikimedia Commons? Forget about troublesome
disputes with specific organizations. Why should they use us and is it
possible for us to tell them how to better utilize our services? What
are our services? Perhaps we need a sales department... ;)

John


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Re: [Foundation-l] GLAM in Holland

[John at Darkstar]

This is important; is it possible to get some kind of agreement with the
 NPG and what will it cost us? Some museums are willing to support our
mission, but we can't just assume that they are in a possition to accept
 every rip-off from their web sites and other publications.

John

Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> I am saddened about the current situation about the National Portrait
> Gallery and the high resolution pictures that were lifted from its website.
> The problem that I have is in the vocabulary used, it paints the NPG as our
> enemy and we are to use pitch forks and fiery speeches to make them aware of
> our displeasure and our wish to fight. It is sad because it is exactly the
> kind of rhetoric that may damage our budding relations with GLAM in for
> instance the Netherlands. (GLAM is galleries libraries archives museums).
> 
> There is much happening in the Netherlands when it comes to the collections
> of GLAM. There are limited subsidies for digitising material and this is
> happening. Much of the material becomes available on the Internet. We are
> talking and have been talking for many months about sharing and using our
> digital heritage on Commons and Wikipedia. There have been talks with
> national organisations and individual museums. There are many powerful
> arguments why we want to partner with GLAM.
> 
>- we need many illustrations for our Wikipedias and we want to have a
>choice of illustrations for all our Wikipedias
>- it is important that we have provenance for our illustrations, not just
>for copyright reasons but particularly to prove the value as an 
> illustration
>   - photoshop or gimp can give a picture a whole new meaning
>- by partnering with GLAM we open their world to our communities, Wiki
>loves art is one project that shows that we can
>- by prartnering with GLAM we gain in respectability
> 
> Recently I have been blogging about our budding relation with the Tropen
> museum. We are looking at an initial upload of some 100.000 illustrations
> that are of particular relevance to our Indonesian projects. These
> illustrations will become available at a similar resolution as the ones of
> the Bundesarchiv. They will be old photos and other flat techniques but also
> photos of three dimensional objects. We are talking on how we can grow the
> relation in the future. We talked about releasing high resolution scans of
> material that needs restoration, we talked about their object of the month
> project..
> 
> There are two other GLAM that we are talking to at the moment. They are as
> relevant as the Tropen musuem. I am fearful about the development of our
> relation with them and with the development of the national organisations. I
> am saddened because I fear that it will now be not as easy to develop all
> these relations.
> Thanks,
>   GerardM
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Re: [Foundation-l] About that "sue and be damned" to the NationalPortrait Gallery ...

[John at Darkstar]

> Where the Norwegian chapter can be helpful is in letting us know how
> such a thing might play out if we were concerned with pictures from
> Norway's national gallery.
>
> Ec

I guess you are speaking about GalleriNOR, which is a joint effort
between Nasjonalbiblioteket and Norsk Folkemuseum. Sorry for my rotten
english, but I guess the information is more important than the grammr! ;)

In the case of GalleriNOR several people uploaded images from the site
without prior agreement with neither NB nor NF. After a while I get in
touch with them and asked how we should handle the case, what people
believed was the right thing to do from our side and what NB and NF
wanted to do. First the stand was established as "the images must be
deleted" and "we don't want to delete them", then we said "okey we will
attempt to get them deleted through due process - but hey, how much of
the traffic come from our site?" Then things get a bit amusing. The
thing is, about 60% of the traffic originates from Wikimedia Commons and
with the additional internal traffic generated from this we probably
generates over 80% of the traffic on the site. This isn't neglible
amouths of traffic on a site, removing the images on Commons would pull
the plug on the majority of the traffic.

So the situation are they said they would not claim copyright on their
own copies of works in public domain. The wording in Norwegian is
slightly different but the net effect is about the same. They would
although forward any claim on copyright that isn't in the public domain
as no doing that would put them in an awkward position. Photographers
that are clearly dead early enough for the law to apply would not be a
problem, that is Axel Lindahl.[2] Photographers that died later and are
in the "snapshot category" compared to the "work of art" are difficult.
Typically this is Anders Beer Wilse.[3] The fist has a shorter time
limit before they go into public domain. Our "understanding" is that we
may claim a photo to be a snapshot but we may get a notice that a
specific image is a work of art. In that case - woopsie, our fault, we
start the process to remove it, no problem. We can't although get a
written statement upfront from them wetter a specific photo is a
snapshot or not simply because they are not in a position to make such a
statement, its something the heirs has to agree upon, and probably the
court if so. In that case we have more than enogh time to remove the images.

As a note, for the moment there is quite a lot of images uploaded that
are taken by Wilse, and I think they should be carefully examined to
verify that none of them are in the category "work of art". It would be
a shame if we upload images that creates trouble between us and NB/NF.
Probably we need a writeup about some general guidelines, but if we can
do without such a guideline it would be better.

NB/NF are asked if they want to join us in some future talks about how
such images can be better utilized. For them it is a real bonus to get
the traffic, especially that the images are of fixed resolution on
Commons, as that makes it possible for them to add services to their own
site, like selling copies of higher resolution. Sometimes it seems like
people forget that we must cooperate with the museums and galleries to
create a win-win -situation.

One of the things they are very eager on is to be able to add additional
information to the images. When we add photos to an article on Wikipedia
that will create additional information about it. Admins on Commons
isn't very eager to utilize that additional information, but that is a
prime selling point for those kind of pictures. I guess we need to
really rethink how we can utilize the new world of mashable sites. How
can GalleriNOR rip out the information we add to the images and reuse
that on their own site?

A few days ago there was a contest in the newspaper (website only) ABC
Nyheter where photos by Carl Curman owned by Riksantikvarieämbetet was
localized.[4] Those images were from about 1890. Within hours they were
pinpointed to locations in Valdres, Norway. This is extremely valuable
for museums as images suddenly become part of history.

[1]http://www.nb.no/gallerinor/
[2]http://www.nb.no/gallerinor/fotografer/lindal.php
[3]http://www.nb.no/gallerinor/fotografer/ab_wilse.php
[4]http://www.abcnyheter.no/node/90741

John Erling Blad
Wikimedia Norway

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Re: [Foundation-l] About that "sue and be damned" to the NationalPortrait Gallery ...

[John at Darkstar]

Local chapters can say something about whats going on, they can't make
claims on behalf of others, but they can interpret written statements
like any other blogger or news outlet. Just remember that wmf sends
press releases on behalf of wmf, nobody else do that.

John

Sue Gardner wrote:
> Sure. Actually the New York chapter probably sends some press releases to US 
> media too; I'm not sure.
> 
> --Original Message--
> From: Thomas Dalton
> To: susanpgard...@gmail.com
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> Sent: Jul 11, 2009 10:41 AM
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] About that "sue and be damned" to the 
> NationalPortrait Gallery ...
> 
> 2009/7/11 Sue Gardner :
>> Point of clarification -- the Wikimedia Foundation sends out press releases 
>> to international media, not just US media.  We have no plans to send out a 
>> press release on this issue.
> 
> Of course, what I meant was that only the WMF sends press releases to
> US media, not that the WMF only sends press releases to US media.
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] About that "sue and be damned" to the National Portrait Gallery ...

[John at Darkstar]

This was public as soon as it got posted on Wikimedia Commons.
The press notice is on our Signpost.
http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tinget#Brukere_p.C3.A5_Wikimedia_Commons_i_tvist_med_National_Portrait_Gallery

John

Thomas Dalton wrote:
> 2009/7/11 John at Darkstar :
>> I sent out a press release earlier today to newspapers in Norway. It was
>> sent to around 200 recipients. Perhaps others could do the same thing.
> 
> Please, nobody else take unilateral action. You're not the one being
> sued, it isn't your call.
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] About that "sue and be damned" to the National Portrait Gallery ...

[John at Darkstar]

This is public and has been so since the first posting. The press
release was just a reference of whats going on at Wikimedia Commons, the
specific user page describing the case and this mailing list. It is sent
out through the mailing list for Wikimedia Norway and it is not a
statement on the behalf of Wikimedia Foundation or anybody else.

If someone feel they should not be quoted on what they write on this
mailing list they should probably not write it at all as this list is
public. This seems to be a real problem as people tend to believe that
they write something for me, myself and us two, while the rest of the
world infact can read it at will.

John

David Gerard wrote:
> On 11/07/2009, John at Darkstar  wrote:
> 
>> I sent out a press release earlier today to newspapers in Norway. It was
>> sent to around 200 recipients. Perhaps others could do the same thing.
> 
> 
> Before doing this, it may be an idea to run prospective press releases
> past Jay and Mike. (jwa...@wikimedia.org and mgod...@wikimedia.org).
> 
> John, if you could forward Jay and Mike a copy of your press release,
> and possibly a translation into English, that would I think be of help
> to them :-)
> 
> 
> - d.
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] About that "sue and be damned" to the National Portrait Gallery ...

[John at Darkstar]

I sent out a press release earlier today to newspapers in Norway. It was
sent to around 200 recipients. Perhaps others could do the same thing.

John

David Gerard wrote:
> 2009/7/11 David Gerard :
> 
>> It gets better: the editor they sent the threat to is an American.
>> So, to recap: A UK organisation is threatening an American with legal
>> action over what is unambiguously, in established US law, not a
>> copyright violation of any sort.
>> I can't see this ending well for the NPG.
> 
> 
> In fact, the more legal success they have with this approach (and they
> do have a plausible cause in the UK, if they throw enough money at
> arguing so), the more *utterly radioactive* the publicity for them
> will be.
> 
> I’ll be calling the NPG first thing Monday (in my capacity as “just a
> blogger on Wikimedia-related topics”) to establish just what they
> think they’re doing here. Other WMF bloggers and, if interested,
> journalists may wish to do the same, to establish what their
> consistent response is.
> 
> 
> - d.
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Proposal for Wikimedia Weather

[John at Darkstar]

ECMWF - European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Centre_for_Medium-Range_Weather_Forecasts

The 4km resolution is from private email correspondence and is for
Northern Europe. The four hour cycle is from memory, it should be four
times a day.

>From other correspondance "EVWMF validerer (etterkontrollerer) varsla
sine (som våre byggjer på) på eit overordna europeisk nivå. Dei gjer
sikkert validering på verdsnivå òg, utan at eg har sett rapportar på
dette. Valideringane som blir gjort, viser at prognosane er svært
treffsikre (90-95%) dei fyrste dagane, og at det fell ned mot 60% for
dag 10 i prognosen."

That is, the EVWMF validates their own weather forecasts on a large
scale level and the hit rate for the first few days is around 90-95%.
I'm not sure what they are measuring. Later that goes down to a 60% hit
rate for day 10.

I'm not sure about how the rest of the world are modeled, the grid
resolution, etc.

John

John at Darkstar wrote:
> Wikimedia Norway have had a meeting with Meteorologisk Institutt
> (http://met.no) in Norway about using the dataset published by the
> institute. Today the dataset is used for the service Yr.no
> (http://yr.no), a joint venture between them and Norwegian Broadcasting
> Corporation (http://nrk.no). Met said it would be pleased if the data
> could be utilized somehow, later this was confirmed by NRK.
> 
> The dataset is localized to within 4km in Norway and updated in about 4
> hour cycles. There are available lookup for 7.5 million places around
> the world, and 700 000 places in Norway. Base data are the HIRLAM model
> (High Resolution Limited Area Model) and the EC model from The European
> Weathercenter ECWMF. HIRLAM has 10 km resolution of the grid. When
> requesting data for named places the data from the grid is interpolated
> to build the new weather forecast.
> 
> The dataset is made available with an open license, they request
> attribution and "truthful reproduction", basically you can't say it is
> from Met and falsify the dataset. You can't add a few degrees to make
> the weather look better at a certain place and still claim its sourced
> from Met. This is analogous to editing a news photo at Commons so its
> not a truthful reproduction of the event anymore. There are one
> disclaimer for sites with pornographic or racist content which may be
> troublesome for a CC-by-sa -licensed site. They do although allow use on
> commercial sites. Other than that the licensing should be given due
> consideration.
> 
> My personal opinion is that they should be kindly asked to make the
> dataset available according to CC-by-sa to make reuse easier.
> 
> Our proposal to Met/NRK was to make an extension that could be localized
> for various languages, based on the XML-data streamed from their site,
> and to use something like this for Wikinews. Unfortunately we have not
> been able to get sufficient funding for the project. We also need some
> backing from the community if this should be considered a viable project.
> 
> Short information in english about Yr.no
> http://www.yr.no/english/1.2025949
> 
> Page about licensing (in Norwegian)
> http://www.yr.no/verdata/1.3321307
> 
> Page about services available (in Norwegian)
> http://www.yr.no/verdata/
> 
> Some locations
> http://www.yr.no/place/Norway/Oslo/Oslo/
> http://www.yr.no/place/Bouvet_Island/
> http://www.yr.no/place/Norway/Finnmark/B%C3%A5tsfjord/Makkaur/
> http://www.yr.no/place/United_States/New_York/New_York~5128581/
> http://www.yr.no/place/China/Xinjiang/%C3%9Cr%C3%BCmqi/
> Page about how the weather forecast is made (in Norwegian)
> http://www.yr.no/informasjon/1.3687572
> 
> John Erling Blad
> Wikimedia Norway
> 
> Tris Thomas wrote:
>> Dear All,
>> I don't know whether this has been discussed before, apologies if it has.
>>
>> I'm interested in people's thoughts on a new Wikimedia project-maybe 
>> WikiWeather, which basically would do what it says on the tin.  Along 
>> with importing national weather from other sources(especially to begin 
>> with), contributors could then put their weather where they are.  This 
>> could evolve into many contributors giving very localised weather 
>> forecasts worldwide, which could be used by many of the other projects 
>> and anybody else.
>>
>> Would people be interested in this proposal/have any thoughts on it?
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Wikinews User Page <http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/User:Tristan%20Thomas>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Proposal for Wikimedia Weather

[John at Darkstar]

Wikimedia Norway have had a meeting with Meteorologisk Institutt
(http://met.no) in Norway about using the dataset published by the
institute. Today the dataset is used for the service Yr.no
(http://yr.no), a joint venture between them and Norwegian Broadcasting
Corporation (http://nrk.no). Met said it would be pleased if the data
could be utilized somehow, later this was confirmed by NRK.

The dataset is localized to within 4km in Norway and updated in about 4
hour cycles. There are available lookup for 7.5 million places around
the world, and 700 000 places in Norway. Base data are the HIRLAM model
(High Resolution Limited Area Model) and the EC model from The European
Weathercenter ECWMF. HIRLAM has 10 km resolution of the grid. When
requesting data for named places the data from the grid is interpolated
to build the new weather forecast.

The dataset is made available with an open license, they request
attribution and "truthful reproduction", basically you can't say it is
from Met and falsify the dataset. You can't add a few degrees to make
the weather look better at a certain place and still claim its sourced
from Met. This is analogous to editing a news photo at Commons so its
not a truthful reproduction of the event anymore. There are one
disclaimer for sites with pornographic or racist content which may be
troublesome for a CC-by-sa -licensed site. They do although allow use on
commercial sites. Other than that the licensing should be given due
consideration.

My personal opinion is that they should be kindly asked to make the
dataset available according to CC-by-sa to make reuse easier.

Our proposal to Met/NRK was to make an extension that could be localized
for various languages, based on the XML-data streamed from their site,
and to use something like this for Wikinews. Unfortunately we have not
been able to get sufficient funding for the project. We also need some
backing from the community if this should be considered a viable project.

Short information in english about Yr.no
http://www.yr.no/english/1.2025949

Page about licensing (in Norwegian)
http://www.yr.no/verdata/1.3321307

Page about services available (in Norwegian)
http://www.yr.no/verdata/

Some locations
http://www.yr.no/place/Norway/Oslo/Oslo/
http://www.yr.no/place/Bouvet_Island/
http://www.yr.no/place/Norway/Finnmark/B%C3%A5tsfjord/Makkaur/
http://www.yr.no/place/United_States/New_York/New_York~5128581/
http://www.yr.no/place/China/Xinjiang/%C3%9Cr%C3%BCmqi/
Page about how the weather forecast is made (in Norwegian)
http://www.yr.no/informasjon/1.3687572

John Erling Blad
Wikimedia Norway

Tris Thomas wrote:
> Dear All,
> I don't know whether this has been discussed before, apologies if it has.
> 
> I'm interested in people's thoughts on a new Wikimedia project-maybe 
> WikiWeather, which basically would do what it says on the tin.  Along 
> with importing national weather from other sources(especially to begin 
> with), contributors could then put their weather where they are.  This 
> could evolve into many contributors giving very localised weather 
> forecasts worldwide, which could be used by many of the other projects 
> and anybody else.
> 
> Would people be interested in this proposal/have any thoughts on it?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Wikinews User Page 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Attribution on small interactive devices and systems

[John at Darkstar]

There is a solution, and it is rather puzzling. The license talks about
identification by an URI, and this can be defined several ways. We can
simply define an URI like "Wikipedia:My article" or perhaps "cc:nn"
where the last is some kind of digital resource identifier for works
licensed by Creative Commons. The first are simpler to understand, while
the latter are somewhat shorter and more reusable.

John

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Re: [Foundation-l] Attribution on small interactive devices and systems

[John at Darkstar]

I know it is even worse for some other languages, but I don't think it
is very interesting to calculate exact numbers for a couple of hundred
languages. The most typical worse case for a SMS is 70 two byte chars.

John

Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> Did you consider what this does in other scripts ... the notion that it is a
> small number of characters is based on the notion that the script will be
> the Latin script.. Other scripts tend to show as the Unicode numbers..
> Thanks,
>   GerardM
> 
> 2009/7/3 Brian 
> 
>> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 5:32 PM, John at Darkstar  wrote:
>>
>>> Minimum attribution of «Terms of Use» from Wikimdia Foundations site
>>> would be
>>> "
>>> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use
>>> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/";
>>>
>>> That is 96 chars, with spaces, of 140 bytes available in a SMS. For some
>>> languages the attribution will take more than one message. Ooops...
>>>
>>> John
>>
>> You just need to provide a url to the article. Type
>> wikipedia.org/articleinto your address bar and wait 5 seconds.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Attribution on small interactive devices and systems

[John at Darkstar]

A url for a medium without a clickable link is, well, not an optimum
solution. Obfuscated url isn't really any better, but it might be shorter.

John

Peter Gervai wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 01:32, John at Darkstar wrote:
>> Minimum attribution of «Terms of Use» from Wikimdia Foundations site
>> would be
>> "
>> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use
>> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/";
>>
>> That is 96 chars, with spaces, of 140 bytes available in a SMS. For some
>> languages the attribution will take more than one message. Ooops...
> 
> Tinyurl and like? It's, well, tiny.
> 
> grin
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Attribution on small interactive devices and systems

[John at Darkstar]

Minimum attribution of «Terms of Use» from Wikimdia Foundations site
would be
"
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/";

That is 96 chars, with spaces, of 140 bytes available in a SMS. For some
languages the attribution will take more than one message. Ooops...

John

John at Darkstar wrote:
> It seems like the attribution scheme chosen does not support small
> interactive devices and systems very Well. Are there anyone who have
> given this any thoughts?
> 
> The problem is basically as the chunk of information shrinks the
> attribution scheme will be more and more of a problem. With the current
> scheme the "paper leaflet" -problem are solved, still what do we do for
> cell phones and similar devices? The same problem also arise for
> solutions where excerpts from articles are used as tooltips in maps. I
> guess there are a lot of other examples.
> 
> I would like a fourth point in the text that says something like
> "attribution after good practice for devices and systems where the
> previous isn't possible".
> 
> The current text reads: Attribution: To re-distribute a text page in any
> form, provide credit to the authors either by including a) a hyperlink
> (where possible) or URL to the page or pages you are re-using, b) a
> hyperlink (where possible) or URL to an alternative, stable online copy
> which is freely accessible, which conforms with the license, and which
> provides credit to the authors in a manner equivalent to the credit
> given on this website, or c) a list of all authors.
> 
> John
> 
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[Foundation-l] Attribution on small interactive devices and systems

[John at Darkstar]

It seems like the attribution scheme chosen does not support small
interactive devices and systems very Well. Are there anyone who have
given this any thoughts?

The problem is basically as the chunk of information shrinks the
attribution scheme will be more and more of a problem. With the current
scheme the "paper leaflet" -problem are solved, still what do we do for
cell phones and similar devices? The same problem also arise for
solutions where excerpts from articles are used as tooltips in maps. I
guess there are a lot of other examples.

I would like a fourth point in the text that says something like
"attribution after good practice for devices and systems where the
previous isn't possible".

The current text reads: Attribution: To re-distribute a text page in any
form, provide credit to the authors either by including a) a hyperlink
(where possible) or URL to the page or pages you are re-using, b) a
hyperlink (where possible) or URL to an alternative, stable online copy
which is freely accessible, which conforms with the license, and which
provides credit to the authors in a manner equivalent to the credit
given on this website, or c) a list of all authors.

John

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Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing update roll-out

[John at Darkstar]

Could there be some updates to
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Implementation as this
page says the roll-out will start at 15. June, while
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/translators-l/2009-June/000959.html
says new messages are to be rolled out "as early as Monday, June 29". In
addition the page at meta says local admins should not interfere with
the roll out, while several projects now have their own improvised messages.

John

Erik Moeller skrev:
> As per the licensing update decision by the community and the Board,
> I've updated the site terms on the English Wikipedia (and the WMF
> website) today, and posted a reference copy of the site-wide terms of
> use to:
> 
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use
> 
> The Wikimedia Commons licensing task force has gone ahead and updated
> the relevant GFDL templates on Commons to indicate that eligible media
> files may also be available under CC-BY-SA.
> 
> The English Wikipedia roll-out serves as a reference implementation
> and may lead to some final tweaks in the terms and language. In the
> coming days, we'll begin the translation and roll-out in other
> eligible projects and languages. Communities will be able to customize
> the messages and terms within limits, as described here:
> 
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Implementation
> 
> Our site-wide roll-out will likely override any project-local
> bottom-up implementation between now and then.

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[Foundation-l] Video from Wikimedia?

[John at Darkstar]

There are some posts about a new video solution, and even more posts
that ... err ... isn't quite correct, but without any official news
about it its impossible to tell the newspapers whats correct and whats not.

I especially like an article saying "from Wikimedia Foundation who made
Wikipedia". I was under the impression that Wikipedia started as a quick
fix for Nupedia, and that WMF was created to support the growing
community. ;)

John

http://beta.technologyreview.com/web/22900/page1/
http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/06/19/2211229/Wikipedia-To-Add-Video?art_pos=1

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Re: [Foundation-l] Google Translate now assists with humantranslations of Wikipedia articles

[John at Darkstar]

It depends on how much a priori knowledge you have about the languages.
For the moment people tend to go into two camps, those who want to use
statistical engines and those who want to go for rule based engines.
According to one person there are some activity to include rules into
statistical engines and vica verca but it still needs a lot of work.

Identifying a language isn't that difficult in itself, most search
engines are quite good at that. Many engines can even be told to
interpret the text according to a specific language so the problem is
basically non existent for us.

Still, because our articles has a lot of text that isn't part of a
single language, and in addition there are also specialized markup,
there should be done some kind of parsing before the translation engine
starts processing the text.

After some discussions last winter I am quite sure a rule based engine
work best for small languages, but that a working solution should use
some kind of self learning mechanism to refine the translation or at
least identify errors.

Our idea was to use statistics to identify cases where existing rules
failed, and let people define the new rules. Failing rules would be
detected by checking which translated sentences got changed afterwards.
Actually it is a bit more difficult than this,.. ;)

And no, I'm not a linguist...

John

>>> One of the most important things that is needed for adding languages to a
>>> technology like this is having a sufficiently sized corpus.
>> Yes, that was basically my main question: What is sufficiently? How much
>> pages or MB of text? At least the order of magnitude.
>>
>> Marcus Buck

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Re: [Foundation-l] Google Translate now assists with human translations of Wikipedia articles

[John at Darkstar]

The link is about Google Translate, I'm not sure about the rumor.

Probably a rule based solution is the easiest to get up and running for
small wikis, while a statistical solution will work for larger wikis.
That will make the system work sufficiently well that users will build
upon the initial machine translation thereby enabling the statistical
engine to learn from the errors. Its like an automatic classifier with
some a priori knowledge.

John

Amir E. Aharoni skrev:
> On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 09:37, John at Darkstar wrote:
>> Google previously used Systrans engine, but now uses their own. Sort of,
>> there are some rumors about them using a open source statistical
>> translation engine.
>> http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/10/google-translate-switches-to-googles.html
> 
> I couldn't find those rumors at the link you gave. Where did you see them?
> 
> That would be interesting. If it is open source, Wikipedia can just
> use it, and more importantly - improve it, by itself, without Google's
> help
> 

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Re: [Foundation-l] Google Translate now assists with human translations of Wikipedia articles

[John at Darkstar]

Sorry for my english, its actually not a machine translation even if it
looks like that! ;p

John

John at Darkstar skrev:
> There are two trends in machine translations; rule based translations
> and statistical translations. Both have pros and cons. Rule based
> translations seems to be possible to integrate with Wiktionary in such a
> way that it can support Wikipedia. Statistical translations seems to be
> possible to integrate more directly with Wikipedia. Both methods can use
> the history of the translated article to identify where the translation
> engine fails; for a rule based translation engine that usually means
> there are some missing transfer rules, for a statistical translation
> engine that means the engine has failed to adapt to some type of sentence.
> 
> Google previously used Systrans engine, but now uses their own. Sort of,
> there are some rumors about them using a open source statistical
> translation engine.
> http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/10/google-translate-switches-to-googles.html
> 
> Microsoft also uses a statistical translation engine.
> http://blogs.msdn.com/translation/archive/2008/08/22/statistical-machine-translation-guest-blog.aspx
> 
> One very promising free rule based translation engine is Apertium
> http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Main_Page
> 
> A very well known free statistical engine is Moses
> http://www.statmt.org/moses/
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Google Translate now assists with human translations of Wikipedia articles

[John at Darkstar]

There are two trends in machine translations; rule based translations
and statistical translations. Both have pros and cons. Rule based
translations seems to be possible to integrate with Wiktionary in such a
way that it can support Wikipedia. Statistical translations seems to be
possible to integrate more directly with Wikipedia. Both methods can use
the history of the translated article to identify where the translation
engine fails; for a rule based translation engine that usually means
there are some missing transfer rules, for a statistical translation
engine that means the engine has failed to adapt to some type of sentence.

Google previously used Systrans engine, but now uses their own. Sort of,
there are some rumors about them using a open source statistical
translation engine.
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/10/google-translate-switches-to-googles.html

Microsoft also uses a statistical translation engine.
http://blogs.msdn.com/translation/archive/2008/08/22/statistical-machine-translation-guest-blog.aspx

One very promising free rule based translation engine is Apertium
http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Main_Page

A very well known free statistical engine is Moses
http://www.statmt.org/moses/



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Re: [Foundation-l] Google Translate now assists with human translations of Wikipedia articles

[John at Darkstar]

Compare such text to a photo of a painting changed by some automatic
algorithm. The copyright of the painting is unchanged and the algorithm
gets no part of any new copyright, yet the person applying the tool
_can_ have a part in the copyright for the new derived work.

If you translate a work through the use of some tool, the tool gets no
part of the copyright, the person may get a part of the copyright for
the derived work but then he must do something in addition to running
the tool, unless the tool is so extremely difficult to use that running
it is sufficient.

John

John at Darkstar skrev:
> Machine translations are not new work, neither derivatives, as it is
> done by machines and not by humans.
> 
> Also Google will have a hard time claiming that because some
> unidentified person added text or an url to a open service they now has
> the right to do whatever they want with the text.
> 
> I guess what they try to say in the TOS is that the text will be used to
> build the statistical engine and you give Google the right to do so.
> That is, they provide the translation and you provide the corrections
> which is then released to them.
> 
> John
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Google Translate now assists with human translations of Wikipedia articles

[John at Darkstar]

Machine translations are not new work, neither derivatives, as it is
done by machines and not by humans.

Also Google will have a hard time claiming that because some
unidentified person added text or an url to a open service they now has
the right to do whatever they want with the text.

I guess what they try to say in the TOS is that the text will be used to
build the statistical engine and you give Google the right to do so.
That is, they provide the translation and you provide the corrections
which is then released to them.

John

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia tracks user behaviour via third party companies #2

[John at Darkstar]

Discussing something as a general social concern is one thing, claiming
that it is a wmf legal issue is something different.
John

Michael Snow skrev:
> John at Darkstar wrote:
>> Are the developers lawyers? A developer claiming something has an
>> unwanted privacy issue is very different from making claims about
>> something being a legal issue on the behalf of Foundation. Simply don't
>> do it.
>>   
> Privacy is not simply a legal issue, it's a general social concern. Our 
> privacy policy should not be treated as merely a legal document, it's an 
> effort to express part of our social compact. Unless it's a matter of 
> interpreting legal regulations somewhere else, I consider the developers 
> equally competent to address privacy issues. If Brion or Tim or Domas 
> identify an issue, they don't need to run to Mike every time to check 
> that it really is something that should be addressed.
> 
> --Michael Snow
> 
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia tracks user behaviour via third party companies #2

[John at Darkstar]

Are the developers lawyers? A developer claiming something has an
unwanted privacy issue is very different from making claims about
something being a legal issue on the behalf of Foundation. Simply don't
do it.
John

Brian skrev:
> Or by one of the WMF developers removing the web bug.
> 
> 2009/6/6 John at Darkstar 
> 
>> You can make claims about what you yourself wants or believe, but do
>> *not* claim that your personal beliefs reflects legal issues for
>> Foundation. If Foundation needs to make claims about what is and whats
>> not a legal issue, then such claims should be made by Mike.
>>
>> John
>>
>> Brian skrev:
>>> I also have not seen a clear explanation of what those who would like to
>>> generate statistics using web bugs plan to do with that data. How do they
>>> plan to use the data, and why aren't the plethora of statistics now made
>>> officially available by the WMF not satisfactory?
>>>
>>> You have bypassed the correct procedure. The amount of time that it takes
>>> the WMF to accomplish goals can be frustrating. Getting them to make your
>>> goal their goal can be frustrating. But it all has to start with you
>>> presenting them with a coherent goal that takes all the constraints into
>>> account. Then you need to get WMF approval which often involves getting
>>> community approval.
>>>
>>> Let's be clear that the privacy policy is a legal issue for the WMF.
>>> Volunteer admins cannot take user privacy into their own hands, under
>> their
>>> own interpretation. That's just not how it works!
>>>
>>>
>>> 2009/6/6 Brian 
>>>
>>>> This is another e-mail on this subject that just strikes me as flawed.
>>>> These are not vague privacy fears - they are real privacy fears. I see a
>>>> fundamental failure by those involved in this controversy to understand
>> this
>>>> point.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 1:31 AM, Tisza Gergő  wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Robert Rohde  writes:
>>>>>
>>>>>> You may not be aware, but the relaying of page view data to third
>>>>>> party analysis platforms has been tried on a number of occasions in
>>>>>> the past and consistently shutdown.  (I think this even includes cases
>>>>>> before the Privacy Policy was adopted.)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> However, to my recollection there has never been a case that quite
>>>>>> mirrors yours since we are talking about a privately hosted server
>>>>>> administered by a highly trusted community member.
>>>>> The (WM-DE-owned) toolserver ran a statistics script called WikiCharts
>> for
>>>>> a few
>>>>> years, which worked with data relayed by Common.js from several
>>>>> wikipedias,
>>>>> including de and en. While that is not exactly the same situation (as
>> the
>>>>> WMF
>>>>> has access to the toolserver), I think it proves my point that passing
>> IP
>>>>> data
>>>>> to an (in the strict organizational sense) third-party server does not
>>>>> necessarily violate the privacy policy, neither letter nor spirit, as
>> long
>>>>> as
>>>>> that server remains within the larger WM community.
>>>>>
>>>>> It is important to understand that this is a much more general question
>>>>> than
>>>>> that of web statistics: any third-party service that interacts with the
>>>>> standard
>>>>> wiki user interface receives private data, whether it needs it or not,
>>>>> because
>>>>> the user interface (the HTML page) is "executed" in the user's browser,
>>>>> and the
>>>>> browser has to contact the third-party service, and it cannot hide its
>> IP
>>>>> in
>>>>> that process. For example, we considered setting up some sort of spell
>>>>> checking
>>>>> service for hu.wp. That is something that cannot be done well centrally
>> -
>>>>> there
>>>>> is too much difference between languages. And if you do it with a local
>>>>> server,
>>>>> it has to communicate with the user's browser, and could in theory log
>>>>> requests
>>>>> and correlate them with edits on the wiki, thus it has to conform 

Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia tracks user behaviour via third party companies #2

[John at Darkstar]

You can make claims about what you yourself wants or believe, but do
*not* claim that your personal beliefs reflects legal issues for
Foundation. If Foundation needs to make claims about what is and whats
not a legal issue, then such claims should be made by Mike.

John

Brian skrev:
> I also have not seen a clear explanation of what those who would like to
> generate statistics using web bugs plan to do with that data. How do they
> plan to use the data, and why aren't the plethora of statistics now made
> officially available by the WMF not satisfactory?
> 
> You have bypassed the correct procedure. The amount of time that it takes
> the WMF to accomplish goals can be frustrating. Getting them to make your
> goal their goal can be frustrating. But it all has to start with you
> presenting them with a coherent goal that takes all the constraints into
> account. Then you need to get WMF approval which often involves getting
> community approval.
> 
> Let's be clear that the privacy policy is a legal issue for the WMF.
> Volunteer admins cannot take user privacy into their own hands, under their
> own interpretation. That's just not how it works!
> 
> 
> 2009/6/6 Brian 
> 
>> This is another e-mail on this subject that just strikes me as flawed.
>> These are not vague privacy fears - they are real privacy fears. I see a
>> fundamental failure by those involved in this controversy to understand this
>> point.
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 1:31 AM, Tisza Gergő  wrote:
>>
>>> Robert Rohde  writes:
>>>
 You may not be aware, but the relaying of page view data to third
 party analysis platforms has been tried on a number of occasions in
 the past and consistently shutdown.  (I think this even includes cases
 before the Privacy Policy was adopted.)

 However, to my recollection there has never been a case that quite
 mirrors yours since we are talking about a privately hosted server
 administered by a highly trusted community member.
>>> The (WM-DE-owned) toolserver ran a statistics script called WikiCharts for
>>> a few
>>> years, which worked with data relayed by Common.js from several
>>> wikipedias,
>>> including de and en. While that is not exactly the same situation (as the
>>> WMF
>>> has access to the toolserver), I think it proves my point that passing IP
>>> data
>>> to an (in the strict organizational sense) third-party server does not
>>> necessarily violate the privacy policy, neither letter nor spirit, as long
>>> as
>>> that server remains within the larger WM community.
>>>
>>> It is important to understand that this is a much more general question
>>> than
>>> that of web statistics: any third-party service that interacts with the
>>> standard
>>> wiki user interface receives private data, whether it needs it or not,
>>> because
>>> the user interface (the HTML page) is "executed" in the user's browser,
>>> and the
>>> browser has to contact the third-party service, and it cannot hide its IP
>>> in
>>> that process. For example, we considered setting up some sort of spell
>>> checking
>>> service for hu.wp. That is something that cannot be done well centrally -
>>> there
>>> is too much difference between languages. And if you do it with a local
>>> server,
>>> it has to communicate with the user's browser, and could in theory log
>>> requests
>>> and correlate them with edits on the wiki, thus it has to conform with the
>>> privacy guidelines. It would be a shame if all such uses would be blindly
>>> forbidden because of vague privacy fears.
>>>
>>>
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>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia tracks user behaviour via third party companies #2

[John at Darkstar]

The strange thingh is, some such servers seems to be outside discussion
while others are not. ;)

John

Tisza Gergő skrev:
> Nathan  writes:
> 
>> Others have since discussed more centralised and secure methods for
>> providing these statistics via the WMF - this is the ideal outcome, and one
>> that might have been achieved earlier had you proposed your method rather
>> than simply going ahead alone.
> 
> Setting up an off-the-shelf awstats with an invisible pixel is web statistics
> 101, not something that needs to be invented. The reason nothing similar got
> implemented is not that nobody thought of this method, but that it wouldn't 
> work
> with enwiki so nobody cared. Actually, the old knams stat (which also 
> collected
> referrers, so it was in some aspects superior) could have been easily kept
> working by filtering out enwiki, and maybe the next few largest projects; 
> again,
> nobody cared. Features that only benefit the smaller projects rarely get 
> enough
> developer interest, which is understandable, but then it is only natural that
> those smaller projects try to solve their issues for themselves. And we did it
> with privacy in mind - we would have obviously preferred Google Analytics
> ourselves, but we didn't switch because we didn't want the logs to leak to
> servers not controlled by WM community, and because it shows data that can be
> used to identify IP adresses.
> 
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia tracks user behaviour via third party companies #2

[John at Darkstar]

* clap - clap *
John

Peter Gervai skrev:
> Hello,
> 
> I wasn't subscribed to this list, since I usually try to avoid the
> politics around.
> 
> I was notified, however, that some interesting claims were made and
> some steps taken (again) without any discussion whatsoever.
> 
> First, let me tell it here again - as I have told it on a different
> list - that I am extremely disappointed by the lack of discussion
> before someone from outside seriously interfere with other project
> based on, as it turns out, incorrect informations. In the past people
> with privileges (if we ever considered them that way instead of people
> with work to be done) were more cautious. I would like you all
> fast-handed guys to slow down and talk first, get informed, and act
> later.
> 
> I already commented elsewhere on vls, in summary I miss the discussion
> and I do not believe the case actually breached any privacy, but this
> isn't my concern now (as I'm in a bit of hurry).
> 
> Regarding huwp, it would have been pretty easy to find out who to ask.
> Apart from the obvious choice of "anyone with any flags on huwp", it
> could've been easy to identify who made the changes, and ask them.
> Like, for example me.
> 
> As far as I see, lots of wasted energies go around, like people
> planning how to block javascript, how to block counters, etc. It is
> the wrong way. The good way is, and I'm repeating myself again, is
> FIRST to get to know WHY these scripts are there in the first hand,
> what solution they have to solve. This is a crucial step, fellows,
> which you neglected to take. (And we all know that the reason is to
> create usage stats.)
> 
> Next step should be examining whether there is anything this violates,
> like, Privacy Policy. In the case of Google this is debateable, since
> I don't know what is the scope of the data retention.
> 
> However I completely do know about the Hungarian stats. Let me share
> the real information here, briefly, since I have to go soon, but I do
> not want to let you destroy something you're not aware of.
> 
> The stats (which have, by surprise, a dedicated domain under th hu
> wikipedia domain) runs on a dedicated server, with nothing else on it.
> Its sole purpose to gather and publish the stats. Basically nobody
> have permission to log in the servers but me, and I since I happen to
> be checkuser as well it wouldn't even be ntertaining to read it, even
> if it wasn't big enough making this useless. I happen to be the one
> who have created the Hungarian checkuser policy, which is, as far as I
> know, the strictest one in WMF projects, and it's no joke, and I
> intend to follow it. (And those who are unfamiliar with me, I happen
> to be the founder of huwp as well, apart from my job in computer
> security.)
> 
> If you would have gathered this knowledge (which means that the server
> is closed and run by an identified user to WMF), then you could have
> started the discussion.
> 
> As it is obvious, don't make any interfering moves while discussing it
> for days, or even weeks, wouldn't change anything.
> 
> What have you achieved with removing the code? You killed our stats,
> which provides us with the statistics originally WMF provided (same
> data content), but later killed off.
> 
> We'll propose (huwp) some solutions on the problem, but I'll really
> have to go now. Tgr can help discussing it, and I'll thank him for his
> help in advance. :-)
> 
> So, think about these in the weekend, I'm back on monday. I hop there
> can be an _useful_ discussion, with thinking people and not people
> acting on impulses.
> 
> Peter Gervai
> Hungary
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia tracks user behaviour via third party companies

[John at Darkstar]

Alex skrev:
> John at Darkstar wrote:
>>> Hmm? There's no reason to do anything like that. The AbuseFilter would
>>> just prevent sitewide JS pages from being saved with the particular URLs
>>> or a particular code block in them. It'll stop the well-meaning but
>>> misguided admins. Short of restricting site JS to the point of
>>> uselessness, you'll never be able to stop determined abusers.
>>>
>> A very typical code fragment to make a stat url is something like
>>
>> document.write('');
>>
>> - server is some kind of external url
>> - digest is just some random garbage to bypass caching
>>
>> This kind of code exists in so many variants that it is very difficult
>> to say anything about how it may be implemented. Often it will not use a
>> document.write on systems like Wikipedia but instead use createElement()
>> Very often someone claims that the definition of "server" will be
>> complete and may be used to identify the external server sufficiently.
>> That is not a valid claim as many such sites can be referred for other
>> purposes. 
> 
> Other purposes that have valid uses loading 3rd party content on a
> Wikimedia wiki? Like what?

If you don't trust other sites you also has to accept that you can't
trust ant kind of «toolserver» where you don't have complete control.
That opens a lot of problems

>> Note also that the number of urls will be huge as this type of
>> service is very popular, not to say that anyone that want may set up a
>> special stat aggregator on an otherwise unknown domain.
>>
>> Basically, simple regexps are not sufficient for detecting this kind of
>> code.
> 
> I don't think I said it would be perfect, the idea isn't to 100% prevent
> it, just to try to stop the most obvious cases like Google analytics.

Its not that it won't be perfect, it simply will not work.

John

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia tracks user behaviour via third party companies

[John at Darkstar]

> 
> Hmm? There's no reason to do anything like that. The AbuseFilter would
> just prevent sitewide JS pages from being saved with the particular URLs
> or a particular code block in them. It'll stop the well-meaning but
> misguided admins. Short of restricting site JS to the point of
> uselessness, you'll never be able to stop determined abusers.
> 

A very typical code fragment to make a stat url is something like

document.write('');

- server is some kind of external url
- digest is just some random garbage to bypass caching

This kind of code exists in so many variants that it is very difficult
to say anything about how it may be implemented. Often it will not use a
document.write on systems like Wikipedia but instead use createElement()
Very often someone claims that the definition of "server" will be
complete and may be used to identify the external server sufficiently.
That is not a valid claim as many such sites can be referred for other
purposes. Note also that the number of urls will be huge as this type of
service is very popular, not to say that anyone that want may set up a
special stat aggregator on an otherwise unknown domain.

Basically, simple regexps are not sufficient for detecting this kind of
code.

Otherwise, take a look at Simetricals earlier post.

John

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia tracks user behaviour via third party companies

[John at Darkstar]

> 
> Is this enough? Of course not, there is so much more to learn.
> 

> 
> Erik Zachte
> 

There are a few very important missing items for the moment
* Number of unique visitors
* Number of page visits per visitors

All should be analyzed on user roles, possibly also on different time
spans (hour, day, week) and likelihood of the user being a real person
or a boot. The overall numbers can then be used for analyzing the squid
logs. Something like this will make it possible to make valid
comparisons with several stat aggregators.

John

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia tracks user behaviour via third party companies

[John at Darkstar]

> On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 6:20 AM, John at Darkstar wrote:
>> User privacy on Wikipedia is is close to a public hoax, pages are
>> transfered unencrypted and with user names in clear text. Anyone with
>> access to a public hub is able to intercept and identify users, in
>> addition to _all_ websites that are referenced during an edit on
>> Wikipedia through correlation of logs.
> 
> This only works for getting info on totally random Wikipedia users,
> who happen to edit using your router.  This isn't a serious compromise
> of privacy for practical purposes due to the resources required to get
> info on a large number of users, or to target a specific user.  Users
> who are concerned about this, however, can use secure.wikimedia.org.

Either you have privacy for _all_ users or you have none. If you accept
lesser privacy for some users, at random, several stat aggregation
schemes are possible. Downside is that you have to decide that some
users in fact have less privacy from time to time.

> So if you want real privacy against MITMs, you still need to use
> something like Tor, as usual.

Attacks on Tor is way outside the scoope of this discussion but it is
possible for this kind of sites.

> On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 12:53 PM, Robert Rohde wrote:
>> One idea is the proposal to install the AbuseFilter in a global mode,
>> i.e. rules loaded at Meta that apply everywhere.  If that were done
>> (and there are some arguments about whether it is a good idea), then
>> it could be used to block these types of URLs from being installed,
>> even by admins.
> 
> No, it wouldn't.
> 
> document.write('http://www.go' + 'ogle-an' +
> 'alytics.com/urc' + 'hin.js" type="text/javascript">');
> 
> Obviously more complicated obfuscation is possible.  JavaScript is
> Turing-complete.  You can't reliably figure out whether it will output
> a specific string.

You can run a script to inspect the dom-three for external urls and
report back if something suspicious are found but it is highly error
prone and can easily be defeated.

John

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia tracks user behaviour via third party companies

[John at Darkstar]

> One idea is the proposal to install the AbuseFilter in a global mode,
> i.e. rules loaded at Meta that apply everywhere.  If that were done
> (and there are some arguments about whether it is a good idea), then
> it could be used to block these types of URLs from being installed,
> even by admins.

Identifying client side generated urls from server side opens up a whole
lot of problems of its own. Basically you need a script that runs in a
hostile environment and reports back to a server when a whole series of
urls are injected from code loaded from some sources (mediawiki-space)
but not from other sources user space), still code loaded from user
space through call to mediawiki space should be allowed. Add to this
that your url identifying code has to run after a script has generated
the url and before it do any cleanup. The url verification can't just
say that a url is hostile, it has to check it somehow, and that leads to
reporting of the url - if the reporting code still executes at that
moment. Urk...

John

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia tracks user behaviour via third party companies

[John at Darkstar]

> Not to mention, as  
> far as I know the program is proprietary.

This is an example of whats the real problem here; its not the security
issues but the users political issues.

>  I'm not convinced that  
> we need to be tracking user behavior at this point in time, or that  
> the tradeoffs for doing so are worth any benefits, or that doing so is  
> in furtherance of our mission.

One example of a very important solution is to identify missing links
between articles. Articles without parents are a special case. Articles
without children too. Articles where a reoccurring problem persist in a
missing link between two articles are the general case, but this can not
be solved without referrer logging, or better logging to a external
server after a JS-function has identified the logging as necessary.
Unfortunatly such logging can't be done today so we must stick to the
two less than optimum special cases.

John

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia tracks user behaviour via third party companies

[John at Darkstar]

The interesting thing is "who has interest in which users identity".
Lets make an example, some organization sets up a site with a honeypot
and logs all visitors. Then they correlates that with RC-logs from
Wikipedia and then checks out who adds external links back to
themselves. They do not need direct access to Wikipedia logs or the raw
traffic.

There is only one valid reason as I see it to avoid certain stat
engines, and that is to block advertising companies from getting
information about the readers. The writers does not have any real
anonymity at all.

John

Neil Harris skrev:
> John at Darkstar wrote:
>> We need tools to track user behavior inside Wikipedia. As it is now we
>> know nearly nothing at all about user behavior and nearly all people
>> saying anything about users at Wikipedia makes gross estimates and wild
>> guesses.
>>
>> User privacy on Wikipedia is is close to a public hoax, pages are
>> transfered unencrypted and with user names in clear text. Anyone with
>> access to a public hub is able to intercept and identify users, in
>> addition to _all_ websites that are referenced during an edit on
>> Wikipedia through correlation of logs.
>>
>> Compared to this the whole previous discussion about the Iranian steward
>> is somewhat strange, if not completely ridiculous.
>>
>> Get real, the whole system and access to it is completely open!
>>
>> John
>>   
> 
> As you say, there is no possibility of absolute privacy from anyone with 
> access to the traffic stream, since the Internet was never engineered to 
> give this kind of privacy.  Wikipedia as "completely open" as any other 
> non-https website -- and, even with https, as with any other website 
> with publicly visible transactions, for anyone with access to the 
> traffic stream, simple traffic analysis is generally enough to correlate 
> user identities to IPs. A combination of http and Tor is probably as 
> good as it gets in attempting to avoid this, but even this has its 
> limitations.
> 
> But it is simply unreasonable to equate this with no privacy at all. 
> Most possible eavesdroppers do _not_ have access to the entire traffic 
> stream, and those who do have access to traffic generally only have 
> access to part of the traffic stream, and even then, most of them can't 
> be bothered to eavesdrop, or are discouraged from doing so by privacy laws.
> 
> Given this, it is quite reasonable to take appropriate technical 
> measures that attempt to keep as much of that remaining privacy as 
> secure as possible.
> 
> -- Neil
> 
> 
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia tracks user behaviour via third party companies

[John at Darkstar]

Forgot a link to an article which describes very well privacy on
Wikipedia! ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes

John at Darkstar skrev:
> We need tools to track user behavior inside Wikipedia. As it is now we
> know nearly nothing at all about user behavior and nearly all people
> saying anything about users at Wikipedia makes gross estimates and wild
> guesses.
> 
> User privacy on Wikipedia is is close to a public hoax, pages are
> transfered unencrypted and with user names in clear text. Anyone with
> access to a public hub is able to intercept and identify users, in
> addition to _all_ websites that are referenced during an edit on
> Wikipedia through correlation of logs.
> 
> Compared to this the whole previous discussion about the Iranian steward
> is somewhat strange, if not completely ridiculous.
> 
> Get real, the whole system and access to it is completely open!
> 
> John
> 
> Neil Harris skrev:
>> Tim 'avatar' Bartel wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> recently the report of the KnowPrivacy [1] study - a research project
>>> by the School of Information from University of California in Berkeley
>>> - hit the German media [2].
>>>
>>> It came to the conclusion that "All of the top 50 websites contained
>>> at least one web bug at some point in a one month time period." [3]
>>> which includes wikipedia.org.
>>>
>>> This is very troubleing and irritating for some of our (German) users
>>> who are very sensitive to data privacy topics. So I established
>>> contact to Brian W. Carver (University of California) who connected me
>>> to David Cancel, the maintainer of Ghostery, which was used to
>>> identify the web bugs. David wrote me today:
>>>
>>>   
>>>> The following web bug trackers were reported to us, on the following 
>>>> subdomains:
>>>>   Google Analytics - vls.wikipedia.org
>>>>   Doubleclick - hu.wikipedia.org
>>>> Both were seen in yesterday's data so they're recent. We don't receive any 
>>>> page level information so that's as much detail as we have. Hope that 
>>>> helps.
>>>> 
>>> I wasn't able to track down the Doubleclick web bug on the hungarian
>>> Wikipedia, but Google Analytics web bug is integrated in every page of
>>> the West Flemish Wikipedia via JavaScript [4].
>>>
>>> Our privacy policy [5] states "The Wikimedia Foundation may keep raw
>>> logs of such transactions [IP and other technical information], but
>>> these will not be published or used to track legitimate users." and
>>> "As a general principle, the access to, and retention of, personally
>>> identifiable data in all projects should be minimal and should be used
>>> only internally to serve the well-being of the projects."
>>>
>>> I think we should stop the current use of Google Analytics ASAP.
>>>
>>> Bye, Tim.
>>>
>>>   
>> Surely this is something which should be possible to block at the 
>> MediaWiki level, by suppressing the generation of any HTML  that loads 
>> any indirect resources (scripts, iframes, images, etc.) whatsoever other 
>> than from a clearly defined whitelist of Wikimedia-Foundation-controlled 
>> domains?
>>
>> Doing this should completely stop site admins from adding web bugs.
>>
>> -- Neil
>>
>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia tracks user behaviour via third party companies

[John at Darkstar]

We need tools to track user behavior inside Wikipedia. As it is now we
know nearly nothing at all about user behavior and nearly all people
saying anything about users at Wikipedia makes gross estimates and wild
guesses.

User privacy on Wikipedia is is close to a public hoax, pages are
transfered unencrypted and with user names in clear text. Anyone with
access to a public hub is able to intercept and identify users, in
addition to _all_ websites that are referenced during an edit on
Wikipedia through correlation of logs.

Compared to this the whole previous discussion about the Iranian steward
is somewhat strange, if not completely ridiculous.

Get real, the whole system and access to it is completely open!

John

Neil Harris skrev:
> Tim 'avatar' Bartel wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> recently the report of the KnowPrivacy [1] study - a research project
>> by the School of Information from University of California in Berkeley
>> - hit the German media [2].
>>
>> It came to the conclusion that "All of the top 50 websites contained
>> at least one web bug at some point in a one month time period." [3]
>> which includes wikipedia.org.
>>
>> This is very troubleing and irritating for some of our (German) users
>> who are very sensitive to data privacy topics. So I established
>> contact to Brian W. Carver (University of California) who connected me
>> to David Cancel, the maintainer of Ghostery, which was used to
>> identify the web bugs. David wrote me today:
>>
>>   
>>> The following web bug trackers were reported to us, on the following 
>>> subdomains:
>>>   Google Analytics - vls.wikipedia.org
>>>   Doubleclick - hu.wikipedia.org
>>> Both were seen in yesterday's data so they're recent. We don't receive any 
>>> page level information so that's as much detail as we have. Hope that helps.
>>> 
>> I wasn't able to track down the Doubleclick web bug on the hungarian
>> Wikipedia, but Google Analytics web bug is integrated in every page of
>> the West Flemish Wikipedia via JavaScript [4].
>>
>> Our privacy policy [5] states "The Wikimedia Foundation may keep raw
>> logs of such transactions [IP and other technical information], but
>> these will not be published or used to track legitimate users." and
>> "As a general principle, the access to, and retention of, personally
>> identifiable data in all projects should be minimal and should be used
>> only internally to serve the well-being of the projects."
>>
>> I think we should stop the current use of Google Analytics ASAP.
>>
>> Bye, Tim.
>>
>>   
> Surely this is something which should be possible to block at the 
> MediaWiki level, by suppressing the generation of any HTML  that loads 
> any indirect resources (scripts, iframes, images, etc.) whatsoever other 
> than from a clearly defined whitelist of Wikimedia-Foundation-controlled 
> domains?
> 
> Doing this should completely stop site admins from adding web bugs.
> 
> -- Neil
> 
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Comparison of Wikipedia in Norsk (Bokmål) and Store Norske Leksikon

[John at Darkstar]

To my knowledge the comparison is not published on www.vg.no, although
it is possible to buy it online.

This is the discussion at our signpost:
http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tinget#VG_tester_SNL_og_Wikipedia

There are two unofficial "faximiles":
http://bayimg.com/image/laankaacf.jpg
http://bayimg.com/image/laannaacf.jpg
Linked from our signpost, well, its not what we should do...

Official pdf's can be bought at:
https://www.buyandread.com/mediaport/pages.htm?date=20090531&pub=156
It is page 24 and 25

John

Ziko van Dijk skrev:
> Thank you for the information, John, do you have a link I can refer to when
> I quote that?
> Kind regards
> Ziko
> 

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[Foundation-l] Comparison of Wikipedia in Norsk (Bokmål) and Store Norske Leksikon

[John at Darkstar]

Sunday 31th of May the Norwegian newspaper VG (Verdens Gang) compared
Wikipedia in Norsk (Bokmål) and Store Norske Leksikon. The latter
encyclopedia is a large traditional paper lexicon transfered to a web
portal, together with to other lexicons; one medical and health lexicon
and one biographical lexicon. SNL has transfered from a closed licensing
model to an open licensing model, and also open up for outside
contributions.

The roundup focused on five different areas; history, culture,
entertainment, society and politics, and sport. The grades goes from 1
to 6, with 6 as the best.

History:Wp 5 - SNL 5
(Det norske arbeiderparti, Andre verdenskrig, Vikinger, Vikingtid)

Culture:Wp 4 - SNL 3
(Edvard Munch, Henrik Ibsen, Leif Ove Andsnes, Hjalmar Borgström,
Ungdommens kulturmønstring)

Entertainment:  Wp 5 - SNL 2
(Melodi Grand Prix, Harald Eia, Tone Damli Aaberget, Nytt på nytt,
Alexander Rybak, Idol, Wenche Foss, Sivert Høyem)

Society and politics:   Wp 5 - SNL 3
(Kristin Halvorsen, AUF-skandalen, Rødt, Saera Khan)

Sport:  Wp 5 - SNL 3
(Marit Breivik, Tore André Flo, Tore Reginiussen, Kjetil André Aamodt,
Fotball-VM

The comparison seems to have a slight bias because there are two much
articles about persons and events fairly close to present time.
Wikipedia is much better on that kind of articles compared to more
classical lexicon articles, where it can be assumed that SNL would be
somewhat better.

John

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Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing update vote result

[John at Darkstar]

>From some voting in no.wp it seems like it takes some time for the real
trends to kick in. If the voting is open for a to short period only the
most eager users will vote and the result will be biased.

John

Brian skrev:
> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 5:46 PM, Michael Snow  wrote:
> 
>> phoebe ayers wrote:
>>> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 10:00 AM, Robert Rohde 
>> wrote:
 On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 1:20 AM, Marco Chiesa 
>> wrote:
> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 7:54 AM, Robert Rohde 
>> wrote:
>> The licensing update poll has been tallied.
>>
>> "Yes, I am in favor of this change" :  13242 (75.8%)
>> "No, I am opposed to this change" :  1829 (10.5%)
>> "I do not have an opinion on this change" :  2391 (13.7%)
>>
>> Total ballots cast and certified:  17462
>>
> I think this is a very good result, in particular the turnout looks
>> great to me!
> Congratulations to all who have worked hard to get to it, and I hope
> there will be a board resolution soon.
>
 As was commented on elsewhere, the 2008 Board Election only had 3019
 votes, which also suggests the turnout this time was remarkable.

>>> Yes -- I think this is definitely the largest group of Wikimedians to
>>> ever collectively express an opinion on anything! It'd be worth
>>> figuring out why the vote was successful, if possible (long period of
>>> voting? ubiquitous sitenotices? Important topic? Lots of outside
>>> interest?)
>>>
>> Deliberately low threshold for eligibility.
>>
>> --Michael Snow
> 
> 
> And yet the "threshold for eligibility" hypothesis has not been tested on
> the projects. You have no idea whether allowing only those with the most
> biased opinions to vote (as most project votes are conducted) skews the
> outcome towards or away from the rational or optimal choice, or whether it
> has any effect on the outcome at all. Indeed, we have no idea whether the
> wording or presentation or usability of the votes matters. It could matter a
> great deal, changing the outcome in a statistically significant matter, or
> it could matter not at all, rendering the threshold for eligibility
> hypothesis meaningless. The current methods amount to folk statistics
> because nobody has any clue what matters and what doesn't. That's why I
> continue to encourage the WMF to adopt scientific thinking.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Licensing update vote result

[John at Darkstar]

No opinion means no opinion and should not be interpreted in any way,
the group represents an uncertainty in the result.
John

Erik Moeller skrev:
> 2009/5/20 Robert Rohde :
>> The licensing update poll has been tallied.
>>
>> "Yes, I am in favor of this change" :  13242 (75.8%)
>> "No, I am opposed to this change" :  1829 (10.5%)
>> "I do not have an opinion on this change" :  2391 (13.7%)
> 
> I do want to state for the record that the only reason a "no opinion"
> option was included in the vote was to give users an option to "not
> vote" explicitly if they didn't feel they could have an informed
> opinion on such a complex issue, so that they wouldn't feel compelled
> to make one up. In other words, it was a measure intended to increase
> the quality of the yes/no votes. But I don't think these neutral votes
> should be given greater weight than the people who expressed no
> opinion by not voting.
> 
> In other words, I consider this for all intents and purposes an
> 88%/12% result (it was also stated in the proposal that "votes that
> express a preference" would be the basis of any decision). I say this
> because that is important if people want to view it through the lens
> of our traditional standards of "rough consensus". :-)

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Re: [Foundation-l] Abuse filter

[John at Darkstar]

Thats Finns interpretation of this. Finn and some other users claims
that there are no such things as privacy concerns with the Abuse filter,
and claims they have a general consensus on the use of it. They even
claim that the local authority "Datatilsynet" would not have any opinion
on the matter and that they would refuse to respond on queries about it,
but in fact they did reply. They where very specific on the issue and
said that the use is outside the reach of the law, as the site is in the
states, but if it were implemented on a site in Norway the solution has
to apply to the law "Personopplysningsloven" or it must be strictly used
for "administration of the system". Thats why I said we may _choose_ to
use it anyhow.

Note that Norwegian users would be bound by local law both in Norway and
partly also abroad, in addition to other local law. How this would be in
this case I don't know, but an admin taking actions against a user
because he have information from the AbuseFilter would at least be
questionable.

Note also that some of the users at no.wp has claimed that we should not
relate to Norwegian law, and that Wikipedia should somehow be regarded
as "international territory" or something similar. I'm not quite sure
how they argue for this idea, I simply can't follow the logic on that.

John

Finn Rindahl skrev:
> This issue has been discussed at rather great lenght at Wikipedia in
> Norwegian (bokmål) and the mailinglist admin-wikipedia-no. I haven't yet
> seen anyone who agrees with Johns interpretation that logging of attempts to
> save (publish) blocked by an abusefilter is against Norwegian law.
> 
> Finn Rindahl
> 
> 2009/3/27 Thomas Dalton 
> 
>> 2009/3/27 Mark Williamson :
>>> And what is "every other countries"? I'm not a lawyer, but even if you
>>> are, have you done a legal study of all the countries on earth,
>>> because there are a lot.
>> He said "every" not "any". "that is not legal in every other
>> countries" (assuming that last word was intended to be singular) means
>> there is at least one country where it is not legal. "that is not
>> legal in any other country" would mean there were no countries where
>> is was legal. People using "every" and "any" incorrectly is a pet hate
>> of mine, but he got it right!
>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Abuse filter

[John at Darkstar]

You publish something when you push the submit buttan AND it is later
publicly available. It is not published because it reads "submit" on the
button or anything else. It is the action AND the result that publish
the content.

When the content are in fact published is somewhat amusing in itself, it
is no universal accepted definitions of when this is done.

John

Chad skrev:
> On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 8:29 AM, John at Darkstar  wrote:
>> As I see it, all problems comes from public or partly public logging
>> actions that are now in a private context.
>>
> 
> When you press submit, you've already completed your action, and
> it's public. Just because the AbuseFilter doesn't let you add your
> text to the page history doesn't make it any less public.
> 
> Your whole argument stems from this faulty premise of edits/moves/etc
> not being public if they are blocked. This is wrong.
> 
> -Chad
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Abuse filter

[John at Darkstar]

Thats correct. 

Thomas Dalton skrev:
> 2009/3/27 Mark Williamson :
>> And what is "every other countries"? I'm not a lawyer, but even if you
>> are, have you done a legal study of all the countries on earth,
>> because there are a lot.
> 
> He said "every" not "any". "that is not legal in every other
> countries" (assuming that last word was intended to be singular) means
> there is at least one country where it is not legal. "that is not
> legal in any other country" would mean there were no countries where
> is was legal. People using "every" and "any" incorrectly is a pet hate
> of mine, but he got it right!
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Abuse filter

[John at Darkstar]

Basically all actions against users given information in such a log.
Contacting the ISP is a valid question, I believe contacting the ISP
about completed actions are legal in most jurisdictions, contacting them
about uncompleted actions is not. In the US it is legal to act on
uncompleted actions after provocations (aka the perpetrators
intentions), that is not legal in every other countries (eg quite few
countries).

As I see it, all problems comes from public or partly public logging
actions that are now in a private context.

Thomas Dalton skrev:
> 2009/3/25 John at Darkstar :
>> In Norway it is legal to log such actions for the administration of the
>> system, but as soon as it is used for actions against the users it would
>> need a license (konsesjon) to handle such information.
> 
> What kind of action against users are you thinking of? All we're
> likely to do is block them, which would be administering the system.
> Are you suggesting that contacting their ISP to report abuse would be
> problematic? (That's the only other action I can think of.)
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Abuse filter

[John at Darkstar]

In Norway Personopplysningsloven §7 gives explicit exemptions to
artistic, journalistic and literary work. Vandalism is no such thing but
the project as such is a journalistic and literary work. When someone
vandalize we claim it is just piggybacking on the normal use of the site
and is "published". If there is no publishing the full law apply.

We had a previous correspondence with Datatilsynet where they claimed
IP-addresses to be personal information. I don't think they have changed
on that matter. WMF may choose to dismiss the law altogether, but I'm
not sure Norwegian users can do the same thing.

I doubt seriously that logging of IP-addresses is a crucial element of
the extension, its simply nice to have for later retrieval and actions.
Given how logging is implemented in Mediawiki it is probably easier to
keep the IP-addresses than removing them.

I don't think anything is going to change, so it is as a lost case.

John

http://www.lovdata.no/all/tl-2414-031-001.html#7

Nathan skrev:
> I asked this in the last e-mail, but I'll make it the primary point of this
> one - do you have specific references that led to your current understanding
> of the problem? Has the distinction you describe in the collection of
> information been litigated somewhere else, or the subject of a law in any
> jurisdiction? As it stands, the logging is a crucial element of the filter.
> It's probably possible to obscure IP data from the log, but I don't see why
> that would be necessary at this point.
> 
> Nathan
> 
> On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 11:35 AM, John at Darkstar  wrote:
> 
>> It is not refusing to accept some kind of edit that creates the problem,
>> it is the logging of the action because you then collect information
>> about the users. Preventing the vandalism instead of reacting to it
>> shifts the actions from a public context to a private context. By
>> avoiding collecting such information and adhering to "administration of
>> the system" most of the problem simply goes away. Its not about using or
>> not using the extension, its about limiting the logging so that no one
>> can gain access to any data to make later actions against the users (ie.
>> the vandals).
>>
>> WMF may choose to log the information anyhow, like it may choose to not
>> respect copyright laws in some countries. I don't think that is very
>> wise, but I can only say what I believe is right.
>>
>> John
>>
>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Usability study in progress

[John at Darkstar]

I've seen some of the results from "agile testing", it seems like they
have a tendency to lock in on specific suboptimal solution. What is an
acceptable solution on a given limited state.

John

Erik Moeller skrev:
> 2009/3/25 John at Darkstar :
>> Wikipedians should not be used to asses usabillity problems with
>> Wikipedia, this is rule number one if you want to get information about
>> why a newbie has problems with a system.
> 
> I'm not sure about your definition of "Wikipedians" above, but the
> recruiting procedure uses a screening process to recruit _readers_ of
> Wikipedia with no editing experience. Our goal here is to at the end
> of the day make improvements to convert more readers to editors.
> 
>> Ten participants are not nearly enough, they can
>> only give you some clue about the real problem.
> 
> There are different philosophies of usability, including a philosophy
> of agile testing with few test subjects (
> http://www.useit.com/alertbox/2319.html ). There's general
> agreement that with these kinds of tests, you'll quickly see
> diminishing returns - adding many more people doesn't actually help
> you discover many more problems. Moreover, resources are not infinite:
> finding a good balance in terms of the number of testers allows you to
> conduct more tests later, with the goal of validating whether the
> changes you've made actually have had the intended effect.
> 
> Erik

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Re: [Foundation-l] Usability study in progress

[John at Darkstar]

There are about 100 times more page views than edits, sometimes even more.
John

Gerard Meijssen skrev:
> Hoi,
> A newspaper wants people to read. We want very much that readers consider
> the option to edit. The approach is therefore different. When I goto
> Wikipedia as a reader, I might be enabled to change my role and consequently
> get a different layout.
> Thanks,
>  GerardM
> 
> 2009/3/25 John at Darkstar 
> 
>> One additional note, in Norway a lot of the newspapers used a layout
>> like Monobook (sort of) but has lately dismissed the solution in favor
>> of radically much simpler designs. Especially the list of links in a
>> left bar has been abandoned in favor of more directed approaches with
>> horizontal menus in the top of the pages. Some of the newspapers has
>> reported instantaneous increase in click rates.
>>
>> It is thought provocative as most of the left bar is for wikipediams,
>> and therefore is usable to only a small percentile of the total users
>> (in page views). The rest of the users need navigational aids for the
>> main space.
>>
>> John
>>
>> Hay (Husky) skrev:
>>> Ten is a low number indeed, however, if those people are indeed
>>> 'typical users' instead of Wikipedians and you given them a few
>>> specific tasks (say, searching for an article on a topic they are
>>> interested in and editing it to add some information) you will
>>> probably encounter lots of problems soon enough.
>>>
>>> On a different note: i'm not sure if this has been discussed before
>>> but will the usability study also take uploading media on Commons in
>>> account? Editing text is one thing, but adding media (and hence, using
>>> Commons) is almost as common and could also use *lots* of work on
>>> increasing usability.
>>>
>>> -- Hay
>>>
>>> On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 11:55 AM, John at Darkstar 
>> wrote:
>>>> Wikipedians should not be used to asses usabillity problems with
>>>> Wikipedia, this is rule number one if you want to get information about
>>>> why a newbie has problems with a system. A typical wikipedian is simply
>>>> not a valid newbie. Ten participants are not nearly enough, they can
>>>> only give you some clue about the real problem.
>>>>
>>>> John
>>>>
>>>> Naoko Komura skrev:
>>>>> Howdy.
>>>>> (adding wikien-l folks to this thread.  my apology for not including
>>>>> wikien-l with my initial email.)
>>>>>
>>>>> The usability study has started today as scheduled.  The usability team
>>>>> is monitoring the interviews and how ten test participants interact
>> with
>>>>> Wikipedia when they are asked to edit an article at the lab facility in
>>>>> San Francisco today and tomorrow.  The remote usability study on
>>>>> Thursday (March 26 PDT) will be done remotely, which means we recruit
>>>>> participants from Wikipedia through the site notice, and connect with
>>>>> them through web conferencing.  Therefore the site notice for
>>>>> recruitment will appear again on Thursday.  We expect to compile the
>>>>> results in a few weeks and the findings with you.
>>>>>
>>>>> Naoko Komura
>>>>> Program Manager, Wikimedia Foundation
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Naoko Komura wrote:
>>>>>> One of the important components of the usability initiative is to
>>>>>> conduct multiple rounds of usability tests.  The plan is to conduct at
>>>>>> least three rounds of tests for qualitative usability evaluation over
>>>>>> the span of twelve months, i) the initial evaluation, ii) the progress
>>>>>> evaluation, and iii) the final evaluation.  The initial usability test
>>>>>> is scheduled on March 24, 25th and 26th.  In-person lab tests are
>>>>>> conducted in San Francisco at the first two days, and remote tests
>> will
>>>>>> be conducted on the third day.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> As a preparation for the initial usability test, we incorporated the
>>>>>> recruiting tool into English Wikipedia's site notice. You might have
>>>>>> encountered site notice inviting for the participation. The target
>>>>>> audience of testers are Wikipedia readers who have little or no
>>>>>> experience in editing the Wikiped

Re: [Foundation-l] Abuse filter

[John at Darkstar]

It is not refusing to accept some kind of edit that creates the problem,
it is the logging of the action because you then collect information
about the users. Preventing the vandalism instead of reacting to it
shifts the actions from a public context to a private context. By
avoiding collecting such information and adhering to "administration of
the system" most of the problem simply goes away. Its not about using or
not using the extension, its about limiting the logging so that no one
can gain access to any data to make later actions against the users (ie.
the vandals).

WMF may choose to log the information anyhow, like it may choose to not
respect copyright laws in some countries. I don't think that is very
wise, but I can only say what I believe is right.

John

Nathan skrev:
> The peculiarity in some respects of Scandinavian law seems to come up on
> this list fairly frequently, but it's usually short on specifics or actual
> cases. John, do you have any specific references to what you've described as
> a problem?
> 
> Adhering to your interpretation on the possible limits on "private"
> information would effectively eliminate the abuse filter as a useful tool.
> I'm having a hard time seeing this as a widespread problem; there can't be
> many jurisdictions that define public and private in this way, or place such
> restrictions on what can be done with this data that blocking someone from a
> private website in another country could be a violation of the law.
> 
> To my mind, private data of the sort we need to worry about is not "private"
> in the sense that it is owned by the Foundation or not publicly viewable,
> but "private" in the sense that it contains potentially sensitive details of
> individual editors and readers. Nothing in the abuse filter would seem to
> change the public availability of this sort of data, and I can hardly see
> Wikimedia being penalized simply for preventing vandalism instead of
> reacting to it.
> 
> Nathan
> 
> On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 8:35 AM, John at Darkstar  wrote:
> 
>> The problem is that something that previously was public (vandal moving
>>  the page "George W. Bush" to "moron") will now be private (he get a
>> message that hi isn't allowed to do that), this shifts the context from
>> a public context to a private context. Then the extension do logging of
>> actions done in this private context to another site. Users of this site
>> will then have access to private information. It is not the information
>> _disclosed_ which creates the problem, it is the information
>> _collected_. It seems like the information is legal for "administrative
>> purposes", but as soon as it is used for anything other it creates a lot
>> of problems. For example, if anyone takes actions against an user based
>> on this collected information it could be a violation of local laws.
>> (Imagine collected data being integrated with CU) If such actions must
>> be taken, then the central problems are identification of who has access
>> to the logs and are they in fact accurate. That is something you don't
>> want in a wiki with anonymous contributors! :D
>>
>> The only solution I see is to avoid all logging of private actions if
>> the actions themselves does not lead to a publication of something.
>> Probably it will be legal to do some statistical analysis to administer
>> the system, but that should limit the possibility of later
>> identification of the involved users.
>>
>> There are a lot of other problems, but I think most of them are minor to
>> this.
>>
>> John
>>
>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Abuse filter legal/privacy implications

[John at Darkstar]

Privacy _is_ about law, but the extension creates the privacy problem
and it must be solved.
John

Domas Mituzas skrev:
> John,
> 
>> There are a lot of other problems, but I think most of them are  
>> minor to
>> this.
> 
> 
> Well, this looks like lawyer thing then, not overall privacy policy  
> discussion.
> 

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Re: [Foundation-l] Usability study in progress

[John at Darkstar]

One additional note, in Norway a lot of the newspapers used a layout
like Monobook (sort of) but has lately dismissed the solution in favor
of radically much simpler designs. Especially the list of links in a
left bar has been abandoned in favor of more directed approaches with
horizontal menus in the top of the pages. Some of the newspapers has
reported instantaneous increase in click rates.

It is thought provocative as most of the left bar is for wikipediams,
and therefore is usable to only a small percentile of the total users
(in page views). The rest of the users need navigational aids for the
main space.

John

Hay (Husky) skrev:
> Ten is a low number indeed, however, if those people are indeed
> 'typical users' instead of Wikipedians and you given them a few
> specific tasks (say, searching for an article on a topic they are
> interested in and editing it to add some information) you will
> probably encounter lots of problems soon enough.
> 
> On a different note: i'm not sure if this has been discussed before
> but will the usability study also take uploading media on Commons in
> account? Editing text is one thing, but adding media (and hence, using
> Commons) is almost as common and could also use *lots* of work on
> increasing usability.
> 
> -- Hay
> 
> On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 11:55 AM, John at Darkstar  wrote:
>> Wikipedians should not be used to asses usabillity problems with
>> Wikipedia, this is rule number one if you want to get information about
>> why a newbie has problems with a system. A typical wikipedian is simply
>> not a valid newbie. Ten participants are not nearly enough, they can
>> only give you some clue about the real problem.
>>
>> John
>>
>> Naoko Komura skrev:
>>> Howdy.
>>> (adding wikien-l folks to this thread.  my apology for not including
>>> wikien-l with my initial email.)
>>>
>>> The usability study has started today as scheduled.  The usability team
>>> is monitoring the interviews and how ten test participants interact with
>>> Wikipedia when they are asked to edit an article at the lab facility in
>>> San Francisco today and tomorrow.  The remote usability study on
>>> Thursday (March 26 PDT) will be done remotely, which means we recruit
>>> participants from Wikipedia through the site notice, and connect with
>>> them through web conferencing.  Therefore the site notice for
>>> recruitment will appear again on Thursday.  We expect to compile the
>>> results in a few weeks and the findings with you.
>>>
>>> Naoko Komura
>>> Program Manager, Wikimedia Foundation
>>>
>>>
>>> Naoko Komura wrote:
>>>> One of the important components of the usability initiative is to
>>>> conduct multiple rounds of usability tests.  The plan is to conduct at
>>>> least three rounds of tests for qualitative usability evaluation over
>>>> the span of twelve months, i) the initial evaluation, ii) the progress
>>>> evaluation, and iii) the final evaluation.  The initial usability test
>>>> is scheduled on March 24, 25th and 26th.  In-person lab tests are
>>>> conducted in San Francisco at the first two days, and remote tests will
>>>> be conducted on the third day.
>>>>
>>>> As a preparation for the initial usability test, we incorporated the
>>>> recruiting tool into English Wikipedia's site notice. You might have
>>>> encountered site notice inviting for the participation. The target
>>>> audience of testers are Wikipedia readers who have little or no
>>>> experience in editing the Wikipedia articles.  The banner is displayed
>>>> within the range of 1:400 to 1:100 page views, and it will continue till
>>>> early next week.
>>>>
>>>> We look forward to learning from the usability tests and sharing the
>>>> result with you.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks.
>>>>
>>>> Naoko ... on behalf of the usability team.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Abuse filter

[John at Darkstar]

The problem is that something that previously was public (vandal moving
 the page "George W. Bush" to "moron") will now be private (he get a
message that hi isn't allowed to do that), this shifts the context from
a public context to a private context. Then the extension do logging of
actions done in this private context to another site. Users of this site
will then have access to private information. It is not the information
_disclosed_ which creates the problem, it is the information
_collected_. It seems like the information is legal for "administrative
purposes", but as soon as it is used for anything other it creates a lot
of problems. For example, if anyone takes actions against an user based
on this collected information it could be a violation of local laws.
(Imagine collected data being integrated with CU) If such actions must
be taken, then the central problems are identification of who has access
to the logs and are they in fact accurate. That is something you don't
want in a wiki with anonymous contributors! :D

The only solution I see is to avoid all logging of private actions if
the actions themselves does not lead to a publication of something.
Probably it will be legal to do some statistical analysis to administer
the system, but that should limit the possibility of later
identification of the involved users.

There are a lot of other problems, but I think most of them are minor to
this.

John

Domas Mituzas skrev:
> Hello John,
> 
>> done, or that any other measure is taken to avoid said problems. Can
>> anyone clarify on the matter as it seems that nearly everyone just
>> hurrays the implementation and there is no effort to solve those  
>> issues.
> 
> 
> I discussed this with Andrew (he is not on foundation-l), and  
> apparently, AbuseFilter does not seem to disclose any information that  
> would not be available elsewhere.
> Is there any particular information released by it you'd consider  
> leaking private data?
> 
> We love privacy, but we want to be consistent :)
> 

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[Foundation-l] Abuse filter

[John at Darkstar]

The abuse filter has some serious problems with logging of personal
information, what to log and why. There are also the problems associated
with the use of such a log, and who has access to it. In some
jurisdictions it may be legal to log and use such information for
arbitrary actions against the users but that is not generally the case.
In Norway it is legal to log such actions for the administration of the
system, but as soon as it is used for actions against the users it would
need a license (konsesjon) to handle such information. Note that WMF may
choose to neglect the Norwegian laws in this respect as it do not have
to apply to Norwegian laws.

I believe it is fairly easy to avoid all of those those problems, but I
can't find any information that says that such adaptions of the code are
done, or that any other measure is taken to avoid said problems. Can
anyone clarify on the matter as it seems that nearly everyone just
hurrays the implementation and there is no effort to solve those issues.

John

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Re: [Foundation-l] Usability study in progress

[John at Darkstar]

Wikipedians should not be used to asses usabillity problems with
Wikipedia, this is rule number one if you want to get information about
why a newbie has problems with a system. A typical wikipedian is simply
not a valid newbie. Ten participants are not nearly enough, they can
only give you some clue about the real problem.

John

Naoko Komura skrev:
> Howdy.
> (adding wikien-l folks to this thread.  my apology for not including 
> wikien-l with my initial email.)
> 
> The usability study has started today as scheduled.  The usability team 
> is monitoring the interviews and how ten test participants interact with 
> Wikipedia when they are asked to edit an article at the lab facility in 
> San Francisco today and tomorrow.  The remote usability study on 
> Thursday (March 26 PDT) will be done remotely, which means we recruit 
> participants from Wikipedia through the site notice, and connect with 
> them through web conferencing.  Therefore the site notice for 
> recruitment will appear again on Thursday.  We expect to compile the 
> results in a few weeks and the findings with you. 
> 
> Naoko Komura
> Program Manager, Wikimedia Foundation
> 
> 
> Naoko Komura wrote:
>> One of the important components of the usability initiative is to 
>> conduct multiple rounds of usability tests.  The plan is to conduct at 
>> least three rounds of tests for qualitative usability evaluation over 
>> the span of twelve months, i) the initial evaluation, ii) the progress 
>> evaluation, and iii) the final evaluation.  The initial usability test 
>> is scheduled on March 24, 25th and 26th.  In-person lab tests are 
>> conducted in San Francisco at the first two days, and remote tests will 
>> be conducted on the third day.
>>
>> As a preparation for the initial usability test, we incorporated the 
>> recruiting tool into English Wikipedia's site notice. You might have 
>> encountered site notice inviting for the participation. The target 
>> audience of testers are Wikipedia readers who have little or no 
>> experience in editing the Wikipedia articles.  The banner is displayed 
>> within the range of 1:400 to 1:100 page views, and it will continue till 
>> early next week. 
>>
>> We look forward to learning from the usability tests and sharing the 
>> result with you. 
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Naoko ... on behalf of the usability team.
>>
>>
>>   
> 
> 

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Re: [Foundation-l] Attribution survey and licensing next steps

[John at Darkstar]

I'm not sure if I would like to credit "Wikipedia" anyhow, Wikipedia is
not the author even if tradition says you can give attribution to an
encyclopedia in some countries. I think GFDL is better on this, even if
the current practice on Wikipedia is crappy on attribution. The main
authors of an article should be identified anyhow, and simpler schemes
should only be used when other solutions are impractical.
John

Thomas Dalton skrev:
> 2009/3/8 Anthony :
>> On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 11:04 AM, Thomas Dalton 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Crediting "Wikipedia" would never be acceptable under CC-by-SA, since
>>> existing contributions weren't made under a terms of service that
>>> required permission be granted for such attribution.
>>
>> True, but would the Creative Commons lawyers agree with you?  Typing
>> "Wikipedia Alabama" into my browser brings up the same page as typing "
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama";.
> 
> Yes, but there is even less guarantee that that will always work than
> there is that the URL will always work. And it relies on you knowing
> that it should work and trying it.
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Attribution survey and licensing next steps

[John at Darkstar]

One person told me that attribution of a single article and a bigger
collection could be made different. That is, a single printed copy of an
article could use a credit of "Wikipedia" and a mirror on a website
could use a history link. We don't have to choose a "one scheme fits
all" -solution.

john

Erik Moeller skrev:
> The author attribution survey is now closed. We have 1017 complete
> responses.  I've posted results of the attribution data in the
> following report:
> 
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:Attribution_Survey_Results.pdf
> 
> I've posted the raw data of the attribution survey here:
> 
> Respondents from English Wikipedia:
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:Attsurvey-en.ods
> Respondents from German Wikipedia:
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:Attsurvey-de.ods
> Respondents from miscellaneous languages and projects:
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:Attsurvey-misc.ods
> 
> (The survey was linked via the WikimediaNotifier bot, so we got quite
> a bit of nicely dispersed traffic.)
> 
> As the report shows, and as I indicated in my prior e-mail, there is
> wide support for simple attribution models, and fairly strong and
> visible opposition to full author attribution (as well as complete
> absence of any attribution). Full author attribution is the second
> least popular option, at 32.82%. Many comments pointed out the tension
> between free content and attribution, such as:
> 
> * "While the whole point of Wikipedia is to provide access to
> information freely and easily, a balance must be struck between
> recognising authors' contributions and the constraints on utilising
> the information."  (User's preferred attribution model is link to the
> article.)
> * "Giving credit to all authors is ridiculous! I think the 'Wikipedia
> Community' is sufficient credit, this project is not about personal
> gratification, its about community collaboration."
> * "Full list of authors is terribly impractical."
> * "Including the full list of authors on a 'NOT online' resource would
> be a waste of resources, i.e. paper and ink, most of the time. But
> even for online use, who would read the version history? On the other
> hand, a link can't do much harm..."
> * "Establishing which editors to credit would cause enormous disagreement"
> * "Although requiring credit may sound noncontroversial, it actually
> is a pretty big can of worms in contexts of (a) editing
> wikipedia-sourced content into rather different things (for example,
> the way that some wikipedia articles grew out of 1911 Britannica
> articles), (b) what if the wikimedia foundation has some kind of
> meltdown and it is necessary to fork the project.  Therefore my
> recommendation is to not think in terms of 'requirements' but
> suggested practices."
> 
> Some users commented on the fact that Wikipedia is primarily written
> by people under pseudonyms, and that being suddenly visibly attributed
> would actually come as a surprise:
> 
> * "If any version of credit-sharing citing editors is made policy, all
> editors should be given notice and allowed to change their monikers to
> their choice. In my case, I choose a moniker I liked when I thought
> the community would remain anonymous forever. If my contributions went
> into print or were used similarly I would like to use my actual name."
> 
> Community credit proved a quite popular option, second only to a
> direct link to the article. Many people viewed it as a simple method
> to credit their contribution both online and offline. (At least one
> user suggested linking to detailed histories online, and crediting the
> community collectively offline.)
> 
> A few users felt very strongly about always giving author credit. The
> strongest example I found:
> 
> "I won't accept nothing less than what I chosed above, and I'm ready
> to leave my sysop status and other wmf-related roles if WMF will
> underestimate the meaning of GFDL to our projects. GFDL is what we
> would have chosen if asked 8 years ago, and is what we will stand up
> for."
> 
> Some users also pointed out that our options were constrained by the
> requirements set forth in the GFDL.
> 
> I'd love to see deeper analysis of the survey. I want to restate my
> original intent in running it: it's intended to be a feeler survey, to
> get a rough impression of what attribution models are widely
> considered acceptable by contributors to our projects, and which ones
> aren't. It served this purpose, and I have no intent in running
> additional surveys; we're on an aggressive timeline and have to move
> forward. It's also not intended to dictate a solution.
> 
> My preliminary conclusion is that a simple, manageable attribution
> model, while causing some short-term disruption, will widely be
> considered not only acceptable, but preferable to complex attribution
> models, in support of our mission to disseminate free information.
> That being said, we probably still have to find a compromise, as well
> 

Re: [Foundation-l] Attribution survey and licensing next steps

[John at Darkstar]

Some options may be out of the question due to local law.
John

Erik Moeller skrev:
> 2009/3/7 Thomas Dalton :
>> I'm curious, why did you include options that aren't actually
>> available? No credit and credit to the community are clearly not in
>> keeping with the license, so knowing who would accept them isn't
>> particularly useful (although I'm not sure it hurts).
> 
> We tried to surface people's "true preference" for an attribution
> model. (While of course the provided options can't capture everything,
> the relatively low number of write-in options for additional
> attribution models suggests that respondents generally found their
> views represented somewhere in the continuum of given options.)
> People's true preferences should guide our thinking process, and if we
> clouded the available options with perceived or real constraints, we
> wouldn't be able to approximate the best feasible solution. It helps
> us to uncover both where people may be willing to compromise and where
> they may not be.
> 
> For example, if the survey had shown community credit to be highly
> desired and not controversial at all, that would be interesting: We
> could have an informed conversation about whether we should try to
> accommodate that model after all. As it is, it's the second most
> popular first option, but with 15.29% ranking it as their
> second-to-last option, it's also somewhat polarizing. A link to the
> article, on the other hand, is the first or second option for more
> than 60% of respondents, and the last or second-to-last option for
> only 3.47%.
> 

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

[John at Darkstar]

Please stop this.
John

Gerard Meijssen skrev:
> Hoi,
> My English is considered to be quite good. I have not learned any new words
> and I do not mind to have an occassional word. For me this was excessive and
> it stopped my reading and my interest.
> Thanks,
>  Gerard
> 
> PS David, what was you first language again ?
> 
> 
> 2009/3/5 David Gerard 
> 
>> 2009/3/5 Gerard Meijssen :
>>
>>> It is not that I am not able to look up words in a dictionary.. When an
>>> excess of dificult word is used, the message is lost.
>>
>> None of these were excessively difficult, and now you know more English
>> words.
>>
>>
>> - d.
>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

[John at Darkstar]

If I'm not mistaken it should be possible to detect the presence of a
text which describe a person, and then include a link to a contact form
about BLP.

John

Nathan skrev:
> Personally, I'd like to see a prominent "Report a problem with this article"
> link or box only on BLPs for starters. We don't want to overwhelm OTRS with
> complaints about other sorts of less time sensitive errors, nor do we want
> to discourage people who notice errors from figuring out how to actually
> edit. I wonder if something can be attached to categories? Like
> subcategories of "Category:Living people" if such a thing exists, and have
> the report link on all pages in those categories.
> 
> You still have the problem of uncategorized pages, but at least it makes the
> report link stick out by not having it be part of the typically ignored
> interface framework.
> 
> Nathan
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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

[John at Darkstar]

In Norway it seems that neglecting to do something will not lead to any
real danger of legal actions, its phrased "uforstand", but gross
neglectence, or "grov uforstand" could be punishable by law. An example
given is that if an admin is notified on email about specific child porn
in an article (that was the example given in an email thread) and
refuses to take action it might be "grov uforstand", while if a group of
admins are notified it will not be more than "uforstand" from those that
does not react. If someone in fact writes back and says "go away, we're
not interested" that might be labeled as "grov uforstand".

It seems like this kind of scenario is the only real danger for an admin
at no.wp for something he has not done himslf.

John

David Gerard skrev:
> 2009/3/2 Michael Bimmler :
> 
>> Well, I could think of a couple people who might be subject to
>> persecutions (depending on how serious Polish prosecution authorities
>> are...) :
>> - Administrators who were made aware of this on-wiki but declined to
>> react by removing the data
>> - Polish volunteers of the info-pl-OTRS queue who were made aware of
>> this via email and rejected to intervene
> 
> 
> Is there likely a legal obligation to act?
> 
> 
>> Shall we exclude them all?  (Note, this is all speculation, but it's a
>> discussion worth having imho)
> 
> 
> If administrators are subject to legal danger for *not* performing
> given actions, their power to take those actions must be taken away,
> for the protection of the encyclopedia.
> 
> I don't say that lightly, but I can't see any other way things could
> be. I have a pile of special superpowers on en:wp, but if I were being
> legally required to exercise them for reasons other than the good of
> the encyclopedia, I'd be fervently hoping someone would take them away
> without me actually asking them to.
> 
> What is the realistic legal danger of people being forced to take
> actions on the encyclopedia just because they can, in Polish law?
> 
> 
> - d.
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

[John at Darkstar]

In Norway its covered in "Lov om behandling av personopplysninger
(personopplysningsloven)" §7; Forholdet til ytringsfriheten (Relation to
freedom of speech) [http://www.lovdata.no/all/tl-2414-031-001.html#7]

It is an exception for "kunstneriske, litterære eller journalistiske,
herunder opinionsdannende, ..." or artistic, litterary and journalistic,
including opinion building purposes.

John

Lars Aronsson skrev:
> Tomasz Ganicz wrote:
> 
>> least in Poland at some legal risk. In Poland there is a law 
>> that a person can always ask for removing his/her personal data 
>> from any electronic database (except govermental ones).
> 
> There is a similar law in Sweden (Personuppgiftslagen, PUL), but 
> it has an exception for the freedom of the press and similar 
> journalistic purposes ("det journalistiska undantaget"), and this 
> exception is always referred to for websites similar to Wikipedia.
> 
> The Norwegian law apparently has a similar exception, that also 
> covers opinion pieces (opinionsdannende). The Danish law 
> apparently refers directly to article 10 (freedom of expression) 
> of the European Convention on Human Rights.
> 
> What you could do is to ask Polish journalists how they operate 
> newspaper websites under this law, and how they (as guardians of 
> the freedom of the press) would react if the Polish Wikipedia was 
> censored in this way.  Perhaps they should write a newspaper 
> article about how this musical artist tries to hide her real age.
> 
> This doesn't necessarily bring an answer to the question, but 
> establishing a good link with journalists is always useful.
> 
> 

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

[John at Darkstar]

At no.wp there was a link in the sidebar with email address to OTRS to
ease reporting of such problems. It generated to many emails to the
liking of some of the people on the OTRS list. After a poll with 3
against the link - they wanted an alternate solution, two for the link,
one unclear and one who wanted to leave the problem to WMF, the link was
removed three weeks later with a reference to the previous poll as
conclusive.

John

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Re: [Foundation-l] Free edition of Norways national encyklopedia Store Norske Leksikon

[John at Darkstar]

Well, quite a number of people (including me) do not agree with you on
that point.

Gerard Meijssen skrev:
> Hoi,
> Due credit is given. It is given to the extend that the amount of attention
> and detail is unparalleled.
> Thanks,
>  GerardM
> 
> 2009/2/26 John at Darkstar 
> 
>> Adding authors, even if they write under pseudonyms, gives due credit as
>> described in the copyright laws of several countries and also gives
>> those persons added cultural capital. I guess someone can elaborate
>> about how cultural capital and economic capital can be traded, and how
>> this can offset the situation whereby one encyclopedia can pay its
>> authors while an other can't. Or in fact, one of the encyclopedias both
>> pays the authors and gives attributes them for the work they do.
>>
>> John
>>
>> Gerard Meijssen skrev:
>>> Hoi,
>>> Ok let me rephrase my question, what would the benefit be to the reader ?
>> In
>>> my opinion there is no benefit. The fact that this information can be
>> found
>>> in the history data is sufficient. There is no obvious way who to include
>>> and why. For instance there are some who do not rate the person who
>> includes
>>> an illustration while the person who created the illustration is
>>> considered.. Really, you open a can of wurms and there is no clear and
>>> obvious benefit.
>>> Thanks,
>>>   GerardM
>>>
>>> 2009/2/26 Andre Engels 
>>>
>>>> On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 10:22 AM, Gerard Meijssen
>>>>  wrote:
>>>>> Hoi,
>>>>> What would you achieve by doing that and, what would it mean for our
>> down
>>>>> stream users ? In my opinion this is not where we want to go at all.
>>>> What it would achieve is that the reader has more of an idea who wrote
>>>> what he is reading. The consequence for our downstream users seems
>>>> little - depending on the exact form we use it is nothing, something
>>>> extra to include or something extra to decide on whether to include or
>>>> not.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> André Engels, andreeng...@gmail.com
>>>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Free edition of Norways national encyklopedia Store Norske Leksikon

[John at Darkstar]

Adding authors, even if they write under pseudonyms, gives due credit as
described in the copyright laws of several countries and also gives
those persons added cultural capital. I guess someone can elaborate
about how cultural capital and economic capital can be traded, and how
this can offset the situation whereby one encyclopedia can pay its
authors while an other can't. Or in fact, one of the encyclopedias both
pays the authors and gives attributes them for the work they do.

John

Gerard Meijssen skrev:
> Hoi,
> Ok let me rephrase my question, what would the benefit be to the reader ? In
> my opinion there is no benefit. The fact that this information can be found
> in the history data is sufficient. There is no obvious way who to include
> and why. For instance there are some who do not rate the person who includes
> an illustration while the person who created the illustration is
> considered.. Really, you open a can of wurms and there is no clear and
> obvious benefit.
> Thanks,
>   GerardM
> 
> 2009/2/26 Andre Engels 
> 
>> On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 10:22 AM, Gerard Meijssen
>>  wrote:
>>> Hoi,
>>> What would you achieve by doing that and, what would it mean for our down
>>> stream users ? In my opinion this is not where we want to go at all.
>> What it would achieve is that the reader has more of an idea who wrote
>> what he is reading. The consequence for our downstream users seems
>> little - depending on the exact form we use it is nothing, something
>> extra to include or something extra to decide on whether to include or
>> not.
>>
>>
>> --
>> André Engels, andreeng...@gmail.com
>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Free edition of Norways national encyklopedia Store Norske Leksikon

[John at Darkstar]

I've been wondering if we could identify different users somehow, what
kind of role they had in writing of the article - especially who did the
research and who did the writing, and what kind of trust (reputation)
they have.

The academic emphasis is something they brag loudly about, but it seems
academia more and more uses Wikipedia anyhow. ;) It is also interesting
how SNL want to be used as a primary source of information, while we
says no one should use an encyclopedia as a primary source for information.

I'm not sure what you mean about "our minus point number two".

John

Andre Engels skrev:
> On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 8:17 AM, John at Darkstar  wrote:
>> The release has been given a lot of press coverage, and some comparisons
>> between the encyclopedias has been done. Two of them, in Dagbladet[1]
>> and Dagsavisen[2], has concluded that Wikipedia is best. According to
>> Aftenposten the new edition will cost Kunskapsforlaget and their owners
>> Aschehoug og Gyldendal NOK 25 mill over the next 3 years, approx USD 3.6
>> mill.[3]
> 
> The first comparison I find not so good; the points he mentions are
> indeed points where Wikipedia is better, they are not the main points
> I would judge an encyclopedia by. The second one looks much better,
> giving good points of comparison, and stating where one or the other
> is better. The points that are mentioned are (using a machine
> translation to read the articles):
> 
> Wikipedia better:
> * easier to use
> * better usage of the possibilities of HTML: tables, images
> * more interlinking
> * SNL uses two different sources by just putting them on the same
> page, which means things are told double
> * more up-to-date
> * better on popular culture subjects and current events
> * more open to (quick) improvements
> 
> SNL better:
> * more academic emphasis
> * authors are identified
> * Wikipedia articles are more uneven in both language and content
> 
> 
> In general a nice list, but I do also want to point at our minus point
> number two - I really think it is worthwhile to see what can be done
> about it. Of course the same holds for the other two, but those are
> much harder to improve in a general manner (but we should all look at
> improving them at the page level).
> 

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Re: [Foundation-l] Free edition of Norways national encyklopedia Store Norske Leksikon

[John at Darkstar]

The release has been given a lot of press coverage, and some comparisons
between the encyclopedias has been done. Two of them, in Dagbladet[1]
and Dagsavisen[2], has concluded that Wikipedia is best. According to
Aftenposten the new edition will cost Kunskapsforlaget and their owners
Aschehoug og Gyldendal NOK 25 mill over the next 3 years, approx USD 3.6
mill.[3]

John

[1]http://www.dagbladet.no/2009/02/25/kultur/tekno/store_norske/wikipedia/5029776/
[2]http://www.dagsavisen.no/kultur/article400676.ece
[3]http://www.aftenposten.no/kul_und/article2946755.ece

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Re: [Foundation-l] Free edition of Norways national encyklopedia Store Norske Leksikon

[John at Darkstar]

There are no formal license so I would say "free beer" as for now.
John

Ian A. Holton skrev:
> But is it free as in free beer or freedom?
> 
> --Ian
> [[User:Poeloq]]
> 
> On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 12:04 AM, Finn Rindahl wrote:
> 
>> Since our (WMF) aim is to provide free knowledge, I would say that SNL
>> making a free online edition is a proof of our success more than a new
>> "competitor". They have a lot to learn from us, we have a lot to learn from
>> them. And whoever is seeking free knowledge in Norwegian on the web will
>> have more alternatives.
>>
>> Finn Rindahl
>>
>> 2009/2/25 John at Darkstar 
>>
>>> Our "national lexicon" here in Norway, Store Norske Leksikon, went
>>> online with its new free edition today. The new edition has user
>>> contributed articles. The chief editor says some of the reason for the
>>> new edition is the harsh competition from Wikipedia, especially
>>> no.wikipedia.org which outnumbered their previous article count last
>>> year, now counting 209,079 articles. Also the alternate version
>>> nn.wikipedia.org (a variation in Nynorsk) is growing steadilly, now
>>> counting 46,466 articles. Store Norske Leksikon now claims they has
>>> 300,000 articles after inclusion of two other encyclopedias, a medical
>>> encyclopedia Store medisinske leksikon and a biographical encyclopedia
>>> Biografisk leksikon. Previously they had 155,000 articles.
>>>
>>> Wikipedia in bokmål should have 300K articles around February or March
>>> next year, it depends on how we will be influenced by the changes in SNL.
>>>
>>> John Erling Blad
>>> jeblad
>>>
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[Foundation-l] Free edition of Norways national encyklopedia Store Norske Leksikon

[John at Darkstar]

Our "national lexicon" here in Norway, Store Norske Leksikon, went
online with its new free edition today. The new edition has user
contributed articles. The chief editor says some of the reason for the
new edition is the harsh competition from Wikipedia, especially
no.wikipedia.org which outnumbered their previous article count last
year, now counting 209,079 articles. Also the alternate version
nn.wikipedia.org (a variation in Nynorsk) is growing steadilly, now
counting 46,466 articles. Store Norske Leksikon now claims they has
300,000 articles after inclusion of two other encyclopedias, a medical
encyclopedia Store medisinske leksikon and a biographical encyclopedia
Biografisk leksikon. Previously they had 155,000 articles.

Wikipedia in bokmål should have 300K articles around February or March
next year, it depends on how we will be influenced by the changes in SNL.

John Erling Blad
jeblad

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Re: [Foundation-l] Nokia, licensing agreement and cellphones

[John at Darkstar]

Then it is safe to assume that there is no special agreement between
Wikimedia Foundation and Nokia that gives the later any kind of special
rights?
John

Angela skrev:
> On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 3:41 AM, John at Darkstar  wrote:
>> What is the present status on licensing of «Wikipedia» and exactly what
>> does the current agreement with Nokia cover? It seems like ZDNet
>> Australia and Angela Beesley isn't talking about quite the same, and I
>> would like an clarification.
> 
> I never said the new platform would be licensed to Nokia at all. As
> far as I know, they have nothing to do with it whatsoever, but one
> journalist makes this up and all the rest (including Wikipedia
> Signpost) just blindly copy the error.
> 
> Angela
> 
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[Foundation-l] Nokia, licensing agreement and cellphones

[John at Darkstar]

What is the present status on licensing of «Wikipedia» and exactly what
does the current agreement with Nokia cover? It seems like ZDNet
Australia and Angela Beesley isn't talking about quite the same, and I
would like an clarification.

If one supplier gets some kind of exclusive rights, for whatever reason,
then it is at least slightly out of line with current practice. So
exactly what is the agreement, and how will it inflict on other use of
Wikipedia on cellphones - with or without branding?

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/soa/LCA-09-Wikipedia-s-new-mobile-platform/0,130061791,339294546,00.htm

John

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