[Foundation-l] Be nice

[Lodewijk]

please!
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[Foundation-l] Chapters reports - Overview mid july - mid sept

[Lodewijk]

Hi all,

several Wikimedia chapters produce monthly (or bimonthly) reports for the
other chapters, the foundation and the community at large. These reports are
posted publicly, and give an overview of what the chapters are doing. I
would like to start giving a bit of attention to these reports on this list,
and send every now and then an overview of some of these reports - mainly
links. You can always find the whole archive on
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/ . If you want to
subscribe to this list, please visit
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/chapters-reports . If you are
from a chapter board, and would like to post a report too, please send it to
chapters-reports-l at lists.wikimedia.org

There are several Wiki-versions available through:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports

Some of the highlights (not all!) that are imho a must-read:
* WM Polska organizing a conference in their parliament
* WM Nederland organizing Wiki Loves Art
* WM Sweden and a 7,5 ECTS university course on Wikipedia

Best regards,

Lodewijk Gelauff

---
Submitted July - mid september

Wikimedia Czech Republic:
June -
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/2009-July/41.html

Wikimedia Deutschland:
february -
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/2009-July/39.html

Wikimedia Nederland:
June -
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/2009-July/42.html
July/August -
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/2009-September/47.html

Wikimedia Polska:
April - June -
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/2009-July/40.html

Wikimedia SE:
May - July -
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/2009-August/45.html
August -
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/2009-September/46.html

Wikimedia UK "newsletter"
July -
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/2009-July/43.html
August -
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/2009-August/44.html
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Re: [Foundation-l] Pedophilia and the Non discrimination policy

[Lodewijk]

Although I do think that at the end of the day, it might be better for
the community of editors to keep this kind of disruptive people
blocked, I would like to counter some of the arguments I have heard in
this discussion.

"danger to our children" - come on.. If he (I assume it is a he?)
wants to get in touch with children, there are many more, much more
effective fora which provide less obvious evidence in case anything
would happen. There are way too many eye balls around to watch if you
do anything.

"According to US law..." someone compared this situation to US law,
and assumed this would be the same all over the world. I don't think
this is the case. In general, I have the feeling this discussion is
getting somewhat US-centric. US law is here only relevant when it has
an impact through the WMF. Where I come from, a person can not even be
forbidden easily to get back to his old home once he sat out his
sentence. Again this is similar to the principle of innocent till
proven/convicted discussion I guess.

"no matter what their opinion..." Andre Engels suggested that because
of NPOV it is important to admit this kind of people. I don't think
that this would or should be the case. Wikipedia does not have to be
all inclusive, because if one specific person scares away more people,
that would be a valid reason to consider banning that person. The
collateral damage would be too large. I think that argument flies in
this discussion. However, in an ideal world I do agree with you.

"appeal" - someone said something that highly surprised me.
Apparently, the AC of enwiki 'endorsed' the blockade, but still you
consider an appeal realistic? I'm sorry, but I would find the chance
of honest ruling very low, nearing zero, in case if that same group of
judges first endorsed the fact they have to judge... Personally, I
feel that AC should never "endorse" stuff without it being a case
submitted to them. But that might be more a side discussion.

"There is no slippery slope" - I don't have the feeling there really
is no slippery slope here. Of course there is. As soon as you start
excluding one group of people for what they are, you will start
excluding others, too. So this is more of a high level discussion:
should we exclude people who cause significant disturbance and make
other people less active in our current community? Pedophiles are just
one example, and not even such an extreme one. A convicted nazi, a
well known mass murderer, a high profile satanist, the pope, all do
they have a profile that could hold for similar arguments (yes, there
are people who wouldn't let their children near the pope). So yes,
there is a slippery slope. This is no disaster, as long as we are fair
enough to recognize it, and beware very carefully not to go down more
then we actually want to.

Lodewijk

2009/11/29, David Levy :
> I wrote:
>
>> > Obviously, not all of us are certain that this was "the right thing."
>
> Anthony replied:
>
>> Fortunately, that's not my problem.
>
> It is, however, the subject of a discussion in which you've opted to
> participate.
>
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[Foundation-l] Assume Good Faith and Don't Bite Newbees

[Lodewijk]

Hi all,

Although I do realize this is a Dutch Wikipedia-topic, I would like to
get a somewhat broader set of input on this. I'll first sketch the
situation a bit, and then explain what my interpretation is.

On the Dutch Wikipedia, there are two related, relatively long
standing, policies:
* Usernames linked to companies / organizations / brands are not allowed
* Usernames are supposed to be strictly personal: groups of people
using one user name is not allowed.
This is enforced by a group of moderators by blocking the usernames
who fulfill one of these conditions, and notifying them on their
talkpage they can create a new username, but that their current is
blocked indefinitely.

I find this practice very unfortunate, for a few reasons. For one, we
assume bad faith: We assume that companies or even organizations are
not able and willing to edit NPOV. This is mentioned often as a main
reason for this policy. Often they are already blocked before they
even can make their first edit. This does not only harm their
feelings, it leaves a trail on the internet that is potentially
harmful for their PR (just imagine: "Company XX got blocked on
Wikipedia on sight"). As soon as a search engine does not fully
respect (intentionally or not) the limitations we asked them to comply
with, such as not search in these talk pages, this might even show up
in a query. In short: companies and organizations are being punisched
for trying to identify themselves.

In the past, there was a lot of hush about companies and organizations
who edited anonymously and they were even named and shamed (although
not by us). Now companies tell in advance who they are, so we can pay
close attention to their edits, and we ask them now to take another
name, which would be not recognizable? I think that is actually an
editorial disadvantage! If we can recognize them easier, we can make
sure they edit NPOV. Please, let's judge users on their actions, not
on their names... This way, also the Tropenmuseum got blocked at some
point, even though the account was created on another wiki!

Also, why would group accounts be bad? I mean, the only one that has
disadvantage from it, is the people using the account, right? If we
treat them as if they are one user, and we block them accordingly if
necessary, it is their problem if someone else on that account did
something bad and got the whole account blocked for it. We don't block
IP-adresses either just because they could be used by multiple people?

I assume this is no WMF topic (thy shall not block people because of
their username won't make it I guess), but I would like to get a
little more insight and experiences from you guys.

* Should editing by multiple people from one account be reason for
blocking on sight?
* Should usernames related to a company/organization name be blocked on sight?
** If not, should additional measures be taken for identification?
* Should wiki's be allowed in the first place to have naming policies
considering the SUL?
** If yes, should they be allowed to enforce them on people who
registered on another wiki?

Thanks,

Lodewijk

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[Foundation-l] Chapters reports - Overview mid september mid december

[Lodewijk]

Hi all,

several Wikimedia chapters produce monthly (or bimonthly) reports for the
other chapters, the foundation and the community at large. These reports are
posted publicly, and give an overview of what the chapters are doing. I
would like to start giving a bit of attention to these reports on this list,
and send every now and then an overview of some of these reports - mainly
links. You can always find the whole archive on
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/ . If you want to
subscribe to this list, please visit
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/chapters-reports . If you are
from a chapter board, and would like to post a report too, please send it to
chapters-reports-l at lists.wikimedia.org
There are several Wiki-versions available through:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports

Some of my favorite pieces of information:

* Wikimedia Polska organized a strategic Planning meeting in September with
40 participants
* Wikimedia France organized the Multimedia Workshop in Paris in November
* Wikimedia France created a week-calender with photos from Wikimedia
Commons and is hiring its first staff member.
* Wikimedia CZ started a Wikimedium magazine, which is published online four
times a year.

Best regards,
Lodewijk Gelauff


Overview

Wikimedia Czech Republic
July - November -
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/2009-November/52.html

Wikimedia France
July - October -
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/2009-November/51.html

Wikimedia Nederland
September -
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/2009-October/50.html
October/November -
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/2009-December/53.html

Wikimedia Polska
July - September -
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/2009-October/49.html

Wikimedia UK
September -
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/2009-September/48.html
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[Foundation-l] Chapters Committee - Call for Candidates

[Lodewijk]

Dear all,

As some of you will know, the Chapters Committee [1] is a Wikimedia
Foundation board-appointed committee that is mainly responsible for
the preparation of approval of new chapters. Currently, there are six
members in the committee, and we are asking for candidates to increase
the membership again.

The chapters committee mainly reviews applications for the forming of
a chapter on legibility and viability and reviews the bylaws of the
organization. This requires communication with chapter candidates all
over the world. Sometimes are applications straight forward and is the
job mainly about reviewing the bylaws and ensuring stability in the
long term that way, sometimes it involves more complex conversations
about whether there are for example enough people involved in the
candidate chapter. At the end of the process, the committee advices
the board of the WMF on the decision to approve the chapter or not.
The board makes the formal decision, but usually follows the advice.

Key skills/experience that we are looking for in new members, are typically:

   * willing to work in a sometimes bureaucratic process (reviewing
bylaws is boring)
   * 1-2 hour per week (on average) available
   * internationally oriented
   * Good communication skills in English
   * Communication skills in other major world languages are a pre
   * able to work and communicate with other cultures
   * a strong understanding of the structure and work of both
chapters and the WMF
   * experience with or in an active chapter
   * an active position in a chapter is a pre

The number of applications is increasing and help is wanted! You can
send your applications with your name, contact data, experience and
motivation to the ChapCom email address, chaptercommittee-l AT lists
DOT wikimedia DOT org before February 22. The applications will be
considered by the current members (in cooperation with the WMF) and
the proposal for the new membership will be reviewed by the Board
before acceptence. I hope for many suitable applications. If you have
any questions, please don't hesitate to email me privately.

With kind regards,

Lodewijk Gelauff
Member, Chapters Committee

[1]: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_committee

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Re: [Foundation-l] Chapters Committee - Call for Candidates

[Lodewijk]

As a clarification, since there seems to be a miscommunication, where the
text states "is a pre", please read "is a plus" and *NOT* "is a
pre-requisite". This is considered a non-obligatory advantage.

Of course it speaks for itself that languages not covered yet are a bigger
plus than languages covered. Please state so if you do speak those
languages, but don't worry too much about them in your consideration.

I'm sorry for the confusion. With kind regards,

Lodewijk

2010/2/2 Lodewijk 

> Dear all,
>
> As some of you will know, the Chapters Committee [1] is a Wikimedia
> Foundation board-appointed committee that is mainly responsible for
> the preparation of approval of new chapters. Currently, there are six
> members in the committee, and we are asking for candidates to increase
> the membership again.
>
> The chapters committee mainly reviews applications for the forming of
> a chapter on legibility and viability and reviews the bylaws of the
> organization. This requires communication with chapter candidates all
> over the world. Sometimes are applications straight forward and is the
> job mainly about reviewing the bylaws and ensuring stability in the
> long term that way, sometimes it involves more complex conversations
> about whether there are for example enough people involved in the
> candidate chapter. At the end of the process, the committee advices
> the board of the WMF on the decision to approve the chapter or not.
> The board makes the formal decision, but usually follows the advice.
>
> Key skills/experience that we are looking for in new members, are
> typically:
>
>* willing to work in a sometimes bureaucratic process (reviewing
> bylaws is boring)
>* 1-2 hour per week (on average) available
>* internationally oriented
>* Good communication skills in English
>* Communication skills in other major world languages are a pre
>* able to work and communicate with other cultures
>* a strong understanding of the structure and work of both
> chapters and the WMF
>* experience with or in an active chapter
>* an active position in a chapter is a pre
>
> The number of applications is increasing and help is wanted! You can
> send your applications with your name, contact data, experience and
> motivation to the ChapCom email address, chaptercommittee-l AT lists
> DOT wikimedia DOT org before February 22. The applications will be
> considered by the current members (in cooperation with the WMF) and
> the proposal for the new membership will be reviewed by the Board
> before acceptence. I hope for many suitable applications. If you have
> any questions, please don't hesitate to email me privately.
>
> With kind regards,
>
> Lodewijk Gelauff
> Member, Chapters Committee
>
> [1]: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_committee
>
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[Foundation-l] Chapters Committee - Call for Candidates

[Lodewijk]

This is a reminder. The deadline for applications is on February 22 (in
about 1 week). Please forward this call to people you might think to be
interested and might make a good candidate.

Kind regards,

Lodewijk

=

Dear all,

As some of you will know, the Chapters Committee [1] is a Wikimedia
Foundation board-appointed committee that is mainly responsible for
the preparation of approval of new chapters. Currently, there are six
members in the committee, and we are asking for candidates to increase
the membership again.

The chapters committee mainly reviews applications for the forming of
a chapter on legibility and viability and reviews the bylaws of the
organization. This requires communication with chapter candidates all
over the world. Sometimes are applications straight forward and is the
job mainly about reviewing the bylaws and ensuring stability in the
long term that way, sometimes it involves more complex conversations
about whether there are for example enough people involved in the
candidate chapter. At the end of the process, the committee advices
the board of the WMF on the decision to approve the chapter or not.
The board makes the formal decision, but usually follows the advice.

Key skills/experience that we are looking for in new members, are typically:

* willing to work in a sometimes bureaucratic process (reviewing
bylaws is boring)
* 1-2 hour per week (on average) available
* internationally oriented
* Good communication skills in English
* Communication skills in other major world languages are a plus

* able to work and communicate with other cultures
* a strong understanding of the structure and work of both
chapters and the WMF
* experience with or in an active chapter
* an active position in a chapter is a plus

The number of applications is increasing and help is wanted! You can
send your applications with your name, contact data, experience and
motivation to the ChapCom email address, chaptercommittee-l AT lists
DOT wikimedia DOT org before February 22. The applications will be
considered by the current members (in cooperation with the WMF) and
the proposal for the new membership will be reviewed by the Board
before acceptence. I hope for many suitable applications. If you have
any questions, please don't hesitate to email me privately.

With kind regards,

Lodewijk Gelauff
Member, Chapters Committee

[1]: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_committee
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[Foundation-l] Overview chapter reports mid December 2009 - mid February 2010

[Lodewijk]

Hi all,

several Wikimedia chapters produce monthly (or bi/trimonthly) reports for
the other chapters, the foundation and the community at large. These reports
are posted publicly, and give an overview of what the chapters are doing. I
would like to give a bit of attention to these reports on this list, and
that is why I send you an overview of these reports - mainly links. You can
always find the whole archive on
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/ . If you want to
subscribe to this list, please visit
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/chapters-reports . If you are
from a chapter board, and would like to post a report too, please send it to
chapters-reports-l at lists.wikimedia.org or contact me privately if you
have questions.
There are several Wiki-versions available through:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/Reports

Some of my favorite pieces of information from these months:

* Wikimedia Nederland organized a New Years event in the Tropenmuseum in
January
* Wikimedia Polska hired a part-time employee as secretary and opened an
office in Lodz
* Wikimedia CH participates in the Third Age Online program
* Wikimedia Nederland launched cooperations with the National Archive and
the Library Association

You want to know more? Read the reports, and ask the sender for more
information!

With kind regards,

Lodewijk


Overview

Wikimedia CH
Newsletter January 2010:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/2010-January/57.html

Wikimedia Italia
January 2010:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/2010-January/56.html

Wikimedia Nederland
December 2009:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/2010-January/54.html
January 2010:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/2010-February/58.html

Wikimedia Polska
October - December 2009:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/chapters-reports/2010-January/55.html
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Re: [Foundation-l] Chapters Committee - Call for Candidates

[Lodewijk]

Dear all,

it is a pleasure to announce that the chapters committee has received more
than enough applications to fill its vacancies, and that five new members
have been added to the committee. You can find the current membership, as
usual, on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_committee

With kind regards,

Lodewijk

2010/2/17 Lodewijk 

> This is a reminder. The deadline for applications is on February 22 (in
> about 1 week). Please forward this call to people you might think to be
> interested and might make a good candidate.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Lodewijk
>
> =
>
> Dear all,
>
> As some of you will know, the Chapters Committee [1] is a Wikimedia
> Foundation board-appointed committee that is mainly responsible for
> the preparation of approval of new chapters. Currently, there are six
> members in the committee, and we are asking for candidates to increase
> the membership again.
>
> The chapters committee mainly reviews applications for the forming of
> a chapter on legibility and viability and reviews the bylaws of the
> organization. This requires communication with chapter candidates all
> over the world. Sometimes are applications straight forward and is the
> job mainly about reviewing the bylaws and ensuring stability in the
> long term that way, sometimes it involves more complex conversations
> about whether there are for example enough people involved in the
> candidate chapter. At the end of the process, the committee advices
> the board of the WMF on the decision to approve the chapter or not.
> The board makes the formal decision, but usually follows the advice.
>
> Key skills/experience that we are looking for in new members, are
> typically:
>
> * willing to work in a sometimes bureaucratic process (reviewing
> bylaws is boring)
> * 1-2 hour per week (on average) available
> * internationally oriented
> * Good communication skills in English
> * Communication skills in other major world languages are a plus
>
> * able to work and communicate with other cultures
> * a strong understanding of the structure and work of both
> chapters and the WMF
> * experience with or in an active chapter
> * an active position in a chapter is a plus
>
> The number of applications is increasing and help is wanted! You can
> send your applications with your name, contact data, experience and
> motivation to the ChapCom email address, chaptercommittee-l AT lists
> DOT wikimedia DOT org before February 22. The applications will be
> considered by the current members (in cooperation with the WMF) and
> the proposal for the new membership will be reviewed by the Board
> before acceptence. I hope for many suitable applications. If you have
> any questions, please don't hesitate to email me privately.
>
> With kind regards,
>
> Lodewijk Gelauff
> Member, Chapters Committee
>
> [1]: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_committee
>
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Along with Vector, a new look for changes to the Wikipedia identity

[Lodewijk]

Hi Jay,

thanks for your update. I am glad that the characters etc have been so
thoroughly prepared, and I followed some of it - great team effort
indeed.

However, I am missing why it was decided to decrease the size of the
logo. It definitely looks more professional, but also somewhat less
friendly to me. Maybe it is just me, maybe not - I just would like to
understand the rationale first.

And is there any chance that the middle horizontal line is made
slightly less intense? Right now, the attention is drawn there (at
least for me) instead of the open part at the top. It gives me a
slight impression as if the bowl is about to burst. Which is of course
a valid representation of the truth with all community uproar lately,
but I don't think it should be our message :)

Best, Lodewijk

2010/5/13 Tomasz Ganicz :
> 2010/5/13 Jay Walsh :
>> SVG versions of the new globe, and the Wikipedia identity can be found here:
>> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_official_marks
>>
>> I don't believe all of those assets have migrated to Commons yet.
>>
>>
>
> Hope you won't forget to change the logo here:
>
> http://www.wikipedia.org/
>
> :-)
>
>
> --
> Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
> http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
> http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
> http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Strategic Planning Office Hours

[Lodewijk]

Hi Philippe,

thanks again for the heads up. We have now seen many reminders, always
helpful - although every time I'm not able to make it for different reasons.
But could you perhaps give a little heads up on what kind of topics are
being discussed nowadays and tease us a bit to actually show up? :)

Best,

Lodewijk

2010/6/1 Philippe Beaudette 

>
> Hi Everyone -
>
> Our next strategic planning office hours will be: 20:00-21:00 UTC,
> Tuesday, 1 May. Local timezones can be checked athttp://
> timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?year=2010&month=6&day=1&hour=20&min=0&sec=0&p1=0
>
> As always, you can access the chat by going to
> https://webchat.freenode.net and filling in a username and the channel
> name (#wikimedia-strategy). You may be prompted to click through a
> security warning. It's fine. More details at:
>
> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours
>
> Thanks! Hope to see many of you there.
>
>
> 
> Philippe Beaudette
> Facilitator, Strategy Project
> Wikimedia Foundation
>
> phili...@wikimedia.org
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Strategic Planning Office Hours

[Lodewijk]

Hi Eugene,

thanks for the explanation, I think the whole banning was quite justified.
But besides that, as I also asked in an earlier email, I can understand
geniice's feeling that it is unclear what the topics are (which can be
solved by an agenda as he suggests or a description of what tend to be the
topics nowadays as I asked). Could you perhaps make it more insightful?

Thanks,

Lodewijk

2010/6/2 Eugene Eric Kim 

> On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 3:16 PM, geni  wrote:
> > Or not.
> >
> > Okey so it happened that the thing was taking place at a time
> > reasonable for my timezone. So I check
> > http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Living_People/IRC_Agendas
> >
> > So there hasn't been an agenda in months. Fair enough agendas can be a
> > pain. Hey how hard can it be to wing it?
>
> You're confusing the agendas of a Task Force to the office hours of
> the strategy process as a whole. As stated at:
>
> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_Office_Hours
>
> the goals of these office hours are to answer questions and engage in
> discussion. These are not formal meetings, but a designated period
> where Philippe and I make ourselves available to interact with people
> in real-time. We keep the agenda open, but at the same time, we also
> do our best to keep the discussion relevant. And, as with the strategy
> process as a whole, we've worked hard to maintain an environment of
> constructive, positive discourse.
>
> > Personally I think it's a bad idea to sacrifice screen real estate on
> > order to solve the odd TR:DR problem. So I make this clear. I'm told
> > that this is related to having a deadline. I start to make the case
> > that perhaps things are getting a little too meta. I also make the
> > case that a tool that is based around removing context and nuance form
> > posts is a bad idea. I start to make the case that if there is a
> > deadline to meet it is better to work out how to do it using
> > technology we already know well (remember no one was considering
> > adding reflect to say en.pedia) rather than trying to introduce new
> > technology and hope it will allow us to do things faster to the extent
> > it makes up for the time lost deploying it and learning how to use it.
> > But at that point I was kinda banned.
>
> The decision to kick geniice off the channel was mine. You can read
> the log to see how the discussion evolved and my explanation for why I
> made this decision:
>
> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours/2010-06-01
>
> I don't think foundation-l is the appropriate place to discuss these
> specific grievances, and I'm happy to continue this discussion on
> strategy wiki's Village Pump. That said, I think we have a strong
> record for openness and tolerance of all views, as long as the
> discussion has remained polite and constructive, and I'm happy to
> address any general questions about this here.
>
> =Eugene
>
> --
> ==
> Eugene Eric Kim  http://xri.net/=eekim
> Blue Oxen Associates  http://www.blueoxen.com/
> ==
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Announcing new Chief Global DevelopmentOfficer and new Chief Community Officer

[Lodewijk]

so if I understand correctly, the US is afraid of Canada? hmmm interesting
;)

2010/6/3 

> Canadians are good for Wikimedia because we have a, uh, healthy sensitivity
> to American cultural dominance. When Barry and I were kids, our prime
> minister famously characterized Canada as a mouse in bed with an elephant --
> no matter how friendly the elephant is, you're affected by every twitch and
> grunt ;-)
>
> I'm in Canada right now, speaking with librarians :-)
>
> --Original Message--
> From: Cycon Office Systems
> Sender: foundation-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org
> To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> ReplyTo: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Announcing new Chief Global
> DevelopmentOfficer and new Chief Community Officer
> Sent: 3 Jun 2010 8:15 AM
>
> More Canadians to the staff?! I tought we already talk about that!!!
>
> Good luck :)
>
> Itzik Edri | T: +972.54.5878078 | it...@infra.co.il |
>   Facebook |
> Twitter
> | Flickr  |
> Linkedin
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 5:23 AM, Sue Gardner 
> wrote:
>
> > Hi folks,
> >
> > Forwarding from the announce list, since it does not yet auto-forward :-)
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Sue
> >
> > -- Forwarded message --
> > From: Sue Gardner 
> > Date: 2 June 2010 19:08
> > Subject: Announcing new Chief Global Development Officer and new Chief
> > Community Officer
> > To: wikimediaannounc...@lists.wikimedia.org
> >
> >
> > Hi folks,
> >
> > I am really happy to announce two important new Wikimedia Foundation
> > hires.  Zack Exley will be Wikimedia's new Chief Community Officer,
> > and Barry Newstead will be our Chief Global Development Officer.  Both
> > will start just before Wikimania, and will join us in Gdansk.
> >
> > There will be a press release going out tomorrow, but the news isn't
> > confidential: please feel free to tell whoever you like.
> >
> > Zack Exley will be our new Chief Community Officer.  Zack joins
> > Wikimedia from the Chicago-based firm Thoughtworks where he oversaw
> > strategy and technology projects for organizations like Obama For
> > America, Rock the Vote, and Global Zero.
> >
> > Zack has a long history of mobilizing people and facilitating them
> > reaching their goals.  During the nineties, he worked as a labour
> > organizer and software developer.  In 2002, he joined MoveOn.org as
> > director of organizing, where he ran mobilization and fundraising
> > campaigns – and in the same period, helped the Howard Dean campaign
> > with its online fundraising.  Zack left MoveOn.org to become online
> > communications and organizing director for the 2004 Kerry-Edwards U.S.
> > presidential campaign, where he ran the team that raised $125 million
> > online for Kerry, and also oversaw online-to-offline organizing
> > efforts responsible for mobilizing hundreds of thousands of field
> > volunteers.  In 2005, he led internet strategy and online fundraising
> > for the UK Labour Party's 2005 election campaign, and since 2005 he
> > has acted as a senior strategist and advisor helping many
> > mission-driven organizations advance their fundraising and
> > mobilization goals, including the American Civil Liberties Union,
> > Amnesty International, the National Association for the Advancement of
> > Colored People (NAACP), the International Rescue Committee and
> > Greenpeace USA.
> >
> > Zack grew up in Connecticut and has also lived in Kenya, China and the
> > United Kingdom. He has an BA in Economics from the University of
> > Massachusetts.
> >
> > As Chief Community Officer, Zack will be responsible for developing
> > the Wikimedia Found
>
> Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
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Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2

[Lodewijk]

Hi all,

thank you for your summary, Guillaume. I would like to add to this a
question based on Jon's insightful email:

the research you did on clicks etc, was apparently only on the English
Wikipedia. Would it be an option to first do more research on how the links
are used on the other projects? Out of the >700 projects to choose from, you
unfortunately picked one where the clicking is most likely to be very
different from all the other projects. Usually that is not a good basis to
build decisions for all 700 projects on. Besides that, it seems you measured
logged in users (since you mention comparing monobook vs vector, it seems
that you measured people who switched before the Big Switch?) Perhaps you
want to actually do research on how anonymous users work.

And to be honest, I find ~1% actually quite a *lot* for this kind of links.
Considering the huge number of people who do not speak a language besides
English, or who rather stay there because they started there for a reason
(and why would you then go to the German article on Pocahontas if the
English Wikipedia suits you well).

Would it be an option to put the language links back to as they were for
now, and then do some more research first on how people outside the English
language behave, how anonymous users behave and have a discussion about that
in the community first? Because I strongly believe this topic is *so*
important to all the smaller languages (they draw their community from these
links, after all), that we should involve that as well into the discussion.
The links are not just there to help the specific visitors of the English
Wikipedia, but they are there as well to help the tswana Wikipedia to
develop over time to a serious size. Please remember that our mission is to
bring the sum of human knowledge to *all* people in the whole world. Not
just the readers of major languages.

I do however recognize that linking the whole huge list might not be an
optimal way of helping these communities, but I am not sure either that
focusing on large and to the reader relevant languages will be.

best regards,

Lodewijk

2010/6/5 Guillaume Paumier 

> Howie,
>
> Thanks for your detailed message. I appreciate your efforts of trying
> to listen to the feedback from the community. However, even after
> listening to the discussion in the office today, and after reading
> your message, I still fail to understand the logic behind these
> decisions. I'm going to try and summarize your paragraphs into a few
> sentences; please tell me if I got something wrong
>
> In a paragraph, you explain it is your belief that in Monobook, the
> long list of languages made it difficult for the user to identify this
> area as "a list of languages".
>
> In the following paragraph, you say you tracked the clicks in the
> sidebar in Monobook, and found that less than 1% of users clicked on a
> language link. You then explain you hid the list of languages because
> this number showed it wasn't used.
>
> Perhaps I'm just beating a dead horse, but, looking at these two
> arguments, a fairly reasonable hypothesis to make is that users don't
> click on the languages links *because* they don't realize it's there.
> A fairly reasonable design decision would be to try and make it more
> discoverable, and you could measure the impact easily by seeing if
> more users click on the language links.
>
> Instead, you chose to hide the list completely. I still fail to see
> how this decision could be an attempt at fixing the issue you had
> discovered.
>
> Maybe users don't think of a traffic jam as "a list of cars". But
> showing an empty road hardly makes things better.
>
> --
> Guillaume Paumier
> [[m:User:guillom]]
> http://www.gpaumier.org
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2

[Lodewijk]

(not pointing to anyone specifically)

could we please stop this side track now? I think everybody knows what the
other person means, and it doesn't really matter after all... at least not
to this discussion.

Lodewijk

2010/6/7 Birgitte SB 

>
>
> --- On Mon, 6/7/10, Victor Vasiliev  wrote:
>
> > From: Victor Vasiliev 
> > Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a
> Bad Idea, part 2
> > To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
> > Date: Monday, June 7, 2010, 8:55 AM
> > On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 5:42 AM,
> > Michael Snow 
> > wrote:
> > > If you don't know the history of racial issues in the
> > US, you might not
> > > realize just how serious a subject lynching is. In
> > that cultural
> > > context, it is not something to be joked about.
> >
> > Your post is a brilliant example of agressive disrespect of
> > other
> > cultures where lynching is merely a verb which means
> > "execution by
> > mob" (I think if you told someone in Russia that
> > "lyniching" is an
> > offensive verb, he would most probably belive you said
> > something
> > silly). Bear in mind that only 0.55 % of the world
> > population are
> > sensitive about lyncing.
>
> That post can only being seen as an example of "agressive disrespect of
> other cultures" by people who think happening to be born in the USA is an
> agressive disrespect of other cultures.  Americans are people too!
>
> Birgitte SB
>
>
>
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Cultural awareness and sensitivity

[Lodewijk]

Dear Michael,

on one side, thank you for bringing this up - I had for example no idea of
this interpretation, and couldn't even have imagined it probably.

On a more general note, how do you think this problem could be approached? I
assume that you can understand that someone uses a word in a different
meaning than the one you brought up, and this is something that is happening
all the time of course - I have experienced it several times. Translating or
writing in a non-native language can be a tricky thing (For example, calling
someone "black" would be considered highly offensive in the Netherlands,
where negroid is apparently offensive in the US), but even within one
language there can be different interpretations. Do you see a way that
people can consider this? Do you see here a task for the writer, or rather a
message for the reader of messages that there might be another meaning in it
than the offensive one you might read at first?

About the underrepresentation - yes, almost every single group is
underrepresented besides the 1) white, middle aged single men, 2)
pubers&adolescent boys, 3) people with all kinds of disorders. Women, black
people, lower educated people, inuit, seniors, children<10y and many other
groups are underrepresented for even more different reasons. My
understanding has never been that this is because there are
misinterpretations of what people say - rather the harshness with which we
discuss sometimes, especially when newbees do something "wrong", seems to
scare people away. Rather the complicated community structure, the huge
amounts of regulations etc - although I'm confident that the strategy team
has done more research into this and can come up with more solid data and
causes.

So although I do agree that we should be careful with cultural differences,
I do not think that we can avoid possible "lynching"-issues (as in, how the
word is used) because we can't expect everybody to be have a major in
English. I think it is rather likely that these offenses are actually more
often the other way around, where non-natives consider something as
offensive, but will not speak up about it. Not so much because Americans or
Brits are so harsh (well, some are) but because of the numbers - there are
numerous more cultures compared to the few that have English as a native
tongue.

Lodewijk

2010/6/8 Michael Snow 

> To avoid further disrupting discussion of interlanguage links and
> usability, I'll address the cultural problems separately now. I must
> admit, though, that in a discussion where we seemed to have agreed
> (rightfully so) that a 1% click rate was significant enough to warrant
> serious consideration, I was disappointed that someone could then be so
> callous about the need for cultural sensitivity because it most directly
> impacts "only 0.55% of the world population" in this case. There is no
> meaningful difference in order of magnitude there.
>
> We have significant distortions in the makeup of our community that
> affect our culture. There are quite a few groups that are seriously
> underrepresented, in part because our culture comes across as unfriendly
> to them at best. I talked about African-Americans because it's what was
> applicable in that particular situation and I happen to have some
> familiarity with the issues. It could just as well have been Australian
> Aborigines or another cultural group that has issues with our community.
> I'm not as prepared to explain those concerns, but I would welcome
> people who can educate us about such problems. It's legitimate to be
> wary of things that promote American cultural hegemony, which is another
> distortion, but that's not really warranted when the concern relates to
> a minority culture in the US.
>
> Some people seem to have gotten hung up on the issue of intent. I didn't
> say there was any intent, by the community or individuals, to exclude
> certain groups or to create a hostile environment for them. I actually
> tried to be as careful as possible not to say that. The point is that
> even in the absence of intent, it's possible for our culture to appear
> hostile to such groups. We didn't have any intent to be hostile toward
> living people, either, yet we've had a long struggle to cope with the
> consequences of that impression created by our culture.
>
> Consider the principle of not "biting" newcomers, which relates to a
> similar problem. It's not about the intent of the person doing the
> "biting", it's about the impact on those who encounter it. We need to be
> more welcoming to people, and striving for more cultural awareness is
> part of that.
>
> --Michael Snow
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] The High Priests of Wikipedia

[Lodewijk]

something that remains always underrepresented in articles about wikipedia:
we are WORLD CHAMPION in [[side tracking]]!

2010/6/8 Steven Walling 

> Okay, okay. Didn't mean to start a discussion about the nature of the
> Catholic Church. Just meant that it's not what most people think of when
> you
> say cult. They think of "drink the Kool-Aid", so on and so forth.
>
> Steven Walling
>
> On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 1:53 PM, Gerard Meijssen
> wrote:
>
> > Hoi,
> > Dear Teun, I grew up in the mother church. When asked we would say that
> we
> > were catholic. From inside the church there is no credible outside
> because
> > they are not part of our community. As a little boy we did not play with
> > the
> > kids of the public primary school (their school was in front of our
> house).
> >
> > Technically you may be right and I will only concede that because I do no
> > longer consider myself to be of the faith.
> >
> > PS thank you for your wishes..
> > Thanks,
> >   GerardM
> >
> > On 8 June 2010 22:32, teun spaans  wrote:
> >
> > > The Catholic church is not identical to the Roman Catholic church, see
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_%28disambiguation%29
> > >
> > > live long and prosper,
> > > Teun Spaans
> > >
> > > On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 10:28 PM, Gerard Meijssen
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hoi,
> > > > The Catholic church is not the same as the Vatican. It is not even
> the
> > > > hierarchy of the Vatican. It is only the head office. Given the large
> > > > amount
> > > > of elderly men, guarded by beautifully dressed highly dedicated Swiss
> > > young
> > > > men, given that they are a law onto themselves, they easily qualify.
> > > > Thanks,
> > > >GerardM
> > > >
> > > > On 8 June 2010 19:19, Steven Walling 
> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > "Wikipedia makes the Vatican look like a coffee clatch"
> > > > >
> > > > > They're saying we're so cliquish that we make the Vatican look like
> a
> > > > > casual
> > > > > coffee work party, not that we are one. Still a mixed metaphor
> > though,
> > > > > considering the Catholic Church hardly meets the definition of a
> > cult.
> > > > >
> > > > > Steven Walling
> > > > >
> > > > > On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 8:05 AM, Aphaia  wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > Of course we don't. As far as I learn from my Wikimania
> > > participation,
> > > > > > Wikipedian's preferences go rather to beer, not dull caffeine.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > /me ducks
> > > > > >
> > > > > > On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 11:43 PM, Bod Notbod  >
> > > > wrote:
> > > > > > >> "For internecine intrigue and power struggles, the Wikipedia
> > makes
> > > > the
> > > > > > >> Vatican look like a coffee clatch.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > I had zero idea what a "coffee clatch" was or is. Google tells
> me
> > > it
> > > > > > > should probably be "klatch".
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > And it is "A casual social gathering for coffee and
> > conversation".
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Well, I could only agree with that if you say any workplace is
> a
> > > > > > > coffee klatch. People converse. People drink coffee. But they
> do
> > > work
> > > > > > > at the same time.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > I don't think you become one of the top ten websites in the
> > world,
> > > > > > > raise millions of dollars each year, by drinking caffeine and
> > > > > > > chatting.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > User:Bodnotbod.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > ___
> > > > > > > foundation-l mailing list
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> > > > > > > Unsubscribe:
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> > > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > --
> > > > > > KIZU Naoko
> > > > > > http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese)
> > > > > > Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD
> > > > > >
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Serbia billboard campaign

[Lodewijk]

we want photo's!

2010/6/17 Sydney Poore 

> Congratulations on this successful alternative use of content in a BIG
> SCALE
> way. :-)
>
> Thanks for sharing it with us. Wonderful idea!
>
> Sydney Poore
> (FloNight)
>
> On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 5:26 PM, Milos Rancic  wrote:
>
> > On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 11:09 PM, Milos Rancic 
> wrote:
> > > [3] - The billboards are designed as the image from the site, but with
> > > link to the project's site and
> >
> > ... and Wikipedia logo. At the site, user can click on the image,
> > which leads to the appropriate article.
> >
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Re: [Foundation-l] Money, politics and corruption

[Lodewijk]

ok... I dont see how these problems, if they exist, can ever relate to each
other, to cause you to treat them in one email post other than "OMG OMG
everything is breaking down". At the same time, I just dont understand what
you mean. I'll put some questions down, and hope you can treat them in
seperate threads when not related.

2010/7/14 Milos Rancic 

> Just to make clear about which problems are, because I didn't
> structure text clearly. Problems are:
>
> 1. Corruption among two chapters.
>
what is your definition of corruption here? Bribing to vote for something?
Espionage?


> 2. US business interests influence WMF strategy.
>
What is influence here? Harmful influence? What kind of interests - specific
or general?


> 3. Gap between those who are coming between poor and rich countries.
>
OK, this is a wikimania problem and I understand this problem. However, I
think already everything reasonable is being done here to resolve them.
Could someone from the organization or WMF please reiterate how many
scholarships have been given out?


> 4. All decisions of WMF, chapters and their bodies are now a matter of
> international politics.
>
I dont see how you can ever draw such a general discussion without talking
to all chapters. Even I have not been able to talk with all of them
recently, so please share your communication methods with me - I would love
to be as efficient!
Seriously however, sure the climate gets more political as organizations get
more professional and have different short time interests.


> 5. Careerists around WMF and chapters.
>
Yeah, if you mean here that there are volunteers who would like to make a
job out of their hobby - that is not very unlikely indeed, and not very
unexpected either. That might, if targeted and treated correctly, even be
beneficial. So can you perhaps explain in which way it is harmful, at which
scale you are talking about etc?


> 6. Alienation.
>
This is very very vague, and a complaint I hear since I joined Wikipedia in
2005. What has changed here, how has it become worse, what magical solution
is there now that we never thought of in the last six yeat at the least?

although I sound very critical now, I do thank you for bringing up
discussion. However, discussion is more easy if you are a little more clear
onto what is related, what not - if you treat seperated problems seperately.
Or otherwise explain the problem lying behind them.

best, lodewijk


>
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[Foundation-l] Privacy etc - merging data

[Lodewijk]

I am assuming that people will be warned and asked for permission in advance
to combine these databases? I for one would definitely have strong
objections against merging donation and edit data. Donations are real life,
edits are wikipedia-universe. Although I do realize that it is much more
convenient for staff to have this data combined, I find this objectionable
from the privacy point of view. (putting this in a new thread to seperate
discussions a bit) I am not sure of legal requirements in this field in the
US - but I hope Wikipedia will always adhere to also for example European
principles in this regard whether it is maybe or maybe not legally obliged
to.

Best,

Lodewijk

2010/7/16 Philippe Beaudette 

> Hiya -
>
> I asked Danese, who is currently buried under about 20 pounds of stuff
> after coming back from Wikimania, to further describe the stakeholder
> database.  Her response is:
>
> Sue has a vision for a single master database that tracks our
> interactions with movement participants.  It is intended to help us
> better respond to requests from individuals by joining all the info we
> have from prior interactions with that person.  This will be
> particularly important as we grow the staff, because current
> onboarding time requires long "buddy system" pairings with existing
> staff to teach how to best interact.  So for instance, if you have had
> a Wikipedia account since 2005, have made enough edits to become, say,
> an Admin, have uploaded 100 images to Commons, have been a donor every
> year and have responded helpfully to many OTRS requests, there should
> be a quick way for a new staffer to learn those facts.  All of this
> information is available to the staff now, just not in an aggregated
> place.
>
> Danese
>
>
>
> On Jul 15, 2010, at 12:41 PM, Excirial wrote:
>
> > I have gone trough the report, and immediately noted the extremely
> > strong
> > growth of the foundation in terms of personal (Nearly doubling the
> > amount
> > two years in a row). Generally i am not a fan of such fast growth as
> > it
> > often leads to bloating; but seeing the the rest of the plan looks
> > fine i
> > presume i am just viewing things to black and white.
> >
> > One particular detail in the "Top Spending Increases, continued"
> > section
> > raised some question marks for me though. There is a 2.6 million
> > dollar
> > increase in the "Other tech staffing and stakeholder database"
> > category. I
> > can understand the 10 new tech position and the annualization of
> > existing
> > tech salaries paid by this increase, but what role will the
> > stakeholder
> > database have? The description, "development of a database to track
> > relationships with all stakeholders including readers, editors,
> > donors,
> > other volunteers, etc." is rather vague and includes no real
> > indication as
> > to its purpose. What exactly will it track, and what will the
> > information be
> > used for? Since there are so many editors on-wiki i doubt that this
> > will be
> > used as a full-fledged CRM (customer relationship management) system
> > used to
> > track literally everything. All i can imagine is that it could track
> > top
> > level community issues such as flagged revisions or OTRS complains.
> >
> > Anyone who has some more information on this system? I'm quite
> > interested to
> > be honest.
> >
> > Kind regards,
> > ~Excirial
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 8:20 PM, Oliver Keyes
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Now if we only had some kind of mobile device which could be given
> >> to such
> >> institutions containing a copy! :P.
> >>
> >> On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 6:28 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <
> >> cimonav...@gmail.com
> >>> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Samuel Klein wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Every national and regional library should have a local copy of
> >>> Wikimedia.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> With a full history dump?
> >>>
> >>> ;-)
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Yours,
> >>>
> >>> Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
> >>>
> >>>
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> >>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Boycott in a...@wiki

[Lodewijk]

(not responding to anyone in particular)

I agree with most of what Gerard said: we should talk with them, and be
polite. What does it bring you to be right, but to scare away a community in
the process? Some people might find comfort in that, I don't.

Now lets try to follow this from their point of view. The English Wikipedia
adheres to US law, and probably some more. People editing any Wikipedia have
to adhere to the law they are in. Now apparently these people feel that they
should follow Islamitic law. So far, I guess everybody can agree that they
are OK to do so. The problem comes when they try to force that onto other
people. But... if the majority of a project is in a certain country - would
we disallow that project to align the rules to that countries law? And if
the majority feels it has to follow Islamitic law, would we say they can't
add in their local rules "pictures of Mohammed are not allowed"? To be
honest, if that would be what the community wants, and beliefs to be the
best, who are we to tell them they can't? I can imagine that if these people
have such big problems with it, also the intended audience might be insulted
with those images.

So, there is one other problem: the template. I have seen worse statements
on user pages, so I would not worry too much about the template itself, as
long as it is restricted to that. I dont see a problem with discussion.
However, using it on the main page does pose a problem. We should not be
bothering our readers with internal conflicts of whatever nature. So
hopefully we can talk to them about that specifically.

Is anyone in conversation with them now?

Lodewijk

2010/7/16 Nathan 

> On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 11:41 AM, Austin Hair  wrote:
> >
> > I agree completely with Gerard, and also want to ask that we extend
> > the same standard to this discussion on the mailing list.
> >
> > We can look at this issue and say "stupid fundamentalists," but that's
> > hardly productive, and very quickly devolves into a thread with posts
> > that are, at best, pretty darn rude.  I really don't want to have to
> > moderate five people this weekend when it finally gets to the point of
> > outright Muslim-bashing.
> >
> > Austin
> >
>
>
> Have a little faith. I don't think anything like outright
> Muslim-bashing has ever happened on this list by regular participants.
> Suggestions of closing the Aceh Wikipedia are obviously premature and
> not helpful; discussing whether the rule violates NPOV, and alerting
> others to facts about the situation, seems fine. It looks like the
> administrators involved on ace.wp speak English and other languages,
> anyone inclined to do so should feel welcome to approach them.
>
> It's worth noting the template does not currently appear on the Main
> Page, and there is something of a discussion about it here:
>
> http://ace.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marit_Ureu%C3%ABng_Nguy:Hercule#Wikipedia_and_Islam
>
> Nathan
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Privacy etc - merging data

[Lodewijk]

I'd rather not speculate about what happens or the intent before someone
from the WMF who is responsible for this clarifies the statement. I hope we
all can hold ourselves from guessing and seeking logic until that moment.

Lodewijk

2010/7/17 Oliver Keyes 

> So the logic seems to be thus - if I tell employee X something about my
> life, interests, experience, C.V. that could possibly be of use or interest
> to the Foundation, it's fine to store it on a central database where all
> and
> sundry within the Foundation can get at it, despite the fact that this was
> never my intent.
>
> On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 2:01 AM, K. Peachey 
> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 10:00 PM, Lodewijk 
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > I am assuming that people will be warned and asked for permission in
> > advance
> > > to combine these databases? I for one would definitely have strong
> > > objections against merging donation and edit data. Donations are real
> > life,
> > > edits are wikipedia-universe. Although I do realize that it is much
> more
> > > convenient for staff to have this data combined, I find this
> > objectionable
> > > from the privacy point of view. (putting this in a new thread to
> seperate
> > > discussions a bit) I am not sure of legal requirements in this field in
> > the
> > > US - but I hope Wikipedia will always adhere to also for example
> European
> > > principles in this regard whether it is maybe or maybe not legally
> > obliged
> > > to.
> > >
> > > Best,
> > >
> > > Lodewijk
> > What I believe this is referring to, is that the Customer Relation
> > Manager (CRM) [CiviCRM iirc] to be setup to allow for some details
> > about the people to be stored such as their usernames/interests/etc
> > compared to it just being a word of mouth system where staff members
> > need to track down which staff know who.
> >
> > So for example a staff member can look up a person and go "oh Jimmy
> > Bloggs is interested in political photograph, X might interest him"
> > compared to say "Jimmy Bloggs was entered by Sally Doors, I need to go
> > talk to her," who redirects to someone else that knows more about the
> > subject.
> >
> > -Peachey
> >
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Re: [Foundation-l] Privacy etc - merging data

[Lodewijk]

I was mainly wondering what the stakeholder database would look like - what
information will be in there, how is it gathered, will information from
existing databases be merged? (for example, if I am an editor and I happen
to make a donation - will that information be put into one combined database
if you happen to know the real name behind me?)

I can hardly imagine that the Wikimedia Foundation woul go wild privacy
wise, but I am just asking to make sure we have a similar understanding.

I am sorry if I did not put my question clear enough.

best, Lodewijk

2010/7/17 Sue Gardner 

> Sorry -- is there a question outstanding?  I know Nathan posted some
> questions about the annual plan (which I think Veronique'll answer, and if
> she she doesn't I will).  If there was something else, I think it slipped
> right past me.
>
> Thanks,
> Sue
>
> --Original Message--
> From: Thomas Dalton
> Sender: foundation-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org
> To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> ReplyTo: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Privacy etc - merging data
> Sent: 17 Jul 2010 07:05
>
> On 17 July 2010 13:53, Lodewijk  wrote:
> > I'd rather not speculate about what happens or the intent before someone
> > from the WMF who is responsible for this clarifies the statement. I hope
> we
> > all can hold ourselves from guessing and seeking logic until that moment.
>
> This is foundation-l... your hope is misplaced!
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Adopting OmegaWiki as Wikimedia project

[Lodewijk]

I think it would be best to first discuss the general question (if) and
later more specific questions (how) like the license. Although important, it
is more important to determine if we want this in the first place. Once we
know that, we can work out the exact conditions from both sides :)

Questions to consider in the if-question would be:
* How does this influence other projects, both positively and negatively
* Do we believe there can be a stable community supporting this (this has
proven to be problematic in the past)
* Would it be good for OmegaWiki, or would it mean that it would practically
split up and that two competing projects arise?
* Do we want anything that doesnt work exactly like MediaWiki works in
enwiki (as in, more database-like), is that a nogo?

Probably you can imagine more questions like this.

Lodewijk

2010/7/19 Gerard Meijssen 

> Hoi,
> OmegaWiki is truly multi lingual in that depending on the amount of content
> available in a language labels and annotations will show up in the
> preferred
> language. Recently many of the relevant phrases were localised in Telugu
> and
> consequently it became useful in Telugu.
>
> When a language is right to left the user interface and the data is shown
> in
> the right to left direction.
>
> One or the more interesting things of OmegaWiki is that we do have links to
> Commons and Wikipedia. This means that when you look for pictures of a
> "hobune" you will actually find them. Having links to Wikipedia means that
> they can effectively work as interwiki links.
>
> To understand why we at OmegaWiki want the WMF to adopt this project, we
> have always wanted OmegaWiki to be a WMF project. As far as the suggestion
> goes to end the Wiktionary projects, we have always said that this is for
> the Wiktionary projects themselves to decide. However particularly for the
> smaller projects the effort of adding content to OmegaWiki is more
> efficient
> as more people benefit from work that only needs to be done once.
>
> As OmegaWiki has its data in a database, it is possible to use the data in
> applications. This is very much our goal ... we are on record saying
> "success is when people find an application for our data we did not think
> off."
>
> As to the license, PD would be our preferred license but sadly their are
> too
> many people who consider that their must be a license because ... In our
> view making our data available under a license prevents success. This is a
> reason why we are not interested in "copyright violations".
> Thanks,
>  GerardM
>
>
>
>
> On 19 July 2010 09:05, Milos Rancic  wrote:
>
> > (Just poking foundation-l, please continue with discussion at
> > wiktionary-l, or, better, at Meta [1])
> >
> > During Wikimania I asked Gerard Meijssen would he be willing to give
> > OmegaWiki to Wikimedia. He said that he doesn't have anything against
> > it: software is free, content is free. More precisely, he told to me
> > "Take it!" :)
> >
> > My initial idea was that it would be the best to replace all
> > Wiktionaries with OmegaWiki. However, the last day of Wikimania I was
> > talking with one Swedish guy who is working on Swedish Wiktionary. He
> > has complained that philologists like more open form for writing
> > dictionary. Thus, my suggestion is to adopt OmegaWiki as one of
> > Wiktionaries, probably as http://wiktionary.org/, similarly to the
> > multilingual Wikisource.
> >
> > And, of course, before possible adoption we need discussion and some
> > software improvements of Wikidata extension.
> >
> > [1] -
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Adopt_OmegaWiki
> >
> > * * *
> >
> > As multilingual projects are not in the scope of the [[Language
> > committee]], before the implementation (or not) of the idea, community
> > should discuss about it.
> >
> > [http://www.omegawiki.org/ OmegaWiki] is a formal multilingual
> > dictionary based on MediaWiki extension
> > [[:mw:Extension:Wikidata|Wikidata]].
> >
> > No matter would it be the only Wiktionary or it would be just one of
> > the Wiktionaries, OmegaWiki would raise quality of Wiktionaries. At
> > the other side, the project would get much more attention as a
> > Wikimedia project.
> >
> > Wikidata extension should be improved (from user experience and
> > linguistic points of view) before implementation as Wikimedia project.
> >
> > [[User:GerardM|Gerard Meijssen]], the founder of OmegaWiki project,
> > doesn't have anything against adopting it as a Wikimedia project.
> >
> > == Advantages and disadvantages of adop

Re: [Foundation-l] Free translation memory

[Lodewijk]

also, wikipedia.org comes very close, but it has been polluted by all those
people who want to change the content a bit to their local situation to make
the text better understandable...

lodewijk

2010/7/29 Amir E. Aharoni 

> 2010/7/29 Amir E. Aharoni :
> > Is there a Free competitor to the Google Translator Toolkit in terms
> > of online storage and sharing? I heard about OmegaT, but if i
> > understand correctly, it is a local application that doesn't offer
> > online storage and sharing - but correct me if i'm wrong. Are there
> > any other Free-minded translation memory services?
>
> ... Thinking out loud / replying to myself - translatewiki.net comes
> very close, but people are used to think about it as a tool for
> translating software messages and not for translating general texts.
> Maybe it can be adopted to that.
>
> --
> אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> Amir Elisha Aharoni
>
> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
>
> "We're living in pieces,
>  I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] [Fundraising] Banner testing again

[Lodewijk]

Hi Philippe,

thanks for this advance warning. I dont recall you sharing this before
on this list, but I probably just missed it.

Just for the record, I assume you will also be testing the
geolocation? (which is most likely one of the things that can break,
and therefore important to test - also giving the option to test
chapter pages). Since I did not see any call to the chapters to update
pages etc, I assume you are going to use last years infrastructure?

Best,

Lodewijk

2010/8/19 Federico Leva (Nemo) :
> Philippe Beaudette, 19/08/2010 06:00:
>> Just a heads up that Thursday at 22:00 UTC (15:00 Pacific), we'll be
>> running some very light banner testing to make sure that the tools we
>> use for the fundraiser are fully optimized before we launch.  We'll
>> also take the opportunity to do a little bit of message testing.  The
>> banners will serve to a very low set of editors, but I didn't want you
>> to be surprised if you got one.
>
> I put some suggestions on
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Banner_testing (which
> will hopefully reduce your work).
>
> Nemo
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] "wikipedia" Domain acquisition

[Lodewijk]

Hi Naoko,

Thanks for clarifying. That indeed helps a bit more than just the original
text.
I guess a good summary would be "the domain is in safe community hands, and
if the Foundation would like that to be different, they can ask so"?

Best,

Lodewijk

2010/9/8 Aphaia 

> I usually give no reply to trolls, so it's just for your information
> as other subscribers on good faith.
>
> It's too bad English to understand what it means, so I just give you
> details instead.
>
> I don't know when wikipedia.jp was first acquired exactly but the
> first acquisition might be in 2003, when WMF had no staff nor active
> board members. The domain has been held by two jawiki admin/b'crats on
> good faith respectively. On the second acquisition some board members
> were informed, since there was no paid staff in the WMF office yet (it
> was a way long before WMF has such).
>
> So
>
> > The "wikipedia.jp" domain acquisition was requested from User:Aphaia
> > by the Wikimedia Foundation staff
>
> the above is a blatant lie I have no good reason to discuss further.
> Due to his disruption I personally advice the moderators of this list
> and EnWP arb to ban this user who has edited only Jimmy's talk to
> troll jawiki and its good users.
> Cheers,
>
>
> 2010/9/8 kigen2700...@gmail.com :
> > The "wikipedia.jp" domain acquisition was requested from User:Aphaia
> > by the Wikimedia Foundation staff. The individual User:Tietew was
> > owned. On earth, who requested it?
> >
> > 山吹色の御菓子
> >
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>
>
> --
> KIZU Naoko
> http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese)
> Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD
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Re: [Foundation-l] Call for a moratorium on all new software developments

[Lodewijk]

OK, let me just ask you a few simple questions:

* You complain that the accreditation with the no (visible?) history tab is
not correct. Did you consult a lawyer or legal specialist (for example
Creative Commons in your country) for their opinion about this?
* The same question for the url when re-using the image
* You complain that the "power structure" in your wiki is changing because
of technical changes. Is there a clear opinion of your community that they
do not wish such change?

Of course we can always be conservative as you suggested: dont do anything
until we know for sure that everybody agrees. That way nothing ever changes,
and all improvements are halted. I will just end up having lots of people
being frustrated and complaining everything is so bad. Things have to
change, constantly, and sometimes they have to be reverted then too. And
every now and then it is you who is sad because he disagrees, but next time
you might be happy with it and it is your collegue who complains that the
proper self made-up procedures are not followed.

If you have serious arguments, like the answers to my questions above, then
they should, imho, be taken seriously into consideration - independent of
procedures. If you don't and there are only a few people complaining, sorry
- but then at some point you just have to accept that things are not going
to change your way.

Best, Lodewijk

ps: I found it highly confusing that you entered so many different
complaints into one email thread - it keeps jumping from one topic to
another. It would be helpful if you, next time, bring your arguments of
course earlier, but also that you focus on the issue at hand. If that is
finalized, and you have another topic: start a new thread.

2010/9/9 Teofilo 

> 2010/9/7, Teofilo :
> > 2010/9/7, Tim Starling :
> >
> >> Presumably this conspiracy would have to extend beyond the WMF to
> >> PediaPress and Purodha Blissenbach, the developers of Collection and
> >> mobile.wikipedia.org respectively.
> >
> > The absence of a history tab in the mobile format is in my view an
> > exact measurement of the temperature of the warmth of the relations
> > between the WMF and its contributors.
> >
> > Let's not call this a conspiracy. Philosopher Pierre Bourdieu  would
> > call it an unconcious strategy (1).
>
> The other reason why we can't call this a conspiracy is that a
> conspiracy is usually kept secret, while that agenda is known by a lot
> of people. They even managed to organise a vote and found a majority
> approving it at
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update/Result
>
> The result is the adding of "You agree that a hyperlink or URL is
> sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license" on every
> edit tab footer.
>
> The result is that it is thought that it is OK to distribute contents
> without the history tab, the author's names remaining in a format not
> readable on the device the user is using. So all these things are
> features of the new vastly known agenda. They are not bugs.
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] [Language committee] Transparency

[Lodewijk]

just for the record, old ways and old rules refer to the fact they get
published on meta, right?

2010/9/16 Milos Rancic 

> As Karen fixed her anonymity issue, archives of the Language committee
> will be public by default starting from September 12th, 2010. We will
> continue to use the same method for the list archives, as it allows us
> to talk about confidential (mostly personal) issues. Previous emails
> will stay as they are, according to the old rules.
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

[Lodewijk]

Topic: Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?


Nope, not a thing changed. We just got a few more entries, but we were
successful in keeping exactly the same structures, prevent people from
getting to know us, vandalism stayed at the same rate and therefore there
was no need to change the software at all. There were barely improvements in
quality, and everything is just as bad as in The Days. Just for the record:
between 2001 and 2005 not much changed either.

I hope this answers your question, although somewhat sarcastically :)

Lodewijk
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[Foundation-l] bureaucrats - best practices?

[Lodewijk]

Hi all,

I'd like to invite the interested people to submit some best practices from
their communities about the bureaucrat procedures. Please let me know what
works well and what not. Appointment, removal, rules of use of the bit.

Thanks a lot.

Best, eia
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[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Commons: Service project or not?

[Lodewijk]

OK, the question has popped up so many times, that I think it would only be
fair to give it a separate topic on this list :)

Now I'd like to have a discussion about this, and not just assumptions.
Let's not be childish and say "yes it is, no it's not" (which some of the
discussion comes down to) but lets play around a bit with arguments.

This discussion is btw not new at all, I remember to have discussed over it
several times, and I've had both opinions probably in time. Mostly this
discussion comes up when a project (in the past at least several times this
was the Dutch Wikipedia, as some might remember) felt that the commons
community was damaging the content they uploaded there without them having a
say over it. The even more important question is, however, when comes the
moment when the two are in conflict?

I doubt any project actually cares whether commons has out of scope images
(well, a few might, but that is actually commons people then imho, not
wikipedians/wikisourcians etc), not what the categorization is like. As long
as it works, they can upload their stuff, it is safe, and they can use it.
The problems often came when a few "bad people" (paraphrasing it as it was
received by the Dutch Wikipedians at the time, no insult intended) were
damaging their content (at the time, it was for example about Coat of
Arms-png's being deleted) and they felt not heard or helped by others.

I think that is currently a repeating pattern in some way. A smaller group,
with all best intentions, decides to "harm"  a collection of content, and
people feel attacked by that, and react in a not-so-positive way.

That is where the service project and the independent project clash. Were it
merely service, the commons would abide the wish of the wikipedians
(wikisourcians etc), were it independent, the Wikipedians would have bad
luck and live with it.

So now please share with me, in those conflict situations, which should it
be, and, most importantly, why? I'll believe service project is great in
ideal situations, as would be independent, as long as everything goes fine.
But in these border cases?

eia
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[Foundation-l] disconnected

[Lodewijk]

(after a bit of thinking, I'll post this to foundation-l after all. As a bit
of context, the whole fundraiser discussion continued on internal-l and a
discussion emerged about disconnect between the board of the WMF and the
chapters, of which the letter would be an example. Based on that discussion,
I wrote the email below. As far as I am aware, it contains no confidential
information, so after consideration, this would be a better place actually)

I think we should be honest with ourselves here: yes there is disconnect -
but it is not /just/ about the foundation. It is a wider problem than that -
but I agree with Dan that this *is* a typical example. Not because of the
direction of the decision even (which I totally disagree with as it is
explained by Sue, but agree with as it is explained privately by some board
members, like noted before) but how it is taken.

I could not have imagined the board changing its bylaws without consulting
the community (not asking approval, but consulting) a few years ago. I could
not have imagined these important decisions to be taken without serious
discussions with those involved. And that someone then notes "we could have
discussed it but honestly they wouldn't have changed their mind anyway" (my
interpretation) is the most striking for where we are today. Small groups of
people sitting in their ivory towers taking decisions. Sure they do their
best to come out and talk with people, but it too often fails.

I have seen it too many times. I know of several chapters too, which are
malfunctioning because they are not able to connect to the editing community
any longer - Wikimedia Nederland has been there too (I hope I'm correct to
speak in the past sense). Listening is hard, involving is even harder. I see
it with the board even stronger - some individuals are still working hard to
engage in conversations, but it is no longer default procedure. Another
striking example is that we had to learn about this discussion from Stu's
blog - and nobody bothered to involve others in that discussion by sending
an email to internal or foundation-l.

It is happening in chapcoms, it is happening in staff (I cannot count
anymore how often I got into the position that I have to defend what Sue and
several other people in the foundation are doing and the saleries they are
alledgedly getting for that) - we all seem to do an extremely bad job in
communicating /with/ the community - not /to/ the community. I have been
saying this a lot of times during the chapters meeting - but I know there
were no foundation people there unfortunately (another example?) so let me
repeat it just once more: talking to people will not suffice, will not
involve them. We are no priests or teachers that will tell them what to do,
but we can motivate them and cooperate with them and be part of it by
talking with them, involving them in conversations.

I know it is very hard to actually accomplish it - and I know it is easy to
say that you're trying and will try even harder - but that won't be good
enough.

Lodewijk

-- Forwarded message --
From: Dan Rosenthal 
Date: 2011/8/11
Subject: Re: [Internal-l] Board letter about fundraising and chapters
To: "Local Chapters, board and officers coordination (closed subscription)"



Well, I think this entire debate over the fundraising letter is a great
example. The board and office seriously miscalculated how strongly the
chapters would feel about such a drastic change. I think, frankly, you still
do. The "us vs. them" tone of these discussions, especially from some of
Erik and Jan Bart's emails, appears to me to be causing people to become
defensive and entrenched in their beliefs.

The fact that this is all being done last minute when many these issues were
known back as of the 2010 fundraiser* sends the message to me that nobody
adequately expressed to the chapters what frustrations the WMF was facing,
at least not in any sort of way that would have prompted a thoughtful series
of responses like we have seen here.

Then we see things like Jimmy saying "WMF owns Wikipedia" -- something that
I believe we have always shied away from saying on ComCom due to the various
interpretations of "what does own mean?"; the side dispute with Thomas
blaming his chapter for not living up to certain standards that they may or
may not have been actually obligated to do….

I should have probably said "In my view, this is an example of a growing
disconnect…" because I certainly can't speak for others. But I think broadly
looking at this whole debacle, it's hard to see anything BUT a disconnect.**


*(such as the inadequacy of the fundraising agreement; as well I vaguely
remember there being several chapters that were not in compliance at some
point and we had discussions about it, but it was so long ago and I don't
have access to any notes at the time I couldn&#

Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia chapters' raison d'être?

[Lodewijk]

Hi Teofilo,

most likely some people will tell me afterwards that I should not have
answered your email, because of famous internet laws, but I will do so none
the less to avoid that people are being misinformed by your email.

>Teofilo: "(...) they also absorb funds (...)"
Chapters do not 'absorb' funds, but they do collect them, provide a part of
those to the Wikimedia Foundation to run the infrastructure, and spend
another part to run programs which should result in more free knowledge.
Chapters (and WMF) should however keep working / work harder (depending on
the organization) to share these projects and their outcomes so that there
is less confusion about this.

> Teofilo: "(...) and hire people (...) which is different from what a
volunteer based project should be."
Some chapters do indeed hire people, and most currently don't. When they
hire people, that is not to replace volunteers - that would be, imho, a
stupid thing to do. However, having run projects in chapters for quite a
while as a volunteer, I can confirm that sometimes the help of staff can
help volunteers to become more motivated, effective and efficient if well
implemented.
Most chapters I know of are extremely careful who to hire as staff, and the
balance between staff and volunteers is constantly scrutinized. Even
further, every chapter is in the end controlled by its General Assembly, a
body made up of... volunteers. More democratic than the Foundation even.

>Teofilo: " and take volunteer seats at the WMF board of trustees"
Unfortunately yet another mistake. Chapters do not 'take' volunteer seats.
The chapters are able to nominate two of the ten board seats - they don't
'own' the seats. If your point is that the Wikimedia Foundation could use
more democracy, I would agree to some extent. I am however not sure if
changing the board structure is the best way to implement that.

> Teofilo: "But I am afraid they are not [being helpful]"
I'll leave that comment for your account. However, I would like to recommand
you to see my lecture on Wikimedia Chapters at this year's Wikimania,
outlining some 45 interesting projects executed by Wikimedia chapters in the
past year - and this was only a small selection. The slides are available on
Wikimedia Commons (
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Chapters_-_Wikimania_2011.pdf)
and the video will become available later. Several of these projects might
also have come off without the existance of a chapter, but most likely many
of them wouldn't. You may disagree with the use of some - but I think that
overall it should be clear that chapters are helpful to our mission both
directly through programs and indirectly through supporting the foundation,
the movement and the community. That is not the same as that every chapter
is doing exactly what you would like them to. You are very welcome to join a
chapter (as a member or (long distance) volunteer) or another non-chapter
organizational group inside the movement.

With kind regards,

Lodewijk

2011/8/17 Teofilo 

> Wikimedia chapters are not only an example of what should not be seen
> in Wikimedia projects (an "institution[...], of any kind, [...]
> claiming to represent [...] individuals" [1]) they also absorb funds
> and hire people, pushing with more weight the goal to make money (a
> salaried person expects his/her salary to be increased by X % each
> year) which is different from what a volunteer based project should
> be.
>
> They aslo are de facto put in a position where people expect them to
> perform decision making. It is already bad that they deprive the
> communities of a decision making of their own, and take volunteer
> seats at the WMF board of trustees, but they don't do the job. See
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:CC-AR-Presidency#Bad_template_for_new_files
> . If the chapters showed that they are helpful in doing things better
> than what volunteer communities alone can do, they could prove that
> they are useful. But I am afraid they are not doing this. If they are
> not present when we need them...
>
> [1]
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Wikimedia_Study_of_Controversial_Content#7._Wikimedia_Projects_serve_the_Information_Needs_of_Individuals.2C_Not_Groups
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Genuine, Generous, and Grateful

[Lodewijk]

Of course there's the infamous @wikipedia_mk and @itwikiquote :)

2011/8/18 Andrew Gray 

> On 18 August 2011 17:39, Tom Morris  wrote:
> > More useful for smaller wikis. Tweeting new pages or recent changes
> > for enwiki would probably destroy Twitter very quickly.
> >
> > When I was more involved with Citizendium, I wrote a script to pipe
> > new pages into Twitter. It's still running:
> > http://twitter.com/cz_newdrafts
>
> Wikimedia article feeds on twitter:
>
> @en_wikinews
> @dewikinews
> @wikinews (Chinese)
>
> @el_wikipedia is an article counter
> @wikipedia_de is the daily FA
> @zhwiki_newpages is all new pages
> @ZHWP is some form of selected article feed
>
> Anyone know of other active ones?
>
> The German approach here seems a pretty good one, at least to test the
> water - daily featured article, plus possibly other front-page
> content. Perhaps a feed of all new (rather than featured-that-day)
> "quality" content would be interesting, to give people something they
> might not see from the main page? A feed of enwiki's newly graded FA +
> GA + FP would be about ten a day, which seems quite a reasonable
> figure; I'm not sure what the figures are like for others, though, and
> this would be a bit more unpredictable than the daily feeds.
>
> As far as new articles, well. Feeding an unfiltered list would get a
> lot of junk (and, perhaps more annoyingly, a lot of quickly dead
> links). If we look at *surviving* pages, and assume we somehow would
> be able to not send out the ones that are going to get deleted, then
> we're looking at an article every forty seconds on enwiki, five
> minutes on itwiki, ten minutes on jawiki, twenty minutes on huwiki...
>
> (This might be an interesting tool for trying to stoke interest in
> less active projects - feeds slow enough to not be annoying, but
> varied enough they might catch people's attention. Hmm. I wonder what
> overlap there is between [language groups common on twitter] and
> [small WP projects needing users].)
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>   andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Referendum 2011 mailout — issues

[Lodewijk]

Maybe we could catch this discussion on wiki - it is an ever returning
issue, and the lessons could be valuable for other campaigns too.

Lodewijk

2011/8/20 Milos Rancic 

> (It seems that mail server is not functioning properly. I've got
> "local delivery failed". Trying again or tomorrow.)
>
> On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 04:14, Andrew Garrett 
> wrote:
> > On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 9:43 AM, Milos Rancic  wrote:
> >> While it is not a big deal for me to get six emails (including one in
> >> Polish) instead of once, I want to say that I already added pattern
> >> for my bot accounts at the Wikimedia nomail list and it existed at
> >> Friday morning there, at least [1].
> >
> > Sorry, that list doesn't accept regular expressions. It's a straight
> > list of account names, which, until yesterday, had to go through about
> > twenty minutes of preprocessing before it was useful.
>
> I supposed that's the problem. Anyway, may you do something like:
> * Check for accounts with the same email address.
> * If some of the accounts have "bot" in the name (something like
> "bot($|\W)"), remove them.
> * If none of the accounts have it, don't touch.
> * If all of the accounts have it, don't touch.
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikilovesmonuments

[Lodewijk]

Hi billy,

thanks for your attention. Wiki Loves Monuments is being organized by
several chapters in over 15 countries in Europe. The main page for that is
indeed www.wikilovesmonuments.eu . The Wikimedia Foundation is not involved
in organizing the events, nor is it responsible for its websites - this is
one of the projects run by chapters.

Unfortunately, it is not affordable to register every possible domain which
might be hijacked. We were aware that there would be a risk for that, and
that potentially, this could be organized in even many more countries. We
did choose to register wikilovesmonuments.org (registered by WMDE) but
didn't register the .com - we had to draw a line somewhere.

For a possible intercontinental contest, we would have to rely on the .org
domain.

Lodewijk

2011/8/26 billy joel 

>
> Yes, I understood that.
> But I think its kind of stupid that the foundation didn't buy the .com
> domain and that it was possible to hijack it...
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions on controversial content and images of identifiable people

[Lodewijk]

I think there are definitely some neutral criteria which might be
applicable. And maybe there are some criteria which are harder to neutralize
(yeah, i know - has a different meaning :) )

Take for example nudity. It should be possible to create a category "Images
that show a vagina", "images that show a penis" which can even be
subcategorized into "(...) as main topic of the picture" or "(...) as detail
of the picture". It will require some work and thinking by neutrality
thinkers like you, but it should be possible. And I'm confident that you and
the likes of you will stay close on the topic to help us remember that we
should make it as objective as possible.

The next step is that someone can use these neutral categories to choose
what he/she wants or does not want to see. For example, maybe someone has a
fear of elevators, so that person can hide all images in the category
"images that show an elevator".

Violence is definitely a topic harder to define objectively - but I'm
confident we'll find a way to do that. If people have problems with that, we
shouldn't change the categories (we could add more), but they should change
their filter, and choose other categories to hide/show.

The only truely non-neutral part could be where we suggest which categories
someone might want to hide. Or packages of categories.

Lodewijk

2011/8/26 Kim Bruning 

> On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 01:25:32PM +0530, Bishakha Datta wrote:
> > On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 6:45 AM, David Goodman 
> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > I want to ask you something else. It's been suggested several times at
> > > various places that the present resolution is justified as a
> > > compromise to prevent a considerably more repressive form of
> > > censorship.
> >
> >
> > This implies that the proposed image hiding feature is a less repressive
> > form of censorship. I do not see the proposed feature as censorship - all
> > the images remain on the site. Nothing is removed. Nothing is suppressed.
> > Everything remains.
>
> The image hiding feature itself is not a form of censorship, as far as
> I'm aware of.
>
> The data used to feed the image hiding feature can be classified as a
> "censorship tool"  (Source: ALA... Read The Fine Thread for details).
>
> Even if we *never* build the image hider itself, but just prepare special
> categories for it, we would be participating in (stages of) censorship.
>
> sincerely,
>Kim Bruning
>
> --
> [Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment]
> gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key  FEF9DD72
> 5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A  01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72
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Re: [Foundation-l] Chapters

[Lodewijk]

Hi Jimmy,

There are several side effects to the idea of not allowing chapters at all
to fundraise (I note that boardmembers and staff members have a different
take on this, so I'll keep it general - keeping in mind there are many other
aspects to be considered, such as transparancy. However, imho fundraising
through chapters should remain the best way).

* Having one organization spreading around money is going to lead, sooner or
later, to that organization solely making decisions on what is important and
what is not. Centralized decision making, centralized prioritising.
* Forcing chapters to abide the WMF cyclus is centralization - an efficient
grant system likely includes fixed moments to ask for grants. Many chapters
currently still have a lot of flexibility to try out programs. If we would
not have had such flexibility, we would not have had Wiki Loves Monuments
for example - a lot of the budget part happened late in the execution
because 95% happens with volunteers.
* Asking grants automatically means language issues. Chapters not having
English as a mother tongue, *will* be more hesistant, no matter what help
you put in place. It will be a big effort, because more bottle necks
(English speakers) are introduced.
* Asking for external grants is much harder - many Dutch grant organizations
for example have a requirement that maximum x% of your budget can come from
grants (For example, Mondriaanstichting has a maximum of 40% grant money).
If we are forced to grant request to the foundation, that cuts off that
income source too.
* Not giving chapters access to donor data has many side effects - because
they will no longer be the organization responsible for communicating with
them. Sure, they would need to be responsible in that too, but denying them
access also means they cannot communicate their activities at the same time,
and get more volunteers involved from externally.

Maybe centralization is not your goal, but it is what you are doing. Having
a non-grant funding just makes an organization more independent, and makes
it more flexible and responsible. That organization is more likely to
develop itself professionally.

That does not leave out that there are many problems with the current
distribution system (50/50 etc) but that is a whole other discussion.

Lodewijk

2011/8/11 Jimmy Wales 

> On 8/10/11 8:51 PM, birgitte...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > I don't think chapters are being cut off I think they are being
> > centralized. Centralization, not lack of funding, is what I believe
> > will make chapters ineffective.
>
> Chapters are not being centralized.  I don't know how I can be more clear.
>
> The idea that the only thing that can make chapters really decentralized
> is the very narrow question of who actually processes the donation is
> mistaken.
>
> --Jimbo
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Chapters

[Lodewijk]

John is unfortunately right. The (currently not publicly available as I
understand) draft includes clauses that require every chapter that receives
a grant to abide all US law, including but not exclusively US anti terrorism
laws and trade bans (unless a court has ruled that... etc). This puts imho
chapters in an awkward position - being forced to follow laws they cannot
reasonably know about unless they hire expensive expertise.

It may be a logical consequence for the WMF giving out these grants (I don't
know but wouldn't be surprised if i.e. Ford Foundation has similar
requirements), but it clearly is a nasty side effect of the choice of the
board to no longer allow chapters to fundraise.

Because although it is claimed differently (and although Thomas seems to
hope differently) the interpretation by the staff is clearly that no chapter
except WMDE should fundraise - no matter how hard they work to improve.

The exact reason for this seems to be vague to me. I really do hope the
board will step forth and makes clear what their reasoning was and is - and
doesn't hide behind staff (board members who already did so are being
appreciated, but I'm still missing important voices). Is the reason really
transparency? Is it about transferring money? Because that is important, but
(sometimes easily) fixable. Or is the reasoning you don't like the projects
the chapters work on? Because *then* we should have a discussion about that,
and not hide behind non-reasons.

Lodewijk

2011/8/29 John Vandenberg 

> On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 2:54 PM, Michael Snow 
> wrote:
> > On 8/28/2011 9:00 PM, Victor Vasiliev wrote:
> >> On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 7:24 AM, Nathan  wrote:
> >>> Which activities are these?
> >> Copyright and internet law lobbying.
> > This is incorrect.
>
> Michael,
>
> Have you seen the draft Chapters Grant Agreement?
>
> --
> John Vandenberg
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Chapters

[Lodewijk]

2011/8/30 Ray Saintonge 

> On 08/29/11 1:55 AM, Lodewijk wrote:
> >
> > It may be a logical consequence for the WMF giving out these grants (I
> don't
> > know but wouldn't be surprised if i.e. Ford Foundation has similar
> > requirements), but it clearly is a nasty side effect of the choice of the
> > board to no longer allow chapters to fundraise.
>
> How can they stop chapters from fundraising? They can certainly stop
> chapters from participating in the WMF's fundraising campaign, but they
> will still have no control over a chapter's own fundraising programmes.
> >
>

I have heard this argument too often now, so let me finally reply to it.
Perhaps I should rephrase my statement to "not allowing good faith chapters
to fundraise". Because that is basically what is happening - a chapter that
has the best with the movement in mind, will not try to compete with the
Wikimedia Foundation by fundraising on its own. I have never heard of any
international organization which had two organizations (national and world
wide) fundraising at the same time in the same country. And why would
not-online fundraising suddenly be OK if the main reasons of the WMF are
transparency and not following the WMF strategy closely enough? Why would it
be so different? Because at the same time, chapters would still be asking
donors to support those goals Wikipedia stands for: the sum of all knowledge
available for every human being. The message doesn't change, the
accountability doesn't suddenly improve and the performed activities with
the money don't change. The only thing that is different is that it is less
visible and that the fundraising agreement doesn't forbid it.

Lodewijk
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Re: [Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced

[Lodewijk]

there are however generic internet filters - foundations which serve as
internet provider and filter out "unsafe" pages (usually with a religious
foundation). These usually have problems though, because they are recognized
as open proxy, and thus blocked. this is a popular service in parts of NL -
and potentially keeps editors away because they have no on-site way of
filtering. But maybe some think we shouldn't want those people as editors
anyway... (yes, that last is sarcasm)

Please note that the group wikipedians, authors, is somewhat self selected,
and we're just running a self fulfilling prophecy. Wikipedians will often be
relatively more liberal - but why should we force liberal views upon other
people? I don't like the filters, and i wouldn't want them (except when
someone comes up with a troll-filter) - but I do think that people have the
right not to see/hear things, just like you should have the right to say
them.

I do however not understand why we are having the fundamental discussion all
over again. I think it is pretty clear there is a large group of people who
want the technology developed - we could next discuss where we want it
implemented (it seems dewp isn't too excited about it for example, others
might be). Let us focus on having a good implementation rather than the
things that (whether we like it or not) already seem to have been decided
for us.

Lodewijk

Am 5. September 2011 18:00 schrieb Andre Engels :

> On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 5:04 PM, Risker  wrote:
>
> > On 5 September 2011 11:02, Marc A. Pelletier  wrote:
> >
> > > On 05/09/2011 10:55 AM, Andrew Gray wrote:
> > > > As to why no-one is distributing a "filtered" version of Wikipedia, I
> > > > think that falls more under the general heading of "where are the
> > > > major third-party reusers that anyone actually cares about?" - the
> > > > non-existence of a commercial filtered version is less of a surprise
> > > > when we consider the dearth of commercial packaged versions at all...
> > >
> > > You'd think a "safe" version would be a valuable service that many
> would
> > > be willing to pay for, given the hordes of people beating down our
> doors
> > > demanding just that...
> > >
> > > oh, wait.
> > >
> > >
> >
> > They already exist, and have for years.  We call them "mirrors.
> >
>
> Yes, but most mirrors are just that - mirrors. As far as I know, there is
> no
> Wikipedia mirror that actually contains extra functionality - like improved
> searching, wisiwyg editing, automatic translation, image filtering, or
> whatever else one could think of.
>
>
> --
> André Engels, andreeng...@gmail.com
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Re: [Foundation-l] On curiosity, cats and scapegoats

[Lodewijk]

The question shouldn't be about who is right - whether it is good that
certain images are not considered "safe for work" - we are not in a position
to change the opinion of society, and we shouldn't want to be in such
position either.

The discussion however should be, if at all, about whether we want to offer
people the option to view content in such environments without being
constantly on their guard for what content might pop up. Do we want to offer
people to tweak the images of Wikipedia in such a way that it suits their
life style, that they can use Wikipedia where and when they would want to?

The board clearly answered that question with yes. Do you think it is better
to force people to choose between watching an article with an image they do
not want to see, and not seeing the article at all?

Lodewijk

Am 6. September 2011 16:44 schrieb Dan Rosenthal :

> On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 5:15 PM, Sarah Stierch  >wrote:
>
> > >
> > > Does your feminism excludes necessity for sexual education?
> > >
> > >
> > No, but, I can send you some pictures on Commons that have been "speedy
> > keeps" of strippers with their legs spread wide because they are
> > "educational and high quality."
> >
> You're saying that a picture of a stripper with her legs wide open can in
> no
> way be educational and high quality? The undertone from this statement is
> that "It would be better and less offensive if her legs were closed" which
> to me highlights the censorship problem precisely.
>
>
> >
> > My boss, who is bound to have a baby any day now, can't open the
> pregnancy
> > article at work because the intro is NSFW our workplace. I can't open the
> > [[vagina]] article at work either, because of the really in your face
> photo
> > of a vagina when you open it up, however, I can totally read the intro to
> > [[penis]] since there isn't a big giant penis in one's face upon opening
> > it.
> > I work in an educational environment (a museum institution, which has
> > exhibits on sexuality, gender, etc) and I can't even look at these
> articles
> > at work, take that as you will.
> >
> This raises twin issues. First, it raises the presumption that you and your
> boss's workplace ought to be the model for how people around the world
> determine what they should or shouldn't see -- at home OR at work.
>
> Second, it echoes my first paragraph that it makes a judgment call about
> the
> appropriateness of a specific image based on the perceived "immoralness" or
> "embarassment" of that image.
>
>
> > "The majority of the women (and men) who participate in this
> > anti-sexualized
> > environment are generally liberal left-wing political individuals. Many
> are
> > pro-sex and embrace liberal sexual lifestyles or are open minded to what
> > other people do in their bedrooms. Some don't even live in America.  I
> > think
> > you need to rethink your statements before you go around accusing
> > supporters, including women, of this referendum as sexually dysfunctional
> > conservatives."
>
>
> The above paragraph is one massive "Citations Needed", but that aside, it
> misses the point.
>
> "Many are" carries with it that "some aren't."
> "Some don't" implies that "some do."
>
> In criticizing Milos for generalizing the opinions of one population, you
> yourself are doing the exact same thing. We don't have that data, and I'm
> sure if there WERE any it could be easily picked apart on methodological
> issues. The broader lesson is that attempting to generalize a view on
> morality to any populace is doomed to inaccuracy and failure.
>  -Dan
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Re: [Foundation-l] On curiosity, cats and scapegoats

[Lodewijk]

I think it is obvious that some people will have a problem with those
images, and others don't. Apparently Sarah is (justified or not - that
doesn't matter) under the impression that it would not be appreciated at her
work if she would open such images there. That she has this impression is a
fact. That she is because of that unable to access the textual contents of
the article is also a fact.

The question in place is now - should Sarah, if she wants to, be enabled to
selectively filter out images so that she can browse on Wikipedia without
worrying too much about whether the next page will contain an image that
people on her workplace would find inappropriate?

Of course people are allowed to have all kind of opinions on this - I heard
Kim (and others of an alledged vocal minority) saying very clearly "no",
even though he found it necessary to twist my words for that. And the board
clearly said yes.

Lodewijk

Am 6. September 2011 22:45 schrieb Béria Lima :

> >
> > *My boss (...) can't open the pregnancy article at work because the intro
> > is NSFW our workplace.
> > *
>
>
> I'm sorry but i don't find the problem in this article.
>
> *I can't open the [[vagina]] article at work either, because of the really
> > in your face photo of a vagina when you open it up
> > *
>
>
> The article is about vagina. The only picture there who might be "NSFW" is
> this one: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Azvag.jpg who only shows
> what are the anatomy of a vagina. I find very educational.
>
> And BTW, if you don't want to see a vagina, don't open the article.
>
> *who is totally grossed out by that photo on the vagina article,
> > gahhh, surely she can't be the only one!
> > *
>
>
> No it was not. There are in fact a category in commons (
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Vagina ) and in that category i
> found the image who replaced the Image you dislike so
> much<
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human_vulva_with_visible_vaginal_opening.jpg
> >.
> But not because you don't like, because the one in the article now is more
> clear.
> _
> *Béria Lima*
> <http://wikimedia.pt/>(351) 925 171 484
>
> *Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter
> livre
> acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. É isso o que estamos a
> fazer <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Nossos_projetos>.*
>
>
> On 6 September 2011 15:15, Sarah Stierch  wrote:
>
> > >
> > > Does your feminism excludes necessity for sexual education?
> > >
> > >
> > No, but, I can send you some pictures on Commons that have been "speedy
> > keeps" of strippers with their legs spread wide because they are
> > "educational and high quality."
> >
> > My boss, who is bound to have a baby any day now, can't open the
> pregnancy
> > article at work because the intro is NSFW our workplace. I can't open the
> > [[vagina]] article at work either, because of the really in your face
> photo
> > of a vagina when you open it up, however, I can totally read the intro to
> > [[penis]] since there isn't a big giant penis in one's face upon opening
> > it.
> > I work in an educational environment (a museum institution, which has
> > exhibits on sexuality, gender, etc) and I can't even look at these
> articles
> > at work, take that as you will.
> >
> > Sarah
> > who is totally grossed out by that photo on the vagina article,
> > gahhh, surely she can't be the only one!
> >
> > --
> > GLAMWIKI Partnership Ambassador for the Wikimedia
> > Foundation<http://www.glamwiki.org>
> > Wikipedian-in-Residence, Archives of American
> > Art<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SarahStierch>
> > and
> > Sarah Stierch Consulting
> > *Historical, cultural & artistic research & advising.*
> > --
> > http://www.sarahstierch.com/
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> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
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Re: [Foundation-l] On curiosity, cats and scapegoats

[Lodewijk]

(as a side-respons: besides being quite rude of making your point this way;
it is nonsensical, because in this case it is the broadcaster (you) who
decides what to leave out, and not the receiver (me). Showing everything or
showing only the parts people want to see have just as much chance for bias.
You could even argue that forcing people to look at pictures and make them
feel uncomfortable gives them in their specific interpretation a larger bias
about the topic than you can ever induce by leaving the pictures out for
that same group.

Lodewijk

Am 7. September 2011 20:38 schrieb Kim Bruning :

> On Tue, Sep 06, 2011 at 05:30:54PM +0200, Kim Bruning wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 06, 2011 at 05:51:40PM +0200, Lodewijk wrote:
> > > The question shouldn't [...] be about whether we want to
> > > offer [...] people [...] Wikipedia?
>
> (
> just as a note: This "quote" is intended as an illustration of why
> it may be preferable to have an all-or-nothing policy for
> wikipedia articles, as opposed to we-hide-parts-of-the-article.
>
> If part of a story is hidden, you can introduce very
> strong bias.
>
> Obviously, it is not normally my intention to deliberately
> twist people's words. (Other than as an illustration here)
> )
>
> sincerely,
> Kim Bruning
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] EU Consultation on Open Access (deadline coming soon)

[Lodewijk]

Hi,

just to be clear: was this submitted /on behalf/ of the wmf? or as a
community effort?

lodewijk

Am 9. September 2011 22:44 schrieb Daniel Mietchen <
daniel.mietc...@googlemail.com>:

> The Wikimedia response has been submitted, based on
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Research:Committee/Areas_of_interest/Open-access_policy/EU_Consultation_on_scientific_information_in_the_digital_age&oldid=2888771
> .
>
> Thanks to all who helped on the way.
>
> Daniel
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 9:31 PM, Daniel Mietchen
>  wrote:
> > While the EC may weigh non-EU responses differently, being in the EU
> > or having EU citizenship is technically not required - any individual,
> > organization or institution can submit a response.
> >
> > Daniel
> >
> > On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 8:26 PM, Kim Bruning 
> wrote:
> >> On Tue, Sep 06, 2011 at 11:50:13PM -0500, Keegan Peterzell wrote:
> >>> On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 6:40 PM, Kim Bruning 
> wrote:
> >>> >
> >>> > You can fill it in as a citizen, (which I did)
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Who, me?
> >>
> >> Haha, yes, you too, provided you're in an EU country. :-)
> >>
> >> Sincerely,
> >>Kim Bruning
> >>
> >> --
> >> I question the question of questioning all questions.
> >>
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> >
>
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[Foundation-l] Wiki Loves Monuments (Was: On curiosity, cats and scapegoats)

[Lodewijk]

Hi,

just a few clarifications:

I totally agree with Naoko of course. However, for me the main goal is not
even just the photos itself, but the reach it gives us to involve more
people. If I understand the statistics correctly; up to date, we have been
able to involve roughly 1000 people throughout Europe in this contest who
never before uploaded/edited anything.

Involving new people was also the reason to set WLM up as a contest - that
assists at least in Europe very well in attracting attention of people who
normally do not edit Wikipedia, and persuade them to participate. However,
in the end they often keep participating because it is fun and because they
like it that their images appear on Wikipedia.

@Yaroslav: the main reason to focus on Europe this year was the large
concentration, intergovernmental support (European Commission & Council of
Europe) and lack of resources (mainly man power). If there are next year
enough people to carry on the idea, I'm sure we can include more countries,
*if* the concept works for them.

Then lists etc are a very practical precondition - not a fundamental one. If
we can find other ways to make it work, that is find of course. Also, if
countries rather run a project on different topics (volunteer involvement is
important, otherwise it won't work) they should definitely do that (I heard
suggestions for Wiki Loves Wildlife, Wiki Loves Rivers and many others!).

Finally a note about chapters. Yes, having a chapter is very helpful -
usually it is a group of organized volunteers who has existing experience
with media and volunteer coordination (because some coordination is
necessary) and they have access to some kind of budgeting / bank accounts.
But also this is very practical - this year four countries without any
chapter participated: Andorra (with the help of Amical), Belgium &
Luxembourg (with a lot of dedicated volunteers, mostly in Belgium) and
Romania (with the help of a local pro-linux association and local
volunteers). So there is definitely no rule against chapters without a
chapter to participate, but it does require a steeper learning curve, and
some extra dedication.

You can find much of the thinking behind this concept in our post-mortem of
2010 and the notes on the Berlin meeting last May with many participating
countries; all available on Commons. Of course I invite all comments
regarding improvements for next years in our post-mortem after September.

Best regards,
Lodewijk

Am 12. September 2011 07:49 schrieb Yaroslav M. Blanter :

> On Mon, 12 Sep 2011 10:51:33 +0900, KIZU Naoko  wrote:
> > Off topic alert:
> >
> > I haven't given a closer look to your main topic, Milos, so I cannot
> > give a responsible statement in any way. But your reference to Wiki
> > Loves Monuments, while I agree it's heavily Europe-focused, I strongly
> > disagree with you on its decadency, as an (retired) aesthetic. While
> > the determination what artworks are heavily depends on the community
> > to appreciate, so partly I understand your concern, if WLM is carried
> > on only by European chapter people, it can hardly of NPOV at some
> > future moment, but artworks belong to the critical part of "the sum of
> > human knowledge" along with the information who created them and then
> > have appreciated or rejected them.
> >
>
> Only countries which have lists of monuments compiled by the government
> and having the status of the law are eligible for WLM. This is in some
> sense POV but no more POV than say writing articles of members of
> parliament who were elected by direct vote. If Japan has such a list (I
> hope it does) next year it would be eligible to participate. My
> understanding is that somehow the organizers did not expect such interest
> and did not try to contact chapters outside Europe. Presumably next year
> they will do. On the other hand, by the next year some of the European
> countries may exhaust their monuments (in the sense that the most of the
> pictures will be taken and the articles written or judged to be impossible
> to write). Thus, NPOV does not seem to be a problem to me.
>
> I do see two other problems with WLM, which are (i) competition format,
> which implicitly stimulates certain strategies we normally do not want to
> stimulate; (ii) involvement of the chapters as a precondition - some
> countries do not have chapters, some chapters showed no interest, some were
> unable to organize anything in the end. But I am not sure such discussion
> belongs to this thread.
>
> Cheers
> Yaroslav
>
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wiki Loves Monuments (Was: On curiosity, cats and scapegoats)

[Lodewijk]

Am 12. September 2011 11:04 schrieb Yaroslav M. Blanter :

> > @Yaroslav: the main reason to focus on Europe this year was the large
> > concentration, intergovernmental support (European Commission & Council
> of
> > Europe) and lack of resources (mainly man power). If there are next year
> > enough people to carry on the idea, I'm sure we can include more
> countries,
> > *if* the concept works for them.
> >
> <...>
>
> > Finally a note about chapters. Yes, having a chapter is very helpful -
> > usually it is a group of organized volunteers who has existing
> experience
> > with media and volunteer coordination (because some coordination is
> > necessary) and they have access to some kind of budgeting / bank
> accounts.
> > But also this is very practical - this year four countries without any
> > chapter participated: Andorra (with the help of Amical), Belgium &
> > Luxembourg (with a lot of dedicated volunteers, mostly in Belgium) and
> > Romania (with the help of a local pro-linux association and local
> > volunteers). So there is definitely no rule against chapters without a
> > chapter to participate, but it does require a steeper learning curve,
> and
> > some extra dedication.
> >
>
> Well, as one example, we had some private correspondence about involvement
> of Russia: The chapter failed to organize anything, mostly because they
> failed to realize that the database they were pointed out to is workable,
> they did not want or dis not manage to contact other people who understand
> the subject, and there was no way for any other group of people to organize
> the contest. As the result, I just had to fill up the (previously empty)
> category "WLM 2011 in Russia" myself single-handedly, not obviously
> expecting any credit for this, but just to avoid creating an impression
> that there are no monuments in Russia.
>
> Also, if there was no group let us give a random example - in Macedonia -
> who wanted to organize the contest, still it would be a good idea to open a
> category for WLM in Macedonia, just to get a chance to indeed involve new
> people and to possibly get a number of good quality image previously
> missing. Especially if people would know this in advance and could take
> pictures for instance during the summer holidays.
>
> Just to be understood correctly, I think WLM is in general a good idea,
> and my criticism is not to undermine it is any way, but to possibly create
> some input for the next time. (I am a WLM supporter and I uploaded so far I
> believe about 1% of the total amount of images).
>
>
Thanks for the clarification - I understand better what you mean now. We
indeed chose explicitely only to organize WLM in countries where there could
be an effort to make the necessary preperations (preparing monument lists
that are useful for non-Wikipedians, having a national jury and awards to
attract attention of newbees etc). So it was indeed necessary to have an
organizing team locally to organize Wiki Loves Monuments. This because
otherwise the images would indeed end up on Commons, but most likely unused,
because the monument is not clearly identified etc.

Anyway, lets have this discussion more in depth later on, after we can see
some more clearly the final results of the 2011 edition in all countries.

Best regards,

Lodewijk
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Re: [Foundation-l] board meeting minutes: Aug 3 2011

[Lodewijk]

Hi Phoebe,

thanks a lot!

Reading the minutes, I am wondering - are the reports of the independent
companies (KPMG and Daniel J. Fusco & Company) available online so that the
considerations of the board can be better understood? If so, it would
probably be helpful to link them from the minutes :)

Thanks,

Lodewijk

Am 12. September 2011 19:27 schrieb phoebe ayers :

> FYI: the minutes from the August 3rd, 2011 Board meeting in Haifa (the
> Wikimania meeting) are now posted:
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2011-08-03
>
> Regards,
> Phoebe Ayers
>
>
> p.s. Digression on minutes:
> Since I recently had to learn the process by which board minutes are
> written and approved, I thought I would share it with you all --
> possibly of interest to long-time foundation watchers :)
>
> 1. both the executive assistant to the board & the board secretary
> take notes during the meeting; the executive assistant makes sure that
> no important items are lost and their presence as recorder allows the
> board secretary to fully participate in the meeting. [in this case
> additionally since it was a transition meeting both SJ and I took
> notes and shared with each other].
> 2. notes are typed up in minute form by the the executive assistant,
> who then gives the document to the board secretary, who then reviews
> and edits, and then shares the minutes with the board. This process
> may take some time (e.g. after Wikimania when everyone is traveling or
> participating in the conference afterwards).
> 3. the minutes are voted on as a regular resolution; this means a week
> for the full board to discuss/edit onwiki if there are any typos or if
> the minutes don't reflect the meeting accurately. After finalization
> there is then a two-week period to vote to approve (in practice the
> voting period for minutes is generally shortened to a week);
> occasionally minutes may get approved by a vote at the next meeting.
> 4. after approval, the board secretary posts the minutes to the
> foundation wiki, as the copy of record for the
> community/board/auditors etc.
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wiki Loves Monuments (Was: On curiosity, cats and scapegoats)

[Lodewijk]

Yes, there is (thanks Béria for linking) - however I think I speak for many
on that list that it would be appreciated if you can hold off the more
general 2012 discussions until October :) Just to state the obvious.

Best regards,

Lodewijk

Am 13. September 2011 12:28 schrieb Béria Lima :

> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilovesmonuments
> _
> *Béria Lima*
> <http://wikimedia.pt/>(351) 925 171 484
>
> *Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter
> livre
> acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. É isso o que estamos a
> fazer <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Nossos_projetos>.*
>
>
> On 13 September 2011 11:26, Yaroslav M. Blanter  wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 13 Sep 2011 11:39:52 +0300, Strainu  wrote:
> > > Hi Naoko,
> > >
> > > Thanks for your pointers. What I'm seeing this year is that in order
> > > to go global, we'll probably need around 10 people to coordinate the
> > > event (I'm thinking that this year there were only 2 people involved
> > > in all the steps and a few more that helped in different areas).
> > >
> > > This means that it's not too early to start talking about WLM2012, but
> > > perhaps a better place for this is the WikiLovesMonuments lists. We
> > > would like to see you participate in discussions there :)
> > >
> >
> > Is there a public WLM list open for discussion?
> >
> > Cheers
> > Yaroslav
> >
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Re: [Foundation-l] On Wikinews

[Lodewijk]

Am 13. September 2011 13:34 schrieb Theo10011 :


>
> The biggest strength that a Wikinews like project can always have, is the
> most diverse contributor base anywhere. We have contributors from so many
> countries, they all know how to contribute, they speak a hundred languages
> and have access to things a news/wire service will never have. Wikinews was
> never able to capitalize on this.
>
> Theo
>
>
Do we really have such a diverse base? I agree that Wikimedia is quite
diverse - although even Wikipedia is made up of way too many intellectual
white men (or rather, too few elderly people, women, people from the 'global
south', people who did not have a university degree or are getting one etc
etc etc) - even Wikipedia is quite biased in its community. And then we're
only talking about the English language - you can imagine that the Dutch
language projects have relatively many people living in... (no kidding) the
Netherlands. We are not perfectly diverse, but we do have the potential to
be very diverse indeed. On some aspects we might be *relatively* diverse,
but on many others we're not.

It is this potential that does matter though - but to achieve that, we
should work on it.

But more importantly - you are correct that Wikinews' user base is simply
too small. You can theoretically write an encyclopedia with 3 skilled
people, as long as you take your time and do a hell lot of research.
However, this is not true for a news source - to make that work you always
need up to date everything, you need to cover the latest news and have
interesting research. If Wikipedia stands still for a week (no edits) we can
just continue after that. If the New York Times would do the same, most
likely they have lost a lot of their readers. Continuity and masses are even
more important for Wikinews than for Wikipedia to make it work.

Therefore, I'm not so sure if forking is good per se. Wikinews was already
too small to my liking, and splitting it up might bring the community even
further below the critical mass. At the same time it might bring the
apparently needed changes for some, and make them work - I do hope though
that both communities will quickly figure out what methods work best, and
join together again to make it more likely to pass this threshold of
activity.

Lodewijk
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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Welcome to Wikimedia D.C.

[Lodewijk]

Hi Tomasz,

Like Béria states, this is not very unusual. In some jurisdictions, the
usage of a trademark in your name is tricky, and sometimes there are other
legal reasons to choose a different official name. However, all chapters use
Wikimedia XX as their 'trade name' in everyday life. This is something
chapcom and the board is definitely aware of. Normally the official name is
used in the resolutions, but for some reason this must have slipped this
time. You can however see on
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Recognition_of_Wikimedia_District_of_Columbia
that
the linked bylaws (which is what is defining the entity) explicitely state
the legal name, even in the link. There is no confusion possible therefore,
also from a very formal point of view.

Best regards,
Lodewijk


Am 13. September 2011 15:17 schrieb Béria Lima :

> Tomasz,
>
> Some chapters use "Wikimedia" as official name, and some don't. Wikimedia
> UK
> for example has "*Wiki UK Ltd*" as official name. There are no real problem
> with that, since the chapter use the "Wikimedia " as
> working name.
> _
> *Béria Lima*
>
> *Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter
> livre
> acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. É isso o que estamos a
> fazer <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Nossos_projetos>.*
>
>
> 2011/9/13 Tomasz W. Kozłowski 
>
> > Errrm.. this is an official approval of the organisation called "Wiki
> > Society of Washington, DC Inc." or I miss something?
> >
> > From a *very* formal point of view, the Board has just recognised a
> > non-existing organisation, as there is no single mention of the name
> > "Wikimedia" in the bylaws of "Wiki Society of Washington, DC Inc.".
> > Why does Wiki Society of Washington, DC Inc use the name "Wikimedia
> > District of Columbia" as their official/convenient name, then?
> >
> > Am I the first one to spot such a difference in the name of the
> > chapter? All (or almost all) existing chapters use the name
> > "Wikimedia" -- WMNYC's official name, for example, is "Wikimedia New
> > York City".
> >
> > --
> > Tomasz W. Kozłowski
> >
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Re: [Foundation-l] 86% of german users disagree with the introduction of the personal image filter

[Lodewijk]

I understand that the details (well, quite big and relevant details) of this
concept was the topic of the survey. So probably it has not been mapped out
yet (because it was/is unknown), but that would be the next step.

I also would like to make a sidenote: if the main argument of the German
Wikipedians would be that this categorization an sich would be evil because
it can be used by governments and ISP's etc, then I have to disappoint you:
even if only one project would like to make the implementation of a filter
possible for their readers, categorization would appear.

Further, categorization of images will be happening likely on Commons (my
guess) - so even if you opt out as German Wikipedia (although personally I
think it would be more interesting to do a reader survey inside the German
langauge visitors before deciding on that) it would not help that specific
scenario.

Lodewijk

Am 19 de Setembro de 2011 09:47 schrieb David Gerard :

> On 19 September 2011 06:28, David Levy  wrote:
>
> > Additionally, if and when the WMF proudly announces the filters'
> > introduction, the news media and general public won't accept "bad luck
> > to those using the feature" as an excuse for its failure.
>
>
> Oh, yes. The trouble with a magical category is not just that it's
> impossible to implement well - but that it's fraught as a public
> relations move.
>
> What is the WMF going to be explicitly - and *implicitly* - promising
> readers? What is the publicity plan? Has this actually been mapped out
> at all?
>
>
> - d.
>
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[Foundation-l] We need more information (was: Blog from Sue about ...)

[Lodewijk]

(not responding to anyone in particular) I'm one of the people who tried to
participate in the discussion without taking a strong standpoint
(intentionally - because I'm quite nuanced on the issue, and open for good
arguments of either side) and I have to fully agree with Ryan. I have yet
been unable to participate in this discussion without either being ignored
fully (nothing new to that, I agree) or being put in "the opposite camp". I
basically gave up.

So I do have to say that I agree with the sentiment that the discussion is
not very inviting, and is actually discouraging people who want to find a
solution in the middle to participate. In that respect I do agree with Sue's
analysis. However, considering the background and the 'German issue' I don't
have the feeling it was particularly helpful in resolving that either.

Anyhow, about the filter issue. I think at this stage it is very hard to
determine any opinion about "the filter" because everybody seems to have
their own idea what it will look like, what the consequences will be and how
it will affect their and other people's lives. I myself find it hard to take
a stance based on the little information available and I applaud the
visionaries that can. Information I am even more missing however (and I
think it would have been good to have that information *before* we took any
poll within our own community) is what our average 'reader on the street'
thinks about this. Do they feel they need it? What parts of society are they
from (i.e. is that a group we are representative of? Or one we barely have
any interaction with?) What kind of filter do they want (including the
option: none at all). Obviously this should not be held in the US, but
rather world wide - as widely as possible.

With that information we can make a serious consideration how far we want to
go to give our readers what they want - or not at all. I don't think we
should be making that choice without trying to figure out (unless I missed a
research into that) what they actually do want. We are making way too many
assumptions here which don't strike me as entirely accurate (how do people
get to an article page for example (by Béria), or how many people are
offended by the image on the autofellatio article (by Erik)) - and we don't
have to do that if we would just ask those people we're talking about -
rather than talking about them on our ivory mountain.

One final remark: I couldn't help but laugh a little when I read somewhere
that we are the experts, and we are making decisions for our readers - and
that these readers should have to take that whole complete story, because
what else is the use of having these experts sit together. (probably I
interpreted this with my own thoughts) And I was always thinking that
Wikipedia was about masses participating in their own way - why do we trust
people to 'ruin' an article for others, but not just for themselves?

Hoping for a constructive discussion and more data on what our 'readers'
actually want and/or need...

Lodewijk

No dia 30 de Setembro de 2011 11:40, Béria Lima escreveu:

> I'll go by pieces in your mail Erik.
>
> *The intro and footer of Sue's post say: "The purpose of this post is not
> to
> > talk specifically about the referendum results or the image hiding
> feature"
> > (...) So it's perhaps not surprising that she doesn't mention the de.wp
> poll
> > regarding the filter in a post that she says is not about the filter. ;-)
> > *
>
>
> It is quite surprise yes, since she gave half of the post to de.wiki main
> page "issue"[1]. And also, if we decide to
> ABF<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ABF>of the other side (like
> that post pretty much does) I would say that she
> doesn't mention because would not help her case.
>
> *Now, it's completely fair to say that the filter issue remains the
> elephant
> > in the room until it's resolved what will actually be implemented and
> how.
> > *
>
>
> You forgot the "*IF*": IF the elephant will be or not implemented.
>
> *What Sue is saying is that we sometimes fail to take the needs and
> > expectations of our readers fully into account
> > *
>
>
> Well, if we consider the "referendum" a good place to go see results[2] we
> can say that our readers are in doubt about that issue, pretty much 50%-50%
> in doubt - with the difference that our germans readers are not: They DON'T
> WANT it.
>
> *Let me be specific. Let's take the good old autofellatio article (...) If
> > you visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Autofellatio , you'll
> > notice that there are two big banners: "Wikipedia is not censored" and
> "If
>

Re: [Foundation-l] Blackout at Italian Wikipedia

[Lodewijk]

I think it is fairly easy to make such statements when you live abroad, and
are not directly influenced by its outcomes.

As a side note, if this strike goes through (I could both understand it if
it does, and if it doesn't), I would recommand to add a link to an English
translation at least, for all those foreigners who might be visiting
it.wikipedia as well.

An alternative could be to use a really huge sitenotice, so that people are
forced to scroll down a lot every time - which is very frustrating, but
doesn't deprive you of the actual contents.

Best,

Lodewijk

No dia 4 de Outubro de 2011 15:23, Thomas Morton <
morton.tho...@googlemail.com> escreveu:

> >
> > Because of such a risk (it’s easily understandable that this rule will
> make
> > encyclopedia articles as pure “frames” for unchangeable text imposed by
> > others), the Italian community has decided, by a vast majority (see
> >
> http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bar/Discussioni/Comma_29_e_Wikipedia
> > )
> >  to lock both read and write access to encyclopedia articles and to
> publish
> > the following text as full screen sitenotice:
> > http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utente:Vituzzu/comunicato (an English
> > translation is available here:
> > http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utente:Vituzzu/comunicato/en). This
> decision
> > will be implemented as soon as possible, during the next 12 hours.
> >
>
> Being polite; I'd call that a serious overreaction. Akin to throwing the
> baby out with the bath water!
>
> I bought my tame Italian lunch and she likes me again; so deigned to have a
> read of this law. As far as we can make out there doesn't seem to be a leg
> to stand on.. or any real likelihood of risk to editors or content...
>
> In the modern world countries love to try it on and apply their internet
> laws across the world. Fortunately courts tend to give that short shrift.
>
> > Which, at least, will mean incoming legal issues or inquiries to be
> managed by WMF, withrelated expenses.
>
> To the extent of a polite response saying "not a chance, sorry", and an
> offer to hand them off to a volunteer to help resolve any issues. Which is
> what happens at the moment :)
> Tom
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Re: [Foundation-l] Blackout at Italian Wikipedia

[Lodewijk]

The WMF has not taken a stance even at this - individuals at the WMF did,
and the WMF did decide so far that it will not break the strike. That is
something else than the WMF taking an active stance. Which it maybe should,
maybe shouldn't (that depends on the wordings etc).

Lodewijk

No dia 5 de Outubro de 2011 00:26, John Vandenberg escreveu:

> On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 7:58 AM, Sue Gardner 
> wrote:
> > The Wikimedia Foundation first heard about this a few hours ago: we don't
> > have a lot of details yet. Jay is gathering information and working on a
> > statement now.
> >
> > It seems obvious though that the proposed law would hurt freedom of
> > expression in Italy, and therefore it's entirely reasonable for the
> Italian
> > Wikipedians to oppose it. The Wikimedia Foundation will support their
> > position.
>
> Is this the first time that WMF has actively taken a stance on
> politics and legislation?
>
> --
> John Vandenberg
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] WMF blog post on Italian Wikipedia

[Lodewijk]

If you even think that is a comparable situation, then you clearly don't
understand at all what this law is all about.

Lodewijk

No dia 5 de Outubro de 2011 09:39, emijrp  escreveu:

> "The Wikimedia Foundation supports the rights of all people to access our
> free knowledge content everywhere in the world"
>
> The Wikimedia Foundation supports a damn.
>
> Now, all Wikipedias know that it is allowed to blank the entire site when
> community doesn't like things. For example, the image filter.
>
> 2011/10/5 Jay Walsh 
>
> > Hi folks - apologies for starting a new thread on this topic...
> >
> > We've just posted a short blog post on the topic of the unfolding issues
> > around Italian Wikipedia
> >
> >
> >
> http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/10/04/regarding-recent-events-on-italian-wikipedia/
> >
> > We've had a few calls to WMF - not many, and we've responded with the
> basic
> > messages in this post.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > jay
> >
> > --
> > Jay Walsh
> > Head of Communications
> > WikimediaFoundation.org
> > blog.wikimedia.org
> > +1 (415) 839 6885 x 6609, @jansonw
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[Foundation-l] Image filter again (was: WMF blog post...)

[Lodewijk]

(changing the topic, since hijacking a thread is considered inpolite)

I think indeed they are incomparable. One is an internal political
discussion, the other is totally external and legal. That alone makes it a
totally different discussion - because I still believe the Wikimedia
Foundation will be reasonable in this and if there is a true majority
against it, I can hardly see them implementing it without further ado. If
the WMF would persue this, you would still have the option to fork Wikipedia
- and continue elsewhere. However, forking a country has proven to be more
controversial and is significantly harder. And if you dont cooperate with
the image filter, the worst thing really that could potentially (and still
unlikely) happen, is getting blocked from *editing* Wikipedia. In the
Italian case, you would get sued and pay high fines.

We're talking about totally different ball parks here.

Lodewijk

No dia 5 de Outubro de 2011 10:53, Thomas Morton <
morton.tho...@googlemail.com> escreveu:

> On 5 October 2011 09:26, Jalo  wrote:
>
> > >
> > > If you don't even think that is a comparable situation, then you
> clearly
> > > don't understand at all what some people think the image filter is all
> > > about.
> > >
> >
> > You're comparing a wiki without images with a world (the italian world)
> > without wiki.  To me, it seems to be "slightly" different
>
>
> it.wiki are specifically saying that they feel this new law would impact
> their ability to provide free and open content.
>
> de.wiki are saying much the same about the image filter...
>
> Tom
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Re: [Foundation-l] Blackout at Italian Wikipedia - What exactly does the proposed law say?

[Lodewijk]

No dia 6 de Outubro de 2011 14:01, Federico Leva (Nemo)
escreveu:

> This doesn't mean that we've misinformed users: prominent jurists agree
> that the proposed law is absolutely crazy for Wikipedia and other
> websites; and the community had discussed and assessed the effects of
> the proposed law for a long time before.
>

it's not that I dont trust you - but several people have asked me for such
opinions. Is there somewhere an overview of legal experts interpreting
this?

Lodewijk
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Re: [Foundation-l] Blackout at Italian Wikipedia - What exactly does the proposed law say?

[Lodewijk]

I mean Wikipedia (or websites like Wikipedia) specific. Italian text will
have to do - Google translate does miracles :) I think what would be really
great is a set of statements/suggestions, so not just by one expert. For
one, the Rodotà  statement was not exactly what I was looking for at some
point, so perhaps another statement by someone else clarifies better.

Thanks a lot,

Lodewijk

No dia 6 de Outubro de 2011 15:20, Federico Leva (Nemo)
escreveu:

> Lodewijk, 06/10/2011 14:24:
> > No dia 6 de Outubro de 2011 14:01, Federico Leva (Nemo)
> > escreveu:
> >
> >> This doesn't mean that we've misinformed users: prominent jurists agree
> >> that the proposed law is absolutely crazy for Wikipedia and other
> >> websites; and the community had discussed and assessed the effects of
> >> the proposed law for a long time before.
> >>
> >
> > it's not that I dont trust you - but several people have asked me for
> such
> > opinions. Is there somewhere an overview of legal experts interpreting
> > this?
>
> Yes, there are some, but do you mean for websites in general or for
> Wikipedia specifically? Are Italian texts enough?
> I've linked only a statement by Rodotà before because I can't imagine a
> more authoritative one now (I'm open to suggestions), but WMI is now
> asking more thorough analysis to legal experts.
>
> Nemo
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Given that we have won, can we turn Italian Wikipedia back on now?

[Lodewijk]

The WIki is back online already. But the village pump page was (at least for
the last day) available.

Lodewijk

No dia 6 de Outubro de 2011 18:17, teun spaans escreveu:

> As I understand, the change has only been proposed.
>
> Possibly another interesting issue will develop: the italian wiki was
> discontinued by a short vote or poll. I suppose the most democratric way to
> terminate it would be another vote or poll. How are they gonna have that
> poll if they locked themselves out?
>
> Teun
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 6:27 AM, Jimmy Wales  wrote:
>
> > http://www.linkiesta.it/wikipedia-law
> >
> > It'd be nice to have Italian Wikipedia back up as people are waking up
> > in Italy.
> >
> >
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Re: [Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content

[Lodewijk]

Discussing 'what if' scenarios in public rarely does any good if those same
people have full power to avoid that scenario in the first place. Both the
community and the board can avoid the sitation that we don't reach
agreement. Therefore, discussing 'what if we don't, what will you do' will
most likely not improve the arguments, discussion or outcome for anyone, but
only makes that very scenario more likely to happen. Let's cross that river
when we get there.

The same goes for the very theoretical 'the board might not accept a board
member nomination'. No such situation happened ever in the history of the
foundation, quite the contrary - they have sometimes appointed people who
ended on the nomination list lower than required *as well* (for example
Oscar). I don't see any reason why that should happen any time soon, so
perhaps discussing that would be a theoretical exersize - very interesting
but hardly productive to this specific discussion.

What would be very constructive for me is getting more hard data which we
can use to have the discussion we need to have. Getting more data about how
our readers think about the topic for example. On whether the difference in
opinion is mainly geographical, related to education/background or to hair
color - whether the community (as has been suggested by some) consists of a
biased group of authors or that this is actually quite representative for
their regions. No conclusions can be drawn automatically from that, but it
would help us in getting to the core of the discussion, and also in figuring
out if there would be a system (filter or not) that both would help resolve
the issues people see, and not obstruct others.

The civil war scenario sounds horrible, but when I read some discussions, it
seems some people are all too eager to steer into that direction, hoping
that 'the others' will steer away first. Perhaps we should just slow down a
bit and map the situation a bit better.

Best regards,

Lodewijk

No dia 9 de Outubro de 2011 19:05, Nathan  escreveu:

> On Sun, Oct 9, 2011 at 12:40 PM, Risker  wrote:
> >
> >
> > Two board members are selected by chaptersl however, the board has
> certain
> > rights to refuse the selected candidates.  Chapter-selected candidates
> will
> > be appointed in 2012.
> >
> > The WMF-wide community holds an election in odd-numbered years to
> nominate
> > three candidates. Again, the board has certain rights to refuse the
> > candidates with the most votes.
> >
> > The remainder of the board members are selected for their expertise, with
> > the exception of the "Founder" seat which is approved on a regular basis.
> >
> > The primary responsibility of Board members is to the Foundation, not to
> the
> > community or the chapters or to any other external agent.
> >
> > This is all available for review in the Bylaws.[1]
> >
> >
> > Risker/Anne
> >
>
>
> Thanks!
>
> To your last point; that's of course true for any corporation. Yet, it
> seems clear and obvious in this case that the Board can't serve the
> Foundation without also serving the Wikimedia community. If the Board
> loses the support of the community, not only will that have election
> repercussions (despite the ability of the Board to determine its own
> membership), it will also be strongly detrimental to the interests of
> the corporation.
>
> I'm sure the Board understands that you can't please the readers at
> the expense of the editors, particularly when we're at a point in
> project development where editors are not so easy to replace. Just
> like editorial decisions happen in the real world and have real world
> consequences, so also will Board decisions have consequences.
>
> Now all this is not to say that the Board has already lost the
> confidence of the community, or that any specific members should be
> turned out or anything like that. But it's worth remembering, for
> folks on both sides of this issue, that there are methods of
> addressing any truly schismatic decisions on the part of the Board in
> the hopefully very unlikely case that any are taken.
>
> Nathan
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] WMF is planning to install a video player that harms creator attribution and ties between Wikipedia and Commons

[Lodewijk]

I assume that you, before sending this email to a mailing list that is not
exactly technical in nature, have submitted bug reports about this on
bugzilla so that the technical magicians can actually fix it? I'm confident
they would appreciate any constructive input.

Best regards,

Lodewijk

No dia 11 de Outubro de 2011 12:25, Teofilo escreveu:

> I have learnt this morning that the "Timedmedia" extension "is not yet
> installed on wikimedia sites, but its meant to replace the existing
> player" (1).
>
> As I was uploading videos, and needed some specific tools, I happened
> the other day to use the mwEmbed gadget on Wikimedia Commons which
> seems to be a prefiguration of what the WMF plans to install
> everywhere on its sites. My experience as guinea pig of that
> experiment is negative:
>
> Clicking on the "i" option of the polar bear video inserted on commons
> village pump (2) produces the following screenshot:
>
> http://prototype.wikimedia.org/timedmedia/File:Screenshot_of_commons_village_pump.jpg
> (3). What the video viewer can read is "Credits: Title :
> File:PolarBearsPlayingSDZooFeb09.ogv Kaltura". This is not a proper
> way of providing author name (which should be Nehrams2020 ) and
> license (which should be Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
> Unported license with a link). The "share" menu provides "< i frame
> src = " //
> commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PolarBearsPlayingSDZooFeb09.ogv?withJS=MediaWiki:MwEmbed.js&embedplayer=yes
> "
> width="220" height="165" frameborder="0" >< /iframe > ". There is no
> "Attribution" code similar to the one you can find when clicking on
> "Use this file" on the photostock toolbar on the Commons description
> page (4). The small polar bear icon displayed in the "i" option of the
> "menu" is too small (it is only about 50x30px, while the standard
> "thumb" size is 220px!). Using the full 220px rectangle as a link is
> the way by which we tell readers/viewers that the Commons description
> page is an important page. Most users will not be aware that they may
> click on that 50x30px icon to find valuable information about the
> file. The File:PolarBearsPlayingSDZooFeb09.ogv text is in grey color.
> This is not the standard way to make the viewer aware that it is a
> clickable link. Usually, clickable links are blue. This video player
> is putting the Wikimedia commons description page 3 clicks away from
> Wikipedia instead of just one (you must click on "menu", then on "i"
> then on "File:PolarBearsPlayingSDZooFeb09.ogv"). If installed on
> Wikipedia, this gadget will not be an improvement, but a huge drawback
> for the quality of the relation between Wikipedia and Wikimedia
> Commons. Wikimedia Commons will be unknown from Wikipedia readers or
> seen as something far away. I guess a lot of people are going to
> believe that the person who deserves credit is the company named
> "Kaltura" instead of the real video creator. The "i" symbol is
> meaningless for people whose languages do not have the word
> "information" in their vocabularies. Even in English or in French
> "information" is vague and does not mean "credit" or "license" or
> "attribution". The efforts Wikimedia Commons has been doing on
> description pages (indicating the source of the file, provide a
> description, provide a date, provide categories to find related files,
> etc.) are put aside for the purpose of the promotion of the "Kaltura"
> brand name. And again a download link seems to be provided straight
> away from the "menu" even if the user has not made the effort to learn
> about the licensing conditions.
>
> (1) Michael Dale 2011-10-11 02:54:09 UTC
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31583
> (2)
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#mwEmbed_gadget:_Videos_no_longer_properly_linked_to_description_pages_by_clicking_on_the_thumbnail
> (3)
> http://prototype.wikimedia.org/timedmedia/File:Screenshot_of_commons_village_pump.jpg
> (4) screenshot of "use this file" toolbar tool:
> http://prototype.wikimedia.org/timedmedia/File:Use_this_file_screenshot.jpg
> ( the "stockphoto.js" toolbar)
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Re: [Foundation-l] Is random article truly random

[Lodewijk]

I would guess that the odds of arriving at such article are so low, that it
would not be worth the huge discussion it would definitely result into, to
make this change because there is barely any improvement. Have we ever
received complaints from people who arrived at such articles after pressing
the random article button?

Best,
lodewijk

No dia 18 de Outubro de 2011 16:00, Fae  escreveu:

> Rather than filtering the unreferenced, I had in mind articles such as
> [[Human penis]] and [[Vagina]] where the lead may be NSFW (Tom's main
> thrust) or unstable articles that are currently locked due to
> edit-warring, blatant lobbying or similar.
>
> Cheers,
> Fae
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Global Fundraiser Test

[Lodewijk]

Hi Charles, all,

maybe I'm missing it - but I don't seem to be able to find an actual
timeline (or planned timeline) for this year's fundraiser. Could you please
point me to it? Thanks a lot,

Lodewijk

No dia 18 de Outubro de 2011 22:45, Charles A. Barr
escreveu:

> The global test is now set for today @ *21:00 - 22:00 UTC.*
>
> Charles A. Barr
> Production Coordinator
> Wikimedia Foundation <http://wikimediafoundation.org>
>
> On 10/18/11 13:23, Charles A. Barr wrote:
> > The global test is delayed due to operations issues. The test is still
> > planned for later today. More information will be sent along when
> > available.
> >
> > Charles A. Barr
> > Production Coordinator
> > Wikimedia Foundation <http://wikimediafoundation.org>
> >
> > On 10/18/11 10:47, Chris Keating wrote:
> >>> Sorry for the confusion. No we are not testing in*US, AU, DE, FR, CH,
> GB.*
> >>>
> >>>
> >> Thanks for clearing that up. Good luck with the test. :-)
> >>
> >> Chris
> >> ___
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Re: [Foundation-l] IMDb sued for revealing actresses age

[Lodewijk]

Why is it that after reading such a message, I only get more curious who
this actress is ;)

No dia 19 de Outubro de 2011 14:49, Yaroslav M. Blanter
escreveu:

> On Wed, 19 Oct 2011 12:40:18 +0100, Thomas Dalton
> 
> wrote:
> > http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15360864
> >
> > I'm not sure of the details of this case, but it looks like it would
> > be worth us keeping an eye on it since it could potentially have
> > repercussions for us. Hopefully, the case will either be thrown out or
> > it will turn out to depend on the existing relationship between the
> > site and the actress (she signed up to something called "IMDbPro"). I
> > can't really see how anything like this could be successfully brought
> > against us, but you never know.
> >
>
> I thought the BLP policy clearly implies that the birth year should be
> referenced otherwise it must go. I do not think we should wait till
> somebody sues the WMF (unless the birth year is referenced to IMDB and as a
> result of the case it will be hidden).
>
> Cheers
> Yaroslav
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Global Fundraiser Test

[Lodewijk]

Hi,

thanks for the extra info. It would be great if a more extensive timeline
could be entered into the actual information page. Dates I would be looking
for:

* When should translations be finished for the first batch
* When are relevant deadlines?
* When is the fundraiser scheduled to start full scale testing
* When does the actual fundraiser start
* When should chapters etc plan to send their press releases if at all (and
when will the WMF version become available for inspiration & translation)
* When it is scheduled to end

Of course not everything will be defined into a day range, but some level of
indication would be nice. I know from historical reasons that it is likely
it starts in November, but it would be great if also people who don't know
that so well can easily find it. Of course the timeline doesn't have to be
binding, but rather indicative for what you expect to happen at this moment,
and it could change every day/week.

Best,
Lodewijk

No dia 24 de Outubro de 2011 09:04, Till Mletzko
escreveu:

>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_2011#When_does_the_fundraiser_start.3F
>
> Best,
> Till
>
>
> Am 19.10.2011 20:01, schrieb Chris Keating:
> >>
> >> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2011 and don't forget to
> check
> >> the discussion page for more places to discuss the fundraiser. As for a
> >> time-line, the fundraiser is scheduled to start within the first two
> weeks
> >> of November. I will see about adding some sort of time-line to the
> >> fundraising page.
> >>
> > I heard back in June that it was November 1st. Since we're now two weeks
> > away, perhaps we could have a confirmed start date ?
> >
> > Chris
> > Wikimedia UK
> > ___
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> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
> --
> Mit freundlichen Grüßen
>
> Till Mletzko
> Fundraiser
> -
> Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
> Eisenacher Straße 2
> 10777 Berlin
>
> Telefon 030 - 219 158 26-0
> www.wikimedia.de
>
> Helfen Sie mit, dass WIKIPEDIA von der UNESCO als erstes digitales
> Weltkulturerbe anerkannt wird.
> Unterzeichnen Sie die Online-Petition unter
> https://wke.wikimedia.de/wke/Main_Page!
>
> Stellen Sie sich eine Welt vor, in der jeder Mensch freien Zugang zu der
> Gesamtheit des Wissens der Menschheit hat. Helfen Sie uns dabei!
> http://spenden.wikimedia.de/
>
> Gemeinnützige Wikimedia Fördergesellschaft mbH.
> Eingetragen beim Amtsgericht Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 130183
> B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I
> Berlin, Steuernummer 27/602/55599.
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Who *doesn't* suffer from adminitis these days?

[Lodewijk]

I don't, and if you disagree, you are trolling and I'll block you!

Lodewijk

No dia 2 de Novembro de 2011 21:52, Kim Bruning 
escreveu:

>
> In reference to people wanting to be nicer to newbies, (and next to the
> obvious step of us really needing
> to make it more frelling obvious that YES YOU CAN EDIT)
>
> ... that doesn't help much if the entire community has come down with
> adminitis and kicks anyone who
> tries to edit out of the wiki and up into low earth orbit.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Adminitis
>
>
> So qua editor retention, 2 things are needed:
> * Make editing more obvious and easy, and bring the fun back. :-)
> * Work on The Cure For Adminitis (tm). O:-)
>
> sincerely,
> Kim Bruning
>
> --
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikimedia India Program Trust

[Lodewijk]

Hi,

thanks a lot all for exmplaining the differences. I would be very much
interested to know more about the ''relationship'' between the trust and
Wikimedia India. You seem to suggest that trustees get appointed by (or on
the advice of - not sure of the legal wording) the WMF - but will Wikimedia
India be involved in that too? Since they are the chapter in that country I
could imagine them to have a say in it.

How closely will this trust and the chapter work together? You mention that
there is communication etc - but is cooperation likely to become the
default or the exception?

And how will it work with regards of who will be the primary point of
contact in India for institutions who want to partner with Wikimedia? Will
they have to approach one of the two or whichever they like (and if they
dont get the answer they like, can they just approach the other?). Will the
chapter and the trust be competing with each other or collaborating?

Thanks for helping me seeing the situation more clearly,

Lodewijk

No dia 11 de Novembro de 2011 09:29, Gautam John escreveu:

> On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 12:14 PM, Liam Wyatt  wrote:
>
> > Can you elaborate on the legal and practical differences between the new
> > India Trust and the India Chapter?
>
> To add to what Bishakha has said - another reason for such a choice
> could very well be a difference in the methods of execution, where the
> Chapter depends on volunteers and members to help scale, and primary
> objectives, where the Chapter is also a collective voice for members.
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] [Internal-l] Fwd: Wikimedia India Program Trust

[Lodewijk]

(not replying to Liam in particular and apologies for the longer email in
advance)
Thank you all for this thread.

First of all a minor request from someone who's not that familiar with how
India and Wikimedia in India exactly is structured: I appreciate it that
people tell who they are and what their (apparent) conflicts of interest
are, but I hope sincerely that we will be able to keep discussions about
the validity of people to a minimum and focus on the validity of arguments.

I think it brought up some issues that have to be dealt with that the Trust
seemed to be unaware of, judging its initial replies. It is clear that some
valued and active volunteers don't feel involved, and consider the trust to
be a threat to the future development of the chapter in India. I can see
some dangers in it too (although I don't know the specific situation as
well - so I'll try to stay in general terms, some may or may not apply to
India) and would like to share them. This doesn't mean I'm against the
trust or not (I haven't made up my mind yet), but it may give a better
insight in why I am interested and concerned, and perhaps some other
worried people have similar feelings.

When there are two organizations calling themselves "Wikimedia" in one
country, there are some obvious and some less obvious problems. In the
Netherlands we have encountered some of those problems in a lesser degree -
but I will spare you the details of that specific situation and how it came
to be. It is of course obvious that there is potential confusion in the
press - personally I don't think that is the one with the most impact to
our mission, but it certainly is annoying to volunteers. The press has on
some occasions attributed projects of Wikimedia Nederland to the Foundation
or even once to Wikimedia Deutschland - and here the chance for that to
happen is quite small. So yes, brace for impact, if you have two
organizations in one country, you *will* get lots more confusion.

The money issue has been covered as well - Both are targeting the same
companies for sponsoring their activities, both are aiming for perhaps the
same major donors. Even though India is a huge country (understatement) it
is likely that every now and then they will encounter each other here.
Clear agreements on who does what and when seems vitally important.
Probably this is one of the most important reasons why I think it would be
good that if there is a seperate trust, that the chapter gets a say in the
appointment of their trustees as well. Anyway, I don't need to cover this
in detail, others did.

But when it comes to money, there is one thing we have to be very careful
of too: envy. I don't accuse people on this list of that, but it is
something they have to consider in the back of their minds when they are
bridging this information to their supporters and members. I have seen in
several chapters a certain level of "envy" towards the foundation or richer
chapters and that they were getting demotivated, because those other
organizations should just hire people to do that stuff instead of bothering
them with it. Again it seems likely this gets stronger the closer by it
gets.

What is perhaps less obvious, is that both organizations will be drawing on
volunteers (I hope! If either wouldn't try to work primarily with
volunteers, I would personally consider it a missed opportunity to use a
euphemism), and that the volunteers will be likely confused about the
organizations just like the press is. The really active ones will know, but
I have seen a situation that very active Wikimedia Nederland members did
not comprehend the differences between the WMF and WMNL - now again imagine
how the situation must be when there are two organizations in one country.

I definitely think that communication is very important, and some signals
on this list have worried me. I also have heard a few times "this is a
first time" etc, and I would like to remark that this doesn't excuse us
from thinking this through very well. The Wikimedia Foundation strategic
plan identifies India as a key country, and that is one of the reasons we
cannot risk letting the chapter going down the drain because some
experiment is executed. We should be very careful about side effects,
exhausting volunteers simply because they feel their work becomes useless
or giving people the feeling they are not needed because the WMF will hire
other people anyway (this is a general concern I have about some
initiatives throughout the world).

Just to repeat myself: I have not yet taken a position, and I am not
against anything. I applaud the intentions, but I am worried about many
side effects. And if several very valued Indian volunteers are brave enough
to step up and out this criticism, I become even more careful.

Best regards,
Lodewijk

No dia Sábado, 12 de Novembro de 2011, Liam Wyattliamwyatt@gmail.comescreveu:

> On 12 N

Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikimedia India Program Trust

[Lodewijk]

Dear Bishakha,

I apologize for intruding in this discussion again as someone who has
little knowledge about India and the local situation.

I'm myself not entirely convinced that there always should be one
organization in one country - but it is out default. That means that if we
want to drift off drom that default, there should be a good reason for it.
That is a different mindset of course than that organizations have
to prove itself.

There are a few things special here however. The first is that one of the
organizations is a membership organization, and the other isn't. To me,
with my limited knowledge and understanding, it would indeed seem logical
given our background to put the membership organization at the center
stage. However, at the same time I can understand that this organization
might not be ready to handle the funds yet that it needs to. But again -
the default would lie imho with the membership organization. If the Trust
wants to deviate that is fine, but ideally that would always happen with
the consent of the chapter.

And of course, now that there *are* two organizations, they should
communicate well with each other. Somehow we should ensure that, and I hope
some good routes are being found to let everyone on the chapter believe
that they are being communicated well with to the full extent. Like was
noted somewhere else in this thread, if there is a paid organization just
doing stuff you'd like to do as a volunteer as well - that can be pretty
darn demotivating. And possibly harmful for the volunteer community in the
long run. Lets just be careful.

Another is the confusing name - both organizations have the words
"Wikimedia India" in their name. Since chapters are usually identified with
Wikimedia Country, this trust is already to me confusing, since it implies
it is set up *by* the chapter. Choosing a different name might resolve some
issues here.

I'm not trying to say here whether those conversations and consent happened
- at the beginning of the discussion I was merely trying to understand the
situation better, to get a better grasp of who talked with who, who were
involved in decision making processes here. From chapters we expect no less
than transparent founding processes on meta, involving the community.
Receiving feedback and even opening up the bylaws for discussion. I have
not seen such a process, but may have missed it. If we are to place the
trust at the center stage (are we? still unclear to me, so not suggesting
anything here) we should *at least* require the same standards as we do for
new chapters.

At least for me this is the major part of why I started off this discussion
in the first place. It is no attack, it has mainly been a set of questions
which have gotten answered in many different ways throughout this
discussion. That alone leaves me to believe that there are ways to improve.

Best regards,

Lodewijk

No dia 16 de Novembro de 2011 04:08, Bishakha Datta  escreveu:

> Dear Hari, Tinu, and Theo,
>
> Thank you for your heartfelt emails; all of them made me think, and want to
> take this conversation forward.
>
> One of the things I do want to say is that despite all the openness within
> the wiki-universe (and there is loads of it, no question), there are
> certain assumptions or 'logics' that are treated as sacred or as givens -
> these assumptions are rarely challenged or questioned, let alone explored
> in any depth. And any attempt to challenge these assumptions is treated
> almost as sacrilege.
>
> One of these assumptions is the idea that once a chapter has started
> operating in a country, no other entity has any business to be there -
> regardless of the size or potential of that country. This has been
> expressed in many emails on this thread, where the India chapter has
> implicitly and explicitly been positioned as legitimate - that which
> deserves to be there - and the program trust as illegitimate (or some sort
> of trespasser or gate-crasher).
>
> A related assumption is that the single-entity model is, by default, and
> without any questioning or critical analysis, the best one for every
> country in the world, including India. (Yes, this model may work for many
> countries - the question is: does it work for all? Is it the only workable
> model?)
>
> For example, the European Union has a population of 502 million (27
> countries, 27 official languages) [1] - and 15-20 chapters if I'm not
> mistaken.
>
> India has a population of 1.2 billion (28 states, 7 union territories,
> atleast 28 official languages) [2], [3] - and 2 entities.
>
> If this data were to be presented to someone outside of the wikimedia
> movement, he or she might actually argue that India needs more entities,
> not less, to accomplish the movement's goal of spreading free knowledge to
> people in India. An outsider m

[Foundation-l] Thanking volunteers

[Lodewijk]

I sent this request already to some internal lists, but here there might
also be quite some volunteers who have a thought about thanking volunteers
:)


It is almost the end of the year, and that is for me personally usually a
moment to thank some of the people I have worked with over the past twelve
months. That triggered me to try and figure out what methods are currently
being used in the Wikimedia universe to thank the real life volunteers.
Therefore I have set up this questionnaire. I have tried to make it
simple&quick to answer, but at the same time to leave plenty of opportunity
to leave suggestions.

Please find it here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?hl=en_US&formkey=dDBXU3l2LXlaeHZoWVJNWjRKQWtFb0E6MQ#gid=0
.
It should take you roughly 3-4 minutes to fill it out. I hope you are
willing to spend these minutes and help me (and others) understand better
what thanking in Wikimedia is all about.
 I am targeting both individuals and organizations with this. If you want
to seperate the two, just fill it out twice. Please focus on what *has been
done* so far, not what you're planning to do. I want to be able to make the
replies available publicly. For individuals without names etc of course,
for organizations I would like to be able to add the name of the
organization unless there is an objection. For the rest it is of course
totally informal and it is for sharing practices. I'm trying to figure out:
* How important you think thanking is * What are the best practices and the
coolest ideas * Whether physical or online methods are used primarily Thank
you for your help! Lodewijk

ps: oh yes, of course: you can share this with everybody you like. I hope
someone can send this to the chapters-l especially.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Reminder: IRC office hours with the Head of Reader Relations, Thursday Dec. 22nd

[Lodewijk]

Hi Steven,

is there some kind of Google Agenda of this type of meetings that I could
load into my own? Then I could use that as a reminder as well.

Best,
Lodewijk

No dia 22 de Dezembro de 2011 00:29, Steven Walling
escreveu:

> This is happening in about 30 minutes.
>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Steven Walling 
> Date: Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 4:28 PM
> Subject: IRC office hours with the Head of Reader Relations, Thursday Dec.
> 22nd
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List 
>
>
> Hey all,
>
> I think most Foundation-l subscribers know Philippe Beaudette from the
> Foundation, but perhaps not all are aware of his title, Head of Reader
> Relations, or exactly what that department is and what role it fills.
>
> If you'd like to hear an update on the office of reader relations at the
> WMF and generally interrogate Philippe, ;) this Thursday at 0:00 UTC is
> your chance. Details are on Meta for how to join as well as time
> conversion.[1]
>
> Thanks,
>
> --
> Steven Walling
> Community Organizer at Wikimedia Foundation
> wikimediafoundation.org
>
> 1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours
>
>
>
>
> --
> Steven Walling
> Community Organizer at Wikimedia Foundation
> wikimediafoundation.org
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Re: [Foundation-l] Reminder: IRC office hours with the Head of Reader Relations, Thursday Dec. 22nd

[Lodewijk]

Hi Jürgen,

I didn't mean to specify a format, but rather how I would like to use it.
If the same can be achieved in a way that is also open source etc (an can
be used on multiple platforms) that deserved of course preference. Hence
the "some kind of" :)

Best,

Lodewijk

No dia 22 de Dezembro de 2011 19:34, Juergen Fenn <
schneeschme...@googlemail.com> escreveu:

> Am 22. Dezember 2011 10:38 schrieb Lodewijk :
>
> > is there some kind of Google Agenda of this type of meetings that I could
> > load into my own? Then I could use that as a reminder as well.
>
> I would appreciate it if you please could provide an iCal calendar
> that works with Thunderbird/Lightning and Apple iCal. Yes, we're open.
> ;-)
>
> Regards,
> Jürgen.
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Spanish website blocking law implemented

[Lodewijk]

We should be careful to start calling all copyright related laws evil (at
least you seem to suggest that) because then that would devaluate very
quickly. At least what I see quickly (but IANALawyer and IANASpaniard) this
law is not thát evil: the government can ask to close a website that is
actually infringing, and the actual enforcement remains with the courts (an
ISP is allowed to disagree, and leave it to an impartial judge). What would
be more dangerous is if there would be no judge involved, if linking to
content alone is enough to block the site, if there are no copyright
exeptions (Freedom of Speech etc) to be considered, etc. You can't really
condemn every law trying to enforce copyright - but you should try to find
a way that is least harmful (especially for 'innocent sites'), fair and
considering other (ground)rights.

L

No dia 3 de Janeiro de 2012 09:26, Kim Bruning escreveu:

>
> Looks like .us is pushing other countries to implement similar laws, eg.
> .es :
>
>
> http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/01/03/0241248/spanish-website-blocking-law-implemented
>
> sincerely,
>Kim Bruning
>
>
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[Foundation-l] Just cruel (was: January 18: Nick Drake)

[Lodewijk]

This is just cruel... "read the rest" yeah right :P

-- Mensagem encaminhada --
De: English Wikipedia Article of the Day <
daily-articl...@lists.wikimedia.org>
Data: 18 de Janeiro de 2012 01:05
Assunto: [Daily article] January 18: Nick Drake
Para: daily-articl...@lists.wikimedia.org


100px|Nick Drake's grave in Tanworth-in-Arden


Nick Drake (1948–1974) was an English singer-songwriter and musician,
best known for his sombre guitar-based songs. He failed to find a wide
audience during his lifetime, but now ranks among the most influential
English singer-songwriters of the last 50 years. Drake released his
debut album, Five Leaves Left, in 1969. None of his first three albums
sold more than 5,000 copies on their initial release. Drake suffered
from depression and insomnia throughout his life, and these topics were
often reflected in his lyrics. On completion of his third album, 1972's
Pink Moon, he withdrew from both live performance and recording,
retreating to his parents' home in rural Warwickshire. He died from an
overdose of amitriptyline in 1974 (grave pictured). Drake was credited
as an influence by numerous artists during the 1980s, including The
Dream Academy, who in 1985 reached the UK and US charts with "Life in a
Northern Town", a song written for and dedicated to him. By the early
1990s, Drake represented a certain type of "doomed romantic" musician
in the UK music press. In 2000, Volkswagen featured the title track
from Pink Moon in a television advertisement, and within a month Drake
had sold more records than he had in the previous 30 years. (more...)


Recently featured: Mauna Kea – Press Gang – Diffuse panbronchiolitis


Archive – By email – More featured articles...

Read the rest of this article:


___
Today's selected anniversaries:

1126:

Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty of China abdicated the throne in
favour of his son Qinzong.


1884:

Welsh physician William Price was arrested for attempting to cremate
his deceased infant son; he was acquitted in the subsequent trial,
which led to the legalisation of cremation in the United Kingdom.


1919:

World War I: The Paris Peace Conference opened in Versailles, France,
to set the peace terms for the Central Powers.


1943:

World War II: As part of Operation Iskra, the Soviet Red Army broke the
Siege of Leningrad, opening a narrow land corridor to the city.


1958:

African Canadian Willie O'Ree of the Boston Bruins played his first
game in the National Hockey League, breaking the colour barrier in
professional ice hockey.


1990:

In a sting operation conducted by the FBI, Mayor of Washington, D.C.,
Marion Barry was arrested for possession of crack cocaine.


_
Wiktionary's word of the day:

chiasmus (n):
An inversion of the relationship between the elements of phrases


___
Wikiquote quote of the day:

"Elohim," the name for the creative power in Genesis, is a female
plural, a fact that generations of learned rabbis and Christian
theologians have all explained as merely grammatical convention. The
King James and most other Bibles translate it as "God," but if you take
the grammar literally, it seems to mean "goddesses." Al Shaddai, god of
battles, appears later, and YHWH, mispronounced Jehovah, later still.
 --Robert Anton Wilson





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Re: [Foundation-l] RESCHEDULED: Mailing lists server migration today

[Lodewijk]

as explained in another email: it was actually sent today, with the wrong
datestamp.

L

No dia 18 de Janeiro de 2012 16:35, Huib Laurens escreveu:

> gmail is having troubles the last few weeks... I miss e-mails daily that
> arrive much later...
>
> On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 2:43 PM, Thomas Dalton  >wrote:
>
> > Just seen the datestamp... why did that email just come through now?!
> >
> > On 18 January 2012 13:42, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
> > > I advise you delay it again - we need the mailing lists at the moment
> > > to coordinate the blackout.
> > >
> > > On 13 January 2012 13:54, Mark Bergsma  wrote:
> > >> (rescheduled after the cancelled maintenance of last Friday)
> > >>
> > >> Hi,
> > >>
> > >> Today I will be migrating the mailing lists from a very old server
> > (lily) in Amsterdam, to a new server (sodium) in our new Ashburn data
> > center. Mailman will be upgraded to version 2.1.13 along the way.
> > >>
> > >> During the migration, mail will be delayed as all data will need to be
> > transferred to the new host. No mail should go lost, but no new mails
> will
> > be sent out during the process until done, and the web interface will be
> > unavailable. This shouldn't take about one hour, if all goes well.
> > >>
> > >> I will report here when things should be back up and running.
> > Afterwards, please let us know of any new issues, in bugzilla or on IRC
> > (#wikimedia-tech). We don't expect any problems, but as with any software
> > upgrade or migration, this can't be guaranteed...
> > >>
> > >> Thanks,
> > >>
> > >> --
> > >> Mark Bergsma 
> > >> Lead Operations Architect
> > >> Wikimedia Foundation
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> ___
> > >> foundation-l mailing list
> > >> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > >> Unsubscribe:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> > ___
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Kind regards,
>
> Huib Laurens
> WickedWay.nl
>
> Webhosting the wicked way.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Nederland reports

[Lodewijk]

Hi Ziko,

I appreciate your email, but it seems you forgot the link. Also, I
personally strongly prefer it if you could include the actual reports in
the email. It makes searching & finding much easier, as well as offline
reading.

Best regards,

Lodewijk

No dia 22 de Janeiro de 2012 22:32, Ziko van Dijk
escreveu:

> Hello,
>
> Wikimedia Nederland is reporting monthly on its activities. We just
> completed December, and for convenience I send you here the link to
> the whole list of reports.
>
> Kind regards
> Ziko van Dijk
> president
>
>
> --
>
> ---
> Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland
> dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter
> http://wmnederland.nl/
> ---
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] ACTA signed but not ratified Re: ACTA analysis?

[Lodewijk]

Apparently the ambassador of the Netherlands did not get permission in time
to sign the agreement. It seems nobody really knows yet why that was, but
it is expected that the signature will follow. Also the signature of Spain,
Slovenia and Cyprus seems to be missing yet. Source:
http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/109330/nederland-mist-ondertekening-acta-verdrag---update.html


No dia 27 de Janeiro de 2012 09:08, Tomasz Ganicz escreveu:

> 2012/1/27 Kim Bruning :
> >
> > ==Update==
> >
> > ACTA has been signed by the EU and 22 member states, but must still be
> ratified.
> > We have time for a good analysis, and time to set up a game plan before
> that time.
> >
> > OTOH If we decide to act, we shouldn't be *too* slow,
> > or we'll lose the momentum that has built up.
> >
> > Currently la quadrature du net is coordinated best.
> >
> http://www.laquadrature.net/en/acta-signed-by-the-eu-lets-defeat-it-together
> >https://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/How_to_act_against_ACTA
> >
>
> Yes. Exactly. Actually, from EU only Germany and Holland has not
> signed ACTA yet. Would be good to make a search on which stage there
> are formal discussions in these countries. In many countries - also in
> Poland, the ACTA formal discussion was made semi-secret - I mean,
> theoretically they were not secret, bo goverment made evrything to
> hide it from eyes of its own citizens. The ratification in EU
> Parliament was originally planned at June, but due to "strike" of
> Kader Arif it might be 1-2 months later. Before that there will be
> ratification debates in local EU-countries parliaments.
>
>
> --
> Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
> http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
> http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
> http://www.cbmm.lodz.pl/work.php?id=29&title=tomasz-ganicz
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Journal Boycott

[Lodewijk]

Hi Andrea,

could you perhaps elaborate how exactly the Free Knowledge would benifit
from boycotting non-OA journals? (Not meant sarcastic, I really want to
know)

Also, how would you imagine such support? I could imagine that with any
support by Wikimedia for a boycott, people would assume automatically that
we would start blocking citations of said journals. Or are you thinking
about that Wikimedia related scholars are asked to public Open Access? (I
could imagine this is already the case)

In the past Wikimedia has always taken the stance that if people or
companies want to exercize their copyright within legal limits, we have no
objection to that (although we may challenge some of the legal limits).
Would you propose a standpoint that goes further than that? (because then,
it would imho certainly require much more community discussion before we
take such step)

Best regards,
Lodewijk

No dia 1 de Fevereiro de 2012 17:32, Andrea Zanni
escreveu:

> I don't know if it's the case,
> but it would be very interesting to have the Foundation
> support officialy the campaign (single scholars can do decide to boycott,
> of course).
> But "universal access to universal knowledge" is pretty Open Access to me,
> and this think is taking momentum,
> hopefully will be effective.
>
> Aubrey
>
> 2012/2/1 Fred Bauder 
>
> > Another article:
> >
> > http://chronicle.com/article/Who-Gets-to-See-Published/130403/
> >
> > > "Elsevier has supported a proposed federal law, the Research Works Act
> > > (HR 3699), that could prevent agencies like the National Institutes of
> > > Health from making all articles written by grant recipients freely
> > > available."
> > >
> > > http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:h.r.03699:
> > >
> > > "Research Works Act - Prohibits a federal agency from adopting,
> > > maintaining, continuing, or otherwise engaging in any policy, program,
> or
> > > other activity that: (1) causes, permits, or authorizes network
> > > dissemination of any private-sector research work without the prior
> > > consent of the publisher; or (2) requires that any actual or
> prospective
> > > author, or the author's employer, assent to such network dissemination.
> > >
> > > Defines "private-sector research work" as an article intended to be
> > > published in a scholarly or scientific publication, or any version of
> > > such an article, that is not a work of the U.S. government, describing
> or
> > > interpreting research funded in whole or in part by a federal agency
> and
> > > to which a commercial or nonprofit publisher has made or has entered
> into
> > > an arrangement to make a value-added contribution, including peer
> review
> > > or editing, but does not include progress reports or raw data outputs
> > > routinely required to be created for and submitted directly to a
> funding
> > > agency in the course of research."
> > >
> > > Fred
> > >
> > >
> > > ___
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> > > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >
> >
> >
> >
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Re: [Foundation-l] Fundraising Letter Feb 2012

[Lodewijk]

Hi Ting,

thank you for the letter. Could you clarify to what extent this is the end
decision, and how much discussion/process should be expected ahead of us?
Going up to this board meeting I have heard both the opinions that the
final decision would be made quickly, and also that definitely no decision
would be made, but rather an inventory, which would allow for a real life
discussion in Paris/Berlin with other stakeholders.

Lodewijk

No dia 9 de Fevereiro de 2012 09:11, Ting Chen escreveu:

> The Board approves the following letter to be sent to the community:
>
> Dear members of the Wikimedia Movement,
>
> As you are probably aware we have been discussing the the future of
> fundraising and fund dissemination for the Wikimedia Movement for almost 6
> months now. After discussing fundraising and funds dissemination at this
> past meeting, the board has drafted the following statement. It our
> intention to discuss these matters in the coming weeks to come to a final
> decision mid March.
>
> But first we would like to thank everyone who took part in the discussion
> so far and spent their valuable time providing us with their viewpoints
> which we have of course taken into account in our decision making process.
> We hope that you will continue to participate by giving feedback on this
> letter.
>
> ==Funds dissemination==
> The board wants to create a volunteer-driven body to make recommendations
> for funding for movement-wide initiatives (Working title: Funds
> Dissemination Committee, FDC). The Wikimedia Foundation has decision-making
> authority, because it has fiduciary responsibilities to donors which it
> legally cannot delegate. The new body will make recommendations for funds
> dissemination to the Wikimedia Foundation. We anticipate a process in which
> the Wikimedia Foundation will review and approve all but a small minority
> of recommendations from the FDC. In the event that the Wikimedia Foundation
> does not approve a recommendation from the FDC, and the FDC and the
> Wikimedia Foundation aren't subsequently able to reach agreement, then the
> FDC can ask the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees to request the
> recommendation be reconsidered.
>
> #the FDC will be a diverse body of people from across our movement (which
> may include paid staff) with appropriate expertise for this purpose, whose
> primary purpose is to disseminate funds to advance the Wikimedia mission;
> #the WMF staff will support and facilitate the work of the FDC
> #Proposals can range from one time smaller contributions for small
> projects from individuals to larger financing for operational costs of
> chapters or associations
>
> The board intends to evaluate this process together with the FDC and see
> if it is working.
>
> ==Fundraising==
> Our thoughts on fundraising are less specific. We have come to the
> following two statements which are important
>
> * If and when payment processing is done by chapters, it should be done
> primarily for reasons of tax, operational efficiency (including
> incentivizing donor cultivation and relations), should not be in conflict
> with funds dissemination principles and goals, and should avoid a
> perception of entitlement.
>
> * The board is sharpening the criteria for payment processing. Payment
> processing is not a natural path to growth for a chapter; and payment
> processing will likely be an exception -- most chapters will not do so.
>
>
> The Wikimedia Board of Trustees
>
> NB: Please note that rather than spend a LOT of time on wording at this
> time, the board preferred to amend the above text if necessary when moving
> towards a resolution. This letter indicates our intent, and we may
> "wordsmith as needed" in our final resolutions.
>
> --
> Ting Chen
> Member of the Board of Trustees
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
> E-Mail: tc...@wikimedia.org
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Announcement: Building a new Legal and Community Advocacy Department & Promotion of Philippe Beaudette

[Lodewijk]

I must say that after reading all this and the detailed page with the
beautiful graphic I am still confused what the department will actually do.
There are beautiful abstract goals which everybody would obviously agree
with, and there are highly diverse skills involved from on one end Maggie
and on the other extreme Geoff. All great. But I hope you can help me by
summarizing in one or two sentences of "mortal" English what you will *do*
everyday. Will you be the ones executing decisions from Legal? Will you be
nutshelling community decisions and act like an ambassador to the Wikimedia
Foundation? Will you be working on guiding the community involvement
processes Geoff handled so well with the Terms of Use?

Thanks,

Lodewijk

No dia 10 de Fevereiro de 2012 07:46, Theo10011 escreveu:

> On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 12:07 PM, Erik Moeller  wrote:
>
> > On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 8:44 PM, Casey Brown 
> wrote:
> > > "Advocacy" is a much more general term in this context than people
> > > seem to be taking it as. It does not mean lobbying or fighting for
> > > something controversial with outside organizations. As I understand
> > > it, it's the opposite: advocating to the Wikimedia Foundation on
> > > behalf of the community.
> >
> > Yeah, that's my understanding of the game plan here as well. I think
> > the announcement could have been clearer in that regard, but that's
> > pretty much what Philippe and Maggie have already been doing, and what
> > they'll continue to do in a structure that's set up for growth.
> >
> > Sometimes we have a tendency to speak in management lingo when we
> > should be choosing simple, crisp & clear terms. Honest feedback: Burn
> > the chart on
> >
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal_and_Community_Advocacy/LCA_Announcement
> > and draft a super crisp mission statement to slap on the first page
> > for this group. I know, I've been guilty of this as well -- no
> > criticism of the team. When working in an organization this kind of
> > communication style is often expected from you in day-to-day work, but
> > it's not necessarily helpful when communicating with people who have
> > very little time and interest to parse it.
> >
> > I think the brainstorming page is a great start and hope it'll be
> > utilized and further advertised in coming days:
> >
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal/Community_Advocacy
> >
> > Congratulations to Philippe and Maggie for their new roles. I think
> > it's about time that we're creating this structure, and I think it'll
> > generate lots of tangible value for the community.
>
>
> Then my suggestion would be, rename the department.
>
> I completely agree, it is about time Philippe and Maggie get more authority
> and a dedicated department. I am happy for both of them. They actually do
> and have been doing the heavy lifting for years when it comes to the
> community. I would actually be more in favor of calling their department
> the community department. ;)
>
> Regards
> Theo
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[Foundation-l] Community Advisory Board / Volunteer Council

[Lodewijk]

While reading the detailed "Legal and Community Advocacy/LCA Announcement",
on  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal/LCA_Announcement  , I stumbled
upon the following sentence: "We would like to build a community advisory
board to reinforce our commitment to a global perspective while
understanding and promoting communities beyond English Wikipedia". This was
quite a big news for me - and something worth much more than a simple side
sentence in the details section of a department reshuffling announcement,
so I'll be starting this thread.

As many will know, I have always been a supporter of the Wikimedia
Foundation asking more structural feedback and active input from the
community. I don't believe myself that this 'Foundation-l' is the best
venue for that, nor any of the other communication channels we have at our
availability right now. In the past I have proposed a "Volunteer Council"
which the board did not want to back up and died in silence. In the past
several other mechanisms with similar goals have been proposed.

So, at this announcement I see a good side - this 'community advisory
board' could bring us exactly that: a more structural approach to getting
continuous community input on Foundation governance decisions - other than
having a board member election every two years. If we were to call it
'community advisory board' (who cares about the name) and still give it the
same rights (right for information, right to be asked for its opinion
before certain decisions are being made, right to give unasked advice,
right to veto certain decisions even?) then it would be great news. But
somehow I don't have the feeling that this department is aiming for that.

So I hope it can be elaborated a bit what is a) the authority of this
advisory board (who decided to build it - board, ED or team), b) what will
be the purpose and c) what will be the rights. I know you won't have all
detailed answers yet because you need to enter a consultation process with
the community before setting such steps (which I am grateful for) but I
would like to get a little more insight in the direction you want to aim
for.

Finally, I hope that in case this 'advisory board' is indeed toothless and
very topic centered, I hope that this is being made obvious in its name as
well. And I hope too that this wouldn't hold back people from keeping
asking for a 'real' volunteer council.

Best,
Lodewijk
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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Announcement: Building a new Legal and Community Advocacy Department & Promotion of Philippe Beaudette

[Lodewijk]

Hi Philippe,

it sounds great. Awesome. But still, it doesn't make much sense to me,
sorry.

Saying people can 'edit' is of course bound to cheer people up - but if you
don't understand *what* you're editing, it is also bound to either become a
mess, or either just become what you pick it to become. I can't suggest
changes to team or actions if I am unable to grasp behind the very broadly
stated goals. Right now it is clear who is in the team, but honestly I
don't know you guys well enough to derive from that what you should be
doing.

Lodewijk

No dia 10 de Fevereiro de 2012 08:54, Philippe Beaudette <
phili...@wikimedia.org> escreveu:

>
> I think we'll be doing some combination of all three of those.  But
> here's the important part:  you tell us.  I built out the brainstorming
> page: people are acting as though there's a determined course charted
> for this team - if anything, it's the opposite.  This is the
> opportunity for the community to tell us how you'd like to be supported
> by this team.  From the ground floor, help us design it.  Tell us what
> will work best.  Do we need more Maggies?  Do we need someone to help
> us track issues of free culture?  Maybe we don't, because the community
> has a process in place for that and we just don't know about it.
>
> Help us design the team, and its high level goals.  We have what we
> THINK some of those will be (they're on the page, but I've pasted them
> here [1], also)... but we're open to the community's input - actually,
> we're begging for it.
>
> Edit this team, and edit this plan. :-)
>
> pb
>
>
> [1]- -
> * Maintaining a proactive online content-protection strategy, defending
> the written and media work of the community on the Projects through
> litigation and other means with the involvement of the community;
> * Ensuring increasing amounts and efficacy of global community
> participation in WMF-generated initiatives (such as revisions to WMF
> policies);
> * Setting up international meet-ups that recognize and support the role
> of administrators and functionaries, including brainstorming ways that
> WMF can better help these critical roles within our movement (e.g.,
> Arbcoms, checkusers, OTRS, etc.);
> * Providing international legislative and policy support to the
> community, such as providing information about legislative issues of
> interest like global censorship laws; and
> * Creating and learning from a community-based advisory board,
> including implementation of support ideas that serve the advocacy
> interests of the community and Foundation.
>
>
> On Thu Feb  9 23:42:23 2012, Lodewijk wrote:
> > I must say that after reading all this and the detailed page with the
> > beautiful graphic I am still confused what the department will actually
> do.
> > There are beautiful abstract goals which everybody would obviously agree
> > with, and there are highly diverse skills involved from on one end Maggie
> > and on the other extreme Geoff. All great. But I hope you can help me by
> > summarizing in one or two sentences of "mortal" English what you will
> *do*
> > everyday. Will you be the ones executing decisions from Legal? Will you
> be
> > nutshelling community decisions and act like an ambassador to the
> Wikimedia
> > Foundation? Will you be working on guiding the community involvement
> > processes Geoff handled so well with the Terms of Use?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Lodewijk
> >
> > No dia 10 de Fevereiro de 2012 07:46, Theo10011  >escreveu:
> >
> >> On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 12:07 PM, Erik Moeller 
> wrote:
> >>
> >>> On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 8:44 PM, Casey Brown 
> >> wrote:
> >>>> "Advocacy" is a much more general term in this context than people
> >>>> seem to be taking it as. It does not mean lobbying or fighting for
> >>>> something controversial with outside organizations. As I understand
> >>>> it, it's the opposite: advocating to the Wikimedia Foundation on
> >>>> behalf of the community.
> >>>
> >>> Yeah, that's my understanding of the game plan here as well. I think
> >>> the announcement could have been clearer in that regard, but that's
> >>> pretty much what Philippe and Maggie have already been doing, and what
> >>> they'll continue to do in a structure that's set up for growth.
> >>>
> >>> Sometimes we have a tendency to speak in management lingo when we
> >>> should be choosing simple, crisp & clear terms. Honest feedbac

Re: [Foundation-l] Movement roles letter, Feb 2012

[Lodewijk]

Hiya all,

It would be great if we can have this discussion without making sarcastic
remarks like this - I know it is a sensitive topic, but I also know that
we're in a suboptimal situation here right now. In the past discussions we
have talked about how we should try to engage volunteers and let them do
what they are best at - I still stand behind that. That however also means
that we should recognize that the chapters model will not work for every
single person or group of persons.

This does not necessarily have to correlate with a 'shift of power' or
disengaging chapters - it *should* be about engaging more volunteers, and
allowing them to do great work with the best tools available. So let us
focus on that.

I think there are two types of organizations within the Wikimedia movement
relevant here besides the chapters and the WMF:
1) Organizations that will ideally grow into a chapter some day
2) Organizations that explicitely do not want to or cannot grow into a
chapter

The group 1) will probably mainly be the case because of either legal
reasons or because there is not enough critical mass yet. I don't think
anyone disagrees we should give them the space they need. This includes for
example Wikimedia Croatia, Kazachstan and Georgia.

The group 2) will in my expectation consist of groups that are indeed more
aligned along cultural ideas. To mind come Amical (as discussed) and
Esperantists. Now this is where things apparently become complicated,
because somehow things can get conflicting when they start to compete with
chapters. There are a few things relevant here in the recognition process
by X-committee:
* What will be the rights will determine to large extent how high the
threshold will be
* If there is a geographical component (explicit or not) there should,
imho, be a consultation with the relevant other organizations overlapping
with that component. I don't know if it is realistic to go as far as a
veto, but it should definitely be a very serious part of the process. This
should probably be reciprocal - if a chapter is to be recognized other
groups in that area should be consulted, too.
* We should have clear to what extent trademarks and fundraising rights go
- both for chapters and non-chapter organizations.
* We have to remain very careful about political statements. I am
personally a bit hesistant with recognizing any organization which is
politically oriented. Hence, this  analysis should also be part of the
recognition process of any movement organization. To give an entirely
obvious example: I would not feel comfortable if any organization would be
founded based on ethnically oriented principles, or would be discriminating
in its membership based on principles that would be considered illegal in
most countries (even if it is not illegal in that specific country).
Another obvious example: I would feel extremely uncomfortable if any of
these organizations would only allow men to vote in their assemblies or if
there are religious requirements.
* In general I would like to find a way to ensure that relations are good
between the organization and the communities and relevant other
organizations. I doubt we ever can formalize that into a demand, but all
efforts should go into this of course.

Probably there are some more criteria which are currently already checked
upon (although not formally in a checklist) by the recognition of chapters
that should be part of this.  I think it would be helpful if chapcom can
tackle that issue in it's berlin meeting.

Anyway, just some thoughts. As a final remark, I sincerely hope that we
will not fall in the trap of building policies around a single case - but
rather focus on the big picture and then afterwards test that picture on
the single scenario. Amical is a complicated case, and it would be very
easy to loose ourselves in who's at fault, the details and what solutions
do not work in their case.

Warmly,
Lodewijk

No dia 13 de Fevereiro de 2012 15:29, marcos  escreveu:

> There is a simpler solution: to dissolve the current structure of chapters
> and to leave everything in hands of the magnificent professionals of San
> Francisco...
>
> Marcos Tallés (aka Marctaltor)
> Secretario de Wikimedia España
> mar...@wikimedia.org.es
> tal_t...@yahoo.es
> (34) 658 395 060
> www.wikimedia.org.es
>
> --- El lun, 13/2/12, Nathan  escribió:
>
>
> De: Nathan 
> Asunto: Re: [Foundation-l] Movement roles letter, Feb 2012
> Para: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
> Fecha: lunes, 13 de febrero, 2012 15:03
>
>
> >
> > I am concerned that trying to include them in that kind of process
> > wouldn't work due to the very flexible nature of such organisations.
> > "One Chapter - One Vote" is problematic as it is (eg. chapters
> > represent geographies of very different sizes, h

Re: [Foundation-l] Movement roles letter, Feb 2012

[Lodewijk]

Hi Ziko,

what was presented at Wikimania, was only supposed to be very rough and a
first phase. The idea was to then continue the process further - somehow
that never really happened. I agree there were and are quite some flaws in
the design (for which I don't necessarily see an immediate solution). When
wordings are the problem, we can probably fix that together - it is more
important that we agree on the actual content - and that seems hard enough
as it is. I'm afraid that a new group at this point would bump into the
same problems as the old one did, and has to go through that whole learning
process all over again.

So yes, lets be critical, and constructive as much as possible.

best,
Lodewijk

No dia 14 de Fevereiro de 2012 00:57, Ziko van Dijk
escreveu:

> Hello,
>
> I am afraid that the letter takes over the "results" of the MR group
> that where presented at Wikimania 2011. There nobody, as far as I
> remember, who was enthousiast about those results. My board colleague
> Marco, for example, was stunned that the MR group thought that the
> International Olympic Committee were a great model for us because of
> its transparency (!).
>
> The wordings were unsatisfying, and we couldn't make up much of the
> proposed "charter" text. On the talk page I later commented that the
> WMF should call for a new group. I would like to interpret this new
> letter as an invitation to think about entities and its names again.
>
> It would be nice if the expressions could be more self-explanitory,
> and if we had more information about what these new entities will be
> for. What problems will be solved by establishing them, what problems
> could emerge etc.
>
> Kind regards
> Ziko
>
>
> ---
> Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland
> dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter
> http://wmnederland.nl/
> ---
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Movement roles letter, Feb 2012

[Lodewijk]

Hi Ziko,

if you're saying that the proposals should not get 'extra points' because
they happen to come from a working group that did not function optimally
(far from that - although it was definitely not useless either) I totally
agree. Just review the proposals on their own merits, and consider its
impact rather than its source.

Best,
Lodewijk

No dia 14 de Fevereiro de 2012 14:23, Ziko van Dijk
escreveu:

> Lodewijk,
> I remember the session in Haifa very well. The audience found it
> extremely difficult to understand the texts and do anything with them
> - think of the awkward silence when the group asked for feedback. It
> must be possible to criticize the texts in spite of their alleged
> "roughness". And indeed, after Haifa we never neard from the group
> again, its members also did not take part in the discussion on the
> concerning meta talk page. Now, suddenly, the content of what you call
> "very rough and a first phase" is put on the table again. So I take it
> seriously and say what according to me must be said.
>
> Kind regards
> Ziko
>
>
>
> 2012/2/14 Lodewijk :
> > Hi Ziko,
> >
> > what was presented at Wikimania, was only supposed to be very rough and a
> > first phase. The idea was to then continue the process further - somehow
> > that never really happened. I agree there were and are quite some flaws
> in
> > the design (for which I don't necessarily see an immediate solution).
> When
> > wordings are the problem, we can probably fix that together - it is more
> > important that we agree on the actual content - and that seems hard
> enough
> > as it is. I'm afraid that a new group at this point would bump into the
> > same problems as the old one did, and has to go through that whole
> learning
> > process all over again.
> >
> > So yes, lets be critical, and constructive as much as possible.
> >
> > best,
> > Lodewijk
> >
> > No dia 14 de Fevereiro de 2012 00:57, Ziko van Dijk
> > escreveu:
> >
> >> Hello,
> >>
> >> I am afraid that the letter takes over the "results" of the MR group
> >> that where presented at Wikimania 2011. There nobody, as far as I
> >> remember, who was enthousiast about those results. My board colleague
> >> Marco, for example, was stunned that the MR group thought that the
> >> International Olympic Committee were a great model for us because of
> >> its transparency (!).
> >>
> >> The wordings were unsatisfying, and we couldn't make up much of the
> >> proposed "charter" text. On the talk page I later commented that the
> >> WMF should call for a new group. I would like to interpret this new
> >> letter as an invitation to think about entities and its names again.
> >>
> >> It would be nice if the expressions could be more self-explanitory,
> >> and if we had more information about what these new entities will be
> >> for. What problems will be solved by establishing them, what problems
> >> could emerge etc.
> >>
> >> Kind regards
> >> Ziko
> >>
> >>
> >> ---
> >> Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland
> >> dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter
> >> http://wmnederland.nl/
> >> ---
> >>
> >> ___
> >> foundation-l mailing list
> >> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >>
> > ___
> > foundation-l mailing list
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>
>
>
> --
>
> ---
> Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland
> dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter
> http://wmnederland.nl/
> ---
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations Sourcing

[Lodewijk]

Hi Castelo,

just to make the discussion clearer: could you just give say 5 or 10
examples of topics where you believe oral citations are unavoidable? Then I
hope that Ziko in his turn can explain how we can write about those
examples without using them.

Best regards,
Lodewijk

No dia 25 de Fevereiro de 2012 05:17, Castelo  escreveu:

> On 24-02-2012 23:18, Ziko van Dijk wrote:
>
>> Those people who would like to write on Wikipedia about any subject
>> can write a book or pdf about it. It does not have to be a scholarly
>> work in every aspect. And then, the Wikipedia in language X can decide
>> that it accepts this kind of literature as reliable. (Those various
>> standards are not uncommon in the different Wikipedias.)
>> Not everything has to happen*in*  Wikipedia.
>> Kind regards
>> Ziko
>>
> In the case of Oral Citations, the people who tells the facts are not the
> same people who want to write on Wikipedia, and definitively, not people
> willing to write a book or pdf. Editors are recording them for using this
> material in Wikipedia.
>
> We are willing to apply this in Brazil, with indigenous traditions. Some
> of the indians cannot write a book, a pdf or a Wikipedia article and those
> are exactly who have more expertise on their traditions. This can give them
> authority when describing their rituals, clothings, artefacts, fights,
> cuisine, etc., much more than a wikipedian can. And we still have a huge
> lack on articles about them, because for certains indigenous nations, there
> are almost no published material (some have no written material at all, as
> far as i know). I live in the capital city, where some of them usually come
> for present their culture in a national museum, and go back to their
> territories. In moments like these, we wikimedians can go there, take
> photos and record an interview (most speak a bit Portuguese, as well as
> their own languages), for publishing in Commons and Commons/Wikinews,
> respectively, for using in Wikipedia articles.
>
> I'm not thinking only on Wikipedia, we have also other projects not
> mentioned here, that can work together on it. Each project for a kind of
> content. In Wikinews, original reporting is fine, in Wikiversity, even
> original research is fine. They can be more reliable than a book, in some
> cases. It depends on how we do that, by reviewing, approval, etc, there's a
> lot of extensions that can be used on it.
>
>
> Castelo
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Re: [Foundation-l] Copyright and cakes...

[Lodewijk]

The cake designer can only release his/her part of the creative process
under a free license (baking the cake/making the photo). I would suggest to
just specifiy that the logo-part is copyright WMF, the photographic and
cake-baking component to be released under CC-BY (not -SA to avoid the SA
clause to make things complicated). That way everyone with permission of
the WMF can reuse the design if wanted.

Lodewijk

No dia 5 de Março de 2012 15:54, Richard Symonds <
richard.symo...@wikimedia.org.uk> escreveu:

> Silly question for you all:
>
> Is 
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/**wiki/File:Wikimedia_cake.jpg<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_cake.jpg>actually
>  copyrighted to the WMF as a WMF logo? The cake was made for
> Wikimedia UK, so it's technically a derivative work, perhaps...
>
> Any ideas what the copyright status of this should be? Does the author
> (Jezhotwells) have the ability to release it under a free licence, if s/he
> wishes?
>
> Richard Symonds
> Office&  Development Manager
> Wikimedia UK
> +44 (0) 207 065 0992
> --
> Wikimedia UK is the operating name of Wiki UK Limited, a Charitable Company
> Registered in England and Wales, No: 6741827. Charity No:1144513 Office:
> 4th Floor, Development House,  56-64 Leonard Street,
> London EC2A 4LT.
> Wikimedia UK is the local chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate
> Wikipedia, amongst other projects). It is an independent non-profit
> organization with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for
> its contents.
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Copyright and cakes...

[Lodewijk]

eating the cake would damage the moral rights of the logo author. Since he
cannot give general permission to violate moral rights, eating the cake
would be illegal.

No dia 5 de Março de 2012 23:08, David Gerard  escreveu:

> On 5 March 2012 22:07, geni  wrote:
> > On 5 March 2012 20:40, Chris Keating  wrote:
>
> >> I suspect a court would hold that the set of "cakes" is disjoint from
> the
> >> set of "objects on permanent display", and thus that a photograph of
> cake
> >> can never benefit from freedom of panorama.
>
> > Well you say that but slices of Charles and Diana's wedding cake have
> > turned up at auction as recently as 2008.
>
>
> I wonder how many cakes you would have if you assembled all the fragments.
>
>
> - d.
>
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[Foundation-l] Wiki Loves Monuments - will your country participate?

[Lodewijk]

-crossposting-

Hi all,
we're well on our way getting started with Wiki Loves Monuments 2012! (feel
free to forward)

For those that don't know what Wiki Loves Monuments is all about, please
read this blog post [
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/10/02/165000-photos-submitted-during-second-annual-wiki-love-monuments-photography-contest/]
on the WMF blog and this page about how the concept works [
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2012/Documentation#Concept];
here's also a small introduction to the main idea of the contest and what's
awaiting us this year.

*== Wiki Loves Monuments in a nutshell ==*
The photo competition around physical cultural heritage (buildings,
bridges, etc.) is running in  September, organized in numerous countries
around the world. The contest is being organized in each country
separately, allowing to play to the local needs and wishes, but is joined
by an umbrella contest for the whole world making it all a bit more
exciting. Last year the contest was organized in 18 countries, and brought
in 165.000 images by 5000 uploaders. More importantly, 4000 of these
uploaders never uploaded anything before!

*== Is your country participating? Helping hands are needed! ==*
For 2012 already 24 countries [
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2012/Participating_countries]
indicated that they will definitely participate, and 16 more say they
possibly will participate. Please take a look at the list, and see whether
your country is already there. If you would like to help organize this
contest in your country, please join the team that signed up for it (often
through a chapter or a local group) or start your own organizing group if
there is none yet! Interested countries for example include India, United
States, Chile, Sweden and Italy.

*== So, why would you want to organize a WLM in your country? ==*
Well, of course there are the images – it is great to have good images
available of your country. But more importantly perhaps is the amount of
individuals that might participate! Hundreds, maybe thousands of people who
never contributed before can now help out with what they are best at:
making photos. They often find it fun, and might hang around a bit longer
if we receive them well. It also is a good opportunity to get in touch with
local cultural heritage institutions.

Finally, it is a good way to try and forge a local community to organize
events together. It is an existing framework you can use, and although
there are no guarantees, working in an international context like this (the
largest collaboration between chapters and other Wikimedia organizations so
far!) helps a lot to keep people motivated and close to each other. An
international group will be helping interested groups with the basic
infrastructure and other things, and on a national level, you can focus on
the organizing of your own contest, lists and communications.

*== Join the team and get started! ==*
If you want to know more, feel free to leave a message[
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2012]
or send us an email. But make sure to get started now if you're interested
- because some parts of the work just require quite some time since
external parties are involved. We would be delighted to help you out in any
way possible to pull off this event.

Best,
Lodewijk
(on behalf of the international coordinating team)
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Re: [Foundation-l] A university partner for Wikimania

[Lodewijk]

And if memory serves me well 2007 was co-hosted by the Academica Sinica and
2008 by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (which probably can be categorized
as academic albeit not university).

Kind regards,
Lodewijk

No dia 26 de Março de 2012 11:04, Ray Saintonge escreveu:

> On 03/25/12 12:34 PM, James Heilman wrote:
>
>> Some academics need conferences to be sponsored by / associated with an
>> academic institution to receive time off and funding to attend
>> conferences.
>> Is this something that Wikimania has ever attempted? Ie. having Wikimania
>> hosted by the local chapter plus a local University?
>>
>>  Wikimania in 2006 was co-hosted by the Harvard Law School.
>
> Ray
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] A discussion list for Wikimedia (not "Foundation") matters

[Lodewijk]

I don't know if this makes sense, so I beg your patience for my ignorance.
But would it be an option to duplicate the archive? Then both the old and
the new links will work. It would be a Great Pity if the new list would not
contain the archive of the old list.

Best,
Lodewijk

No dia 4 de Abril de 2012 01:43, Thehelpfulone
escreveu:

> >
> > One other thing to think about while you're making larger adjustments:
> it's
> > possible to customize the listinfo page to not be so ghastly. For
> example,
> > compare <https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l> with
> > <https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l>. Perhaps one
> > of
> > the designers can work on making the new wikimedia-l listinfo page less
> > ugly
> > and off-putting?
> >
> > MZMcBride
> >
> >
> The designer could also use
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/accounts-enwiki-l for some
> inspiration, which is an improvement to the wikien-l mailing list (it has
> dynamic resizing for example). Source code is at
> https://github.com/enwikipedia-acc/mailinglist,
> https://github.com/enwikipedia-acc/mailinglist/blob/master/listinfo.html
> is the main page and
> https://github.com/enwikipedia-acc/mailinglist/blob/master/options.html is
> the page with all the subscription options once you've logged in.
> --
> Thehelpfulone
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Thehelpfulone
> English Wikipedia Administrator
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Re: [Foundation-l] New Project Process

[Lodewijk]

I totally second SJ's poke for more new projects! Although our flagship
project is highly successful, it would be good if we try to keep creating
new communities. I have been sad for quite a while now that we don't create
new projects any more. It would be great to see one new project every year
:)

Best,
Lodewijk

No dia 4 de Abril de 2012 05:53, Pharos escreveu:

> On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 4:22 PM, Samuel Klein 
> wrote:
> > On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 3:38 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
> >> On 3 April 2012 07:47, Federico Leva (Nemo)  wrote:
> >>
> >>> We had started a stub table about this:
> >>>
> https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_that_need_to_be_free
> >>
> >> This is brilliant! I've been after something like this for a while.
> >
> > Thanks for the reminder, Nemo.  I was looking for this on Meta, but
> > forgot to check the stratwiki.
> > Embarrassing, since apparently I started the page... :) Liam: another
> > reason to consider merging meta wikis.
> >
> > Ziko:
> >> what would a WMF evaluation of Wikinews or Wikispecies say? Should we
> shut down such
> >> a project... cease to mention it on Wikipedia main pages... or invest
> money in promoting it?
> >
> > Good questions, subtle answers.  Those are not the only options; we
> > might help them merge with a similar project.  For instance,
> > wikieducator and wikiversity have almost identical missions, and might
> > benefit from being merged; the question of 'who hosts the site' is
> > relatively minor compared to the loss of splitting energy and focus
> > across two wikis.
> >
> > Liam (paraphrased):
> >> - "project review" : identify support each project expects from the WMF.
> >> - "easy improvements with high value". Start with Wiktionary
> >> - rename Commons to "WikiCommons"? merge WikiSpecies w/ WikiData?
> >> - merge Outreach, Strategy and MetaWiki --> wikimedia.org
> >> - lower barriers b/t wikis: global userpages, talk, watchlists
> >
> > This whole class of brainstorming is important; making it less of a
> > pain to travel between projects is good for all of them.
> >
> > Yaroslav:
> >> may be we could use the experience of langcom and appoint ten
> individuals
> >> who would recommend new proposals to the Board.
> >
> > That's not a bad idea.
> >
> > SJ
>
> Indeed, perhaps a 'Sister Projects Committee' could start looking into
> some of Liam's type of questions.
>
> (Of course, Wikipedia is a "sister project" too!)
>
> Thanks,
> Richard
> (User:Pharos)
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Foundation Blog] Article feedback pilot goes live

[Lodewijk]

just wondering - are the ratings accompagnied with a time mark? (ie, can you
see whether the rates changed when the page was improved without making a
screenshot every day?)

Lodewijk

2010/9/22 aude 

> On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 2:24 PM, Guillaume Paumier
> wrote:
>
> > Link to the original article:
> >
> >
> http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/09/22/article-feedback-pilot-goes-live/
> >
> > As recently announced on the tech blog and in the Signpost, we're
> > launching an experimental new tool today to capture article feedback
> > from readers as part of the Public Policy Initiative. We're also
> > inviting the user community to help determine its future by joining a
> > workgroup tasked with evaluating it.
> >
> >
> The "Article Feedback Tool" allows any reader to quickly and easily
> > assess the sourcing, completeness, neutrality, and readability of a
> > Wikipedia article on a five-point scale. It will be one of several tools
> > used by the Public Policy Initiative to assess the quality of articles.
> > We also hope it will be a way to increase reader engagement by seeking
> > feedback from them on how they view the article, and where it needs
> > improvement.
> >
> > The tool is currently enabled on about 400 articles related to US public
> > policy. You can see it in action at the bottom of articles such
> > as /United States Constitution/, /Don't ask, don't tell/ or /Brown v.
> > Board of Education/.
> >
>
> Why does the feedback tool have no reference to the public policy
> initiative?
>
> Casual users and readers will not know why they are seeing this tool in
> some
> articles, and may be curious.
>
> @aude
>
>
> > Another goal of this pilot is to try and find a way to collaborate with
> > the community to build tools and features. As main users of the
> > software, Wikimedians are in a unique position to evaluate how a feature
> > performs, and what its strengths and limitations are. The Article
> > Feedback Tool is still very much in a prototype state; we're hoping the
> > user community can help us determine whether resources should be
> > allocated to improve it (and if so, how), or if it doesn't meet the
> > users' needs and should be shelved or completely rethought.
> >
> > More information about the tool is available on our Questions & Answers
> > page [1].
> >
> > If you want to try the tool to assess an article, pick a subject you're
> > familiar with from the full list [2] and rate it! If you'd like to
> > participate in the evaluation of the tool itself and what becomes of it,
> > please join the workgroup [3]. If you're interested in article
> > assessment in general, please also join the Public Policy Initiative's
> > Assessment Team [4].
> >
> > Thank you,
> >
> > Guillaume Paumier,
> > on behalf of the Features Engineering team
> >
> > [1]
> > http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_feedback/Public_Policy_Pilot/FAQs
> > [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Article_Feedback_Pilot
> > [3]
> >
> >
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_feedback/Public_Policy_Pilot/Workgroup
> > [4]
> >
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States_Public_Policy/Assessment#Project_Evaluation
> >
> > --
> > Guillaume Paumier
> > Product Manager, Multimedia Usability
> > Wikimedia Foundation
> > Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
> >
> >
> >
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia movement roles project

[Lodewijk]

Hi Austin,

thanks for sending around. Could you just give a link to where exactly on
the wiki you would "the discussion" (very broad term :) ) like to take
place? Which topics do you especially invite people to discuss /now/?

Also the meeting notes mention "The first deliverable, a formal proposal to
the Board at its October meeting, was discussed. A first draft will be sent
to the workgroup in the next few days." - is this draft going to be public
as intended initially? (I hope so :) - would love to give some more input
there)

Best,

Lodewijk

2010/9/22 Austin Hair 

> The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees has commissioned a
> year-long effort to clarify the roles of various stakeholders in the
> movement, with the final goal of developing a "Wikimedia Charter"—a
> document where the roles and responsibilities within the Wikimedia
> organization are clearly defined and agreed upon by all
> stakeholders—and a plan for going forward with organizational
> development.
>
> This process will be transparent, and open to input from anyone
> interested.  It's planned to take approximately one year, with regular
> milestones along the way.
>
> A core group of people will be tasked with ensuring that steady
> progress is being made toward those milestones.  Although the exact
> makeup of the group may change as specific needs are reevaluated, this
> working group currently comprises:
>
> * Alice Wiegand
> * Arne Klempert
> * Austin Hair (facilitator and adviser)
> * Barry Newstead
> * Bence Damokos
> * Bishakha Datta
> * Galileo Vidoni
> * Jon Huggett (facilitator and adviser)
> * Morgan Chan
> * Samuel Klein
>
> The work is just getting started, with the inaugural meeting of the
> working group having taken place on 10 September; please see the page
> on Meta[0] to comment and participate.  Although I expect that there
> will be plenty of replies to this e-mail, it would be nice if the
> project-related discussion could take place on-wiki.
>
> This announcement is about two weeks overdue—many of you may already
> know about it, since it's no secret.  I apologize for that; my
> computer died and I didn't manage to retype the e-mail with my thumbs
> on my phone before I got the replacement.
>
> I personally hope to see lots of participation, and am willing to
> answer any questions about the process.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Austin Hair
>
> [0] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_roles_working_group
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia movement roles project

[Lodewijk]

This group is talking about the Wikimedia organization, so it is no more
than logical that people heavily involved in that will be the ones thinking
about it. Besides that, although Austin did not mention that in this
specific email, it has been pointed out every time when I spoke with people
about this, that they will be searching for a huge support for anything that
comes out of it. A charter will only work if it is agreed upon by virtually
everybody affected. Also, it was clear that the process will be open, and
that people will be able to join in the conversation later on if they proof
to be constructively participating the discussions.

So, going from here there are two things you can probably do. The first is
just complain - probably wont get you very far, my guess is you already got
out of that what is in it. The second option is participate and give
constructive input. How would you like the Wikimedia Organization (that is
not the community per se, but rather the whole framework behind it including
Foundation and Chapters and non-affiliated organizations like the
Wikimedians in Kansai) see develop, how would you see your role in that?

Best,

Lodewijk



2010/9/22 who this 

> why not throw in florence and aprhabhala into the mix and we can round up
> the same "advisory group" cabal.
>
> maybe they are in rotation for the next one..
>
> anyway seeing the same names over and over again irked me and I decided to
> comment on the issue which like many other editors I try to avoid.
>
> looking forward to seeing more of the same
>
> Anon
>
> On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 2:07 AM, who this  wrote:
>
> > Lets see..
> >
> > Austin- chapcom member/chair
> > Arne Klempert-chapcom member
> > Bence Damokos-chapcom member
> > Samuel klein-chapcom member + many others
> >
> > Morgan Chan- communication committee(status unknown)
> >
> > bishkha datta- board member
> >
> > barry newstead-employee
> >
> > jon hugget-outside employee/contractor
> >
> > thats how I see the current "committee"
> >
> > same people already heavily involved either retired from community
> editing
> > shifting influential positions. half this working group is made of
> chapcom
> > members.
> >
> > As for joining..I didnt see an announce or any posting for this
> working
> > group like many others. they just show up, make influential decisions and
> > disappear into some other committee. No senior editors who are currently
> > active on there, same ppl who would be affected most by their decision.
> >
> > Anon
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 1:52 AM, Steven Walling <
> steven.wall...@gmail.com>wrote:
> >
> >> Anon,
> >>
> >> The percentage of community members interested in doing meta organizing
> >> and
> >> research for the movement as a whole will always be much smaller than
> >> those
> >> interested in working on a single project (or just a single task or
> >> subject
> >> within a project). It's a fact of life when it comes to any movement,
> >> online
> >> or off, and Wikimedia is not unusual in this regard.
> >>
> >> It's important to remember that working groups such as Movement Roles
> try
> >> hard to get a diverse array of perspectives in on a project, even if
> they
> >> don't alway succeed.
> >>
> >> If you want to see some new blood involved, I would suggest either
> joining
> >> in yourself or making sure the right people know that they can join in,
> *
> >> especially* if they aren't normally the type to self-select for groups
> >> such
> >> as Movement Roles.
> >>
> >> Steven Walling
> >>
> >> On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 1:05 PM, who this  wrote:
> >>
> >> > Am I the only one or do people get the feeling that its the same
> people
> >> > that
> >> > keep showing up for these communities and groups.
> >> >
> >> > I do not see new community people, mostly outsiders, someone from the
> >> > staff,
> >> > and the same old cabal.
> >> >
> >> > when you gonna get some new people in there?
> >> >
> >> > anon editor
> >> >
> >> > On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 5:56 PM, Austin Hair 
> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > > The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees has commissioned a
> >> > > year-long effort to clarify the roles of various stakeholders in the
> >> > > movement, with the final go

Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia movement roles project

[Lodewijk]

2010/9/22 Austin Hair 

>
> 
> > Also the meeting notes mention "The first deliverable, a formal proposal
> to
> > the Board at its October meeting, was discussed. A first draft will be
> sent
> > to the workgroup in the next few days." - is this draft going to be
> public
> > as intended initially? (I hope so :) - would love to give some more input
> > there)
>
> That proposal will be made available for comment, certainly.  It's
> currently being drafted "in committee," as it were, not because it's
> secret, but for practical reasons.  The proposal is meant to formalize
> the work that's already been done and set goals for the next
> milestone.  Since the ultimate goal is a universally accepted
> agreement, obviously the idea is that it won't be anything
> particularly objectionable.
>
> Austin
>
> [0] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_roles_working_group
> [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Movement_roles_working_group
>
>
>
Hmm, I hate to be the nagger here - I just hoped that right from the
beginning the openness and transparancy could be clear by doing this kind of
things, that are not secret, as much as possible in the open :) Although I
also hope everybody will agree with it - it would be helpful if people could
lend you their thoughts on it, even if they are not involved in the group
formally fostering the discussion. Although you hopefully did not mean it
like that, "will be made available for comment" does not sound exactly
inclusive :)

Lodewijk
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Kosovo Chapter? Re: Fwd: SFK100 Press Release

[Lodewijk]

lets first await how things develop, whether there are enough people being
involved, if a chapter is actually the most useful format for their
activities in the first place - before we are going to get into the whole
political question of whether Kosovo is a seperate jurisdiction or not and
what WMRS' role would be in that.

Lodewijk

2010/9/27 Gerard Meijssen 

> Hoi,
> I doubt very much that political considerations should be part of the set
> up
> of a chapter. Asking the Serbian chapter for an opinion is fine. Giving
> them
> a vote on this is not. Given that Kosovo is a separate jurisdiction means
> that it fulfils the basic requirement. Given that Hong Kong and New York
> have chapters the case for Kosovo to have a chapter is at least as strong
> if
> not stronger.
> Thanks,
>   GerardM
>
> On 27 September 2010 11:09, Nikola Smolenski  wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 2010-09-26 at 18:29 +0200, Milos Rancic wrote:
> > > On Sun, Sep 26, 2010 at 14:58, Daniel ~ Leinad  >
> > wrote:
> > > > Look here
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Step-by-step_chapter_creation_guide
> > > > and here http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Local_chapter_FAQ.
> > >
> > > Plus to convince voting ChapCom members enough that it is good idea to
> > > convince WM Serbia that it is a good idea.
> > >
> > > As a non-voting member of ChapCom and Board member of WM RS I can
> > > confirm that the harder task is to convince ChapCom.
> >
> > As a non-voting board member of WM RS, I am highly doubtful of such a
> > confirmation.
> >
> >
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