Re: [Foundation-l] 86% of german users disagree with the introduction of the personal image filter

[Victor Vasiliev]

On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 3:22 PM, emijrp  wrote:
> By the way, not all German Wikipedians/readers are under German laws.

Most are. And if German Wikipedia community believes that in order for
de.wp to be more useful it should be made redistributable under the
law of most German-speaking countries, that would be a reasonable
choice for them.

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] Chapters

[Victor Vasiliev]

On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 7:24 AM, Nathan  wrote:
> Which activities are these?

Copyright and internet law lobbying.

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] Chapters

[Victor Vasiliev]

On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 3:38 AM, Nathan  wrote:
> If the WMF plans for grants to be the interim method of funding for
> developing chapters (aside from that raised independently by the chapters
> themselves) then I expect that they will tweak the process to account for
> the specific issues involved (like not wanting to bury chapters in
> book-length paperwork requirements).
Oh, really? Do you really believe that current Foundation staff is
capable of handling at least 30 different organization around the
world? I doubt it. Even now, the situation is fairly ridiculous: they
sign the same (am I correct?) agreement with all chapters, regardless
of how much would this chapter get, what is its budget, how difficult
is it to transfer money to and fro.

The problem with "over-budget money" may be solved fairly easily: just
make an independent, per-chapter-tailored fundraiser. If UK chapter
collects its budget faster than WMF, just change their landing page to
WMF, and they will not get unused money! Neither will they have to
transfer anything to WMF. If some other chapter does not collect its
budget, make its fundraiser longer. Some chapters are doomed to be
locally underfunded; they can apply for WMF grants. Besides, some
chapters are located in countries where December fundraising is
legally problematic.

But please, get rid of the idea that WMF can act in a similar way to
all chapters and sign the same agreement. Instead of forcing one-way
funding model, Foundation should *really* work on the way it
communicates with chapters. Either by loosening the control or by
increasing the amount of time spent on them. Honestly, I believe that
right now it would extremely irresponsible from their side to take
obligations of approving and controlling the budget of 30 chapters, as
am almost certain they would not be able to fulfill them adequately.

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] Chapters

[Victor Vasiliev]

On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 1:21 AM, Risker  wrote:
> Bearing that in mind, one of the concerns that came to my mind even then was
> that many of them did not make it explicitly clear that XX percent of the
> donation was going to and independent local chapter. There was also a
> significant lack of fiduciary information about the chapter entities to
> which their donation was going - such as links to audited financial
> statements, operational or strategic plans, current programs, expansion
> plans, budgets, identities of the chapter board members, and so on.  All of
> this information was available in some form or other  from the "non-chapter"
> landing pages.  Indeed, I never could figure out from any of the chapter
> landing pages what percentage of the donation stayed local and what
> percentage would be submitted to the WMF.

Oh, WMF landing page contains so many links to all the things you
mention (especially comparing to WMDE's or WMFR's landing page).

> In other words, I *knew* that these were chapter landing pages, I knew the
> money was going to chapters, and even still it wasn't immediately obvious to
> me that the money was going to a separate entity (the chapter) and not just
> a local branch directly controlled by the WMF - or to the global WMF
> fundraising pool.

And you assume most people even know what WMF is and what is the
difference between WMF and chapters? Come on, go to
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate and count how many times
Wikimedia is mentioned (answer: 3, 2 times in the footer). Then count
how many times Wikipedia is mentioned (11 times in the main text).
People are donating to Wikipedia, not WMF, and WMF knows that and
hence designs the fundraising messages in that way (remember the
"Wikipedia CEO" incident?). Chapters are much more honest in this
respect.

-vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] AbuseFilter to be enabled on all Wikimedia wikis by default today

[Victor Vasiliev]

On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 8:21 PM, Wjhonson  wrote:
> Admins should never be given powers over content.  Not now, not then, not 
> ever.
> Admins have no business being involved in content of any type ever :)
> In every possible universe.

Oh, sure. Especially when the content is "HELLO I CAN EDIT THIS PAGE
YOU ARE PEDOPHILES".

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] Astonished by the so-called principle of least astonishment

[Victor Vasiliev]

On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 6:20 PM, Teofilo  wrote:
> B) Is there a philosopher aboard the plane ? Did-it not occur to
> anybody in the board that astonishment and knowledge are synonymous ?
> If you are against astonishment, you are against knowledge.

Hello Teofilo,

Imagine I open http://en.wikipedia.org, and see a large photo of penis
instead of the main page. Am I astonished? Yes. Do I learn something?
According to you, yes. Am I against knowledge if I oppose penis photos
instead of main page? According to you, yes.

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] Board letter about fundraising and chapters

[Victor Vasiliev]

On Sat, Aug 6, 2011 at 12:12 AM, Béria Lima  wrote:
> If they do revoke (which they can, because do report are part of Chapter
> Agreement), will be also a private discussion. I do understand your people
> curiosity to know what they discusses, but all the relevant info are public.
> Only particular details are handle in private

Wait, was that a non-of-your-business response? And what do you mean
by "they discuss"? Who are they?

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] Board letter about fundraising and chapters

[Victor Vasiliev]

On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 11:54 PM, Béria Lima  wrote:
> I sugguest you to go tough chapters report and ask what they are doing with
> the money they receive in Fundraising. They need to be transparent about
> what they are doing, but WMF does not have a "policy" status over that.

Well, right now many chapters fail to handle such basic transparency
thing like publishing an annual report (seriously, look at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports ). If they fail, Wikimedia
Foundation, as an organization that empowers them to collect money
through the banners, may act as an oversight and revoke that
privilege. I do not believe that this is the proper process to do
that, but I certainly agree that it is what to be done.

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] About the low-hanging fruit

[Victor Vasiliev]

On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 2:02 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter  wrote:
> this would be 10 years of my work. Note that this is just a narrow topic
> which does not overlap with my professional interest (I am a theoretical
> physicist specializing in nanoscience). In this field, I am just an amateur
> (may be slightly above the average level).

You are interested in this topic; many users (or most, I am afraid) are not.

> My conclusions from the two-weeks experience:
>
> 1. May be the really low hanging fruit, almost on the ground level, has
> been picked up, but in the vast majority of articles there is much room for
> improvement. Note that I did not add any special things - only the basic
> info which you expect to find in the encyclopaedia. I did not aim at GA or
> FA. I used may be 10% of the information I had, and what I had I found in
> the internet.

You have an expert knowledge in this topic, namely the knowledge of
Russian language. Most of English Wikipedia editors don't.

There is a plenty of low-hanging fruits in classical music articles
(especially in Russian Wikipedia). With a use of Grove Dictionary of
Music and Musicians, one could add more than 1000 paragraphs of text
into Wikipedia by just retelling its content. Grove has a basic
coverage of topics, and it has 29 volumes in it; I think that
describes the breadth of the topic well. Anyone claiming there is
nothing to write about there must be kidding.

The reason nobody writes them are:
1. Nobody cares;
2. Nobody understands the terms (most of which are fairly easy to learn).

> 2. I seem to be perfectly suited for these articles - I have a general
> interest in the topic, and also I know Russian and can work with Russian
> sources. On the other hand, I an not a native speaker, and I can leave some
> slight spelling errors / incorrect wording etc. This may be a problem, and
> generally I am not sure how this problem can be solved. However, if I
> estimate the balance, probably I created more of a useful product than I
> created troubles.

The very fact that you were able to write this paragraph suggests that
your English is enough to write English Wikipedia articles. Grammar,
if not horrible, is an issue for FAs and GAs, and there you can get
someone to aid you.

> 3. Even for an technically experienced user as myself it is difficult to
> start contributing to the project. I was able to clear the barrier, but I
> am afraid many of the regular users would leave, not being able to
> understand the usage of templates and similar things. On there other side,
> I got some necessary help, and I know where to ask if I need more.

Please, share your findings with our usability team. Even if it does
not exist anymore (I am not completely sure), they would be glad to
help.

> 4. Comparing the quality of this particular class of articles to Russian
> Wikipedia, I see both advantages and disadvantages. Obviously, there is a
> high chance that someone just living in the district will add some info in
> the article in Russian Wikipedia. On the other hand, there are two major
> problems with these articles in Russian Wikipedia - copyright violation
> (big pieces are added to articles and stay there for years - things became
> considerably better with the implementation of flagged revisions, but still
> persist), and adding a big number of insignificant and often unsourced
> details, including spamming of local interest websites. The English
> articles are completely free of these problems. I realize though that this
> line of reasoning can not be generalized to all articles, since the
> articles on other topics may have very different issues.
>

I assume that this is because they are less popular. Articles about US
towns may have the same problems.

-Victor

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Re: [Foundation-l] Can it get any worse?

[Victor Vasiliev]

On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 12:47 AM, Virgilio A. P. Machado  
wrote:
> Of course. No doubt about it. We have now reached a level beyond
> personal attacks. Now my name is used as a thread. So much for "focus
> on the comment, not the person making the comment."

Pity you prefer to assume bad faith (I'd even say worst faith) instead
of replying to the comments (discussing a tone of a messages is
neighboring with personal attacks in Graham's hierarchy of
disagreement).

Now, following your logic, when we use Newton's laws of motion to
solve a physical problem, we are focusing on Newton's personality.
Nice?

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] multilingual mailing list

[Victor Vasiliev]

On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 12:21 AM, Casey Brown  wrote:>
> This *is* a multilingual list.  All languages are welcome here.

Ты это серьёзно? Мне кажется, письме на двадцатом Google Translate
всем изрядно надоест. К тому же как быть с просторечиями и
фразеологизмами, на которых автоматические переводчики постоянно
спотыкаются?

-Виктор Васильев
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Re: [Foundation-l] Steward election issues

[Victor Vasiliev]

On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 11:51 PM, Casey Brown  wrote:
> Or we could just use the SecurePoll extension that is used for board
> elections and enwiki ArbCom elections.  The extension would bar people
> who did not meet the requirements from voting at all.

Can we keep the election open while using the SecurePoll?

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia "Storyteller" job opening

[Victor Vasiliev]

On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 11:26 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> You appear to be generalising from your personal preferences to the
> world here. This is a common fallacy and a really bad idea in general.

I have heard numerous complains from other volunteers who thought that
WMF is spending its money irrationally. So I believe those "personal
preferences" are widespread enough.

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] Moral rights

[Victor Vasiliev]

On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 8:02 PM, Teofilo  wrote:
> In my opinion, the people who want to attack this, are on a sloppery
> slope where the next step is when they request you to waive your human
> rights.

Are you quite serious?

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] Big problem to solve: good WYSIWYG on WMF wikis

[Victor Vasiliev]

More thoughts.

I always viewed wikitext vs. WYSIWYG dilemma as similar to LaTeX vs.
Microsoft Word one.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Big problem to solve: good WYSIWYG on WMF wikis

[Victor Vasiliev]

I have thought about WYSIWYG editor for Wikipedia and found it
technically impossible. The main and key problem of WYSIWIG are
templates. You have to understand that templates are not single
element of Wikipedia syntax, they are integral part of page markup.
You do not insert "infobox template", you insert infobox *itself*, and
from what I heard the templates were the main concern of many editors
who were scared of wikitext.

Now think of how many templates are there in Wikipedia, how frequently
they are changed and how much time it would take to implement their
editing.

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] Call for a moratorium on all new software developments

[Victor Vasiliev]

On Mon, Sep 6, 2010 at 2:33 PM, Teofilo  wrote:
> Conclusion : Because more software means more harm, I call for a
> moratorium (1 year? 6 months ?) on all new software developpements.
> During that time the developpers should be allowed to repair only
> obvious and urgent bugs.

A brief examination of French Wikipedia will show that it is abounding
with obvious (and some may say they are urgent) mistakes. I suggest
hence to introduce a moratorium on all content addition in French
Wikipedia. Feel the analogy?

Or I'd actually suggest to fix all bugs yourself per WP:SOFIXIT.

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] The Border Control

[Victor Vasiliev]

On 08/22/2010 09:27 AM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote:
> ... I join this request. Also, could you please give the Russian name
> of this policy? I edit the Russian Wikipedia every now and then and i
> don't remember ever encountering it. (I must note that i barely edit
> outside the article space in ru.wp.)

It's a local meme. Generally it means "too strong administrative action 
which I don't like". Rarely it refers to essay ВП:ФБЛОК.

Nobody will tell what it actually is; if you ask different users, you 
will get different definitions which will contradict each other. For 
example, Vladimir claims that it means banning people for criticizing 
project itself; many people would say that it's nonsense and there never 
were such blocks on ru.wikipedia, yet some will agree with him.

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] ru-Wikiversuty

[Victor Vasiliev]

On Sat, Aug 21, 2010 at 3:00 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter  wrote:
> Is this a normal practice? I remember the story of Russian Wikisource,
It was actually Russian Wikibooks.

> when an admin, Ramir, has been speedily desysopped by stewards for blocking
> users arbitrarily.
He removed Foundation banners from site, made an edit war with
stewards on its removal, insulted several stewards and Foundation as a
whole. His desysop was not only because of his blocks.

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] ru-Wikiversuty

[Victor Vasiliev]

On Sat, Aug 21, 2010 at 3:42 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter  wrote:
> PS I have suspended my participation in all WMF projects and activities
> until the issue has been resolved.

Are you blackmailing us? It's no use.

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] Announcing my departure from the Wikimedia Foundation

[Victor Vasiliev]

On 08/03/2010 02:01 AM, Cary Bass wrote:
> It is with deep regret that I tell you I will be leaving the staff of
> the Wikimedia Foundation at the end of December.

Cary,

You just managed to write the first mailing list post that ever managed 
to shock me deeply. I do not think I'm able to express my appreciation 
for your work; you are invaluable.

Good luck with theology.

Victor Vasiliev
Grateful Volunteer
Wikimedia Foundation

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Re: [Foundation-l] Boycott in a...@wiki

[Victor Vasiliev]

On 07/17/2010 06:57 PM, Fred Bauder wrote:
> Piss Christ was an artistic-political controversy.

Oh, and Jyllands-Posten wasn't?

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] Boycott in a...@wiki

[Victor Vasiliev]

On 07/17/2010 04:39 AM, Fred Bauder wrote:
> First: There are no authentic images of Mohammad extant.

There are no authentic images of most characters from the Bible. Yet I 
believe at least 1 % of works of art on Commons contain them.

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] Your abuse of moderator status

[Victor Vasiliev]

On 06/28/2010 01:00 AM, wjhon...@aol.com wrote:
> I make my changes, and move on, and never look back.  Thus, I never  weep
> over the massacre made on my beautiful workmanship.  Weeping does not  turn
> into gnashing of teeth, and does not proceed into daggers of  vengeance, then
> to the remorse caused by unwanted punishment.
>

I believe there was some research which claimed that quality of articles 
tended to decrease dramatically if they were not watched by their main 
authors.

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Board resolution commissioning study and recommendations

[Victor Vasiliev]

On 06/24/2010 10:40 PM, Michael Snow wrote:
> I recommend that people not confuse "educational" with "pedagogical" or
> try to divorce its interpretation from the context of the particular
> project. Historical records have educational value, for example, even
> when those records are not created for pedagogical purposes.
>
> --Michael Snow

May then we have a clear definition of what "educational value" is? I 
feel very confused about its meaning.

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Board resolution commissioning study and recommendations

[Victor Vasiliev]

On 06/24/2010 10:20 AM, Michael Snow wrote:
> 4. We do expect material in our projects to be educational in nature,
>>  and any material that is not educational should be removed.

I still believe such a statement imply that most of Wikisource content 
will have to be deleted if remove all "non-educational" content.

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy "one language - one Wikipedia"

[Victor Vasiliev]

I may suggest two easy ways how it may be solved technically:
* Introduction of a special namespace on a "larger" Wikipedia.
* Introduction of s subdomain (e.g. simple.de.wikipedia.org) with shared 
admins (that should be simple with SUL).
I believe there is no need for seperate set of admins for such project. 
Also note that such projects have tendency to become POV forks and 
community of both main and simple version have to control NPOV issues on 
the smaller project.

--vvv

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

[Victor Vasiliev]

On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 5:42 AM, Michael Snow  wrote:
> If you don't know the history of racial issues in the US, you might not
> realize just how serious a subject lynching is. In that cultural
> context, it is not something to be joked about.

Your post is a brilliant example of agressive disrespect of other
cultures where lynching is merely a verb which means "execution by
mob" (I think if you told someone in Russia that "lyniching" is an
offensive verb, he would most probably belive you said something
silly). Bear in mind that only 0.55 % of the world population are
sensitive about lyncing.

--vvv

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

[Victor Vasiliev]

On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 1:07 AM, Erik Moeller  wrote:
> The original intent of the UX team, as I understand it, was to help
> readers find essential (frequently clicked) elements in the navigation
> more easily by collapsing less essential ones.

This is wrong approach of reworking sidebar. To do it correctly, you
have to prioritize existing things. Add icons to most important items
and move them to the top (random article is far more popular than
current events). Move toolbox to the bottom and, ensuring youself
before that most users don't use it, hide it for anonymous users only.
Move most probably used interwikis to the top (I'd volunteer for
coding this if I was sure I had enough spare time this summer). Add
language codes, they are much easier to understand and to look for in
a long list than a language name in language itself. Add more icons,
so things are distinguishable.

Oh, and no wonder that IW links are used less in Vector than in
Monobook. Monobook sidebar has clear division between blocks. Vector
has some loosy line between them. Also, in Vector sidebar elements are
on the grey background, so most people don't notice them. Honestly,
the set of blue links on the grey background is one of the worst thing
you may introduce to improve the usability of the sidebar.

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] Along with Vector, a new look for changes to the Wikipedia identity

[Victor Vasiliev]

Hello!

What should be my course of action if I find that the replacement of the 
old 3D logo with a new "wannabe-Web-2.0" melted circle offends my 
aesthetic sense to the degree inexpressible in any human language?

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] "Filtering" ourselves is pointless

[Victor Vasiliev]

On 05/11/2010 12:25 AM, David Gerard wrote:
> Any attempt to "filter" ourselves is not addressing the fact that the
> images exist at all on Commons.

+1.

I suggest to ignore them. Or perhaps someone should write more nice 
things in the article about FOX news (maintaining NPOV, of course).

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] Reflections on the recent debates

[Victor Vasiliev]

> Think future, not past. Think project, not Jimmy.

We do think future: if Jimmy had already carelessly intervened twice
and caused controversies both time, how can we except the story will
not repeat.
We do think project: if we already had careless interventions with
desysopping, users retiring and wheelwarring, how can we except we
will not have more users leaving and more users getting upset by being
ignored?

The deletions themselves aren't the problem; the manner in which they
were carried out is. As a lawyer you should understand that the due
process is important.

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content

[Victor Vasiliev]

On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 6:45 PM, Ting Chen  wrote:
> Commons, Wikiquote and Wikisource has by themselves no educational
> value. They gain their educational value in the way that they provide
> repositories for the other WMF projects.

What about Wikinews? What educational value does it have?

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] Where things stand now

[Victor Vasiliev]

On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 5:08 PM, Jimmy Wales  wrote:
> We were about to be smeared in all media as hosting hardcore pornography
> and doing nothing about it.

Do you understand that not all images you deleted were hardcore pornography?
What was the reason of wheel warring on them?

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content

[Victor Vasiliev]

On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 11:30 PM, Michael Snow  wrote:
> Having said that, the Wikimedia projects are intended to be educational
> in nature, and there is no place in the projects for material that has
> no educational or informational value.

I'd like to point out that we already have a project where most
information has no educational value. It's called Wikisource and
materials there are primarily of artistic value, not educational or
information one. Since I basically support the idea that one of
Wikimedia Commons aims is to collect as much notable works of art as
possible, I view it as a Wikisource for visual arts and music.

Should we expect Wikisource to be cleaned up as well? Does Foundation
feel need to host such highly disputed works as [1] or [2]?

--vvv

[1] http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lady_Chatterley's_Lover
[2] http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Fanny_Hill:_Memoirs_of_a_Woman_of_Pleasure

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Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions

[Victor Vasiliev]

It's another time we have a problem which would hypothetically fall
into the scope of some "global arbcom", but since it does not exist,
I'm still not sure there's the correct way to handle such situations.
I hope that Jimbo and Board will be able to make things settle down.
Petition [1] seems to be a variant too, though I was told it does not
work well.

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

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Re: [Foundation-l] Projekt: OpenCritics (let's free subjective content, too!!)

[Victor Vasiliev]

Sage Ross wrote:
> I think this is an excellent, long overdue idea and something
> Wikimedia should be interested in.  I was actually thinking of
> proposing something like this at strategy.wikimedia.org (and may still
> do so).
> 

I don't think that creating such a project within Wikimedia would be a 
great idea. NPOV is one of the most important Wikimedia principles.

--vvv

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Re: [Foundation-l] Compulsory policies for all Wikipedias

[Victor Vasiliev]

Jaska Zedlik writes:
> Hi!
>
> It is totally clear that all the Wikipedias must respect and follow
> some particular policies which are global for all the Wikipedias. The
> question is what are these policies?
>   
I believe all projects should follow 
.
--vvv

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