Re: [Foundation-l] 2011 Board Elections: Input needed
On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 6:54 PM, Andre Engels andreeng...@gmail.com wrote: Lowering the edit counts sounds good, it does however also have a downside, in that it makes it easier to vote using sockpuppets or meatpuppets. I agree with voices speaking out against giving voting rights based on donations; I do also think giving people voting rights based only on being 'readers' basically means giving it out to random people. There's two groups I would be first thinking of when extending the voting populace. The first is those with commit rights on the Mediawiki code (I'd feel a single commit in the last year would be enough - in general having been granted commit right shows already that one is active as a Mediawiki community member). The second would be participants of Wikimania or other Wikimedia or chapter events (using a specific but extensive list). -- André Engels, andreeng...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l I don't think it's a good idea to include donors especially donors above or below a certain point, to essentially buy the right to vote. As for developers, campus ambassadors - most of them are already community members, its their decision to vote or not. They are already composed of community members, their inclusion hasn't really been an issue in my opinion. The discussion about including readers into the voting pool has also been going on Meta [1]. I believe the 'reader' group is far too wide and random to be successfully considered a separate entity in the elections. Its also getting too close to the election to come up with policies and infrastructure to implement suffrage for random readers. I would point to the recently concluded Steward election as an example of who to include in the voting process. I would hope that the selection is limited to the community, at almost a 100,000, it's far larger than the voting pool of any other similar organization. Theo User:Theo10011 [1]http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Board_elections/2011#Participation ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Is Google allowing users to block Wikipedia?
On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 2:30 AM, Kul Takanao Wadhwa kwad...@wikimedia.orgwrote: On 3/19/11 1:56 PM, Erik Moeller wrote: 2011/3/19 Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org: Looks like it's one of their small percentage experiments. Haven't been able to reproduce it myself. Not clear whether it's just wikipedia.org or other/all sites. Bence pointed to this explanation: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/hide-sites-to-find-more-of-what-you.html Thx. I know about the general blocking option but wanted to know if anyone has seen other sites, besides Wikipedia, specifically called out too. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l I first thought it might have had something to do with google's new search algorithm. I thought a similar feature had been around for a while, to block results from a particular site. There was a star option earlier to prioritize results from a particular site, it seems to be a natural progression. It seems to be a personalized search feature, not directly related to Wikipedia visibility in search results. Theo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Job openings - Bugmeister
On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 12:30 AM, Casey Brown li...@caseybrown.org wrote: On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 12:34 PM, Jan Kucera (Kozuch) garba...@seznam.cz wrote: what about this job opening? Has it been filled already? Mark Hershberger (MAH) is fulfilling the role of Bugmeister and he's already started cleaning up Bugzilla. Id link to the announcement, but I'm not sure where it was. I'm CCing him if you have any questions. -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l I don't think it was announced on Foundation-l, there was an announcement on wikitech-l. http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech/221758 it was also covered in Signpost Tech report back in January. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-01-17/Technology_report Theo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Raising funds without being quite so annoying to readers
WereSpielChequers, I believe we either tried or considered all those things and more. I think we established continuing donations sometime half-way through the fundraiser, it mostly depends on the payment intermediaries- Philippe and Megan really worked hard on getting it. From what I recall, Zack and the rest of the team considered all those things and many more to reach out to possible benefactors during the fundraiser. They didn't just consider money raised per ad, but a whole host of metrics about every banner and every minute detail. Do bear in mind that there are a lot of legal limitation when dealing with such an international user-base - things like merchandising are governed by non-profit policies, internationalizing is another issue we have to consider. The foundation is limited in that option and that is where the chapters need to take the lead in establishing donation infrastructure in their respective countries. Theo On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 8:00 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 5 March 2011 14:19, Neil Harris n...@tonal.clara.co.uk wrote: And also, WMF should make it possible to accept continuing donations as a subscription on a monthly basis. Even better, they should do this already! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Monthly_donations/en (a link from http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate with the words If you'd like to make an automatic monthly donation please click here. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Friendliness: a radical proposal
On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 11:43 PM, Neil Harris n...@tonal.clara.co.ukwrote: Thesis: The main reason why Wikipedia seems unfriendly to beginners is the reduction in the assumption of good faith. A lot of this could be resolved simply by creating large numbers of new admins. This should be done automatically. So why not just do it? Argument and proposal: Many admins and edit patrollers find themselves forced into an aggressive stance in order to keep up with the firehose of issues that need to be dealt with, a surprising amount of which is fueled by deliberate malice and stupidity and actually does require an aggressive and proactive response. This is not the admins' fault. The major reason for this is the broken RfA process, which has slowed the creation of new admins to a trickle, and has led to an admin shortage, which in turn has led to the current whack-a-mole attitude to new editors, and a reduction in the ability to assume good faith. I'd like to move back to an older era, where adminship was no big deal, and was allocated to any reasonably polite and competent editor, instead of requiring them to in effect run for political office. If, say, over the next three years, we could double the number of admins, we could halve the individual admin's workload, and give them more a lot more time for assuming good faith. And, with the lesser workload and more good faith, there will be a lot less aggression required, and that will trickle outwards throughout the entire community. I can't see any reason why this shouldn't be done by an semi-automated process, completely removing the existing broken RfA process. Now it might be argued that this is a bad idea, because adminship confers too much power in one go. If so, the admin bit could be broken out into a base new admin role, and a set of specific extra old admin powers which can be granted automatically to all admins in good standing, after a period of perhaps a year. For an example of the kind of power restrictions I have in mind, perhaps base new admins might be able to deliver blocks of up to a month only, with the capability of longer blocks arriving when they have had the admin bit for long enough. All existing admins would be grandfathered in as old admins in this scheme, with no change in their powers. Every new admin should be granted the full old admin powers automatically after one year, unless they've done something so bad as to be worthy of stripping their admin bit completely. None of this should be presented as a rank or status system -- there should only be new admins, and old admins with the only distinction being the length they have been wielding their powers -- admin ageism should be a specifically taboo activity. Now, we could quite easily use a computer program to make a pre-qualified list of editors who have edited a wide variety of pages, interacted with other users, avoided recent blocks, etc. etc., and then from time to time send a randomly chosen subset of them a message that they can now ask any old admin to turn on their admin bit, with this request expected not to be unreasonably withheld, provided their edits are recognizably human in nature. (The reason why new admins should not be able to create other admins is to prevent the creation of armies of sockpuppet sleeper admin accounts riding on top of this process -- a year of competent adminning should suffice as a Turing test.) So: unless there is a good reason not to, why not do this? -- Neil ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l I think those are two separate issues. I don't think having a large number of admins would have an effect on apparent friendliness to beginners, if I had to guess I would say having more admins would probably increase the degree of alienation. Admins do a lot of janitorial tasks, having more would prob. increase the administrative activity. This is in addition to having new admins who wouldn't have been properly vetted by the community, which would bring in new and unknown admins into the equation. There is an another school of thought, who believe that some admins might be the problem. Beginners might not be able to separate or understand that an admins actions is isolated and doesn't represent the larger community, they're probably unaware of possible recourse available to them after an administrative action. The second problem is the current RfA process, which I agree has been getting really restrictive for genuine candidates. I saw people oppose deserving candidates for the most trivial of reasons, from a single userbox to not being descriptive enough in edit summaries. I agree that we need to reconsider the current RfA process, the number of new admins has been falling steadily. I would support going back to the old days when
Re: [Foundation-l] The matrix, reloaded (movement roles, or who does what in Wikimedia?)
On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 7:42 PM, Austin Hair adh...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 1:54 PM, FT2 ft2.w...@gmail.com wrote: Apologies for my unusual denseness here, but this matrix makes no sense to me, and lacks any information needed for constructive improvement. What I'd be looking for is a description of what the role and responsibility is, in each box. Knowing that Business partnerships/Foundation is Globally, or that Advocacy+lobbying/Groups is Support groups, tells me precisely zero of any value about any organizational matter, roles, work needed, and so on. Well, that's sort of the point. It's the start of something that we hope to have extensive community input on—it's the first step, not the last. Thirteen people brainstormed over the course of a few hours two weeks ago, and we wanted to throw what we had out there so everyone has a chance to participate. The definition of groups is particularly vague, as noted in the description. It's not something that I expect to resolve this week or next, but with some help we might have it mostly clarified within a few months. If you have specific questions, let's discuss! There's plenty of space on the wiki, and I'm happy to address stuff on this list and make sure it's integrated into the main body of work. Hey Austin I left a message on the talk page about the definition of groups in the context of Movement Roles Project last week. I also brought this up in the IRC hour a week ago. I know the intention here is to be as inclusive as possible, but can we start to classify what groups are expected to be included in the project. A little more clarification about these groups would be greatly helpful either on wiki or the mailing list. I would assume that chapters are one such groups that are definitely going to be included in the classification, if so, can we at least include them somewhere so people have a general idea here about the context or what's expected. Theo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Shorter Url for non-latin languages
I thought the biggest reason to get a url shortener was suggested as links in and from non-latin languages, the issue was character encoding for non-latin scripts. But if we're considering top level domains already, how about our own tld for all the projects. The foundation already has hundreds of projects, a single tld for all current and future project- .wmf or .wiki. Theo On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 12:55 AM, RYU Cheol rch...@gmail.com wrote: There is a related proposal at strategy : http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal_talk:.WIKI._and_.WK._top_level_domains http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal_talk:.WIKI._and_.WK._top_level_domains I think we can choose our own pathname manually just like http://en.wp.wmf.org/WMF. (Wikimedia Foundation) And When you want to point out exact paragraph, http://en.wp.wmf.org/WMF#1.2(We usually do not use numbers as paragraph headers, in this case second section of a first paragraph) On the proposal, I also suggested to add twitter button on every articles. Those shortened URLs might be helpful. Cheol 2011/2/13 The Mono m...@mono.x10.bz Of course, this is not possible. Very nice url would be for example: http://en.wp.wmf.org/Az09Q . This would make possible to see which project the link leads to. Wmf.org is already registered, but in the future, a .Wmf TLD might be possible. -- *Mono* http://enwp.org/m:User:Mono ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How should we greet newcomers?
Hi Lennart Would this be related to merely modifying the welcome template or something a little more encompassing? One idea that I had was to somehow refer new visitors to WikiProjects or articles in need of expansion, based on some selection option where they can select their field of expertise or interest. An easy way to implement it would be providing an option to assign Categories to new users themselves, we would only need a front end with an attractive UI. We refer them through the welcome template to get started on what they like, they are referred to a tool which gives them several options from languages to fields to hobbies all based on categories and as they select those the categories are added to their user-page. The tool refers them at the end to WikiProjects and listed open tasks based on those selections.Its a similar option to what yahoo, hotmail used to have, options to select field of interests which they would use to for future marketing opportunities. Similar to that, just in a non-spammy, helpful way. I don't think embedding a video would be a feasible option, it might get very resource intensive to host and implement. I have added my suggestion to the outreach wiki, I was wondering if anyone else had any thoughts related to it. Theo On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 5:56 PM, Lennart Guldbrandsson wikihanni...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, I know that some of you who are reading this have problems editing any other wiki than your home wiki. It feels foreign. I myself have that problem sometimes. But now you have the chance to do something remarkable. You just have to go to the Outreach wiki to do it. During the next 10 days, you can pitch in as many new versions of the pages that the newcomers see when they get an account. For instance, if you think that the newcomers should be met by a video that explains Wikipedia's policies before they start editing, go ahead and make a page with a video in it! You can add as many different versions as you have the time or inclination to do. And it doesn't have to be perfect, either. We have a design firm that can help us make it look good later on, so you can concentrate on what the text should be. By February 21st, we want at least five versions of the three different pages that we can then do A/B tests on. (More versions are welcome, so do not feel bad if your version becomes nr 6.) This is the link: http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Account_Creation_Improvement_Project/Testing_content Please edit those pages as though they were your own wiki. Make yourself at home on the Outreach wiki. You can read more about the Account Creation Improvement Project here: http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Account_Creation_Improvement_Project Best wishes, Lennart -- Lennart Guldbrandsson, Fellow of the Wikimedia Foundation and chair of Wikimedia Sverige // Wikimedia Foundation-stipendiat och ordförande för Wikimedia Sverige ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] New General Counsel!: Geoffrey Brigham
Hi Geoff,
{{welcome}}
Welcome !!!
Regards
Theo
On Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 1:38 AM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote:
Welcome to Wikimedia, Geoff! May you find both challenges and
inspiration on our legal frontiers.
SJ
Sue writes:
Hey folks,
I'm delighted to tell you that the Wikimedia Foundation has a new
General Counsel.
Geoff Brigham, formerly of eBay, will start with us March 7 once he's
relocated from Paris to San Francisco. He'll report to me.
To recap: In late October, I hired m|Oppenheim to find us a new
General Counsel. I expected it to be a tough search, because
appropriate GCs for the Wikimedia Foundation don't exactly grow on
trees. As a growing U.S.-based non-profit that operates one of the
world's most popular websites in partnership with a global network of
volunteers, we need a GC who can handle a broad range of legal issues
including the legal defense of our projects in an international
context, an array of matters related to policy and regulatory
compliance, issues such as privacy, and helping us with the challenges
of opening a new office in India. Very few people have that kind of
breadth. And for our GC as with all our jobs, we are also looking for
someone who is passionate about the mission, has a collaborative and
inclusive personal style, is inclined towards transparency, and
ideally is a bit of an iconoclast. It's a lot to ask of one person :-)
So we braced ourselves for a long and difficult search. But in fact it
turned out to be highly enjoyable. Over a period of several months,
m|Oppenheim talked with hundreds of connectors and candidates, and in
the end we interviewed about a dozen finalists. They were terrific,
inspiring lawyers: I was glad to meet them all. And I am delighted
that we discovered Geoff.
Geoff spent eight years at eBay during its main growth years, which
gives him important experience managing the legal challenges and risks
inherent in operating a popular site. His work at eBay encompassed
North America, Europe, Asia and Australia where he handled legal
issues throughout the world. He's worked alone and led large teams. He
is hands-on, collaborative, open-minded and inclusive. And he is
extremely excited about working with us.
A little more about Geoff's background: Most recently, Geoff was
Vice-President and Deputy General Counsel at eBay in San Jose,
California. There, he directed legal affairs in more than 15 countries
throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Australia, encompassing
litigation, copyright and trademarks, privacy, ethics, product and
site content review, policy and regulatory compliance, new market
advice, contracts, governance and site security. Previously he worked
for eBay in Bern, Switzerland for four years as Vice-President
Senior Director, and in Paris, France for two years as Senior
Compliance and Litigation Counsel.
Prior to joining eBay, Geoff was Assistant United States Attorney in
Miami, Florida. Before that he worked for the U.S. Department of
Justice in Paris and Washington, was an Associate with Finley, Kumble,
Wagner et al. in Washington, and was a law clerk for the Honorable
Howard F. Corcoran, U.S. Judge for the District of Columbia. Geoff
received his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in
Washington DC. He also holds a B.A. in Political Science and French,
from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.
He speaks English and French. He's a passionate music fan and an
accomplished flute player: he used to busk many years ago, playing
jazz and classical music on the Parisian streets, and he was well
known at eBay for playing his flute in the office in the early
mornings. Maybe that will happen at the Wikimedia Foundation too :-)
Many thanks to Lisa Grossman of m|Oppenheim for leading this important
search for us. My thanks also to everyone who helped Lisa and me
define the General Counsel role and surface and interview candidates,
including (roughly in order of their involvement) Erik Moeller, Cyn
Skyberg, Kat Walsh, Arne Klempert, Stu West, SJ Klein, Barry Newstead,
Veronique Kessler, Danese Cooper, Zack Exley, Jimmy Wales, Bishakha
Datta, Matt Halprin, Gautam John, Pavel Richter and Shari Steele. My
thanks also to Derrick Coetzee, who happened to be in the office one
day and got pulled into an impromptu conversation helping brief Geoff
about some of the issues facing us. I also want to thank Wikimedia
France for staging its GLAM conference in Paris recently: Geoff
attended it and says that meeting Wikimedians there, and watching them
work, significantly contributed to his desire to join us.
If I remember correctly how this list works, replies to this mail
should go directly to foundation-l. (That's how it's intended to work:
I hope it's actually true.) Geoff is subscribed to foundation-l, so
if you do reply there, he'll see it.
[Foundation-l] New York Times - Gender gap on Wikipedia.
Hi I saw this article in the New York Times today. In case other's missed it, here's a link. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/business/media/31link.html?ref=media Regards User:Theo10011 Salmaan Haroon ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Making wikimediafoundation.org more open to contributions
Great Work, MZ. One small point, the buttons on foundation wiki redirect to a the page we get on FWF page on Meta, the edit page has a newly created header that includes Wikimedia is not associated with Wikileaks. I think the confusion with Wikileaks issue is ephemeral and is not as common anymore. Maybe we should consider removing that small disclaimer on the edit page, its already there on the main page itself. Regards Theo On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 11:35 AM, James Alexander jameso...@gmail.comwrote: On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 12:34 AM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: 2011/1/27 MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com: In the spirit of being bold, I've taken a number of steps to correct what I view as deficiencies in the current contribution system, all of which I'll outline in this e-mail. If anyone has objections to these changes, they're more than welcome to revert them and we can discuss ways to improve the overall situation.[2] Looks great to me :-) I agree that the edit restrictions on the WMF wiki are very unfortunate and there's still much more that can be done (perhaps one day leading toward www.wikimedia.org as a single information, collaboration and discussion hub, subsuming both WMF and Meta, and possibly other backstage wikis). -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l Agreed, There are pages that you would obviously not want touched but I really wish it could be more open. In the long run I agree I think we want something more all encompassing with the community etc. I believe there is an extension that turns on raw html for protected pages only or by namespace... though I've never used them before. In the long run I'm sure there are lots of options but in the short run I like the changes. -- James Alexander jameso...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Executive Director?
I didn't like the assumption of bad faith earlier on part of the team, the fundraising team [1] as you would note, consists of Community members from different locations and backgrounds. I am from India, Moushirah is from Egypt, Dan and James are community members who also work remotely, all of us are community members working on the fundraiser together. Philippe himself has been a long-standing community member for the past few years before joining the foundation. The implication of an Us Vs. them mentality here, is counter-productive to our common goal. The banner in question was created yesterday and barely went live for a very short time before MZ mentioned it on the list. It was rectified within hours once there was an objection raised, this I thought, was an example of the community working together. Also, as someone who has a different background than the majority of people on the list, I can speak to the recognizability factor of Wikipedia Vs. Wikimedia. I can personally attest to uncertainty between the association of Wikimedia with Wikipedia. As a matter of fact, I agree that the we should inform the readers about the difference and the relation between the two, but you also must understand that there are constraints to what we can do with a banner. We have a limited amount of space on each banner to connect with our readers, Jimmy's appeal as the Wikipedia Founder has worked incredibly well so far, so have the editor appeals, we took some liberty with the intoduction and took the shorter approach in light of direct statistical evidence between our options. It was never our intention to deceive or imply anything beyond the facts. My only issue is with the assumption of Bad faith on our part, we did the best considering the data that was available. In light of the reaction, changes were made as quickly as possible and the differences clarified. Regards Salmaan Haroon User:Theo10011 Community Associate [1]http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Staff http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Staff On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 9:30 AM, KIZU Naoko aph...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 9:16 AM, Zack Exley zex...@wikimedia.org wrote: OK, everyone -- I learned my lesson! Thanks for teaching it. I was looking at it from the perspective of the reader who has never heard the word Wikimedia. There are millions and millions of them. Luckily they simply think we are misspelling Wikipedia, and are donating anyways. We will continue to answer their emails alerting us to our error with patient explanations. I'm pretty sympathetic with you. I got same kind emails on OTRS queues I'm taking care of too. How about having Jimmy (in the next time? Or right now?) add one line to his personal message for donors something to try clarification on that, on Wikimedia Foundation is founded for fostering Wikipedia and other sister projects? Donors may notice - at least some of them hopefully. -- Zack Exley Chief Community Officer Wikimedia Foundation On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 2:20 PM, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/12/9 Delphine Ménard notafi...@gmail.com: On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 7:59 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: On 9 December 2010 18:54, Michael Snow wikipe...@frontier.com wrote: While I understand the challenges in communicating effectively with a variety of audiences, I think the point that's been raised is that for a project that is all about trying to describe things as accurately as possible, much of the community feels that in order to maintain a basic level of accuracy, it's worth it to forgo whatever additional money we might raise by giving it up. To phrase it differently, this is not a messaging decision that should be left to the outcome of AB testing. That's an argument to which I'm sympathetic. That certainly describes my position very well. Thank you. And mine. My thanks too. To even imply that Wikipedia has an executive director is not only a falsehood, but also somehow undermines all the efforts the Wikimedia community has put in over the years to differentiate Wikimedia from Wikipedia, and more importantly, to make sure that it was clear that Wikimedia organisations (chapters and Foundation alike) have no power over editorial content. Delphine I agree completely with Michael Snow and Delphine. The impulse is understandable, but it's a mistake to encourage a misunderstanding that can undermine the confidence of the public in Wikipedia's independence and create confusion about the structure of the WMF and its projects. Nathan ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list
Re: [Foundation-l] A question for American Wikimedians
Well why only African American Wikimedians, I think the issue might be the same with other Racial Minorities in the US. How about Hispanic American or Asian American Wikimedians. Apart from social issues inherent to minorities, I think there might be something worth looking into, I doubt there would be any data available to look into it yet. I seem to recall, there was also the issue of Gender bias among Wikimedians that was brought up earlier this year. Regards Theo On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 3:05 AM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote: For some time I am a bit puzzled by the fact that I don't know any African American Wikimedian. For some time just because I am living in a European country without African population, so everything seemed to me quite normal for a long time. I tried to make a parallel between Roma people and African Americans, but it is not a good one. It is very hard to find a Roma with university degree. At the other side, two former State Secretaries are African Americans and present US president is almost, too. What are the reasons? Why American Wikimedian community is exclusively white? Maybe the answer to that question would give us an idea what should we solve to get more contributors. I ask myself the same question whenever I go to teach the incoming classes of computer science students here at my university. Although this is California, and we are close to having no ethnic majority in the state as a whole,* the university population doesn't neatly mirror state demographics;** and the CS classes, anecdotally speaking, mirror it much less so. (It would be easy to claim that this is true nationwide, though the data*** doesn't actually back that up). And anyway, we know that formal education is a poor proxy for being a Wikipedian, or even for computer culture as a whole. You could probably just as helpfully look at the demographics of Silicon Valley, or any other big tech center in the U.S., and wonder why it was skewed white. I've only personally met a couple of black Americans in my time going around the U.S. meeting Wikipedians, which again is totally anecdotal, but considering that I've met a few hundred American Wikipedians in total would seem to argue for a low rate of participation. But then again, the people I've met at Wikimania and elsewhere are highly self-selected, and don't necessarily match our actual editor base with any certainty (I think about the black editor I met once at a small meetup who had never been to any sort of meetup before, or as far as I know since). I think the truth is that we just don't know, the same way that we just don't know exactly how many women participate or why. We *do* know -- both anecdotally and statistically, based on the readership to editorship conversion rates -- that all Wikipedians are outliers: we are all unusual in some way. It is not common to both want to participate in a wiki project and then to expend significant amounts of time doing so, and we more or less know the general reasons why someone does become a Wikipedian. These motivations, from what I can tell, cut across nationality and gender and all other possible categories: and I've been wondering if we've been going about this diversity discussion rather the wrong way for a long time -- if we should focus not on why so few people out of the general population participate, but rather who is likely to make a good Wikipedian and how we can encourage them, in all circumstances.* -- phoebe p.s. race in America, as you can gather from reading the Wikipedia article below, is far from a dichotomy: I'd frame this question rather as what's our overall diversity, in terms of ethnicity and class and gender, with an eye to how we succeed or fail at being welcoming and representative; and how we address topical systemic bias overall. * http://www.laalmanac.com/population/po40.htm ** http://statfinder.ucop.edu/library/tables/table_106.aspx *** http://elliottback.com/wp/black-diversity-in-it-and-computer-science/, data from here: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf07308/pdf/tab13.pdf; compare to national demographics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States#Racial_makeup_of_the_U.S._population http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County,_California#Demographics * Things like university outreach programs do exactly this. -- * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers at gmail.com * ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Attack pages at Encyc. Dramatica
Like Steven said ED is in it for the lulz. So please don't feed the trolls (I know a few editors from en:wp that are on ED). In terms of legal standing, US has much less plaintiff-friendly Defamation laws than most European Countries, and most differ widely from state to state. I don't think you would have an easy case in any jurisdiction. Think of it along the lines Celebrity blogs, Probably congratulate those who have their own page on ED. LULZ abound. Regards Theo On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 12:41 AM, Anirudh Bhati anirudh...@gmail.comwrote: On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 9:53 PM, Steven Walling steven.wall...@gmail.com wrote: People on ED are exactly the same as 4chan: they are in it for the lulz.[1] They will probably always write these attack pages/satire/whatever term you prefer. We're mostly pretty odd folk, so it's easy to make fun. But giving them attention of any kind is what they want most, since it gives them an opportunity for more mischief (and thus more lulz). In other words, don't feed. Unless they are exposing sensitive and private information (facts) about you or someone you know. Anirudh Bhati 00 91 9328712208 Skype: anirudhsbh ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Umberto Eco on small languages/dialects Wikipedias (Aristotle article)
There is however a direct correlation between poverty and internet access. Regardless of the linguistic diversity, its an issue of usage, the highest read, reviewed and edited articles would have the highest merits in terms of quality and length. It is an issue of reflexivity, lots of contributors means lots of eyes viewing the same content which means that it would be corrected and edited by the largest population. This is the reason why English language Wikipedia has the largest and highest rated articles compared to any other language because its written and viewed by the single largest contributor group. Theo On Sun, Sep 19, 2010 at 3:02 PM, Mark Williamson node...@gmail.com wrote: We have heard this type of criticism before, that lower-prestige varieties or languages that are not official or national languages are somehow intrinsically incapable or unsuited to encyclopedic writing. Article quality on a Wiki is not high or low due to some intrinsic characteristic or trait of the language variety used, it is a result of the content not being well-developed. Also, many languages in a relatively small territory does not mean living in a ghetto; on the contrary, count how many national languages there are in Europe, then count how many across all of Latin America, then take a look at economic indicators and you'll see that there is no necessary correlation between linguistic diversity and poverty. -m. On Sun, Sep 19, 2010 at 1:49 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com wrote: I suppose you may be interested: http://espresso.repubblica.it/dettaglio/el-me-aristotil/2134379/18 But, don't expect it to be an actual usable judgement about those projects, because it's more like a pretext to comment some recent Italian events. A Google translation to English contains only 2-3 completely wrong sentences. Nemo ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] HR and Recruiting Feed on Identi.ca and Twitter
I thought this was very smart Idea by the HR department. It would be much easier to follow up on for new wikimedians and prospective hires, rather than going through posting pages on the foundation wiki and the Meta. Its the quickest way of informing the community of new staff hires and introducing them to the community. I thought this was the easiest and the quickest way to provide updates rather than pages on Meta or the foundation Wiki (which I think would still be updated). If the bone of contention is the choice of media here of Micro-blogging then I think thats another discussion altogether, the foundation and many prominent projects are already very active in the Micro-blogging world. Last I checked Wikimedia tech staff, Wikimedia Mobile, Wikipedia Signpost and others provide regular updates through the same medium. Regards Theo On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 11:48 PM, Daniel Phelps dphe...@wikimedia.orgwrote: Angela, This was exactly our hope when creating the feed or stream system with Identi.ca and Twitter. The feeds require minimal time commitment yet get the information out in an easily digestible format that can be used in ways like you mentioned. In cases where more information is necessary we still plan to use and link to our blog, Job Openings page, email welcome announcements to the various lists, etc. In addition the Staff page is constantly updated when new employees are added. Thanks for the constructive and encouraging feedback. :) -Daniel On Sep 3, 2010, at 5:38 AM, Angela wrote: On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 8:18 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: If there's an RSS-embedding widget that's up to our standards, it might be a good thing to put on the relevant WMF wiki page. It may be better to have a bot copy the content into the wiki page instead of only displaying the RSS. That way the history remains on the wiki and you're not relying on a third party to provide a copy of the content. I've found that embedding Twitter feeds in a wiki too often results in timeouts. Angela ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] A proposal of partnership between Wikimedia Foundation and Internet Archive
A real time feed wouldn't be a smart idea neither would only new links. New external links are probably the most reliable ones, if they dont work today then theres probably no point in preserving them. Link rot is the biggest problem here, external links which might be 5-6 years old or more. I suggested DeadURL.com because it re-directs to previous versions maintained by other archives after including *deadurl.com/ *in front of the dead link. Ideally, there should be a way to redirect to older versions of a page through an internal template to include before any dead links. I think that would be the easiest way to implement a change without any technical overhaul. Theo * * * * On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 3:47 AM, Excirial wp.excir...@gmail.com wrote: *What would it take to produce such a feed?** * A real-time feed may or may not be the best idea, for several reasons. - One issue is that every edit would have to be examined not only for external links, but for external links that were not present previously. Doing this real-time may cause slowdowns or additional load for the servers - keep in mind that we would have to scan external links on all edits for all Wikipedia's; Counted together this would result in a very, very busy feed towards IA. - Sometimes added links are spam or otherwise not acceptable, which means they may be removed soon after. In such a case man would prefer not having them archived, since it would be a waste of time and work for IA. An alternate solution could be forwarding a list of new links every day. The Database Layout http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Mediawiki-database-schema.png for Wikimedia seems to sugest that all external links are stored in a separate table in the database (And i presume this includes links in reference tags). I wonder if it would be possible to dump this entire table for IA, and afterwards send incremental change packageshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changesetto them (Once a day perhaps?). That way they would always have a list of external links used by Wikipedia, and it would decrease the problem with performance hits, spam and links no longer used. If we only forwarded a feed with NEW links IA might end up with a long list of links which are removed over time. And above everything - the External Links table is simply a database table, which should be incredibly easy to read and process for IA, without custom coding required to read and store a feed. But perhaps the people at the tech mailing list have another \ better idea on how this should work :) ~Excirial On Sat, Aug 28, 2010 at 9:48 AM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: Gordon @ IA was most friendly and helpful. archive-it is a subscription service for focused collections of sites; he had a different idea better suited to our work. Gordon writes: Now, given the importance of Wikipedia and editorial significant of things it outlinks-to, perhaps we could set up something specially focused on its content (and the de facto stream of newly-occurring outlinks), that would require no conscious effort by editors but greatly increase the odds that anything linked from Wikipedia would (a few months down the line) also be in our Archive. Is there (or could there be) a feed of all outlinks that IA could crawl almost nonstop? That sounds excellent to me, if possible (and I think close to what emijrp had in mind!) What would it take to produce such a feed? SJ PS - An aside: IA's policies include taking down any links on request, so this would not be a foolproof archive, but a 99% one. On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 9:13 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: I've asked Gordon Mohr @ IA about how to work with archive-it. I will cc: this thread on any response. SJ On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 8:56 PM, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 5:48 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: Here's the Archive's on-demand service: http://archive-it.org That would be the most reliable way to set up the partnership emijrp proposes. And it's certainly a good idea. Figuring out how to make it work for almost all editors and make it spam-proof may be interesting. SJ On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 8:45 PM, Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote: David Gerard wrote: On 24 August 2010 14:57, emijrp emi...@gmail.com wrote: I want to make a proposal about external links preservation. Many times, when you check an external link or a link reference, the website is dead or offline. This websites are important, because they are the sources for the facts showed in the articles. Internet Archive searches for interesting websites to save in their hard disks, so, we can send them our external links sql tables (all projects and languages of course). They improve their database and we
Re: [Foundation-l] A proposal of partnership between Wikimedia Foundation and Internet Archive
Its a great idea, using the wayback machine to ward of link rot. I support it but doesn't Google cache offer a similar service. there is also deadURL.com which uses Google Cache, the Internet Archive, and user submissions for gathering dead links. I would guess that Google Cache would have the highest and the longest reliability, at least as long as Google exists, its their business. Regards Theo On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 10:07 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 24 August 2010 17:32, emijrp emi...@gmail.com wrote: Internet Archive is a nonprofit foundation, and it is running since 1996, so I think that it is a stable project and they are going to create mirrors in more countries (now there is a mirror in Alexandria). But, of course, Webcite or Wikiwix can help storing web copies (3 different archiving projects are better than only 1). That's a key point: have multiple archives easily supported. (Hopefully not as complicated as what happens when you click on an ISBN.) - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] WMF Chapter Development Director job posting
I do agree with some of what Mr. Meijssen said in the last email but not all of it. Yes, there might be a bias with some of the new projects being undertaken in the US specifically, but outside of Europe there are very few chapters who would be in a position to take on university collaborated projects without some sort of experience and help from the foundation. The Idea that it is expensive to undertake projects in the US compared to the rest of the world in illusory, the costs incurred in lets say the UK or Germany might be higher than the US, simply because of the foundation is located across the Atlantic, their would be much higher travel cost and more paperwork involved when dealing with large institutions, not to mention a language barrier which might be prohibitive in the rest of the EU. With that said I do agree with Mr. Meijssen that the foundation might mix national and international priorities at some occasions. A wider representation using one of the EU chapters could easily be achieved especially in the case of the recent university projects. Regards Salmaan On Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, The USA is a sizeable country. But it is not unique in that. Russia is certainly bigger and India is certainly more populous. Both Russia and India have one chapter. When the Wikimedia Foundation runs a project, it should be obvious that such a project can be easily understood from its perspective. For me the WMF is a worldwide organisation and consequently its actions should be acceptable from that perspective. When the WMF runs a pilot project like the current public policy project, it should therefore conform with its global perspective. Given that it is about SUBJECT MATTER whose appreciation differs from country to country it is weird that no foreign universities are part of this project. It is also easy to argue that from a cost point of view, this project requires less funding when it is run in many other countries. The fact that it is run only in the USA also has NPOV implications. The issue is that when there is an USA chapter and this project was run by the chapter, such reservations would not be as potent. Mixing national and international priorities is not appropriate. Thanks, GerardM On 23 August 2010 08:56, Keegan Peterzell keegan.w...@gmail.com wrote: I have to chime in to echo that the size of the USA and the fact that it is populated throughout is an issue for a general USA chapter. I attended a meetup in Nashville, Tennessee, which had people from five states and it was a seven hour drive for me, and I was in a state next to it. Going to DC in January was equally interesting, I had to fly in to visit and that's not even half a country away. The US is a different creature, I have no advice on chapter organization here. -- ~Keegan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] WMF Chapter Development Director job posting
Hi everyone I just wanted to step in and remind everyone of the enormity of the task thats lying ahead for the Foundation. As Mr. Davis and Horning have pointed out that US already has a very good representation, its the Headquarter and the base for the foundation. The point of having chapters is to present a decentralized structure and proper representation for all the communities, US I think is well covered in that regard. There could be Local, State-level organization if there is an interest by the community, but should the focus be on US states or entire countries or even continents that have no representation right now. Now, compare the current situation to lets say India for example- you are talking about more than a billion people and the size of a sub-continent not being represented at all (the chapter formation is underway) and even once completed, a single chapter will represent more than a billion people same could be argued on different levels for Brazil or the Middle-east for that matter. The entire country of Russia has just one chapter, not to mention that there is currently no representation from the entire Continent of South Africa, a meeting in Johannesburg recently took the first steps towards changing that but its still a far way from Northern and Southern California divide. Even in terms of North America, Canada and mexico have no representation right now even while having large Wikimedian communities present. I think that US representation should be the least of the concern for the foundation, a PR campaign to clarify and promote would always be helpful especially with all the recent misunderstandings but with all the university collaborations and outreach projects and research related to Wikipedia going on in the US, I don't think representation is an issue. Regards Salmaan On Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 4:20 AM, Jon Davis w...@konsoletek.com wrote: If I remember my reading from the recent strategy documents, the Foundation wants to create more awareness amongst the less internet prevalent countries. Here in the USA, you could poll several dozen random people on the street, and likely not find a single person that doesn't know about Wikipedia (maybe 1, depending on your location and luck). In fact, it is so prevalent here than anything with the world Wiki in it, is presumed to be Wikipedia. I know I'm not the only one recently who has had family/friends ask about WikiLeaks relation to Wikipedia (due to the major media blitz about their document release). So, if the Foundation needs to do something in the USA, it is a PR campaign to clarify such misunderstandings - but this thread isn't about that. According to Meta [1] Wikimedia chapters are independent organizations founded to support and promote the Wikimedia projects within a specified geographical region (country). Since the Foundation is USA based, and a majority of editors speak English... promotion in a country in which most of the population are already aware of what Wikipedia is... doesn't seem terribly high priority (At least to me). Chapters are supposed to support/promote in their areas because they'll have a MUCH better understanding of the cultures, and that really is the critical component. If you can get local people Also, as someone involved with the proposed Wikimedia California [2] chapter, there is an issue of Geography. We (volunteers) in Northern Cali have had trouble working with SoCal simply because of size (amongst other reasons). SoCal is less interested in what we are up to when it is an 8 hour drive for them to attend. California the state is larger than the entire country Germany (by about 20% more). Granted California is one of the larger states, but my point is that a USA chapter formed just like every other countries...may not work. If proper state level groups were established first, then it would have a much better chance. Not saying it isn't possible, just a lot of work for currently little return (as I see it). [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_California -Jon On Sun, Aug 22, 2010 at 14:51, Steven Walling steven.wall...@gmail.com wrote: Gerard, As a Wikimedia from the United States, I think I can speak to concern about a lack of a U.S. chapter. There are many factors that have thus far held back the formation of a chapter in my country, some of which are unique because of the history of the movement, and some of which we share with other large, developed nations with high levels of Internet penetration. I can go into them at length if you like, but suffice it to say that I don't think the lack of the U.S. chapter in any way devalues Wikimedia's focus on chapter development outside the U.S., Barry's work, or the prospective hire at the Foundation. Steven Walling On Sun, Aug 22, 2010 at 2:13 PM, Gerard Meijssen
Re: [Foundation-l] $20 TV-based en:wp reader
The Tom's hardware article does link to the Wired article mentioning it as the source, that where I first read about it. Theo On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 10:06 PM, Steven Walling steven.wall...@gmail.comwrote: It was also covered by Wired fairly well: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/07/humane-wikipedia-reader/ http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/07/humane-wikipedia-reader/Steven Walling On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 9:33 AM, Pharos pharosofalexand...@gmail.com wrote: This is a pretty great embodiment of our copyleftism, that's for sure. BTW, here's the guy's website: http://humaneinfo.com/ Thanks, Pharos On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 6:07 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: http://www.tomsguide.com/us/humane-reader-wikipedia-console,news-7706.html Just a tiny gadget that hooks to your TV to display stuff and holds a copy of en:wp. Nice reuse :-) - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Partecipation in Wikimania 2011
Well I want to attend Wikimania in Israel, but in all likelihood might not be able to even after not coming from the middle-east specifically. I like many others travel frequently to UAE and Saudi Arabia(rarely), as important as Wikimania might be the idea of not travelling there for work, family etc. would be a big problem. I like many others would need a visa, my country has good diplomatic relations and a good standing with israel, but having that visa on my passport regardless of the stamp might create a problem for future travel to not just me but anyone else. This would affect not just me but Europeans and Americans if they want to go to the say Dubai for example, they might have trouble with the same issues. I am also concerned about being harassed or questioned unnecessarily for maybe previously travelling to these places as well. I am interested in attend wikimania but the cost might be too much for me or others like me. On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 4:20 PM, Osama Khalid osa...@gnu.org wrote: On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 01:31:46PM +0300, Harel Cain wrote: Actually, the United States in the last decade has a very strict visa policy, I'm not so sure if some of the people Osama is referring to could so easily get in - this remains to be seen. In Saudi Arabia it's pretty much about the time needed to get a visa from the US, but the United States is generally 'more welcoming' than Europe (e.g. they usually give multiple, three-year visa, AFAIK). -- Osama Khalid English-to-Arabic translator and programmer. http://osamak.wordpress.com | http://tinyogg.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Partecipation in Wikimania 2011
I absolutely agree that this is a complicated matter and would differ from country to country. the thing is the foundations goal of expanding in the global south does place some priority on the middle east, it would be rather unfortunate that most of the people might not be able to make it to the conference. I also understand that the organizers are making a great effort to be as inclusive as possible, but I think we have to realize its going to be what its going to be. Many people might not be able to attend this year. Its not only an issue for the resident but also for people who travel or work in countries which might discriminate against an Israeli stamp on their passport. I am curious if the Israeli embassies are going to be lenient in mid-eastern countries and are aware of the issue, do you have their support? I would also like to ask about the stamp being on a separate page? doesnt the Visa have to be on the passport itself, are you talking about two separate things? Regards Theo On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 11:20 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter pute...@mccme.ruwrote: I believe the difficulty of getting a visa varies from one country to another, but even with the help of the bidding team, an issue will remain unresolved, that is: Some countries do not allow persons with an Israeli stamp on their passports, to enter their borders. The list includes: Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, UAE, Turkey ..and other destinations. I am not sure if there are exceptions for this rule in those countries. It is a complicated situation on political and ethical levels. Turkey is no problem, Turkish citizens can, may and do visit Israel. Also, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Tunesia, and Mauretania are no problem. Algeria I would need to check. The list of countries which would never let a visitor in with the Israeli stamp (or Jordan or Egypt stamp in correponding checkpoints) is (I believe this is a full list but one needs to check the lates updates; not sure about Irak for instance): Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Yemen, Qatar, Sudan, Lybia. Citizens of these countries who openly visit Israel break the laws of these countries and can face prosecution. There are other countries which would let a foreigner with an Israeli stamp in but not let their citizens to visit Israel. This list needs to be compiled from the database but I believe it includes at least Malaysia and Indonesia. Cheers Yaroslav ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Partecipation in Wikimania 2011
Its from 2006 and its still the first time I ever read of such a boycott. I agree with Yaroslav, its irrelevant. On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 11:43 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter pute...@mccme.ruwrote: Isn't there supposed to be a boycott? http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2006/jun/20/internationaleducationnews.highereducation ___ This is bullshit. There are always people who for instance never take an air flight - should we also complain that they do not have an opportunity to travel to Wikimania which is on a different continent? Cheers Yaroslav ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Partecipation in Wikimania 2011
Again the thing is the difference between the two according to the visa stamping info on the website, most of these countries- actually a lot of countries are going to need a visa to enter israel regardless of their relations. there is no way to get a visa on a separate paper, even if you get a stamp from immigration separately that visa in all likelihood is going to be there. On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 11:53 PM, theo10011 de10...@gmail.com wrote: Its from 2006 and its still the first time I ever read of such a boycott. I agree with Yaroslav, its irrelevant. On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 11:43 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter pute...@mccme.ruwrote: Isn't there supposed to be a boycott? http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2006/jun/20/internationaleducationnews.highereducation ___ This is bullshit. There are always people who for instance never take an air flight - should we also complain that they do not have an opportunity to travel to Wikimania which is on a different continent? Cheers Yaroslav ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Partecipation in Wikimania 2011
You are leading this into an ideological debate whoever you are, this is for people interested in attending wikimania getting to attend wikimania-thats it. whatever your beliefs are this is not the forum for it. Troll elsewhere. On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 11:57 PM, wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote: Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote: Isn't there supposed to be a boycott? http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2006/jun/20/internationaleducationnews.highereducation ___ This is bullshit. There are always people who for instance never take an air flight - should we also complain that they do not have an opportunity to travel to Wikimania which is on a different continent? OH I was just pointing out that there is an academic boycott of Israel, of course one is at liberty to break or not participate in such, just like those who turned up at Sun City. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artists_United_Against_Apartheid One has to decide where one stands on such issues, does one not? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Partecipation in Wikimania 2011
Not to mention that the visa itself has to be on the passport and remain there, no matter where the stamp goes. On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 12:04 AM, Abbas Mahmoud abbas...@hotmail.comwrote: Assess the following scenario: If say, i'm in country X planning to go to Israel. And, i go apply for an Israeli visa; but since i'm working in say, Dubai, the Israeli embassy stamps my visa in a separate paper. I book my ticket to Haifa and go to the airport. For me to board the airline, the airport authorities in my country X need to scrutinise my documents at the immigration desk. Do you think that officer will let me through if the visa isn't stamped on my passport? Doesn't he have the right to deny me passage on grounds that the visa hasn't been stamped on a bonafide document(i.e. The passport)? To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2010 22:11:35 +0400 From: pute...@mccme.ru Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Partecipation in Wikimania 2011 I am curious if the Israeli embassies are going to be lenient in mid-eastern countries and are aware of the issue, do you have their support? I would also like to ask about the stamp being on a separate page? doesnt the Visa have to be on the passport itself, are you talking about two separate things? In the past, sometimes Israeli entry authorities would agree to stamp a passport of a citizen of a visa-free country on a separate page (technically, on a page that does not belong to the passport) to avoid them having Israeli stamps. I am not sure about the citizens of the countries which do require visa - I think visa is always on a passport, but I think it is easier for the organizers to inquire at the Foreign Ministry. It this is indeed the case, the only way I see for a citizen of a country A which does not recognize Israel to travel to Israel is the following. To travel first to a country B which does recognize Israel, get in B Israeli visa (which is anyway impossible to get in A), travel to Israel, lose a passport while back in B, apply to the embassy of A in B and get a new passport or a return certificate. To me personally it sounds too complicated, but cases could be different. Cheers Yaroslav ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
