Re: [Foundation-l] FAQ for fundraising resolutions

[Michael Peel]

Hi Phoebe,

Thanks for posting this. I've asked a question (OK, three related questions) at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_and_Funds_Dissemination/Board_FAQ#Why_just_the_four_chapters.3F

Thanks,
Mike

On 5 Apr 2012, at 19:29, Thomas Dalton wrote:

> On 5 April 2012 19:14, phoebe ayers  wrote:
>> Thanks, Tom. If you don't mind I'll put it on the talk page; this will
>> likely require some discussion to answer.
> 
> By all means.
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Board Resolutions from March 30th 2012

[Michael Peel]

On 30 Mar 2012, at 23:17, Nathan wrote:

> Since payment processing is not contemplated as a vector for receiving
> funds, either in 2012 or beyond,

[citation needed]. Also, [attribution needed]. There are those that are 
contemplating this, and those that aren't - it's not as clear cut as you imply.

> it makes sense to permit processing only
> where it provides a significant advantage in raising funds and where the
> reliability and integrity of funds processing is not in doubt.

I can't disagree there. But there should be clear routes to ensuring that 
reliability and integrity, and to foster it where it is currently being 
developed. Those routes are currently rather conspicuous by their complete 
absence, and by the lack of WMF interest in fostering these. I hope that the 
chapters council can play a big role here, but worry that it will be 
handicapped by this decision by the WMF.

> As the
> resolution states, all entities are permitted (and, I'm sure, encouraged)
> to raise funds in other ways.

So ... entities are trusted to receive donations by one method, but not 
another? That makes no sense whatsoever to me. Either they're trusted to handle 
funds and resources donated to the Wikimedia movement, or they're not.

I'm probably ranting against a fait accompli here. But I'm deeply saddened and 
depressed by this outcome.

Thanks,
Mike
(Personal viewpoint)
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Re: [Foundation-l] Board Resolutions from March 30th 2012

[Michael Peel]

"We ask the Executive Director not to allow any additional chapters to payment 
process, until the Board revisits the framework for fundraising and payment 
processing in late 2015 in advance of the November 2016 fundraising campaign."

This is very disappointing. It's a real shame that chapters aside from WMDE, 
WMFR, WMUK and WMCH aren't being given any encouragement to develop their 
capabilities for handling donations. I have to say that I think this is a 
fundamental misstep for the Wikimedia movement, and one that we will come to 
regret in the future.

On voting transparency: this is a great step forward. However, I would 
encourage the WMF to take a further step, and to explain why trustees voted 
approve/abstain/against. This could potentially be done by (for examples) 
adding notes next to votes explaining reservations or key supporting factors, 
or by making resolutions more focused (e.g. the fundraising decision could have 
been split into four: principles, chapter payment processing, four chapters, 
and additional chapters, which would have provided more insight here).

Thanks,
Mike Peel
(Personal viewpoint)

On 30 Mar 2012, at 22:42, Ting Chen wrote:

> Dear members of the community,
> 
> After having discussed the final aspects of this today I would like to 
> announce the following three resolutions
> 
> 1) Board of Trustees Voting Transparency: 
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Board_of_Trustees_Voting_Transparency
> 1) Fundraising 2012: 
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Fundraising_2012
> 2) Funds Dissemination Committee: 
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Funds_Dissemination_Committee
> 
> For those of you who are currently in Berlin, we will have a 2 hour window 
> tomorrow to discuss this together, we invite you to send questions for this 
> session to Harel Cain (mailto:harel.c...@gmail.com>>) 
> He will be moderating tomorrow's session which will be similar to the Q&A 
> session we had in Paris.
> 
> We are currently working on a Question and Answer document which we will 
> publish as soon as possible.
> 
> Although the decision has now been made, we have a large number of challenges 
> ahead of us and I hope that we as a movement will come together to make the 
> Funds Dissemination Committee a success by working with us to come up with 
> answers tot the questions that we still have and helping to make it work!
> 
> -- 
> Ting Chen
> Member of the Board of Trustees
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
> E-Mail: tc...@wikimedia.org
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Draft charter of the Wikimedia Chapters Association

[Michael Peel]

Think of this more as the hub of a bicycle wheel with many spokes, rather than 
a centralised body. A device that makes for quicker progress than walking 
alone, but isn't a burdensome stone wheel.

Having a lightweight central organisation that can keep an eye on what is going 
on, that can provide advice, and can fix things when they go wrong is vital. 
Having a single organisation that everything's centralised into is monolithic, 
bureaucratic and ineffective in the long run.

Thanks,
Mike

On 18 Mar 2012, at 19:47, Nathan wrote:

> So a group of chapters, reacting against a perceived effort to centralize
> the movement, create a brand new central body with an extensive (and
> apparently, expensive) bureaucracy? Are there really a lot of people that
> think this is a good idea?
> 
> 
> On Sun, Mar 18, 2012 at 3:30 PM, Ziko van Dijk wrote:
> 
>> Dear friends,
>> 
>> After weeks of full work, this is the draft charter that has been
>> worked on. I copy for you here the introduction and the link to meta.
>> 
>> If you have questions about it, you may put them on the talk page or
>> send them to me.
>> 
>> Kind regards
>> Ziko
>> 
>> 
>> In February 2012, in Paris, Chapter representants agreed on creating a
>> new organization. As there was no person or group assigned to write a
>> draft charter, finally, after having talked to some people on general
>> questions, I took the task on me. Subsequently I presented this page
>> (March 7th) which was very much altered in the meanwhile.
>> 
>> I have tried to integrate Paris texts, parts from the models B and
>> KISS, and I have contacted a lot of the people who are going to Berlin
>> (end of March; alas I did not find all e-mails but I believed I
>> contacted every participating chapter). There were some phone calls
>> and chats e.g. with Sebastian Moleski. There is also another draft, by
>> Tango, which I (and others) have read carefully.
>> 
>> Now we nearly arrived March 18th, on which, according to the timeline,
>> a draft charter is supposed to be ready. Whatever that means, I would
>> like to call the draft provisorily ready (there will be certainly
>> changes, especially for the final incorporation) and invite people
>> again to read.
>> ...
>> 
>> The idea is to have an organization with a kind of parliament
>> (Council) and a kind of government (Secretariat). A Judicial Board has
>> the task to arbitrate in severe cases of conflict; this could have
>> been a simple Council committee, but for general reasons a seperate
>> organ is better: the Council or Council members could be part of a
>> conflict. We hope that the Judicial Board will have nothing to do.
>> 
>> Normally, the members of the organs are elected for a certain term.
>> This is important to give them a certain independence. There must be a
>> relationship between work, responsibility and the right to make
>> decisions. But if there is a severe problem, then the Council can
>> dismiss people (by a 2/3 majority).
>> 
>> There was a lenghy discussion on several levels about the position of
>> the Council members, the Representatives. Now, according to the
>> general principle, the Representative has a fixed term and can be
>> dismissed in certain cases. But the Representative can have a position
>> in a chapter (in contrary to a former model).
>> 
>> Maybe the most important question to be answered: If a chapter joins,
>> what are the consequences and obligations? First of all: A chapter
>> joins only if it wants to, it does not become a member automatically.
>> A chapter agrees to elect a Representative and pay an annual
>> contribution. Later in the year 2012, there will be a budget.
>> Possibly, the chapters will have to pay some % of their annual chapter
>> budget. Of course the Wikimedia Chapters Association will consider the
>> financial possibilities of the chapters.
>> 
>> Why is it good for a chapter to join? The Association will support the
>> chapters and represent their interests. A lot of international
>> coordination work, that now has to be done by chapter boards, will be
>> done (or supported by) the organs of the Association. Even if a
>> chapter is already big and mature - it is good for every chapter to
>> belong to a big family of well organized chapters.
>> 
>> 
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_Council/Draft_charter_of_the_Wikimedia_Chapters_Association
>> --
>> 
>> ---
>> Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland
>> dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter
>> http://wmnederland.nl/
>> 
>> Wikimedia Nederland
>> Postbus 167
>> 3500 AD Utrecht
>> ---
>> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Stopping the presses: Britannica to stop printing books

[Michael Peel]

On 14 Mar 2012, at 12:21, Russavia wrote:

> Interesting news indeed.
> 
> Lead's one to wonder when WMF will launch it's first printed
> encyclopaedia. Perhaps a 2013 Citation Needed edition is in the works?

Something like this:
http://www.labnol.org/internet/wikipedia-printed-book/9136/
?

(And that's just ~400 FA's...)

Mike


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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia domains, SOPA, Godaddy and MarkMonitor

[Michael Peel]

Hello,

Thanks MZMcBride for your reply here.

On 10 Mar 2012, at 22:32, MZMcBride wrote:

> Michael Peel wrote:
>> I'd like to see more information here. What activities are MarkMonitor
>> involved in with the 'anti-piracy fight'? Are they involved in filtering all
>> peer-to-peer traffic, or just the traffic that contravenes copyright law? As 
>> a
>> domain name supplier, what is their relation to ISPs, and how do they
>> practically provide this filtering? What evidence do they supply to copyright
>> holders - I assume that this evidence is related to who has registered which
>> domain, since (as domain name providers) they shouldn't be in a position to
>> provide any other (non-public) information here? How do they monitor titles?
> 
> Did you do any quick research before asking these questions?

Yes. I've been aware of this planned transfer for a while, and I did some 
background research into MarkMonitor as time has permitted. Of particular 
relevance here, I've read the (English) Wikipedia article, and the WMF blog 
post. I'm still surprised at what Domas said here, though, and I want to 
understand this aspect of the issue. Both my last email and this one was/is 
sent in the hope of gaining a deeper understanding of this issue from 
knowledgable people, rather than just relying on a bit of quick research via a 
Google search.

>> I'm asking this out of genuine interest. My understanding of domain name
>> providers in general is that they provide a service that simply says "this
>> domain name points to the server at this IP address", rather than them having
>> any role in filtering, providing evidence, or monitoring.  I'm rather
>> surprised to hear that their activities go beyond this.
> 
> MarkMonitor isn't a typical domain registrar. It's a component of what they
> do, but they're quite explicitly a "brand protection service." A very large
> part of Web brands just happens to be their domain names.
> 
> I did some quick research. It looks like MarkMonitor has been involved with
> a lot of major companies, including Facebook (hi Domas!), Google, and now
> the Wikimedia Foundation
> (<https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:MarkMonitor>). There were
> rumors that MarkMonitor was also involved in the acquisition of mobileme.com
> and me.com for Apple.
> 
> http://arst.ch/nu2 was an interesting take on one of the company's reports.
> I guess they pissed off RapidShare pretty badly at some point.

That's interesting to hear, but I'm still curious about the logistics of how 
they operate, particularly in terms of how them being a domain name provider 
(which is a rather distinct role) but not an ISP (another rather distinct role) 
connects to them assisting in filtering content, and also how this link to them 
enforcing Creative Commons licensing. Speaking as someone that has contributed 
to the Wikimedia projects, I would be rather surprised if the WMF's domain name 
supplier started trying enforcing the copyright and licensing terms of the 
content that I have provided to the projects.

I want to see more information here. Ideally, that information would be 
provided via the Wikipedia article on this organisation. But if Domas could 
provide links that back up his comments, then that would still be really 
useful. At the moment, though, I have to tag his whole email with [citation 
needed]... That's not to provide any sort of opposition to the move that WMF 
has made here; it's just to make an expression of interest in terms of seeing 
more information being made easily available (via the Wikimedia projects) on 
this topic.

>> I'm all in favour of moving the Wikimedia domain names from GoDaddy to
>> MarkMonitor (and, tbh, I'm rather puzzled by why the WMF decided to use
>> GoDaddy in the first place), I'm just rather puzzled by your statements here.
> 
> Byproduct of history, I imagine. It used to be that it didn't really matter
> where you registered a domain, as long as they were competent enough to keep
> it registered and handle your whois data. In most cases and for most people,
> this is still true. I vaguely recall some major site being interrupted
> within the past year because their domain registration password (on a site
> like GoDaddy or HostGator or wherever) was incredibly weak. You'd be
> surprised what kinds of domains are registered where. :-)

Thinking about this further, I guess that this links all the way back to 
Nupedia being a Bomis project, which would explain why they an unethical domain 
name provider was used for the Wiki[p/m]edia domains...

Thanks,
Mike
(personal viewpoint)


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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia domains, SOPA, Godaddy and MarkMonitor

[Michael Peel]

Hi Domas,

I'd like to see more information here. What activities are MarkMonitor involved 
in with the 'anti-piracy fight'? Are they involved in filtering all 
peer-to-peer traffic, or just the traffic that contravenes copyright law? As a 
domain name supplier, what is their relation to ISPs, and how do they 
practically provide this filtering? What evidence do they supply to copyright 
holders - I assume that this evidence is related to who has registered which 
domain, since (as domain name providers) they shouldn't be in a position to 
provide any other (non-public) information here? How do they monitor titles?

I'm asking this out of genuine interest. My understanding of domain name 
providers in general is that they provide a service that simply says "this 
domain name points to the server at this IP address", rather than them having 
any role in filtering, providing evidence, or monitoring.  I'm rather surprised 
to hear that their activities go beyond this.

I'm all in favour of moving the Wikimedia domain names from GoDaddy to 
MarkMonitor (and, tbh, I'm rather puzzled by why the WMF decided to use GoDaddy 
in the first place), I'm just rather puzzled by your statements here.

Thanks,
Mike
(NB: please note that although I'm subscribed to this list under my 
@wikimedia.org.uk address for the purposes of organising my incoming emails, 
I'm asking these questions on a personal basis.)

On 10 Mar 2012, at 19:23, Domas Mituzas wrote:

> Hi!
> 
> I hereby congratulate Wikimedia Foundation switching domains from
> pro-SOPA Godaddy to MarkMonitor.
> 
> Not that many people know, but MarkMonitor is ahead of the industry in
> anti-piracy fight:
> 
> * They have systems to do real-time content filtering for ISPs, that
> stop peer-to-peer piracy.
> * They provide evidence for largest media and entertainment copyright
> holders, that is accepted in civil and criminal courts.
> * They have state of the art systems to monitor millions of titles on
> peer to peer networks and send Cease and Desist letters.
> 
> There're way more anti-piracy activities that MarkMonitor does, and
> I'm happy that WMF and MM are joining their forces.
> I hope it will lead to better Creative Commons license enforcing, as
> well as detecting illegal use of content on WMF sites too, some day.
> 
> BR,
> Domas
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Copyright and cakes...

[Michael Peel]

Best all around to simply destroy the evidence (by eating it?).

... can this topic end now? Or be moved on-wiki so that it can be filed under 
WP:SILLY?

Thanks,
Mike

On 5 Mar 2012, at 23:23, Thomas Dalton wrote:

> On 5 March 2012 23:14, Lodewijk  wrote:
>> 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.
> 
> If you take a slice out of the cake, that could be an issue since you
> have created a new work that negatively portrays the logo. I think the
> only option is the eat the entire cake at once.
> 
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Re: [Foundation-l] Chapter Selected Board Seats - Time for questions

[Michael Peel]

Hi all,

I'm expecting to be contradicted here, but I have to ask these questions in 
order to personally understand the politics surrounding this topic.

My understanding here (having been subscribed to the chapters mailing list 
since the start of the chapter-selected WMF board seats - i.e. since late 2008) 
is that the Wikimedia Foundation wanted this process to be conducted in private 
in order to have candidates that would benefit the WMF's governance process, 
and would benefit from the chapters' networks of experienced and knowledgeable 
individuals, whilst not requiring those candidates to go through the elongated 
public ordeal that the community-elected seats involve (and in particular: the 
public Q&A and voting requirements that are expected of a community-selected 
trustee).

There were reasons why the Wikimedia chapters were not able to make this 
process public in the past (and why they are not able to have a public vote on 
this issue). These reasons are due to the chapter's understanding of the 
context of this topic, rather than the chapters deciding on their own that the 
process needs to be kept confidential. It's absolutely fantastic that all of 
the candidates for this election are willing to make their statements public - 
but the credit here is really due to the the candidates that have put 
themselves forward for this election in an open manner, rather than anything 
else.

If I'm wrong here, then I would really welcome corrections. But I really don't 
like that the requirement of keeping the decisions made by this this process is 
being put on the Wikimedia chapters rather than the Wikimedia Foundation. It 
may be that this issue has arisen due to a misunderstanding between the 
Wikimedia chapters and the WMF, but please don't think that this 
confidentiality is solely due to the chapters here.

Thanks,
Mike
(internal-l has had the standard approach that Wikimedia trustees can declare 
that their emails are reflecting personal viewpoints rather than those comments 
representing the chapters that they are trustees of - and I hope this extends 
to foundation-l. My comments and queries here are solely my own rather than 
WMUK's.)

On 3 Mar 2012, at 01:29, Tinu Cherian wrote:

> Thanks Beria for taking the initiative for making the list of candidates
> and statements on a public wiki.
> 
> It brings in more transparency and better understanding of the process to
> the whole of the Wikimedia World.
> 
> All the best wishes to the candidates!
> 
> Regards
> Tinu Cherian
> Wikimedia India.
> 
> On Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 7:57 AM, Béria Lima  wrote:
> 
>> Hello people,
>> 
>> So after receive authorization from all candidates, the list of candidates
>> + statements are in meta, and you can find it here: http'://
>> meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapter-selected_Board_seats/2012/Candidates
>> 
>> Until 14 March is time for questions, so if you have any questions to any
>> of the candidates, please put your question in this page:
>> 
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapter-selected_Board_seats/2012/Candidates/Questions(there
>> are already some questions and some answers there)
>> 
>> So there is only one thing. Candidates are not forced to answer, and even
>> if they do, they're not forced to answer in public, so might happens that
>> some answers won't go to meta. If you ask a question and the candidate
>> don't want to make the answer public, I will send you a mail with the
>> answer - but of course, you can't leak the answer anywhere.
>> 
>> Also do keep in mind this isn't a community vote. We are trying to keep as
>> public as we can, but the discussions the chapters will have will be
>> private. So don't expect me to post those in meta.
>> _
>> *
>> *
>> 
>> *[image: Inline images 1]*
>> 
>> *Béria Lima*
>> 
>> * *
>> 
>> * Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter
>> livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano.*
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> *Ajude-nos a construir esse sonho.* **
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> *
>> ** *
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Re: [Foundation-l] Oral Citations Sourcing

[Michael Peel]

On 25 Feb 2012, at 17:15, Castelo wrote:

> In my opinion, and i already pointed that in Meta discussion, Wikipedia is 
> not the place for original content, but Wikinews can publish the interviews 
> and the content can be uploaded to Commons so others volunteers can check the 
> material. 

Actually, Wikipedia sort of is the place for original content - when it comes 
to illustrations in articles. It's possible to envisage audio recordings being 
used in appropriate Wikipedia articles along the lines of 'listen to a 
fisherman from the coast of Shandong talk about his work', more in the current 
role of pictures/photographs rather than as references.

Just a thought.

Thanks,
Mike


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Re: [Foundation-l] The Mediawiki 1.18 image rotation bug on Commons and on all Wikimedia projects

[Michael Peel]

> From: David Gerard 
> 
> On 12 December 2011 18:18, Erik Moeller  wrote:
> 
>> Technically, nothing was "messed up" by the feature. Rather, the
>> software previously did not take EXIF rotation into account, and some
>> images had incorrect EXIF rotation information to begin with. Those
>> images are now shown in an incorrect rotation to the user, because the
>> incorrect EXIF rotation info is being evaluated.
> 
> 
> That's ridiculous misuse of words. What was messed up was the
> presentation of images that were already displayed correctly.
> 
> It is entirely unclear to me why you appear to be evading rather than
> answering a fairly simple and straightforward question:
> 
> How many images used in the wikis had the pages they were on messed up by 
> this?

Actually, I think Erik's use of words here is spot on. The previous images were 
messed up in such a way that they appeared right by fluke, but their metadata 
wasn't correct. Now, they can be easily identified and properly fixed by the 
community. This is a good and useful improvement - well done WMF + tech team 
for implementing it. :-)

> From: Andrew Gray 
> 
> I agree applying it to old images was a bit of an odd thing to do (if
> they were visibly wrong, someone usually went to the effort of
> re-uploading them), but that doesn't mean applying it to later ones
> was somehow a stupid thing to do.

With this type of modification, it's natural that it would apply to all images 
rather than just images uploaded after it was switched on. It would be horribly 
unnatural and deliberately-buggy if it tried to take the date of upload into 
account when applying the modification...

Thanks,
Mike
P.S. am replying to the digest - apologies if this ends up in the wrong 
thread...


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[Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia UK report, October 2011

[Michael Peel]

Below is the Wikimedia UK monthly report for the period 1 to 31 October 2011. 
If you want to keep up with the chapter's activities as they happen, please 
subscribe to our blog, join our mailing list, and/or follow us on Twitter. If 
you have any questions or comments, please drop us a line on this report's talk 
page.

This report is also available, complete with pictures, on our website at 
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports/2011/October .

Contents

1 Program activities
1.1 2012 Activity Plan
1.2 Education projects
1.3 GLAM activities
1.4 Other activities
1.5 UK press coverage (and coverage of UK projects & activities)
1.6 Upcoming activities in November
2 Administrative activities
2.1 Board activities
2.2 Extraordinary General Meeting to change our Objects
2.3 News from the CEO
2.4 Fundraising
2.5 Recruitment
Program activities

2012 Activity Plan

Our 2012 Activity Plan was posted to the WMUK wiki on 1 October and has been 
submitted to the Wikimedia Foundation as part of the planning for the annual 
fundraiser. This plan is an outline of the work we will do in 2012, and the 
resources we need to support it. It is an important stage in the development of 
our 2012 Budget. When we’re asking people for money in this Autumn’s 
fundraiser, the Activity Plan will show people what we’re hoping to achieve 
with their donations – so it’s also important for the openness and 
accountability of our fundraising. We welcome any comments or suggestions on 
the talk page.

Education projects

Dr Mark Graham, and Han-Teng Liao, both from the Oxford Internet Institute, 
attended WikiSym 2011 on WMUK scholarships this month; they also presented 
about their work at the Wikimedia Foundation offices.

Fiona Apps, supported by Richard Symonds, held a stall at the University of 
Warwick Freshers fayre, on 1 October. This resulted in over 70 expressions of 
interest in forming a Wiki student club.

We have supported a University of Birmingham bid for JISC funding for World War 
One digital content prioritization; our letter of support is at File:Birmingham 
JISC support.pdf.

On 24th October, Fiona Apps led a Wikipedia Lounge at The University of 
Manchester.

GLAM activities

On October 1st there was a Herbert Art Gallery and Museum Backstage Pass - this 
was covered in detail in the This Month in GLAM newletter. Also on the 1st, Tom 
Morris attending Over the Air at Bletchley Park.

On the 7th October, an internal training workshop was held at the British 
Museum. Then on the 13th October, the British Museum Ice Age art "Behind the 
Scenes" event was held.

Other events this month included:

5th - Martin Poulter spoke on "Common pitfalls in engaging with Wikipedia" at 
Bathcamp #26, the Innovation Centre, Bath
8th - Andy Mabbett talked about "GLAM and QRpedia" at Library Camp UK in 
Birmingham
14th - CeriseLovesColours from France visits Derby for VIP tour and to pick 2nd 
prize for the Wright Challenge
28th - Initial meeting for MonmouthpediA - John Cummings
A video showing Derby Museum using QRPedia codes was released on Vimeo.
Other activities

UK Wikimeets this month: Edinburgh meeting (1st), Cambridge meetup (8th), 
London (16th)
3rd-5th - Roger Bamkin speaking at Europeana Tech Conference in Vienna (report 
here)
29th - Trevor Johnson hosted a stand and a training event at RISC OS London 
Show, Feltham
Microgrants funded this month include Elections in Europe from User:Number 57 
and Copyright law from User:Ironholds
UK press coverage (and coverage of UK projects & activities)

Press coverage of Wikipedia in UK publications this month included:

Journal: "The Linguist" (vol. 50 no. 5, Oct/Nov 2011, p. 7 covers "Net 
Challenge" by Andrew Dalby listing the winners in Russia, France, Italy, 
Indonesia and the Czech Republic
1st - continued coverage of QRPedia:
How Wikipedia Is Making QR Codes Useful Again, Gizmodo
QRPedia: Wikipedia launches QR code tool for museums, PC Advisor
QRPedia - simple but effective , i-Programmer
Also: Wikipedia Signpost write-up of QRPedia
3rd - Wikipedia codifica tutto, Pubblicita Italia (QRpedia and arty QR codes)
5th-7th - several UK media outlets covered the strike of the Italian Wikipedia:
Wikipedia closes in Italy after Silvio Berlusconi 'gagging' bid, Independent
Wikipedia shuts Italy site to protest Berlusconi "gag law", Reuters UK
Italy wiretap law: Wikipedia hides pages in protest, BBC News
Wikipedia Shut Italian Site In Protest Over Privacy Law, Huffington Post UK
7th - Die Wikipedia kommt ins Museum, Spiegel on line, Interview with Peter 
Weiss about QRpedia and GLAM
14th Arriba a Barcelona l’exposició ‘Joan Miró. L’escala de l’evasió, Calalan 
Wikipedia and QRpedia enable Spanish Art Gallery labelling by Kippelboy
Wikipedia vandalism:
Rugby World Cup 2011: referee Alain Rolland's Wikipedia account sabotaged after 
Sam Warburton red card, Telegraph
Wiki-d lies so mean say North Lynners, Lynn News
When I died on Wikipedia, Guardian
Jimmy Wales
23 October, Jimmy Wales: The inter

[Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia UK report, September 2011

[Michael Peel]

Below is the Wikimedia UK monthly report for the period 1 to 30 September 2011. 
If you want to keep up with the chapter's activities as they happen, please 
subscribe to our blog, join our mailing list, and/or follow us on Twitter. If 
you have any questions or comments, please drop us a line on this report's talk 
page.

This report is also available, complete with pictures, on our website at 
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports/2011/September .

Contents

1 Recruitment
2 Program activities
2.1 Education projects
2.2 GLAM activities
2.3 Other activities
2.4 UK press coverage (and coverage of UK projects & activities)
2.5 Upcoming activities in October
3 Administrative activities
3.1 Board activities
3.2 Charitable status
3.3 Fundraising
Recruitment

This month we completed our recruitment of our new Chief Exec: Jon Davies will 
start work on 1 October. Andrew Turvey, who led the recruitment, blogged about 
the process of recruiting our Chief Exec; one of the last steps in this process 
was the presence of the final three candidates at the 49th London Meetup so 
that the community could provide their input.

Our new full-time Office Administrator, Richard Symonds, known as Chase me 
ladies, I'm the Cavalry on Wikipedia, started work this month to assist 
specifically with the fundraiser work, and also more generally with WMUK's 
administrative needs. His contract runs until mid-January.

Program activities

Education projects

On the 1st September, Martin Poulter and User:Martinvl ran a workshop for 
members of the Institute of Physics. The event was written up in a blog post.

We funded two scholarships to attend WikiSym 2011 in October 2011. The 
scholarships were awarded to Dr Mark Graham, and Han-Teng Liao, both from the 
Oxford Internet Institute. Following from the visit, they will also present 
about their work at the Wikimedia Foundation offices.

GLAM activities

Two ARKive project events were held in Bristol on 15 September (one in the 
afternoon, the other in the evening), led by Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing), 
details of which are at Wiki Wildlife Bristol. These were part of a larger 
collaboration to improve Wikipedia articles on threatened species, full 
information for which is available at Wikipedia:GLAM/ARKive. The events were 
covered by a number of local blogs and media organisations.

QRPedia saw extensive media coverage this month, mostly following from the WMF 
blog post about it. See below for links to the news stories.

A number of other GLAM activities also took place, including:

3rd - The Mayor of Derby awarded prizes by a webstream to winners in Russia, 
France and Indonesia for the Derby Multilingual challenge
8th - the first Wikipedia editing training session at the British Museum was, 
with nine BM people present (a mix of curators, curatorial interns and 
volunteers) and three Wikimedians. More details are on the Wikipedia project 
page.
14th - A workshop for GLAMs was run at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum. For 
more information on this, see the 'This month in GLAM' UK report.
27th - A presentation was given to all staff at the British Library by Fae and 
Roger
30th - Fae meet with Museums Galleries Scotland to talk about an upcoming 
partnership.
Other activities

UK Wikimeets this month: London (11th) and Manchester (17th)
2nd-3rd - Mike Peel presented at Science Online London in the "How are wikis 
being used to carry out and communicate science?" session, and also the 
'Micro-attribution' session.
8th - Steve Virgin and Roger Bamkin presented at TEDx Bristol
13th - Jimmy Wales uses QRpedia in Indianapolis
14th - Editathon in Barcelona creates articles to support QRpedia at Foundation 
Joan Miro
27th - Fiona Apps (User:Panyd) spoke about Women and Wikipedia at Manchester 
Girl Geek Dinner at B-Hive, Manchester. A report is available on the wiki.
We have offered travel grants to support UK residents' attendance of 
WikiConference India in November.
UK press coverage (and coverage of UK projects & activities)

Press coverage of Wikimedia in UK publications this month included:

1st - QRpedia and Lori on Indianapolis local radio
8th - Wikipedia creator’s keynote speech at radio festival, JournalLive
9th - Wikipedia founder wows Cambridge Network audience - "Wikipedia attracts 
more readers than the top 20 newspapers in the world combined. ", also covered 
in Cabume (13th)
12th - Joan Collins Corrects Wikipedia Entry, Express
14th - Johann Hari: A personal apology, Independent. Also covered in The 
Guardian and Periscope Post.
15th - QR Codes at the National Archives: National archives news & 
GovernmentNews
16th - coverage of ARKive event:
Life’s wild editing Wikipedia, Bristol Wireless
Bristol ‘Wikipedians’ taught to edit online encylopaedia, Bristol 24/7
ARKive on the Road: Wiki ‘Wildlife editathon’ in Bristol, UK, ARKive blog.
24th - QRpedia on Spanish Discussion programme as part of 40 minute programme 
on Wikipedia - one of three Spanish TV interviews
28th - 维

Re: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia project has forked

[Michael Peel]

> From: Nikola Smolenski 
> On 22/09/11 10:12, Andrea Zanni wrote:
>> when Sue presented us the Strategic Plan and Wikipedia was all over the
>> pages,
>> but none of the sister projects.
> 
> I have to say, whenever I make a presentation of Wikimedia and mention 
> sister projects, all I get is blank stares. It really makes sense to 
> focus on Wikipedia in outreach activities.

Um… no. That means it really makes sense to talk about the sister projects more 
than just mentioning them, as they are clearly in more need of outreach than 
Wikipedia with that audience…

I often briefly describe the sister projects when I'm doing Wikipedia outreach 
- and quite often see people making comments on twitter etc. as a result about 
how they didn't know about a particular project, and were going to take a look 
at it (and hopefully go on to contribute to it…)

Mike


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[Foundation-l] Sending announcements to this list

[Michael Peel]

Hi all,

Just to check: I've been assuming of late that everyone that's interested in 
reading announcements (including things like chapter reports, committee reports 
and signpost issues) is subscribed to the wikimediaannounce-l mailing list - is 
that a valid assumption, or should reports continue to be sent to this list?

Thanks,
Mike Peel
(who sends out WMUK reports, amongst occasional others)


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Re: [Foundation-l] Ring of Gyges

[Michael Peel]

On 30 Nov 2010, at 23:53, George Herbert wrote:

> Two, nearly all WP users use pseudonymity rather than real names, and
> for most people not having their real name attached anywhere gives
> them a sense of anonymous empowerment similar to the truly anonymous
> trolls seen elsewhere.  We see a lot of behavioral problems that are,
> to anyone who studies interpersonal communications online, extremely
> common.  People don't inherently humanize other pseudonyms; they don't
> feel that they'll necessarily be held accountable in the same way they
> would in real life for behavior, etc.  Coupled with the inherent
> degraded emotional communications in text-based communications, we
> have a lot of the same behavior even with persistent pseudonyms.  And
> you can see a lot of that, where a pseudonym account gets sufficiently
> bad community karma on WP and they go and sockpuppet off and create
> another one, not caring about the underlying issue their behavior
> raised.  That sort of thing is not unheard of in the real world, but
> it's generally felt to be the domain of scam artists and private
> investigators and the like; at the very least, socially dubious.

I guess I'm one of the few that contributes under my real name.

One of the options coded into MediaWiki is to submit a real name for 
attribution at the same time as registering (i.e. you specify both a pseudonym 
and a real name). By default, this is on when you use a non-Wikimemedia install 
of MediaWiki. However, within Wikimedia this is always turned off. I've 
wondered for a long time why this is - can anyone provide an insight into the 
decision to disable this?

Thanks,
Mike
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Re: [Foundation-l] Ring of Gyges

[Michael Peel]

On 30 Nov 2010, at 22:53, Fred Bauder wrote:

> https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/opinion/30zhuo.html
> 
> Fred
> 
> User:Fred Bauder

Unfortunately, comments are disabled/absent, which makes it rather difficult to 
add my own (non-trolling) thoughts... It's well worth reading this for a 
general insight into the downside of anonymity, although I'm not sure how much 
it actually applies to Wikipedia.

Mike
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Re: [Foundation-l] [Commons-l] Wikidata

[Michael Peel]

On 22 Nov 2010, at 23:17, Brian J Mingus wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Andrea Zanni wrote:
> 
>>> 
>>> As it is the first new project in quite a long time, having a WMF
>>> staff member assigned to it would be brilliant.
>>> As this would/should involve the first deployment of semantic
>>> mediawiki by WMF, it would be good for that someone to already
>>> experienced with semantic medawiki.
>>> 
>>> 
>> Agree. Starting using SMW for a brand new project for data
>> could solve all the issues that prevented it
>> to be used until now? Hope it could.
>> it would be extremely helpful for project like Commons and Wikisource
>> (just talking about data now)
>> 
>> Aubrey.
> 
> 
> SMW would have to be completely redesigned for use in a project with
> millions of pages and millions of attributes where arbitrary queries are
> possible.

OK - a) why, b) how, c) is this feasible, d) is SMW the right way to go?

Mike


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Re: [Foundation-l] [Commons-l] Wikidata

[Michael Peel]

(also including foundation-l as this isn't really a commons-specific discussion)

On 22 Nov 2010, at 21:04, Samuel Klein wrote:

>> A wikidata project could use semantic mediawiki from the outset, and
>> be seeded with data from dbpedia.
>> 
>> A lot of existing & proposed projects would benefit from a centralised
>> wikidata project.  e.g. a genealogy wiki could use the relationships
>> stored on the wikidata project.  wikisource and commons could use the
>> central data wiki for their Author and Creator details.
> 
> +1
> 
> Could this be part of dbpedia?

dbpedia is about collating the information available on Wikipedia and providing 
that as a database for others to use. This is about having a central 
information store that can be edited to add information. Whilst dbpedia could 
seed wikidata, they're very different projects in the way they would operate.

In my opinion, the Wikimedia Foundation should very seriously look into 
starting something like wikidata. I don't suppose there's a facilitator that 
could be hired that knows about Wikimedia sufficiently to facilitate an on-wiki 
discussion and formation of a comprehensive proposal to start this project, 
including bringing together the various people interested in this project?

Mike Peel


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Re: [Foundation-l] Paid editing comes of age

[Michael Peel]

On 18 Nov 2010, at 15:42, Fred Bauder wrote:

>> On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 14:09, David Gerard  wrote:
>>> 
>>> On 18 November 2010 11:30, Â  wrote:
>>> 
 Any one signed up yet?
 http://www.ereleases.com/pr/visibility-wikipedia-easier-43135
>> 
>> I could find anything wrong in their code of ethics
>> http://www.wikipediaexperts.com/codeofethics.html
>> 
>> --
>> Amir E. Aharoni
>> 
> 
> Neither do I, which bodes problems for the business. They hire you to
> break Wikipedia rules, not follow them. The question remains: is paid
> editing which does conform to Wikipedia policies and guidelines
> acceptable, even welcome?

What I worry about is the volunteer time that gets taken up tidying things up 
after something like this goes wrong - or worse, goes somewhat right but not 
completely (so that a simple revert is out of the question and a major cleanup 
of an article is needed, or a lot of discussion with the editor is necessary to 
set things straight). That's volunteer time that could otherwise be spent 
either productively, or tidying up after other volunteers.

It almost leads into the catch-22 scenario where the paid editors need to 
guarantee that if their work isn't up to scratch then they'll pay someone else 
to fix it...

Mike
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Re: [Foundation-l] New projects

[Michael Peel]

Fantastic. :-) Semantic issue: these aren't new projects, they're new language 
versions of existing projects. We haven't had a new project since 2007.

Mike

On 13 Nov 2010, at 18:51, Milos Rancic wrote:

> Our family has got new projects:
> 
> * Wikipedia in Gagauz: http://gag.wikipedia.org/
> * Wikisource in Venetian: http://vec.wikisource.org
> * Wikisource in Breton: http://br.wikisource.org/
> * Wikibooks in Limburgish: http://li.wikibooks.org/
> * Wikinews in Esperanto: http://eo.wikinews.org/
> 
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


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Re: [Foundation-l] No, even a couple of Google ads on each page would be a fatally bad idea

[Michael Peel]

On 6 Nov 2010, at 20:54, MZMcBride wrote:

> Liam Wyatt wrote:
>> Whilst I don't support or advocate for Wikimedia projects including
>> advertising, I would like to ask a hypothetical question. Would people's
>> opinions towards ads would be different if google's ads were to be
>> incorporated ONLY on the Search page:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search in the whitespace on the right.
>> 
>> This is by far the most popular individual page
>> http://wikistics.falsikon.de/2009/wikipedia/en/ and ads there would be able
>> to be served in a way that is both relevant to the end-user (based on the
>> term being searched for) and yet without having to "sell out" our article
>> pages. On the other hand it would mean we could no longer say "we have zero
>> ads" and it would create a lot of angry Wikimedians (possibly me included)
>> making the "slippery slope" argument.
> 
> Careful there.
> 
> A lot of people (and scripts) go through "Special:Search" because it follows
> links much better. For example:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=mw:MediaWiki works
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/mw:MediaWiki doesn't work
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=wikia:un:UN:N works
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wikia:un:UN:N doesn't work
> 
> As far as I'm aware, this is the only reliable way currently (and for the
> past few years) to resolve interwiki prefixes in an automated and accurate
> way. I can't say for sure, but I have a strong feeling that this is the
> reason that "Special:Search" gets so many hits.

Erm... how many people actually know what an interwiki is? I doubt it's a 
significant number. Combine that with how many people would think about of that 
particular usage of Special:Search, and I suspect that you're talking very 
small numbers. Certainly, I've never thought of that in ~ 5 years of using 
Wikipedia.

> "Special:Search" also likely
> gets a hit when the "go" button (or just the return key now) is used.

This strikes me as much more relevant and more likely to generate a significant 
number of hits.

> All of
> these people wouldn't be seeing the page either. So your primary audience
> would be people searching on Wikipedia for a topic that doesn't currently
> have an article or a redirect. Given that a another sizable percentage of
> views comes from search engine results, the pool of actual views you're
> talking about becomes even smaller.

I don't understand why this is a problem - if Wikipedia doesn't have a page on 
what they're searching for, then wouldn't they be more likely to click a 
sponsored link to somewhere else that does?

> The evidence is bolstered by another redirect page ("Special:Random") having
> so many hits according to the data you linked to. It's not even possible to
> view that page in any meaningful sense. Put some ads there and I doubt you'd
> hear many complaints, but you'd be getting millions of "views" each month.
> ;-)

Special:Random is just plain fun, though, especially when you're getting 
started with reading Wikipedia. It has a huge amount of popular appeal. As a 
result, I'm not sure that it's quite comparable to the search function, which 
is obviously much more orientated at finding a specific page/description...

> Calling "Special:Search" the most popular page (or basing fundraising
> theories on it) is dangerous and often misleading work.


I'm not convinced of this assertion yet.

Mike
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Re: [Foundation-l] the annual advertisement discussion

[Michael Peel]

On 6 Nov 2010, at 17:46, Thomas Dalton wrote:

> On 6 November 2010 17:43, Gerard Meijssen  wrote:
>> Hoi,
>> I just checked it again. It is cc-by-sa.
> 
> I don't know what you checked, but that image is released under ND,
> not SA. Check the link near the top of this page (that you link to):
> 
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/hikingartist/4897593340/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Yup, CC-BY-ND. This is why you should reuse images from Commons rather than 
Flickr. ;-)

Mike
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Re: [Foundation-l] No, even a couple of Google ads on each page would be a fatally bad idea

[Michael Peel]

On 6 Nov 2010, at 17:43, Thomas Dalton wrote:

> On 6 November 2010 17:07, Liam Wyatt  wrote:
>> ads there would be able
>> to be served in a way that is both relevant to the end-user (based on the
>> term being searched for)
> 
> That's a big problem. To use a somewhat clichéd example, we should not
> be showing adverts for either Coca-cola or Pepsi to people searching
> for "coke".

Precisely. Having adverts on the search page could have a serious impact on 
neutral point of view, even if indirectly.

Another point of view/consideration: if an article doesn't yet exist on a 
specific organisation/person, then being able to find its website by the 
Wikipedia search engine might encourage the creation of an article on that 
organisation - so people could effectively pay for creating new Wikipedia 
articles on their organisations. Ideally, WP:NOTE wouldn't let that happen 
though, so that might even be a good thing. ;-)

Mike


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Re: [Foundation-l] Misplaced Reliance, was Re: Paid editing, was Re: Ban and...

[Michael Peel]

On 31 Oct 2010, at 23:08, John Vandenberg wrote:

> We should be careful with new studies even when published in respected
> journals, until the citation count rises to the point that we feel
> comfortable that the study has been accepted by the academic
> community.

The citation count isn't the only measure within academic journals, though - 
the reputation of the author should also be borne in mind, i.e. (speaking 
generally) the reliability at which their previous works have been rated, and 
hence the likelihood that the new work that they have been published should 
also be considered worthwhile of attention. And, of course, the level of peer 
review that the article has undergone - different journals require higher 
standards of review, and hence will have different initial levels of 
acceptance/trust from the academic community. Relying on citations alone is 
definitely a flawed measure, and is not something that we should rely on in 
solitude if we're interested in covering the latest scientific findings.

The funding is almost inconsequential when considering these other metrics, 
given that they're based almost entirely on alternative sources of reliability 
(or should be within an ideal information/scientific-based world).

Mike Peel
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Re: [Foundation-l] Page views

[Michael Peel]

On 22 Oct 2010, at 02:02, Erik Zachte wrote:

> A quick update on our inflated page view stats:
> 
> Ryan's hypothesis that deployment of the new CentralNotice banner 
> loader had something to do with it has been confirmed. 
> 
> So those extra page views were actually internally generated requests,
> which accessed just two new special pages in huge amounts.
> 
> Special:BannerController and Special:BannerListLoader
> 
> http://stats.grok.se/en/201010/Special%3ABannerListLoader
> http://stats.grok.se/en/201010/Special%3ABannerController

I'm a little surprised that those numbers are so low. ~70 million page views a 
day is only about 10-15 times the number of page views that the en.wp main page 
gets, and is way less than the number of page views that Wikipedia gets each 
day. It's also surprising that the two pages get different numbers of page 
views a day. Is there caching going on here, or are these pages not loaded upon 
every access to the site via other means (are they only called by the 
occasional centralnotice perhaps)?

Mike Peel


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Re: [Foundation-l] Free culture?

[Michael Peel]

On 19 Oct 2010, at 19:06, Mike Dupont wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 19, 2010 at 7:51 PM, Michael Peel  wrote:
>> 
>> On 19 Oct 2010, at 18:44, Mike Dupont wrote:
>> 
>>>> I don't think we gain anything by providing a platform for Kohs campaign,
>>>> as illustrated at
>>>> http://www.mywikibiz.com/Top_10_Reasons_Not_to_Donate_to_Wikipedia
>>>> against Wikipedia.
>>> 
>>> Wow, this is very well written and interesting! please share more such
>>> information.
>> 
>> , I hope, given the sheer number of inaccuracies and misportrayals 
>> in that document?
> 
> 
> This page about wikipedias faults points to some concrete places to
> help improve the quality of wikiepedia.
> of course you have to take it all with a grain of salt,
> 
> I am just reviewing the wikia links right now.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LinkSearch&limit=5000&offset=2&target=http%3A%2F%2F*.wikia.com
> 
> For example, who added a link to wiki
> http://water.wikia.com/wiki/Oil_sands is linked from How to Boil a
> Frog ?
> It is a link that is not obvious as how to value is added to wikipedia.
> 
> * David Dodge, Dan Woynillowicz & Chris Severson-Baker
> [http://water.wikia.com/wiki/Oil_sands],
> 
> That page on wikia has some reference to an article from Woynillowicz
> but does not justify the link, doe it?

Those sound like typical problems with external links on Wikipedia, not 
anything specific to Wikia. It's a shame that there isn't an easy way to only 
see the links in the article namespace, though, as that might make this list of 
links somewhat more useful (and a lot smaller)...

Mike Peel
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Re: [Foundation-l] Free culture?

[Michael Peel]

On 19 Oct 2010, at 18:44, Mike Dupont wrote:

>> I don't think we gain anything by providing a platform for Kohs campaign,
>> as illustrated at
>> http://www.mywikibiz.com/Top_10_Reasons_Not_to_Donate_to_Wikipedia
>> against Wikipedia.
> 
> Wow, this is very well written and interesting! please share more such
> information.

, I hope, given the sheer number of inaccuracies and misportrayals in 
that document?

Mike
P.S. +1 for more explanation on why Peter was put on moderation...
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Re: [Foundation-l] Free speech

[Michael Peel]

Hi Peter,

On 9 Oct 2010, at 11:15, Peter Damian wrote:

> My apologies for the Godwinism.  I am a writer, the idea of preventing 
> someone expressing a viewpoint is reprehensible.  Disruption to the project 
> of building a comprehensive and reliable reference source is one thing. 
> That is a matter of a 'preventative block'.  Punitive blocks intended to 
> prevent expression of ideas is another.  As you must all know, Larry Sanger 
> was indefinitely blocked simply for expressing the wrong opinions:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=block&page=User%3ALarry+Sanger

Note that Larry was unblocked within ~30 mins of being [unjustly?] blocked on 
wiki.

> By our own Phil Nash, in fact. The practice of a 'community ban' is simply a 
> matter of a few admins getting together and imposing one.
> 
> On the comparison with China, that was naughty, I concede.  But imprisoning 
> someone is the only way of preventing the expression of opinions in the real 
> world.  In the virtual world, blocking is far simpler.  That is the only 
> difference.  As a writer, I find the suppression of free speech far more 
> painful and immoral and intolerable than mere incarceration.  If I were in 
> prison and still permitted to write, that would not be an imposition.  Being 
> prevented from writing is the worst crime of all. 

The mailing list is not a wiki; subscribers receive all emails sent to it 
regardless of whether they are productive input or not (compared to a wiki, 
where people can watch the pages they want and hence filter the comments based 
on their interest). As such, you should make sure that any comment you make is 
important enough to justify distracting several hundred people with it. There 
was nothing in the moderation process to the mailing list that prevented you 
from writing; it did prevent your comments from being heard for a short while 
(whilst a moderator checked that they were reasonable to send around, or even 
blocking them if they were troll-like), but that doesn't express you from 
presenting them in a blog post / email to individual people / academic paper / 
etc. Fundamentally: this was not the appropriate place for you to send that 
email. I fully support the moderation that ensued.

Please, stop seeing absolutions* where there aren't any. In relation to your 
earlier comments about philosophy articles: if an irrational argument is 
preventing you from sharing logical arguments, then present a rational argument 
against it at the same location, remembering that there is a community present 
rather than a dictator (and hence there are always people to talk to on-wiki 
that aren't against you; if they're not around that specific talk page then 
their attention can always be attracted).

Thanks,
Mike Peel
(who is hoping that this is of use/interest to the bulk of subscribers to this 
mailing list; apologies to those it needlessly distracted...)

* This doesn't seem to be the right word; does anyone know the appropriate word 
for seeing 'absolute' interpretations that doesn't infer release from 
guilt/obligation/etc.? (offlist, please)
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Re: [Foundation-l] How to improve quality of Wikipedia?

[Michael Peel]

Czesc all,

On 10 Oct 2010, at 06:54, Przykuta wrote:

> Hi
> 
> In pl wiki "depth" is very weak. We have many edits, like other bigger 
> Wikipedias, but Ratio is problematical (Non-Articles/Articles). We have not a 
> lot of non-article pages. Could you help us? Any ideas?
> 
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Non-Articles/Articles
> 
> http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesArticlesEditsPerArticle.htm
> 
> http://s23.org/wikistats/wikipedias_html.php?sort=good_desc
> 
> http://pl.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Specjalna%3ANowe_strony&namespace=4&tagfilter=&username=
> 
> Przykuta

It's a bit ambiguous as to whether this is  over  (or even the number 
of articles vs. number of non-articles), but I'll assume the first one of these.

Is this actually a symptom of a problem? It could even be viewed as the absence 
of a problem. One of en.wp's problems can be over-discussing something before 
it is carried out in article space, which can be seen by the extremely high 
number of edits to the talk pages compared to the content pages. Having a 
minimal amount of discussion per article can be seen as an efficient way of 
creating articles. However, it could also be seen as people not wanting to 
challenge the content of an article in a critical way, which might be more of a 
downside - a reasonable level of debate/controversy about articles tends to be 
productive in producing a balanced article on the subject

I think image discussion is somewhat of a red herring/off topic discussion, as 
I'm not sure that there is much discussion that actually happens around 
individual images. The same applies to bot article edits, if these only make 
small numbers of edits.

Does pl.wp have WikiProjects? If not, then perhaps this could explain the 
reduced number of non-article edits, given how many pages on en.wp only have 
wikiproject templates on their talk pages (or cases where having a non-redlink 
has promoted discussions).

Thanks,
Mike Peel

P.S. I wish that en.wp sent all images to Commons - it would ease a lot of 
issues. ;-)
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Re: [Foundation-l] Five-year WMF targets exclude non-Wikipedia projects

[Michael Peel]

On 10 Oct 2010, at 11:33, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:

> Despite repeated assurances at Wikimania, on lists and on strategywiki, 
> that the strategic plan was going to consider all Wikimedia projects as 
> important, now at 
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Five-year_targets the 
> second target, «Increase the amount of information we offer» considers 
> only the number of Wikipedia articles.
> «We're aware of the challenges around bot-created articles, articles of 
> low quality, etc., and the limited focus on Wikipedia, so this metric 
> shouldn't be seen in isolation, but is an important indicator.» Yes, but 
> a wrong one.
> 
> I'm, very, very disappointed: I have to conclude that all the words on 
> community participation etc. were only empty rhetoric.

It's a shame that the number of Wikipedia articles is the only entry under that 
heading, but this appears to be a vastly simplified document that is very black 
and white - every single objective only has one unit of measure, whereas there 
should be several for every one of them. I would hope that the Foundation's 
board recognised this (either officially or unofficially) during their 
consideration of it, and that the extrapolation of saying that community 
participation was only empty rhetoric is not a good extrapolation (I sincerely 
doubt it is - that reassurance will have been based in reality).

In any case, I think one of the major benefits of the strategy exercise was to 
get Wikimedians considering where Wikimedia should be in 5 years and setting 
their individual aims accordingly. Getting the WMF Board to recognise those 
aims is only a secondary consideration, really, as it's the community that 
drives Wikimedia's success and breadth/depth/etc. of content.

Mike Peel
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Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

[Michael Peel]

On 5 Oct 2010, at 18:48, wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:

> What is the main point of wikipedia to edit it, or to read it? Because 
> the readability of something like the Bulger article is very low. Making 
> it easier to edit with peppered refs will probably mean that more refs 
> get added making it less readable.
> 
> NOTE: when reading an article or a book one rarely looks at the 
> references. They are, in the main, a distraction.

I disagree completely; if I'm reading a non-fiction book, I find the references 
very useful, and wish that they were easier to track down. I find the ease of 
access of Wikipedia's references absolutely vital in its role as a starting 
point for research, as well as a double-check of where the information comes 
from. This is possibly due to my more academic background (I'm used to reading 
papers with lots of references, although I much prefer Harvard-style to the 
numbered style that Wikipedia uses), so I'm not saying that this is a widely 
held viewpoint, but bear in mind that there is a wide spectrum here. The 
references are there in articles or books for a reason. ;-)

BTW, if anyone's not tried using navigation popups to read references while 
reading an article, then you're really missing out - it's fantastic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation_popups

Mike Peel


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Re: [Foundation-l] Sakha Wikipedia passed 7000 articles

[Michael Peel]

Erm ... huh?

1) If you're interested in helping, and have experience/knowledge of languages, 
then get involved with the committee.

2) They're getting things achieved - they're fostering the development of new 
language projects, making decisions, getting the projects started, and doing 
this in a very effective way. Compare this with the ineffectual procedure for 
starting an entirely new project in any language, which hasn't gotten anywhere 
in the last 3(?) years.

3) Please point to _recent_ examples where they've made a bad choice (i.e. 
Klingon doesn't count, as that was before their time). I'm not aware of any.

I agree that it's not good that they have a hidden discussion forum; as much as 
possible of the discussion leading up to a new project should be public, and i 
can't see a reason for secrecy. Apart from that, though, I don't understand 
these (somewhat bitchy) comments at all...

Mike

On 25 Aug 2010, at 21:21, Mohamed Ibrahim wrote:

> On 25 August 2010 23:01, Muhammad Yahia  wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 12:48 PM, Mark Williamson 
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> I think it has been proven many times over now that the Language
>>> Committee works in mysterious ways with little or no community
>>> oversight or input, essentially a self-appointed committee of
>>> "experts", mostly from similar linguistic backgrounds, handing down
>>> judgements about the rest of the world's languages from their
>>> overwhelmingly European ivory tower. It seems we as a community of
>>> people who care deeply about the future of potential new languages and
>>> the success of existing language versions within our Wikimedia
>>> community have no choice but to watch from the sidelines as they do
>>> what they please.
>>> 
>>> -m.
>>> 
>>> 
>> +1
>> 
>> Add to that the fact that a portion of their discussion archives is
>> deliberately hidden from the public as if they are debating state security
>> issues. So even after a decision is taken, we only have a patchy view of
>> the
>> process that led to that decision.
>> 
>> --
>> Best Regards,
>> Muhammad Yahia
>> ___
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>> 
> 
> I agree with what Muhammad and Mark has said
> it's a pity that such resolutions that affect the whole community is
> controlled like this..
> resulting in such projects that really make Wikimedia looks like a host for
> childish projects that's
> written in a funny language never seen written before in
> any respectable scientific book, website, etc..
> 
> -- 
> - Arabic Wikipedia: http://ar.wikipedia.org/  "Share your knowledge"
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[Foundation-l] Wikisource and reCAPTCHA

[Michael Peel]

(Renaming the subject as we've changed topic)

On 23 Jun 2010, at 21:31, Mariano Cecowski wrote:

> --- El mié 23-jun-10, Michael Peel  escribió:
> 
>> I always think than not using reCaptcha is a shame, as it's
>> a nice way to get people to proofread text in a reasonably
>> efficient way. It would be really nice if someone could
>> create something similar that proofreads OCR'd text from
>> Wikisource... .
> 
> And how do you decide that what was entered is wrong or right?
> 
> Better take a look at Project Gutemberg's Distributed Proofreaders[1].
> 
> Cheers,
> MarianoC.-
> 
> [1] http://pgdp.net

My understanding is that original text within the reCAPTCHA is shown to several 
different people; if they agree then the word is counted as correct. Looking at 
the Wikipedia article, it's a little more complex than that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReCAPTCHA
There's a reason why there are two words to solve during a reCAPTCHA.

What Distributed Proofreaders can do, Wikisource can do - but in a Wiki 
environment. If you haven't checked out the proofreading features that 
Wikisource now has, I would encourage you to give them a go, e.g. at:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Frederic_Shoberl_-_Persia.djvu/92

Mike
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Re: [Foundation-l] English language dominationism is striking again

[Michael Peel]

On 23 Jun 2010, at 16:23, David Gerard wrote:

> Reliance on Google for what is really an essential function for those
> who aren't native English speakers is problematic because it's (a)
> third-party (b) closed. Same reason we don't use reCaptcha.

I always think than not using reCaptcha is a shame, as it's a nice way to get 
people to proofread text in a reasonably efficient way. It would be really nice 
if someone could create something similar that proofreads OCR'd text from 
Wikisource... .

Mike
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Re: [Foundation-l] Creating articles in small wikipedias based on user requirement

[Michael Peel]

Is it just me, then, that finds it easier and quicker to read top post replies 
than to search through large amounts of text to find the response? Inline 
posting makes sense if you're replying to an email that makes its point in the 
space of a few lines, but otherwise it seems easier to me to top-post and to 
leave the previous email below for context.

Of course, any way that people reply always leaves duplicate and unnecessary 
text in the email, which can be a pain when you're catching up with a large 
number of emails in a thread. That's just one of the downsides of the mailing 
list format, with a setup that can't cope with full conversation trees but 
instead assumes that the conversation is perfectly linear.

Another way of arguing this (since I only just found Keegan's second reply when 
cropping the previous email...): having a mixture of posting styles reflects 
the rich historical culture of email transactions, and is something that we 
should foster rather than try to do away with.

Mike

On 14 Jun 2010, at 05:23, Keegan Peterzell wrote:

> I agree


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Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2

[Michael Peel]

On 2 Jun 2010, at 22:51, Gregory Maxwell wrote:

> A tiny benefit to a hundred
> million people wouldn't justify making wikipedia very hard to use for
> a hundred thousand

Can you justify that the change has now made it very hard for users of those 
interlanguage links? Given that it's now one click away (click on 'languages' 
in the sidebar) the first time, and then it stays there afterwards (this menu 
does stay expanded after the first time it's opened, right?), I wouldn't have 
thought that would make it very hard.

I would support it being expanded by default, though (even though I rarely use 
it myself) simply because it's a lot less intuitive to find the language links 
now, and they're a big part of our mission (as Aryeh and others pointed out). 
It would also be nice if there were a link along the lines of "can't find the 
article in your language? start it!" (e.g. red interlanguage links).

As a very general observation: all of the Wikimedia wikis (both different 
languages and different projects) are essentially islands, with very few 
non-obvious bridges linking them together, which is a real shame. We need to 
build better bridges, and encourage people to use them more!

Mike Peel
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Re: [Foundation-l] Renaming "Flagged Protections"

[Michael Peel]

On 24 May 2010, at 07:57, Erik Zachte wrote:

> Revision Review is my favorite. It seems more neutral, also less 'heavy' in
> connotations than Double Check.

> Also Review is clearly a term for a process, unlike Revisions.

The downside is that 'Review' could be linked to an editorial review, and hence 
people might expect to get feedback on their revision rather than a simple 
'yes/no'. I'd also personally link the name more to paid reviewing than 
volunteer checking.

Combining the two, and removing the potential bad bits (i.e. "double" and 
"review") how about "Checked Revisions"?

Mike Peel
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Re: [Foundation-l] Removing questions about me and my role from this discussion

[Michael Peel]

On 9 May 2010, at 17:57, Anthony wrote:

> On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 5:46 AM, Jimmy Wales  wrote:
> 
>> I've just now removed virtually all permissions to actually do
>> things from the "Founder" flag.  I even removed my ability to edit
>> semi-protected pages!  (I've kept permissions related to 'viewing' things.)
>> 
> 
> The community recognizes that you have given up certain permissions under
> controversial circumstances and reminds you that you that those permissions
> may not be reinstated without a proper request for permissions on meta.

Daft question: the community here being ... you? Or is there a wiki !vote page 
saying this?

Mike Peel
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Re: [Foundation-l] Hello world. Update from Berlin.

[Michael Peel]

I'm glad to see that the resolved bugs include this one:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23223

Hope you all manage to escape Germany sooner rather than later.

Mike

On 21 Apr 2010, at 17:43, Philippe Beaudette wrote:

> Dear world:  Help wanted.  Plz send a rowboat and a few paddles.
>
> It’s no secret by now that a volcano in Iceland with an
> unpronounceable name decided to get cranky this week and stranded
> hundreds of thousands of people all over the world.
>
> With that out of the way, Did you know… that half the Wikimedia
> Foundation staff and a lot of volunteers who were in Berlin for the
> Wikimedia Developers and Chapters conferences (since renamed,
> collectively, “Ashcon”), were among those who were stuck?
>
> We’re making the best of it… we’ve got it better than a lot of
> people.  We’re in a very nice hotel in downtown Berlin, and we’ve got
> food and drink.  We’re missing our families and really want to be
> home, but the whole trip has a very “summer camp” feeling to it now.
> We’ve done laundry, and “the boys” (as Danese affectionately calls
> them) are whacking some Mediawiki bugs from our makeshift office in
> the lobby.  The kind people at Wikimedia-Germany have been wonderful
> hosts, arranging outings, giving tours of their office, and connecting
> us with local Wikimedians for sight-seeing tours.
>
> We’re getting pretty good at ordering curry-wurst, and we’ve found the
> local Ka-De-We department store (which Danese affectionately labeled
> “heaven”).  On the whole, we’re doing okay.  Some of us are even
> optimistic about making it home someday soon.  Others are practicing
> their German.  But Iceland, you’re on notice:  we’re holding a grudge.
>
> 
>
> Philippe Beaudette
> Facilitator, Strategy Project
> Wikimedia Foundation
>
> phili...@wikimedia.org
>
> Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in
> the sum of all knowledge.  Help us make it a reality!
>
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Announcement list is active

[Michael Peel]

On 21 Apr 2010, at 16:08, Thomas Dalton wrote:

> On 21 April 2010 05:43, Huib!  wrote:
>> Participation announcements for Wiki meet-up
>>
>> I'm sure there is a Wiki meet-up every weekend around the globe,  
>> posting
>> this information to this list will probably spam. People  
>> interested in
>> joining wiki meet-ups would find it in a local site and this list  
>> would
>> probably reach to much people. Or there should be more information  
>> like
>> Wiki meet-ups bigger than X people or something like that.
>
> I agree. Meetups, other than Wikimania, should be announced on local
> lists. I have no interest in meetups that are happening outside the UK
> since there is no chance I'll be attending them (if I know I'm going
> to be in another country and would like to know if there will be
> meetups there while I'm there, I will subscribe the the relevant local
> list, as I have done in the past).

A summary, once a month or so, of the upcoming meetups could work  
well. I believe that there's a sufficient number of meet-ups that  
there should be something nearby to a significant fraction of the  
audience of the announce list; if not, then a note at the end saying  
"Can't see a meetup near you? Organize one!" might change that over  
time.

It's probably something best appended to other information, though.  
E.g. have a headline of "first meetup in [Country X] planned", or  
coverage of a big in-person event, and then append a list of meetups  
after the main story.

Having said that: there's lots of other things that the announce list  
is better suited for than this.

Mike Peel

P.S. I'm looking forward to the day when we can have geolocated  
sitenotices for advertising meetups etc...

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Re: [Foundation-l] Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) in London on 24th April 2010

[Michael Peel]

Hi all,

The Wikimedia UK AGM will also be taking place at this conference.  
All are welcome - the more the merrier!
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_AGM

If you want to vote on the election and motions, then you'll need to  
be a member - but it's quick and easy to join if you haven't already:
http://tinyurl.com/JoinWMUK

Due to the volcano, we're not entirely sure yet who from Wikimedia  
will be speaking - we had previously arranged for Jan-Bart (WMF),  
Jose (WMNL) and Hay (WMNL) to speak about education, libraries and  
the Tropenmuseum respectively, but that depends on whether they can  
get across the channel...

If anyone wants any assistance with travel (within the UK) and/or the  
registration fee, or would be interested in giving a talk, please let  
me know.

Thanks,
Mike Peel
Wikimedia UK

On 14 Apr 2010, at 19:29, Jonathan Gray wrote:

> Hi,
>
> A quick reminder that this year's Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) is
> taking place in London on 24th April 2010 - in 10 days time! There are
> still tickets left - and you can register at the following link:
>
>   http://www.okfn.org/okcon/register/
>
> Speakers and sessions include:
>
>   * 'State of the Nation' Keynotes:
>  - Matthias Schindler, Wikimedia (Germany) on 'Bibliographic Data
> and the Public Domain'
>  - Glyn Moody, on the 'Post-Analogue World'
>  - Peter Murray-Rust, on 'Recent Developments in Open Science'
>  - Chris Taggart, on 'Open Local Government Data'
>  - Sören Auer, on 'Linked Open Data'
>  - Jordan Hatcher, on 'Open Licensing for Data'
>   * Ideas and Culture with talks on analyzing 'Dickens Letters' and
> 'Making the Physical from the Digital'
>   * Open Bibliographic Information with talks on 'The Itinerant Poetry
> Library' and the 'Journal Commons'
>   * Community Driven Research with talks on 'Climate data' and 'Open
> Archaeology'
>   * Civic Information with talks on 'Using Open Government Data to
> Profile Politicians' and the 'Straight Choice'
>   * Open Government Data and PSI in the EU which looks at the current
> state of play in France, Norway, Germany, the UK and elsewhere
>   * Tools with talks on 'Large-scale data handling and revisioning'
> with the Genome, Ontowiki, CKAN and more
>   * Open Data and the Semantic Web with talks about South Korean
> DBPedia and Thesaurus Management Tool ‘Pool Party’
>   * Open Data in International Development including talks from
> PublishWhatYouFund and on OpenStreetMap in Haiti
>
> Further details are available at:
>
>   http://blog.okfn.org/2010/04/14/okcon-2010-nearly-here-24th- 
> april-2010-in-london/
>   http://www.okfn.org/okcon/programme
>
> More information:
>
>   * Main conference page: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/
>   * FAQ: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/faq
>
> If you have any questions please email Sara Wingate-Gray at  
> sara.g...@okfn.org.
>
> We look forward to seeing people there!
>
> All the best,
>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Jonathan Gray
>
> Community Coordinator
> The Open Knowledge Foundation
> http://blog.okfn.org
>
> http://twitter.com/jwyg
> http://identi.ca/jwyg
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Welcome to a new board member

[Michael Peel]

Hi Bishakha,

Welcome! I hope that you enjoy your new role.

Could you share a little about your involvement with the Wikimedia  
projects before this, either as an editor or a reader?

Thanks,
Mike Peel

On 5 Apr 2010, at 15:03, Bishakha Datta wrote:

> Thanks, Michael and Ting.
>
> Look forward to this new adventure, to becoming part of the  
> community -
> and to meeting up soon.
>
> Yes, I did wonder whether you'll had noticed the POV-NPOV irony -  
> but no
> worries on that score.
>
> Cheers
> Bishakha
>
>
>
> On 05-04-2010 14:06, Ting Chen wrote:
>> Welcome Bishakha and looking forward to meet you soon in person.
>>
>> Ting
>>
>> Michael Snow wrote:
>>
>>> As many of you know, we have had one vacant seat left on the  
>>> Wikimedia
>>> Foundation Board of Trustees for the board to appoint. We have now
>>> filled that seat by appointing Bishakha Datta, a journalist,  
>>> filmmaker,
>>> and nonprofit leader from India. In the course of finding  
>>> Bishakha, we
>>> met with a number of great people and had a lot of support going  
>>> through
>>> the process, and I want to thank everyone who participated.
>>>
>>> I hope everyone will warmly welcome Bishakha as part of our  
>>> community.
>>> By way of background, Bishakha runs a nonprofit based in Mumbai that
>>> focuses on conveying women's perspectives in culture and the  
>>> media. She
>>> also has been involved in other international nonprofit work, and  
>>> her
>>> knowledge of India should be a great help to us as we move  
>>> forward with
>>> the strategic plan. In general, her experience will be a  
>>> wonderful asset
>>> and I think she is an ideal fit for the remaining board seat.
>>>
>>> In a bit of an ironic twist, Bishakha's organization is called  
>>> Point of
>>> View, but rest assured that she understands and endorses the neutral
>>> point of view approach for Wikimedia projects. Her journalistic
>>> background means she appreciates the value of an objective  
>>> presentation,
>>> and throughout our conversations with her it was clear that she  
>>> supports
>>> our mission and values.
>>>
>>> We will have an official press release in the next day or so with  
>>> some
>>> more information. I'm excited to be able to work with Bishakha,  
>>> and I
>>> know that she is looking forward to being involved as well.
>>>
>>> --Michael Snow
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] list o' image donations?

[Michael Peel]

Also see the 'content partnerships' page on the Wikimedia UK wiki  
that I've put together:

http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cultural_partnerships/Content_partnerships

Additions are welcome.

Thanks,
Mike

On 16 Mar 2010, at 23:33, Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Hoi,
> They are not "donations" they are images shared as part of a  
> partnership.
> The partnership part expresses that care is expected of us to  
> handle this
> material. It is vital that we produce the wonderful statistics as  
> created by
> Magnus Manske. We have to refer back to the GLAM not only as a  
> courtesy but
> also to provide provenance for the material that we show. Check out  
> the info
> it produces for the Tropenmuseum.. Actually we should provide such  
> courtesy
> if they are our partner or not ..
>
> http://toolserver.org/%7Emagnus/glamorous.php?doit=1&category=Images 
> +from+the+Tropenmuseum&use_globalusage=1&ns0=1
> Thanks,
>  GerardM
>
> On 16 March 2010 23:30, Ziko van Dijk  wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>> Thanks for the question, Phoebe. Indeed, maybe it is better to  
>> begin a
>> new page like "Commons:Donations" and have there a list in
>> chronological order.
>> Kind regards
>> Ziko
>>
>>
>> 2010/3/16 phoebe ayers :
>>> On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 1:13 PM, Casey Brown 
>> wrote:
 On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 4:04 PM, phoebe ayers  
 
>> wrote:
> Is there an list somewhere of major image donations/collections  
> that
> have been uploaded to Commons in the last few years? E.g., the
> Bundesarchiv donation, Antweb, etc.

 It looks there's a list, but it's not updated.
 
 (That's the category, also see the first page in it.)
>>>
>>> Thanks Casey. I wonder if "partnerships" is really the right
>>> all-encompassing term for that kind of large donation to Commons?
>>> Anyway, that's the kind of page I was looking for -- it just  
>>> needs to
>>> be updated! Thanks.
>>>
>>> -- Phoebe
>>>
>>> ___
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>>> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/ 
>>> foundation-l
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Ziko van Dijk
>> NL-Silvolde
>>
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[Foundation-l] Call for Participation - Wikimedia Track at the Open Knowledge Conference/Wikimedia UK AGM 2010

[Michael Peel]

For anyone in the UK (or willing to visit the UK ;-) that hasn't seen  
the below, please take a look. Apologies for the cross-posting. This  
event is also hosting Wikimedia UK's AGM, so it is fairly  
important. ;-) Please distribute it to anyone else that you think  
might be interested.

Thanks,
Mike

Begin forwarded message:

> From: joseph seddon 
> Date: 25 February 2010 12:01:55 GMT
> Subject: [Wikimediauk-l] Open Knowledge Conferece - Wikimedia Track  
> (Call for Participation)
> Reply-To: wikimediau...@lists.wikimedia.org
>
> This year Wikimedia UK is partnering with the Open Knowledge  
> Foundation in the organisation of the 2010 Open Knowledge  
> Conference ("OKCon"), an interdisciplinary conference that brings  
> together individuals from across the open knowledge spectrum for a  
> day of presentations and workshops.
>
>
> At this year's conference, Wikimedia UK will be supporting and  
> organising a track dedicated to the projects and communities  
> central to Wikimedia.
>
>
> We need your help to create an exciting and interesting track that  
> will inspire and challenge Wikimedians and others alike. Could you  
> give a presentation or host a discussion on a Wikimedia theme? Any  
> subject relevant to the Wikimedia communities, free content or  
> Wikimedia UK are welcome.
> Timeline
> February 25 (Thursday): Submissions will open
> March 28 (Sunday) 23:59 UTC: Closure of submission dates
> April 7 (Wednesday): Notification of acceptance of submission
> April 24 (Saturday): Open Knowledge Conference 2010
>
> If you wish to participate but with good reason cannot meet one of  
> the above deadlines please email conferen...@wikimedia.org.uk  
> before the deadline as it may be possible to accomodate late  
> submissions Themes Submissions should address one or more of the  
> following themes:
>
>
> Wikimedia Communities - Interesting projects and characteristics  
> within the communities; policy creation; conflict resolution and  
> community dynamics; reputation and identity; multilingualism,  
> languages and cultures; the development of Wikimedia UK.
> Free Content - Open access to information; ways to gather and  
> distribute free knowledge, usage of the Wikimedia projects in  
> education, journalism, research; ways to improve content quality  
> and usability; copyright laws and their interaction with Wikimedia  
> projects.
> Culture and Heritage - Ideas for potential partnerships, building  
> on previous partnerships and the legal, technical and resource  
> issues that are barriers to such partnerships.
> Technical infrastructure - Issues related to MediaWiki development  
> and extensions; Wikimedia hardware layout; the Toolserver; the  
> Usability Project; new ideas for development (including Usability  
> case studies from other wikis or similar projects).
> Submission Guidelines Please email submissions to  
> conferen...@wikimedia.org.uk. Please email the following details,  
> all in English:
> Title:
> Theme: Closest category from above for your submission.
> Abstract: 50-100 words summarising the topic
> Summary: Detailed description of the topic - 300 words or more. May  
> contain a link to a more details.
> Contact information: Email/Telephone and whether we may publish  
> these details
> Additional Information:
> 1-3 sentence biography of the author(s).
> any special requirements (e.g. flipchart; OHP. A digital  
> presentation will be assumed as standard)
> whether you will attend the 2010 Open Knowledge Conference (a)  
> definitely, (b) probably, (c) only if your submission is accepted.
>
> ___
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> wikimediau...@wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
> WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org


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Re: [Foundation-l] Sue Gardner, Erik Möller , Wi lliam Pietri: Where is FlaggedRevisions?

[Michael Peel]

On 2 Mar 2010, at 01:18, MZMcBride wrote:

> You know what sounds toxic? The
> claim that a man is "a new resident in the area and a known child  
> molester."
> That's been in one of our articles for months and months; the only  
> provided
> source is a dead link that's part of an advocacy site.


Reverted last night by Wjhonson, for anyone wondering:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php? 
title=West_Memphis_3&action=historysubmit&diff=347211677&oldid=346894057

Mike


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[Foundation-l] Announcing: Britain Loves Wikipedia

[Michael Peel]

Hi all,

In case you haven't heard already, "Britain Loves Wikipedia", a free  
photography scavenger hunt following on from Wiki Loves Art et al.,  
will be taking place in 21 museums and archives across the UK  
throughout February, and is launching on Sunday at the Victoria and  
Albert Museum! Full details are now up on the WMUK blog, at:

http://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2010/01/britain-loves-wikipedia/

and also the Britain Loves Wikipedia website at:

http://www.britainloveswikipedia.org/

Thanks,
Mike Peel
Wikimedia UK

PS: Apologies if you're not in the UK...

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Re: [Foundation-l] open wikis for chapters....?

[Michael Peel]

My viewpoint is: why restrict editing? As Geoffrey and Peachey  
mentioned, there are some pages that do need protecting, but other  
than that? A central part of the Wikimedia zeitgeist for me is that  
anyone can edit.

If you restrict editing, then you're removing the ability for non- 
members to give their opinions and help out. They _might_ become  
members so that they can edit, but odds are that won't be the primary  
driver for them joining. Then there are people that can't join for  
whatever reason (in another country [if your bylaws restrict that],  
no money, ...).

The Wikimedia UK wiki (http://uk.wikimedia.org/) is open for everyone  
to edit - even anonymous editors (who can even create pages - so  
we're more open than Wikipedia. ;-) ). There are pages that are  
necessarily locked down, but the talk pages are always open. That's  
worked out well for us so far. There's a little bit of vandalism, but  
it's been kept in check by board members and some trusted members  
that are also admins.

BTW, I've never liked that the WMF's wiki is completely locked down.  
It feels a bit like a cabal. ;-)

Mike

On 12 Dec 2009, at 10:01, effe iets anders wrote:

> what will be the goal of the website? Answers should depend on that.
> The question whether "open editing" is a good thing or not, is not an
> absolute question, but depends on what you want to reach etc. First
> get consensus on that, then find the model best suited for that.
>
> -- eia
>
> 2009/12/12 private musings :
>> G'day all,
>> over on the wikimedia au mailing list, we've been having a  
>> discussion about
>> whether or not our 'official wiki' should be able to be edited by  
>> more than
>> just the current financial members (I think we've got around 30 -  
>> 50 members
>> at the mo) ( see
>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaau-l/2009-December/ 
>> 002745.htmlfor
>> the thread, and it sort of gets just a little bit heated)
>> I thought I'd flick this list a note because the tensions between the
>> foundation's aims and this more pragmatic decision have been  
>> discussed. What
>> I'd like to ask this list's members is whether or not you agree  
>> that open
>> editing is a good thing, and as many pages as possible on a  
>> chapter's wiki
>> should be open to as many folk as possible?
>> Obviously there are important factors to keep in mind in making these
>> decisions, but I feel it would be useful for others not quite so  
>> connected
>> to 'WMAU', but with a close connection to WMF in general, if they  
>> have a
>> moment, to review our thread, and offer feedback and ideas as to  
>> whether
>> we're doing it right, or (as I feel) we really should open up the  
>> wiki a bit
>> more :-)
>> best,
>> Peter,
>> PM.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Charity Navigator rates WMF

[Michael Peel]

On 10 Oct 2009, at 16:54, Marc Riddell wrote:

> on 10/10/09 11:32 AM, geni at geni...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>> Depends on the school. By being anti-wikipedia you make a statement
>> that you insist on a certain quality in your sources. You could view
>> it as a form of snobbery "Wikipedia may seem okey to the peons but we
>> know better".
>>
> A goal of a good teacher is to introduce their students to  
> scholarship. And
> a one-stop visit to Wikipedia does not accomplish that.

No, but it's an excellent place to stop on the way out to the wider  
world, and check up on what can be found out easily. It's the low- 
hanging fruit in the tree of knowledge.

Plus, writing and editing Wikipedia articles is an excellent way to  
learn about how to do research and proof-reading.

(This is getting a little off-topic, though... My question about  
surveys in my first email still stands.)

Mike

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Re: [Foundation-l] Charity Navigator rates WMF

[Michael Peel]

On 10 Oct 2009, at 15:00, geni wrote:

> 2009/10/10 Michael Peel :
>>
>> On 10 Oct 2009, at 00:41, Samuel Klein wrote:
>>
>>> In my experience, high-school teachers were 90/10 anti Wikipedia 3
>>> years ago, and are slightly in favor of it today.  This sort of  
>>> thing
>>> would be a fascinating survey to run year after year.
>>
>> Does the WMF commission surveys like this? It would seem a natural
>> thing to do - there are third party organizations that are capable of
>> performing this sort of survey in a statistically unbiased way.
>>
>> (Am I correct in thinking that the only surveys done to date are
>> those held on-wiki, and possibly that done by third parties such as
>> ComScore without the request of Wikimedia?)
>>
>> Mike
>
> The complexity is that in certain groups being anti-wikipedia is a
> requirement for fitting in. A statement that you take knowledge
> seriously.

I'm sorry; I can understand those sentences separately, but not when  
they are combined. Wikipedia is a way to take knowledge (and the  
spread of knowledge) seriously. That's why I'm here.

I would hope that being anti-wikipedia (or anti-knowledge) is not a  
requirement for high-school teachers.

Mike

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Re: [Foundation-l] Charity Navigator rates WMF

[Michael Peel]

On 10 Oct 2009, at 00:41, Samuel Klein wrote:

> In my experience, high-school teachers were 90/10 anti Wikipedia 3
> years ago, and are slightly in favor of it today.  This sort of thing
> would be a fascinating survey to run year after year.

Does the WMF commission surveys like this? It would seem a natural  
thing to do - there are third party organizations that are capable of  
performing this sort of survey in a statistically unbiased way.

(Am I correct in thinking that the only surveys done to date are  
those held on-wiki, and possibly that done by third parties such as  
ComScore without the request of Wikimedia?)

Mike

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Re: [Foundation-l] Fundraising Promotion and Job Opening

[Michael Peel]

On 17 Sep 2009, at 17:22, Gregory Kohs wrote:

> They are a key constituency in
> supporting the financial stream, as every single one of them is  
> worth 16 or
> more "average" donors.

This doesn't seem quite right to me. "average" donors may financially  
be worth less in each donation, but remember that there's a lot more  
of them, and they're more likely to give repeat donations. Also,  
there's more to "worth" than just financial, e.g. in good will /  
spreading the word.

Mike

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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimania-l] Thank you!

[Michael Peel]

On 14 Sep 2009, at 22:47, Tim Landscheidt wrote:

> At another conference, the video switched from the camera
> viewpoint to the slides back and forth (I do not know wheth-
> er that was done while recording or in post-production). Ob-
> viously, this requires more manpower but the result was
> worth it.
>
> Tim

The easiest way to do this is to create images of the powerpoint  
slides, and add them into the recordings post-production. I believe  
that adding images into videos (with fading in/out) is fairly  
standard in video editing software. It's something that could be done  
by the community a) if they want, and b) if they have the software.

Mike

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Re: [Foundation-l] Do we have a complete set of WMF projects?

[Michael Peel]

On 9 Sep 2009, at 00:42, Yann Forget wrote:

> Michael Peel wrote:
>> ** A few of my favourite examples: WikiJournal, publishing scholarly
>> works;
>
> These works are welcomed on Wikisource, if they are under a free
> license, of course.
>
>> WikiReview, providing in-depth reviews of subjects;
>
> I think this can be hosted on Wikibooks or Wikiversity for the most  
> part.

There's a big difference between starting a new section of something,  
and starting something completely new and fresh. With the former, you  
get all of the baggage of that project so far - e.g. if you want to  
start something slightly different on the English Wikipedia, then you  
have to modify huge numbers of policies, argue with many thousands of  
people, etc. Sometimes it's easier to split something off and do it  
seperately - as WikiSpecies has been doing, for example.

There's also a big difference between testing a project and launching  
a project. Tests are normally small-scale, aimed at just trying  
something out, rather than actually doing a project. It's very  
difficult to establish critical mass with that approach. Launching a  
project involves announcing it loudly to the world, and getting the  
attention of lots of people. As long as the basic idea is sound, you  
then get a large influx of people who want to try it out. Perhaps  
they don't all stick around - but some of them will.

Of course, you can't do either very often, otherwise people will stop  
paying any attention. But for some projects, it could work very well.  
Especially if there's the backing of e.g. a funding body, which could  
easily be attracted now that Wikimedia is so large and popular.

Mike

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[Foundation-l] Do we have a complete set of WMF projects?

[Michael Peel]

On 2 Sep 2009, at 12:35, David Goodman wrote:

> There is sufficient missing material in  every Wikipedia, sufficient
> lack of coverage of areas outside the primary language zone and in
> earlier periods, sufficient unsourced material; sufficient need for
> updating  articles, sufficient potentially free media to add,
> sufficient needed imagery to get;  that we have more than enough work
> for all the volunteers we are likely to get.

I apologise for taking this slightly out of context, but it touches  
upon something I've been wondering about recently, which is: do we  
have a complete set of WMF projects?

David focuses on Wikipedia, which is the main project, and also  
touches on Wikimedia Commons. We also have (in no particular order)  
WikiBooks, WikiSource, WikiNews, Wikiversity, Wiktionary, Wikiquote  
and WikiSpecies, in all their various languages. Each of these has  
essentially its own set of volunteers (so I disagree with David's  
assertion at the end of his paragraph - different work brings in  
different volunteers).

The latest* one of these projects is Wikiversity, which opened on 15  
September 2006. That's almost 3 years ago. In terms of internet time,  
that's practically a generation ago.

Do we now have all of the projects running now that we could have  
running? Are all of the gaps in our project coverage already done  
sufficiently well by someone else that we couldn't improve on matters  
by having our own?

My personal feeling is that there's plenty of scope for new Wikimedia  
projects. There have been plenty mentioned on this mailing list, or  
on the various wikis, etc.** A wiki version of OpenLibrary is a good  
example of something we could try; even if it failed then it wouldn't  
be time wasted, as the result could be fed into OpenLibrary. So, I  
think the answer to my question is "no".

What could be the cause of this recent dearth of new projects?

Could it be the presence of Wikia?

Are we stuck in the mindset of just Wikipedia + supporting projects?

Is the technical side of things too moribund to easily establish new  
projects?

Are we afraid of trying new things (or worse, unable to try new things)?

Do we lack the leadership to make new projects successful?

Is it a limitation of not being able to make a living from working on  
Wikimedia projects?

Wikimedia is big enough that it can launch new projects very  
publicly, and get a lot of support (both volunteer and financial)  
very quickly. It's widespread enough that you can ask a group of  
people in any room if they know of Wikipedia, and over half of them  
will.*** Actually editing Wikipedia might not appeal to them, but  
working on a different project could, especially if it's in their  
speciality.

One final question: do we need to start looking for project donations  
- i.e. absorbing projects started elsewhere?

Mike

PS: my questions here are posed to be provocative. Please don't take  
them as accurately representing my viewpoints.

* Note that increasing the number of languages that these projects  
use doesn't in my mind count as a new project.
** A few of my favourite examples: WikiJournal, publishing scholarly  
works; WikiReview, providing in-depth reviews of subjects; WikiWrite,  
where fiction can be written collaboratively; etc.
*** Country-dependent. Your language may vary.

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Re: [Foundation-l] open IRC meeting w/ Wikimedia Trustees: this Friday, 1800 UTC

[Michael Peel]

On 8 Sep 2009, at 18:46, Samuel J Klein wrote:

> Hello,
>
> We wanted to have a more informal forum for discussing Wikimedia
> issues with Board members, so the three new Wikimedia Trustees (Arne,
> Matt, and myself) are hosting an open meeting on IRC in #wikimedia
> this Friday.
>
> Where : #wikimedia
> When  :  Friday  September 11, 1800-1900 UTC
>  (11:00-12:00 PST / 14:00-15:00EST / 20:00-21:00CEST)
>
> Other Board members will hopefully be there as well; we picked a time
> when we knew all of the new members could attend.  Please join with
> any thoughts or questions you have for the Board or about Wikimedia in
> general.  If you'd like to see something on the agenda, whether or not
> you can attend in person, please add it here:
>
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ 
> Talk:Wikimedia_meetings#September_open_meeting
>
> Since we only have an hour, we will try to keep to the agenda.  New
> topics brought up after noon UTC the day of the meeting will be
> addressed on-wiki if we run out of time.
>
> I'm looking for someone to help moderate the chat.  If interested,
> please reply offlist.  Thanks!
>
> SJ

Great idea! I hope that this is the first of many. I'd love to  
attend, but won't be able to at that time. Will logs/minutes of the  
meeting be made available after the event?

I've just added a question about transparency to the suggestion list  
- hope that's OK. I'd love to get the Board's views on cleaning up  
the WMF website (e.g. lots of material is still on meta!), but I'm  
not sure how well that would fit in.

Mike


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Re: [Foundation-l] Omidyar Network Commits $2 Million Grant to Wikimedia Foundation

[Michael Peel]

On 27 Aug 2009, at 03:46, Michael Snow wrote:

> Kropotkine_113 wrote:
>> Does he fulfill the Nomitanig Commitee selection criterion :  
>> "Membership
>> in the Wikimedia community" ?
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nominating_Committee/ 
>> Selection_criteria#General_needed_traits
>>
> Ting already answered the rest of these questions, but I will  
> elaborate
> on this one. The page is perhaps not completely clear, but the
> Nominating Committee used it as a workspace to brainstorm and  
> prioritize
> possible criteria. Thus, it was not decided that we should make
> membership in the Wikimedia community a criterion for the appointed
> seats, as most of us did not think this was a priority. I think  
> this is
> quite understandable, since these seats are designed to allow us to  
> find
> outside expertise for areas not already covered by the board members
> selected by the community. Neither Matt nor anyone else pretends  
> that he
> was a member of the Wikimedia community before he was appointed to the
> board. I know that he was looking forward to getting to know people  
> from
> the community at Wikimania, though.
>
> --Michael Snow

Can I ask: what experience _does_ he have of the Wikimedia movement?  
Has he ever edited a Wikimedia project? How has he supported free  
content aside from via money and being on Boards of Trustees?

There doesn't seem to be an "About Matt Halprin" section available in  
any of the press releases, as there is for the other new appointments...

Thanks,
Mike Peel

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Re: [Foundation-l] New projects opened

[Michael Peel]

On 23 Aug 2009, at 09:50, Bod Notbod wrote:

> On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 8:21 AM, Milos Rancic  
> wrote:
>
>> There won't be new lingua franca. ~30 years is now very small amount
>> of time for changing behavior of the global society, while it is very
>> large amount of time for machine translators. (Translation engines
>> between similar languages are very very good now.)
>
> The Google Wave demo shows real time translation as things are typed.
> I'm sure you'll inevitably end up with some of the very strange
> sentence constructions you get whenever you do an online translation
> but it's still quite a remarkable feat.

I was at a demonstration of Google Wave yesterday, and someone asked  
for a demo of the live translation robot. They weren't able to demo  
it; apparently it's been decommissioned by Google.

Mike

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Re: [Foundation-l] Email list archives

[Michael Peel]

On 16 Aug 2009, at 03:58, Pavlo Shevelo wrote:

>> For me Google Groups do a good job and it's enough.
>
> Yes, I would support the proposal to look at Google Groups (as
> alternative mailing list platform) closer.
> As we can see Wikimedia Brasil and Wikimedia UK are using that
> platform and perhaps not only them (I'm pushing this platform for
> Wikimedia Ukraine while we started from Mailman-based list, provided
> by WMF).

WMUK still use the standard mailman platform [1]. As far as I know,  
it's just WMBR that are using google groups.

Does Mailman not provide any sort of templating options that make it  
more useable? I see that the wikien-l mailing list has a themed front  
page which greatly improves how that page looks [2], but that doesn't  
seem to extend any further than that page.

Mike

[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
[2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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Re: [Foundation-l] strategic planning IRC office hours

[Michael Peel]

The website link states 21st July - so I assume this evening...

Mike

On 21 Jul 2009, at 10:37, Florence Devouard wrote:

> Eugene Eric Kim wrote:
>> Hi everybody,
>>
>> We're still in the process of getting up to speed, but I'm anxious to
>> start interacting with more of you and garnering some feedback as we
>> prepare to initiate this process. As a way to get to know each other
>> and talk about the process, Philippe and I will be holding IRC office
>> hours tomorrow on freenode's #wikimedia channel from 8-10pm UTC. (You
>> can convert this to your local timezone using: http://bit.ly/ 
>> 1aCw9p ).
>>
>> It will be informal. We'll be around to chat, hear your ideas, and
>> tell you what we know thus far. Please join us, and please spread the
>> word to others who might be interested!
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> =Eugene
>>
>
> Hello Kim,
>
> With hope that tomorrow is the 22nd, I'll try to be around :-)
>
> Happy to meet you.
>
> Ant
>
>
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[Foundation-l] Wikimedia in the UK

[Michael Peel]

What Wikimedia events or activities would you like to see take place  
in the UK?

We're currently trying to pull together ideas for "initiatives" that  
Wikimedia UK can support, at
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Initiatives/Proposals
There have been lots of ideas posted at:
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Initiatives/Ideas
which need fleshing out before they can be taken forward. We've also  
got a list of things that we've already supported at
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Initiatives

We're having an open IRC meeting to discuss possible initiatives,  
which will take place this coming Tuesday, the 30th June 2009, at  
8.30PM BST (19:30 GMT), in #wikimedia-uk on irc.freenode.net . For  
more information, and to say that you'll be coming, please visit:
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetings/Discussions/Initiatives

Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, and is  
set up as a membership-run non-profit UK company limited by  
guarantee. To find out more information, to join or to donate, please  
visit our website at http://uk.wikimedia.org/ .

Thanks,
Mike Peel
Chair, Wikimedia UK - http://uk.wikimedia.org/

Wikimedia UK is the operating name of Wiki UK Limited.
Wiki UK Ltd is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England  
and Wales, Registered No. 6741827.
The Registered Office is at 23 Cartwright Way, Nottingham, NG9 1RL,  
United Kingdom


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Re: [Foundation-l] Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository

[Michael Peel]

On 26 Jun 2009, at 02:08, Samuel Klein wrote:

> Wikimedia currently doesn't like files as large as a feature film, or
> even a high-def short. (how should we address this?  Brion mentioned
> something about making video easier to upload in November.)

As I understand it, there are three issues with having large video  
files on Wikimedia:
1. Server capacity: Disk space + server load + bandwidth
2. Interface: Ogg only, no ability to create clips, rescaling, etc.
3. Community will

(1) I assume is fairly easy to solve (simply by throwing money at the  
problem) provided that there's sufficient demand and money available.
(2) is at least partly on its way, I believe, as per recent news  
stories [1].
(3) I don't know whether there's the will in the community to have  
large video support, partly as it's already done to an extent by  
archive.org and partly due to bandwidth/resource concerns (both the  
uploader's and Wikimedias)

Videos are resource-heavy, and community-light, unlike text content  
on Wikipedia, or even images on Commons. It will remain community- 
light unless we want to go the way of YouTube. It's still very  
difficult to create decent quality, useful video.

Having said that, IMHO having a usable (high quality) copy of public  
domain videos, and educational videos (PD or user-created), on  
Wikimedia sites can only be good.

> But is
> there any reason not to include other bodies of published sources now
> available under free license?  Wikisource is currently the closest
> thing available to a unified place to categorize, comment on, and
> provide bidirectional links to source text and files of any sort.  It
> should in some ways be our largest project, and even our most widely
> cited.

Wikisource is for textual sources, not videos or files in general -  
that's Wikimedia Commons.

Mike

[1] http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10269308-17.html

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Commons: Service project or not?

[Michael Peel]

On 16 Jun 2009, at 18:56, Geoffrey Plourde wrote:

> Commons is an oddball project. Other projects produce work, but  
> Commons stores it. Wikisource could be considered another oddball  
> for the same reason. At this point in time, I would class Commons  
> as a service project (and wikisource as well) because it provides a  
> service to other projects and its only point is to provide a  
> service to other projects.
>
> Unfortunately, I can not fathom any reason that Commons should be  
> or is a independent project in its own right. It would be like  
> making all the filing cabinets in an office their own division.

I produce images for Commons in an analogous way to producing text  
for Wikipedia. I don't expect all of the images that I upload to  
Commons will be used in Wikimedia projects. I do hope that they will  
be useful for projects/education/life in general, though, both within  
Wikimedia and without.

Wikipedia itself can be regarded as a service project - it is  
providing content/a service for other projects. Fundamentally, we are  
about making content/information available freely to everyone. I  
think that Commons (and wikisource) does this as well as any other  
project (although of course they do this more effectively in  
combination than separately). Commons does however provide multimedia  
for Wikipedia. Hence I view it both as a project in its own right and  
a service project, but primarily the former.

Mike

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Re: [Foundation-l] Some reflections about the governance of Commons

[Michael Peel]

That is more to do with the interface to Commons, as I understand it,  
rather than the governance of it. Flickr is seen as being much easier  
to use. I believe that was also the origin of Pikiwiki - essentially  
creating a better interface to Commons.

BTW, to date I've never had a problem with Commons (after >2000 edits  
and >500 images uploaded).

Mike

On 15 Jun 2009, at 17:58, Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Hoi,
> There is a project called "Wiki loves art/nl"  In this project  
> people make
> pictures of objects in museums in the Netherlands. The thing I have  
> been
> wondering about is that the pictures are first published on Flickr  
> and then
> are copied into Commons.
>
> This is a project of the Dutch WMF chapter and some other  
> organisations. I
> read it as "there are too many problems with posting on Commons  
> directly".
> The reason why I bring this up is because it demonstrates how  
> Commons is not
> thought of as the helpful project it should be and it is not only  
> pikiwiki
> that has a problem.
> Thanks,
> GerardM
>
> 2009/6/12 Ting Chen 
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I had started a discussion on the Village Pump of Commons. I think
>> Commons is a very important project, and a very complicated project.
>> With more and more projects initiated by our chapters to encourage  
>> other
>> organizations or individuals to give their content free and upload  
>> them
>> to Commons it also becomes a fassade project of the Foundation and  
>> its
>> chapters. This and other reasons make me think that we should as  
>> broadly
>> as possible to discuss a few issues on Commons. The discussion is  
>> here:
>>
>>
>> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ 
>> Commons:Village_pump#Some_reflections_about_the_governance_of_Common
>>
>> --
>> Ting
>>
>> Ting's Blog: http://wingphilopp.blogspot.com/
>>
>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Google Wave and Wikimedia projects

[Michael Peel]

Having just watched the talk/show/discussion/dancing, I agree  
completely with Steve's comments on wikien-l:

On 29 May 2009, at 04:52, Steve Bennett wrote:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ&eurl=http%3A%2F% 
> 2Fwave.google.com%2F&feature=player_embedded
>
> (See from about 31:00 onwards for the relevant bit...)
>
> Real-time collaborative editing. Scroll back and forth through
> history, showing changes by a single user or of a single paragraph.
> Embedded comments updated in real time. Edit from multiple clients.
>
> Could we please have all of this? This is several orders of magnitude
> better than MediaWiki's collaborative editing features.
>
> Steve
>
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>

I'm not so sure about the rest of the wave idea (I dislike being  
trapped within a browser rather than using the whole of a computer's  
interface, and I'm vary wary about the apparent lack of interaction  
with existing systems and the whole client-server interaction), I  
thought that the interface was amazing.

I would love to see a Wikipedia article develop along the lines of  
the play back option; it would be great to be able to instantly edit  
Wikipedia, and see other people's edits in real time (although real- 
time vandalism could be interesting...). Being able to drag-and-drop  
images into an article/onto Commons from a desktop, or from elsewhere  
on the web, would be a real timesaver.

Could this be considered by the Usability team, or is this way beyond  
their scope? Could we ask Google nicely to come up with a brand new  
interface for mediawiki? ;-)

Mike

On 29 May 2009, at 20:10, Milos Rancic wrote:

> Probably, some of you already saw that Google made something for which
> I think that it will be the new form of the mainstream Internet
> perception. You may read Slashdot article [1], a good description at
> the blog "Google Operating System" [2] (not officially connected with
> Google) and, of course, you may see the official site with more than
> one hour of presentation [3].
>
> I expected such kind of tool (a client connected with others via P2P
> XML-based protocol; with servers for identification). However, I
> didn't expect that i will come so soon, that it will be done by one
> large corporation and that it will be done at the right way: open
> protocol, free software referent implementation.
>
> At the official site they said that it will start to work during this
> year. As one large corporation is behind the project, as well as free
> and open source community is able to participate, I have no doubts
> that it will be implemented all over the Internet (and not just
> Internet) very quickly. Probably, in two years the basic component of
> one modern operating system will not be a Web browser, but a Wave
> client. Probably, Web will become a storage system, while all of the
> interaction will be done via Waves.
>
> This development of Internet is very strongly related to the  
> Wikimedia projects:
> * I want to be able to edit Wikipedia through the Wave client.
> * I want to add my own notes to articles, history of articles etc.
> * I want to have collection of my knowledge at one place, including
> Wikipedia articles and my notes.
> * I want to be able to make a program which would analyze articles on
> Wikipedia and to give program and/or analysis to my friends.
> * I want many more things to be browsable or editable or whatever from
> a Wave client...
>
> All of those my (but, in one year, not just my) wishes may be
> fulfilled just through work on MediaWiki and Pywikipediabot. So, I am
> calling all of you who are willing to think about it or who are at the
> position to think about it -- to start with thinking :)
>
> [1] - http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/05/28/1912226/Googles-Wave- 
> Blurs-Chat-Email-Collaboration-Software
> [2] - http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/05/google-wave.html
> [3] - http://wave.google.com/
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia is not the Karma Sutra, was Re: commons and freely licensed sexual imagery

[Michael Peel]

On 15 May 2009, at 08:36, Nikola Smolenski wrote:

> Michael Peel wrote:
>> On 15 May 2009, at 08:01, Nikola Smolenski wrote:
>>
>>> Perhaps this is off-topic, but I wanted to say it for a long  
>>> time. The
>>> more time passes, the more I wonder if people who work on Wikipedia
>>> have
>>> ever seen an encyclopedia. On Wikipedia, dictionary definitions and
>>> image galleries are forbidden, and stubs are frowned upon. Yet every
>>> encyclopedia I have ever seen has dictionary definitions, and image
>>> galleries, and stubs-a-plenty.
>>>
>>> I guess that conclusion is that we are doing something wrong.
>>
>> They're not forbidden: they're just in a different location
>> (Wiktionary and Commons).
>
> Wiktionary has dictionary definitions, but they can't be expanded to
> cover what encyclopedic aspects of the topic could be covered.
>
> Commons has image galleries, but it does not have encyclopedic image
> galleries. Commons galleries feature images based on their aesthetic
> value, but do not offer encyclopedic information about the topic that
> should be presented by the images.

In cases where there is encyclopaedic benefit and/or aspects to  
having definitions and/or image galleries, then I'd expect WP:IAR to  
be applied. In the vast number of cases, though, I'd be very  
surprised if this was the case - e.g. nearly every single image  
gallery I've seen on Wikipedia has been for the benefit of showing  
off the authors' photography skills. ;-)

(BTW, I've seen image galleries used at least semi-encyclopaedically,  
e.g. at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 
Solar_eclipse_of_August_1,_2008 , although perhaps someone will  
decide to remove them after this email...)

>> Could you clarify what you mean by "stubs are frowned upon"? The only
>> reason I can think of for that is that it would be better if they
>> were developed into better articles rather than left as stubs...
>
> People dislike stubs. Sometimes, stubs get deleted because they  
> have too
> little information, even while they are about a valid topic.  
> Sometimes,
> stubs get merged into larger articles with suspicious choice of topic.
> Sometimes, stubs get converted into redirects to articles on similar
> topics, where information contained in the stubs is eventually  
> lost. All
> of this is done in cases where a traditional encyclopedia would  
> have stubs.

All I can say to that is that it's a great pity if that happens...

Mike


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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia is not the Karma Sutra, was Re: commons and freely licensed sexual imagery

[Michael Peel]

On 15 May 2009, at 08:01, Nikola Smolenski wrote:

> Perhaps this is off-topic, but I wanted to say it for a long time. The
> more time passes, the more I wonder if people who work on Wikipedia  
> have
> ever seen an encyclopedia. On Wikipedia, dictionary definitions and
> image galleries are forbidden, and stubs are frowned upon. Yet every
> encyclopedia I have ever seen has dictionary definitions, and image
> galleries, and stubs-a-plenty.
>
> I guess that conclusion is that we are doing something wrong.

They're not forbidden: they're just in a different location  
(Wiktionary and Commons).

Could you clarify what you mean by "stubs are frowned upon"? The only  
reason I can think of for that is that it would be better if they  
were developed into better articles rather than left as stubs...

Mike

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Re: [Foundation-l] Long-term archiving of Wikimedia content

[Michael Peel]

On 10 May 2009, at 22:06, David Gerard wrote:

> 2009/5/10 Michael Peel :
>
>> I don't want to restart this rather long (but very interesting)
>> topic, but I'd like to point out / remind people that a couple of
>> well-placed fires could wipe out most of wikipedia et al. as we
>> currently know it - surely the first priority, before thinking about
>> the real long term, is to sort that out? Remember the Library of
>> Alexandria...
>
>
> The new dumps are progressing very well. Presumably when they're done
> we can give the Internet Archive and any similar archivists a yell.

I'll believe that when the dump's finished running... (or is the dump  
process recoverable now?)

Personally, I'd like to see much more mirroring of the live  
databases, spread around as many countries/continents as possible, in  
addition to dumps being made available regularly.

Does the WMF have a disaster recovery plan?

Mike


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Re: [Foundation-l] Long-term archiving of Wikimedia content

[Michael Peel]

I don't want to restart this rather long (but very interesting)  
topic, but I'd like to point out / remind people that a couple of  
well-placed fires could wipe out most of wikipedia et al. as we  
currently know it - surely the first priority, before thinking about  
the real long term, is to sort that out? Remember the Library of  
Alexandria...

Mike

On 7 May 2009, at 15:21, Aryeh Gregor wrote:

> On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 8:13 PM, Platonides   
> wrote:
>> In that futuristic approach I find it more likely that there will  
>> be no
>> paper / printer, but instead everthing will be stored into
>> computers/PDAs and transfered between them. So in the event of the
>> catastrophe you'd be only able to access it with the surviving  
>> devices.
>
> In such a futuristic world, I would expect that the major sources of
> power would be things like solar and geothermal that don't require
> long-distance supply chains.  Then even if the world falls into
> anarchy, some well-stocked parts will still have power for a good long
> while.  So you wouldn't need to actually print it out, you'd have
> computers running continuously in some places.
>
> Even if 95% of humanity was wiped out, you'd still have a few hundred
> million people.  Not one of them is going to be in a position to save
> some computers?  Even militaries, which are prepared for all sorts of
> disasters -- some of which will have computers in multiple
> geographically distributed bunkers deep underground with enough fuel
> on-site to keep them running for days to years?
>
>> You have a copy of wikipedia on your hard disk. You can access it.
>> But your computer lifetime is finite. And you also don't know for how
>> much time you'll still have electric current.
>> What do you do?
>
> Screw Wikipedia.  If I want to preserve useful knowledge, I'll make
> sure to safeguard my textbooks.  In terms of utility for rebuilding
> society, the value of Wikipedia is zero compared to even a tiny
> university library.  And there are many thousands of university
> libraries already conveniently scattered around the world, not a few
> of them in subbasements where they'll be resistant to nasty things
> happening on the surface.
>
> On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 12:16 AM, Tim Starling  
>  wrote:
>> I wouldn't go quite that far. The idea of doing it (or having done  
>> it)
>> makes people feel good, due to the collective sci-fi-like fantasy
>> implicitly promulgated by the project itself -- a future world of
>> poverty and decay, saved by the serendipitous discovery of a
>> time-capsule sent from the past. It's a spectacle, a stunt, and it  
>> has
>> PR value.
>>
>> I certainly don't begrudge the Long Now Foundation for having done
>> this with the Rosetta Project, since their primary goal is to
>> encourage long-term thinking, and expensive stunts are obviously a  
>> key
>> part of that.
>>
>> But Wikimedia's goals are somewhat different, and we could probably
>> find some stunts which are more relevant to our mission.
>
> Okay, I can agree with that.
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of living people

[Michael Peel]

 From the Chapters point of view, Berlin is pretty much as central as  
you can get (restricting locations to those on the surface of the  
planet!). I don't know the distribution of developers, so can't  
comment about that. If you look at the board meeting alone, then yes,  
it would probably make much more sense to hold it elsewhere - but  
combine it with the other meetings, and Berlin is a very sensible  
place to hold it.

Voice and video conferencing have come a long way, but are not even  
close to meeting in person in terms of time-effectiveness or effect  
on relations, especially if the people involved haven't met each  
other before. Until meetings can be held in immersive 3D  
environments, I doubt things will improve (and even then, meeting  
over tea/beer can't happen, which is incredibly useful to get to know  
someone).

The locations that you list for board meetings all tally extremely  
well with places that other events have happened in - mostly  
Wikimanias - and I would assume that the dates are in very good  
agreement. It makes a huge amount of sense for board members to go to  
those events (whose location isn't determined by the board), and once  
they're all together why not hold a board meeting?

Note that within the academic world, far more exotic and far-flung  
places are chosen for conferences. In comparison, the WMF is  
incredibly restrained!

BTW, I trust that, since you are so in favour of being "green", you  
never go on holiday to foreign countries, and avoid making any  
unnecessary trips (be it long or short distance)?

Mike Peel

On 1 May 2009, at 18:06, Gregory Kohs wrote:

> The purpose of my question was to examine the carbon impact on our  
> global
> environment by holding this meeting in Berlin, which (by my  
> estimation) is
> quite a ways off from the point of "least cumulative distance" that  
> could
> have been achieved for at least the mandatory attendees.  All of that
> additional jet fuel and hotel consumption (laundered sheets, poor  
> recycling
> standards, etc.) is something to consider if the polar ice melts  
> and floods
> San Francisco one day, thanks to CO2-accelerated warming.  A  
> shorter-haul
> Boeing 737 flight burns about 200 pounds of fuel per passenger.  I  
> can only
> imagine that a trans-continental flight, plus a trans-Atlantic leg to
> Berlin, is likely burning at least 400 pounds of fuel per  
> passenger.  Return
> trip makes that 800 pounds of fuel.  I hope each of the San  
> Francisco-based
> attendees feel comfortable that their burning of 800 pounds of jet  
> fuel
> (about 114 gallons) in order to attend the conference in Berlin (a
> conference that, as far as I can tell, had zero "dial-in" conferencing
> options offered) was justified?
>
> I get the impression that there is a corporate culture afoot at the
> Wikimedia Foundation that stifles any attempts to optimize meetings  
> and
> conferences in ways that might be more economical and environmentally
> friendly, with innovations such as Skype and video- 
> teleconferencing.  My
> sense is that "interesting" and "exotic" places are chosen  
> instead... San
> Francisco, the Netherlands, Berlin, Taipei, Alexandria (Egypt, not
> Virginia), Buenos Aires, etc.  I suspect it's part of the corporate  
> culture
> to get the "backwater" taste of St. Petersburg (Florida, not  
> Russia) out of
> everyone's mouth, to select all of these far-flung, non-English- 
> speaking
> locales for a Board that consists mostly of North Americans who speak
> English, and who are funded mostly by U.S. dollars.
>
> I know that regarding a recent trade conference that was only 124  
> miles from
> our headquarters, my Fortune 100 employer sent down an edict that  
> only one
> of the 3 people from our team of 14 personnel who were interested  
> in going,
> could actually attend.  Certainly, this was more of an economic  
> decision
> than a "green" decision, but frankly, the two are often hand-in-hand
> outcomes.  Is the Wikimedia Foundation very "green" in its governance
> practices?  I know that Wikia, Inc. touts its dedication to  
> "Green", but
> what about the WMF?
>
> Here's a 100-gallon aquarium:
> *http://tinyurl.com/100-gallon-tank*
>
> Imagine it full of jet fuel, then setting a match to it, sucking  
> oxygen out
> of the air, and replacing it with carbon-laden molecules.  That's  
> what each
> of the North American board members did to enable travel to Berlin  
> to hold
> their meeting which seems to have exhausted most of the attendees.
>
> -- 
> Gregory Kohs
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Re: [Foundation-l] depth

[Michael Peel]

Perhaps a better thing to quantify is the usefulness, rather than the  
quality? That is, ask the people reading and using articles how  
useful the article has been to them?

Or, more generally, ask them to rate articles on a scale of 1 to N,  
where N is e.g. 5.

By doing that, you can learn about the distribution of ratings (==  
quality/usefulness/???) within a wikipedia, or within a subsample of  
the wikipedia (e.g. "featured" or "good" content). It provides a  
complementary statistic to article ratings, which are generally done  
by editors. It also highlights articles where we as editors think  
we've done a good job, but perhaps readers don't. Add in the  
evolution of the rating with time (possibly with a half-life for an  
individual rating) and you get to see the direction that the  
article's heading in. It's a simple, unobtrusive, commonly used tool  
that's much more likely to be used than any type of survey, yet is  
direct from the users rather than being an inferred quantity.

(This isn't my idea; if I remember correctly, it's  
[[en:User:Majorly]]'s. I hope he doesn't mind me passing it on. I've  
just added my slant, and hopefully inserted it at a useful point in  
this discussion.)

Mike

On 23 Mar 2009, at 20:26, Nikola Smolenski wrote:

> Дана Monday 23 March 2009 20:00:06 Thomas Dalton написа:
>> 2009/3/23 Mark Williamson :
>>> There are many situations in which it could be useful to have a  
>>> way to
>>> quantify the quality, rather than just number of articles, of a
>>> Wikipedia edition. If the whole formula is flawed, we should find a
>>> better one.
>>
>> Step one: Define "quality".
>>
>> If you give me an unambiguous, uncontroversial definition of quality,
>> I'll find you a formula for it.
>
> It doesn't have to be unambiguous or uncontroversial, it only has  
> to be
> useful.
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Proposed revised attribution language

[Michael Peel]

On 20 Mar 2009, at 17:03, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Michael Peel wrote:
>> On 20 Mar 2009, at 08:57, Tim Landscheidt wrote:
>>
>>> Is this problem really exclusive to online references? I'd
>>> guess there is plenitude of author references to "[...] et
>>> al." (or none at all) out there that cannot be resolved
>>> without access to a catalog or the source material itself
>>> and become "devoid of meaning" at the latest when these re-
>>> sources are destroyed or not accessible.
>>>
>> I'm not talking about references to a text, I'm talking about a copy
>> of the text. That's completely different. Please, give me examples of
>> where text is reprinted with the authors attributed as "[...] et al."
>> or none at all.
>>
>>
> A copy of Wikipedia text is frequently used in eBay descriptions of
> books.  The attribution is simply to Wikipedia, and does not  
> progress so
> far as to say "[...] et al."  That's about as much as anyone could
> reasonably expect, no matter what the licence says.

I was meaning non-Wikipedia text, i.e. existing attribution methods  
for other works.

In the case of eBay, where the use is temporary, attribution by URL  
seems fine to me. Were it more permanent (e.g. a proper website, or a  
book), then attribution by author names would seem more appropriate.

> Only my own laziness and the economics of publishing prevent me from
> putting together a book of related Wikipedia articles.  (Maybe a
> wiki-guide to Vancouver in time for the upcoming Olympics.) If I did I
> could do so safely in the knowledge that no-one would sue me. For any
> author to expect otherwise is to suffer (to use Milos's appropriate
> term) from "bourgeois egotism."

That's an argument for clear rules, with no relation to attribution.  
A simple rule saying "if you use this text for that, attribute these  
authors" suffices and removes any doubt about anyone being sued.

Mike


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Re: [Foundation-l] Proposed revised attribution language

[Michael Peel]

On 20 Mar 2009, at 08:57, Tim Landscheidt wrote:

> Michael Peel  wrote:
>> The issue, from my point of view*, is that they do "suddenly become
>> devoid of meaning" as soon as those links stop working. This can
>> happen for a number of reasons, including article moves, deletions,
>> and ( forbid) wikipedia.org going away. There are no
>> guarantees that I'm aware of that the links will continue to work for
>> even a decade, let alone the full length of copyright (and, given the
>> tendency to attribute authors even for PD works, afterwards).
>
>> On the other hand, a local copy of the author list (normally) stays
>> accessible as long as the work does.
>> [...]
>
> Is this problem really exclusive to online references? I'd
> guess there is plenitude of author references to "[...] et
> al." (or none at all) out there that cannot be resolved
> without access to a catalog or the source material itself
> and become "devoid of meaning" at the latest when these re-
> sources are destroyed or not accessible.

I'm not talking about references to a text, I'm talking about a copy  
of the text. That's completely different. Please, give me examples of  
where text is reprinted with the authors attributed as "[...] et al."  
or none at all.

>   If the shards of a coffee mug with a URL attribution get
> excavated 100 years in the future, I think a bit of research
> on the part of the archaeologists can be asked for.

The whole discussion of coffee mugs is a red herring. That's most  
likely using a quote from an article, which would fall under fair use  
anyway and probably wouldn't (or shouldn't) need URL attribution. I'm  
interested in the cases where a substantial part (or all) of the text  
is used.

Wikipedia has many uses, and I don't think a one-size-fits-all  
attribution-by-url works, technically nor logically (and possibly not  
legally, given the debates going on at this mailing list). I'd much  
rather see a sliding scale of attribution, based on how much of the  
content you're wanting to reuse and the situation in which you're  
reusing it. If you're printing a book with wikipedia content, then a  
full author list is reasonable. If you're using a paragraph online,  
then perhaps attribution-by-url is appropriate. If you're using a  
sentence in a news article or on a coffee mug, then attributing  
"Wikipedia" would probably be OK.

So long as the tools for the different levels of attribution exist  
(the only two lacking are an easy and obvious way to get an author  
list from wikipedia and a decent history URL), then why not set up a  
page on wikipedia (et al.) which the community can edit (and debate),  
defining the levels of attribution required?

Mike


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Re: [Foundation-l] Proposed revised attribution language

[Michael Peel]

On 16 Mar 2009, at 00:55, Michael Snow wrote:

> Can we please drop the nonsense that a URL is "no attribution at  
> all" in
> an offline context? I've made this point before, but URLs do not
> suddenly become devoid of meaning just because you're using a medium
> where you can't follow a hyperlink. I could just as soon say that  
> print
> media aren't acceptable sources for Wikipedia articles because you  
> can't
> check them by following a hyperlink, it's the same logic. We allow
> references that adapt the conventions of other media to our  
> context, we
> should allow people using other media the same privilege in  
> adapting our
> conventions to their context.
>
> --Michael Snow

The issue, from my point of view*, is that they do "suddenly become  
devoid of meaning" as soon as those links stop working. This can  
happen for a number of reasons, including article moves, deletions,  
and ( forbid) wikipedia.org going away. There are no  
guarantees that I'm aware of that the links will continue to work for  
even a decade, let alone the full length of copyright (and, given the  
tendency to attribute authors even for PD works, afterwards).

On the other hand, a local copy of the author list (normally) stays  
accessible as long as the work does.

How does the WMF plan to tackle this problem if attribution-by-link  
is used?

Mike Peel

* Note that these points have been raised several times before on  
this mailing list, but I've yet to see an adequate response, so I  
figure they deserve raising again.

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Re: [Foundation-l] The reality of printing a poster

[Michael Peel]

On 3 Feb 2009, at 21:59, Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Hoi,
> Your wish for attribution comes at a monetory cost so the  
> difference is
> negligible. They want their reward for the creation for IP and so  
> do you.
> Thanks,
>GerardmM

Huh? Where am I asking for money? Depending on the method of  
attribution, there should be negligible extra cost involved with  
printing the poster (i.e. < 1p)

Mike

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Re: [Foundation-l] The reality of printing a poster

[Michael Peel]

On 3 Feb 2009, at 21:39, Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Hoi,
> The change of the license will happen not only for Wikipedia but  
> for all
> projects as I understand things.

The change of license can only apply to wiki-created GFDL works,  
which does not apply to the images. They will remain with their  
current licenses.

> When you do not like the notion that in real life people want  a clean
> print, you will find that your legalistic approach hardly survives  
> the real
> world. There are people who like their jeans with labels. I remove  
> them if I
> can. In a way you take the position of the RIAA.
> Thanks,

You still buy the jeans with labels attached; it's up to you if you  
remove them later.

The RIAA's stance is completely different to mine. They want you to  
pay money (preferably repeatedly); I only care about attribution.

Mike

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Re: [Foundation-l] The reality of printing a poster

[Michael Peel]

On 3 Feb 2009, at 21:01, Sam Johnston wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 9:41 PM, Gerard Meijssen
>  wrote:
>> Hoi,
>> The economics of it are such that there is a real fine balance  
>> between cheap
>> and expensive. I positvely hate text on my posters. Printing on  
>> the back is
>> two prints and that IS expensive. My point has been and still is  
>> that it is
>> nice to come up with "solutions". They have to be practical in the  
>> real
>> world. If a proposed solution adds enough overhead, the effect  
>> will be that
>> it will not be accepted a solution.
>
> Thanks for another practical example of attribution stifling reuse -
> too bad if you ever wanted to print something like this:
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WikimediaMosaicCapture.png
>
> I'd be a lot more accepting of a 'Wikipedia' and/or the Wikipedia logo
> printed discretely in the bottom right corner of my poster than one or
> more meaningless usernames too.

You're overlooking the large range (with a high skew) of the number  
of authors on images and are instead focussing on the extremal value.  
For my pictures, I am currently the single author on all of them  
(although that may not be the case in the future). They are released  
under a license that requires attribution. If you don't like that,  
use another picture.

Where larger numbers of authors for images are concerned, you're  
arguing your viewpoint, not the legal situation. Unless you can argue  
fair use, then you're bound by the licenses that the images were  
released under originally. If those licenses say that the author must  
be attributed, then you must attribute the author. You can't  
whitewash over that.

Two final points. Note that all of my images (and edits) are done  
under my real name; not everyone's username is meaningless. Also,  
Wikimedia (inc. or exc. Commons) is not Wikipedia.

Mike

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Re: [Foundation-l] The reality of printing a poster

[Michael Peel]

On 2 Feb 2009, at 07:11, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>- When I TELL you that something spoils a picture for me, you  
> can ignore
>this, or you accept this. When I have a framed picture I do not  
> want the
>license printed with it, I do not want a list of authors. I want  
> a clean
>picture just as it would be when I have it printed at my local  
> copy shop.

Is this full stop, or meant in a specific way? Obviously, having the  
license, author list, etc. printed on top of the image is  
unacceptable. However, I've seen posters with a small white space at  
the bottom where the author name and copyright is given. I've also  
seen posters where the information is put on the back of the page.  
Would those options be acceptable?

I have made a number of images available on the Wikimedia Commons  
under a CC-BY-SA license. I'm quite happy for people to print them  
off, so long as my name remains attached to them (i.e. I'm  
attributed, as per the license). It's easy to do this in an  
unobtrusive manner. I've so far been unable to find out whether the  
WMFR poster printing setup includes attribution or not; does anyone  
know the answer to this?

Mike

PS: To date, I'm aware of one of my images being printed out in  
poster form. In this case, I wasn't attributed - but in this specific  
case I don't mind because they sent me a copy of the print (there was  
a delivery mistake, and they got two copies). That was fine by me,  
but it would have been even nicer if I was attributed

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[Foundation-l] Agreement between WMF and O'Reilly Media about Wikipedia: The Missing Manual on Wikipedia?

[Michael Peel]

Hi all,

The author of Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, John Broughton, has just  
uploaded the book to Wikipedia under the GFDL, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Wikipedia:_The_Missing_Manual

My reaction when I spotted this was: great, but shouldn't this be on  
Wikibooks? Part of the author's response to this was that "the  
agreement between O'Reilly Media and the Wikimedia Foundation was  
that this would be at /Wikipedia/ ... [do] not remove it from this  
site without a /lot/ more discussion among a /lot/ of other people."

Did the WMF really make an agreement saying that the content should  
be on Wikipedia, rather than a WMF project or simply under a free  
license?

Does anyone want to weigh in with comments on this on the talk page?

Thanks,
Mike Peel

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Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal

[Michael Peel]

Scenario 1: An article from Wikipedia is used elsewhere (be it on or  
offline), with a link to the history of the page. The article is  
subsequently deleted from Wikipedia (e.g. accidentally and  
irretrievably).

Scenario 2: Wikipedia ceases to exist in its current form. Its  
content is hosted elsewhere, but no link exists from the former  
location of the history page to the new location.

In either of those scenarios (and there's lots of other  
possibilities), the attribution ceases to be meaningful or useful.

In my opinion, attribution of all authors is preferable, and  
technically achievable.* Where that is not possible, e.g. due to  
space restrictions, then naming the key N authors is acceptable (and  
it should also be technically achievable to provide that abbreviated  
list). Including "Wikipedia" in the attribution is very reasonable,  
but not as the sole word. Providing a single URL only, which may stop  
working in the future, is not acceptable (although it would be  
acceptable as an accompaniment).

Mike

* If you don't want this cluttering up the footer, then simply have  
an "Authors" tab along the lines of the existing history tab. Or some  
sort of "Reuse this page" link with reuse instructions/guidelines on  
it, along the lines of "Cite this page"

On 21 Jan 2009, at 07:51, George Herbert wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 6:57 PM, geni  wrote:
>
>> 2009/1/21 Erik Moeller :
>>> CC General Counsel has confirmed that our proposed attribution model
>>> is consistent with the language of CC-BY-SA. There is no need to use
>>> attribution parties - our proposed approach is consistent with 4 
>>> (c)(i)
>>> and 4(c)(iii).
>>
>>  4(c)(iii) is irrelevant. The foundation not the licensor and the URL
>> is on top of other attribution and copyright stuff. The only way
>> attribution methods can be controlled through CC-BY-SA-3.0 is   
>> through
>> 4(c)(i).
>
>
> How is the foundation not distributing the (independently authored)  
> work?
>
> Attribution methods are first controlled by 4(c) - specifically "  
> reasonable
> to the medium or means You are utilizing".
>
> If Mike believes that a URL to the page history for pages with 6 or  
> more
> authors is acceptable under the terms of the license, and the Creative
> Commons' staff attorney so agrees, then I believe that they have just
> defined "reasonable to the medium or means we are utilizing" in  
> minimum
> legal terms, at least.  If you feel that it's morally repugnant  
> somehow then
> we can talk, of course, but I believe that this is both reasonable  
> and on
> first glance close to the optimum balance of practical (in the  
> sense of, can
> be consistently and legally followed) and ethical (in the sense of,  
> keeping
> people's credits as closely associated as we can).
>
>
> Again lets go through that section you have two things you can  
> attribute to:
>>
>> "the name of the Original Author (or pseudonym, if applicable) if  
>> supplied"
>>
>> However since you reject that we have to move onto the second half:
>>
>> "if the Original Author and/or Licensor designate another party or
>> parties (e.g., a sponsor institute, publishing entity, journal) for
>> attribution ("Attribution Parties") in Licensor's copyright notice,
>> terms of service or by other reasonable means, the name of such party
>> or parties;"
>>
>> So yes you can mess with the attribution requirements using that part
>> of the clause but trying to define say
>> "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Canal&action=history";  
>> as an
>> Attribution Party is somewhat unreasonable in the context of the
>> paragraph and in the general legal use of the term party.
>>
>> Remember even if you do think you can somehow squeeze this though it
>> still causes issues with wikipedia's habit of deleting things from
>> time to time and prevent the import of CC-BY-SA 3.0 text from third
>> parties.
>
>
> If we get common agreement with the CC's attorney and the populace  
> as a
> whole that CC-BY-SA-3.0 means (for wikis with 6+ contributors) what  
> we say
> it does, then it doesn't prevent any import or have any issue with  
> deleting
> things.
>
> If we delete a contribution, from the page text and page history,  
> then that
> text is not part of the page that's being served up and to which  
> the license
> applies.  Legally, CC-BY-SA-3.0 could be fought over by me going in  
> and
> taking all your contributions to a page and paraphrasing them, then  
> taking
> you out of the "authors list" as you didn't write any text still  
> appearing
> on the page.  We take a more liberal view- if you contributed,  
> you're in the
> history.  There are exceptions - we do delete revisions in  
> extremis.  But in
> general, not one word you wrote can still be in a current article  
> and you
> still show up and get credit now.  In some cases your ideas may  
> still be
> present, in some cases they have all been removed, but you still  
> get credit
> except for rare a

Re: [Foundation-l] GFDL Q&A update and question

[Michael Peel]

On 11 Jan 2009, at 21:46, Erik Moeller wrote:

> The GFDL (including prior versions) deals with author names for three
> different purposes:
>
> * author credit on the title page;
> * author copyright in the copyright notices;
> * author names for tracking modifications in the history section.
> ...
> In the context of
> Wikipedia, authors are not named as part of the copyright notice.

I'm curious: why isn't a copyright notice displayed at the bottom of  
each article, stating the copyright owners of the material?

That appears to be how GFDL is supposed to be used (as per "How to  
use this License for your documents"), taking "document" to mean an  
article. It's also standard practice to state the copyright owners  
(look at the large majority of webpages, or any book).

Mike

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Re: [Foundation-l] GFDL Q&A update and question

[Michael Peel]

On 8 Jan 2009, at 22:16, Thomas Dalton wrote:
>
> I don't think that's clear at all. I don't know how many authors you
> are meant to attribute things to under CC-BY-SA, it may well be all of
> them. I need to do more research (or, I need someone to tell me the
> answer!).

My preference would be: all authors that have contributed to the  
article, where that contribution has not been reverted, unless the  
authors say that they don't want to be attributed. There is a large  
amount of leeway here, though: I think even "Wikipedia" would satisfy  
the license, or on the other scale a complete list of every editor of  
the wiki. The WMF really needs to state up front what the attribution  
should be before we have the vote / start using the license (assuming  
we do).

Note that for the GFDL the requirement is that five (or all if less  
than 5) of the principle authors of the document (which I would  
interpret as an article) should be attributed.

Personally, for everything I've written, and any photograph I've  
taken, I want to be attributed when it is / they are used, with the  
option to waive the attribution if I dislike the usage of it. That  
applies both to content I've submitted to Wikipedia et al., and in  
general to anything else I do. I'm happy for that attribution to be  
relegated to an "et al." in the case of being one author among many,  
where my contributions are less than the N authors being attributed.

Mike Peel

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Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening

[Michael Peel]

On 13 Dec 2008, at 14:02, Platonides wrote:

> teun spaans wrote:
>> Many times it works well.
>> But the procedures also irregularly goes amiss.
>>
>> I also received deletion messages of a pic i had uploaded with a  
>> correct
>> license. Some wikimedian had accidently removed the license,  
>> making a bot
>> come along and warn me. By pure coincidence i happened to come  
>> along at
>> commons - sometimes months go by without me dropping in - and was  
>> able to
>> restore the license, protest angainst its deletion, and so on.
>> 7 days is awfully short. One easy thing that can be approved is an  
>> email
>> instead of a bot message on a talk page.
>>
>> But that wont change the self centered attitude of commonists.
>
> You *will* get an email if have chosen on your Preferences to get an
> email whenever your talk page is modified.
> Having that option available on WMF wikis was pushed from commons
> community, and in fact Commons was one of the first projects where it
> was added. Now it is enabled on all wikis but the big ones.

 From personal experience, this feature doesn't work reliably. I have  
a fairly large number of items on my watchlist at Commons and on  
Meta, such that there are edits made on average once a day, but I  
only receive the emails about those edits sporadically, and often in  
bursts.

It is still a very useful feature, though. It's a pity that you can't  
have two watchlists on en.wp, such that you can use one to keep an  
eye on articles you're particularly attached to, with the other  
handling all the rest.

Mike

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Re: [Foundation-l] and what if...

[Michael Peel]

On 12 Dec 2008, at 10:52, Florence Devouard wrote:

> Now, seriously, what is more important right now ?
> That citizens can not read one article ?
> Or that all the citizens of a country can not edit all articles any  
> more ?
>
> I would argue that the content of Wikipedia can be copied and
> distributed by anyone, so preventing reading our site is not such a  
> bid
> deal.
> However, editing can only be done on our site, so the impact of  
> blocking
> in editing is quite dramatic.

If you can't read the article on Wikipedia, then you can't edit it.  
If an article doesn't exist on Wikipedia, then it can't be  
distributed by other people.

IMO, the best approach would be to have a channel (a phone number, an  
email address, etc...) where governments can contact the WMF to  
request that certain pages are blocked in certain countries. These  
entries can then be publicly listed, so that people know that they  
are censored, and when a censored page is requested a notice should  
be displayed instead saying that the page is censored.

I don't like the idea of censoring at all, but it seems to be  
required in today's world. We can't do much about that, but we can  
deal with it in such a way that people know that it is being  
censored, rather than just hiding it behind error 404 messages. It  
also lets the rest of the world continue editing those pages, so that  
they are there when they no longer need to be censored (and/or other  
sites can distribute them to). Think of it as the digital version of  
a black marker over text.

Mike

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Re: [Foundation-l] Moving towards a more usable MediaWiki

[Michael Peel]

Gerard,

You seem to have completely missed my point. At which stage in the  
process did they fail?

It's like answering the question "why do cars crash?" with "they  
failed to not crash."...

No, I don't have experience with small projects. That comment was  
based on my experience with en.wp, where red links seem to have gone  
out of fashion (and not because they're unnecessary).

Mike

On 2 Dec 2008, at 15:00, Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Hoi,
> They failed their task. Their task was to create a new article.  
> There are
> many people who fail at this.
>
> When you state that "those seem to be getting increasingly rare", I  
> wonder
> if you have experience with small and starting projects. It is a  
> recurring
> theme and it is a major reason for the failure of projects. I  
> completely
> agree with you that there are many more pain points. The trick is  
> to solve
> the issues that are easy to solve first. From this we can progress  
> to a next
> issue.
> Thanks,
>   GerardM
>
> 2008/12/2 Michael Peel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>> Where did they fail? Did they fail to find a red link to create an
>> article? (those seem to be getting increasingly rare) Could they not
>> find a subject to start a new article on? Were they unable to type
>> text into the appropriate box and submit it? Were they unable to
>> structure the article well enough? Were they unable to wikify it?
>> Were they unable to categorize it? Did they fail to add an infobox or
>> a picture? Were they unable to get it to GA/FA status?
>>
>> There's lots of failure points; which ones caused the problems, and
>> are there simple tweaks that can be made to sort out the problems?
>>
>> Mike
>>
>> On 2 Dec 2008, at 13:23, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>>
>>> Hoi,
>>> You do not create a new article by finding the "edit" button. The
>>> task all
>>> these people failed at was creating a whole new article.
>>> Thanks,
>>>   GerardM
>>>
>>> 2008/12/2 Ilario Valdelli <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>>
>>>> On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 12:51 PM, Gerard Meijssen
>>>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>>>> Hoi,
>>>>> Over the last weeks I have been rather active in promoting  
>>>>> improved
>>>>> usability for the MediaWiki software. What really got me going was
>>>> learning
>>>>> from a Wikimania presentation that a UNICEF usability study  
>>>>> done in
>>>> Tanzania
>>>>> showed that 100% of the test subjects were unable to create a new
>>>> article.
>>>>> UNICEF has created extensions to improve on this, extensions that
>>>>> make a
>>>>> difference. The fact that our usability is poor does not only
>>>>> hurt what
>>>> some
>>>>> call "minority languages". A professor in Austria I know, a
>>>>> veteran user
>>>> of
>>>>> software, was also hard pressed to collaborate on a wiki.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The problem for usability is that sometime there is not a better
>>>> selection of users to have a "real" sampling.
>>>>
>>>> Naturally if this sampling is formed by users with a poor or no
>>>> knowledge of computers, probably they will not have problems with
>>>> Wikipedia because they would not able to switch on a computer. The
>>>> usability, in this case is the minor problem.
>>>>
>>>> Probably is better to know if they were not able to use the edit
>>>> button because the edit button is not "usable" or if they were not
>>>> able because they don't have seen an "edit" button in the past.
>>>>
>>>> Ilario
>>>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Moving towards a more usable MediaWiki

[Michael Peel]

Where did they fail? Did they fail to find a red link to create an  
article? (those seem to be getting increasingly rare) Could they not  
find a subject to start a new article on? Were they unable to type  
text into the appropriate box and submit it? Were they unable to  
structure the article well enough? Were they unable to wikify it?  
Were they unable to categorize it? Did they fail to add an infobox or  
a picture? Were they unable to get it to GA/FA status?

There's lots of failure points; which ones caused the problems, and  
are there simple tweaks that can be made to sort out the problems?

Mike

On 2 Dec 2008, at 13:23, Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Hoi,
> You do not create a new article by finding the "edit" button. The  
> task all
> these people failed at was creating a whole new article.
> Thanks,
>   GerardM
>
> 2008/12/2 Ilario Valdelli <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>> On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 12:51 PM, Gerard Meijssen
>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> Hoi,
>>> Over the last weeks I have been rather active in promoting improved
>>> usability for the MediaWiki software. What really got me going was
>> learning
>>> from a Wikimania presentation that a UNICEF usability study done in
>> Tanzania
>>> showed that 100% of the test subjects were unable to create a new
>> article.
>>> UNICEF has created extensions to improve on this, extensions that  
>>> make a
>>> difference. The fact that our usability is poor does not only  
>>> hurt what
>> some
>>> call "minority languages". A professor in Austria I know, a  
>>> veteran user
>> of
>>> software, was also hard pressed to collaborate on a wiki.
>>>
>>
>> The problem for usability is that sometime there is not a better
>> selection of users to have a "real" sampling.
>>
>> Naturally if this sampling is formed by users with a poor or no
>> knowledge of computers, probably they will not have problems with
>> Wikipedia because they would not able to switch on a computer. The
>> usability, in this case is the minor problem.
>>
>> Probably is better to know if they were not able to use the edit
>> button because the edit button is not "usable" or if they were not
>> able because they don't have seen an "edit" button in the past.
>>
>> Ilario
>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] EN Wikipedia Editing Statistics

[Michael Peel]

On 30 Nov 2008, at 20:11, Robert Rohde wrote:

> On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 8:20 AM, Erik Zachte  
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> English -> English dump
>>
>>> Because myself and others have been frustrated by the lack of good
>>> stats on the number of active editors on the English Wikipedia, I  
>>> have
>>> compiled some stats on the editing frequency on enwiki:
>>
>> No worries: in only 176 days from now the English dump will be  
>> ready and I
>> can run wikistats scripts on it.
>> It just started 52 days ago, so let us be patient for a while ;)
>
> Is there any reason at all to believe that it is more likely to finish
> this time than all the previous attempts during the last two years?
>
> I have virtually zero faith in a script that takes 230 days and where
> any error wipes out all progress.
>
> -Robert Rohde

Hold on...what? There is no recent dump of the English Wikipedia, and  
there hasn't been for the last 2 years?

Please tell me I'm misunderstanding things here.

Mike

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Re: [Foundation-l] European Commission Green Paper - Copyright in the Knowledge Economy

[Michael Peel]

On 14 Nov 2008, at 15:47, geni wrote:

> 2008/11/14 teun spaans <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>> Agree.
>>
>> And perhaps other organizations working with copy left licenses  
>> could be
>> informed?
>
>
> There is nothing in there of any real significance to free licenses.

Isn't that something that should be fed back to them, with a question  
of why this is?

Mike

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