Re: [Foundation-l] FAQ for fundraising resolutions

[phoebe ayers]

Thanks, Tom. If you don't mind I'll put it on the talk page; this will
likely require some discussion to answer.
 -- phoebe


On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 10:56 AM, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
> Thanks for posting this, Phoebe. My question about what you intend to
> do over the next 3 years wasn't answered. There is no point waiting
> three years and then re-evaluating the situation if you haven't made
> sure you've been gathering all the right information during those 3
> years and that you are clear on what the questions you are actually
> trying to answer are. As a movement, we have a very poor record of
> following through on our trials with proper evaluations and that is
> because we never actually plan them out at the start. It is really
> important that we don't make that mistake again here.
>
> On 5 April 2012 18:35, phoebe ayers  wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> The Board has published a Q&A document around the recently published
>> fundraising & funds dissemination resolutions.
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_and_Funds_Dissemination/Board_FAQ
>>
>> It's quite long -- sorry! -- but hopefully informative. Note that we
>> did this as everyone was traveling and, in the interests of time,
>> didn't put it up for a final vote -- so not every trustee may agree
>> with every word, and we reserve the right to edit :)
>>
>> The first section of the FAQ, "overview", focuses on board process for
>> coming to a decision and a summary of the decisions; the next two
>> sections focus on specific questions about the resolutions' content
>> regarding fundraising & funds dissemination plans. Some of the
>> questions we were asked this past weekend already, and some of them we
>> are anticipating might be asked.
>>
>> If you've got more questions, please put them on the talk page; if you
>> want to discuss the resolutions themselves, there's a talk page on
>> meta:
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_and_Funds_Dissemination/Final_Board_resolutions
>>
>> all best,
>> phoebe
>>
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>>  gmail.com *
>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Board of Trustees resolutions

[phoebe ayers]

On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 10:47 PM, phoebe ayers  wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> The Board of Trustees had a meeting this weekend in conjunction with
> the Wikimedia chapters conference held in Berlin. As an outcome of the
> meeting we discussed and passed nine resolutions, which are published
> here:
>
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions
>
> * "Recognizing models of affiliation", and "Affiliations committee"
> are related to the movement roles project
> (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_roles) and are in response to
> that group's final recommendations. These resolutions recognize three
> new models for affiliated Wikimedia groups, and expand the mandate of
> Chapcom to cover these new models.
>
> * "Organizational best practices" and "committee standards" are
> general best-practices documents that also are related to
> recommendations from the movement roles group; these are documents
> that we asked the Board audit committee and the Board governance
> committee respectively to develop.
>
> * "Board governance committee charter" and "Amendment to Chapter
> Committee Rules of Procedure" both relate to creating or amending
> committee governing documents. The BGC is an internal board committee
> that deals with board appointments and evaluation; the chapter
> committee amendments update and clarify the procedure for appointing
> new chapters committee members.
>
> * "Funds Dissemination Committee" asks the WMF executive director to
> set up a community-led funds dissemination committee structure for
> making decisions on movement-wide project funds allocations.
> "Fundraising 2012" is about chapter "payment-processing", i.e. chapter
> handling of donations to the Wikimedia project sites, and asks that
> only the four chapters who are currently payment-processing be allowed
> to do so until 2016. These recommendations are the conclusion to our
> lengthy discussion this year and last about fundraising, and are in
> response to the ED's recommendations on the subject.
>
> * And, lastly, "Board of Trustees Voting Transparency" asks that the
> name of trustees be published with their votes in formal resolution
> votes.
>
> Please don't hesitate to ask me or us if you have questions about these.
>
> best,
> Phoebe
> (2011-12 WMF Board secretary)
>

And one last resolution; there was a short delay in publishing while
we talked to those affected. This resolution takes care of any
outstanding open-ended provisional chapter approvals; there are
currently only two such groups.

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Revision_of_open-ended_Chapter_approvals

best,
-- phoebe

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[Foundation-l] FAQ for fundraising resolutions

[phoebe ayers]

Hi all,

The Board has published a Q&A document around the recently published
fundraising & funds dissemination resolutions.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_and_Funds_Dissemination/Board_FAQ

It's quite long -- sorry! -- but hopefully informative. Note that we
did this as everyone was traveling and, in the interests of time,
didn't put it up for a final vote -- so not every trustee may agree
with every word, and we reserve the right to edit :)

The first section of the FAQ, "overview", focuses on board process for
coming to a decision and a summary of the decisions; the next two
sections focus on specific questions about the resolutions' content
regarding fundraising & funds dissemination plans. Some of the
questions we were asked this past weekend already, and some of them we
are anticipating might be asked.

If you've got more questions, please put them on the talk page; if you
want to discuss the resolutions themselves, there's a talk page on
meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_and_Funds_Dissemination/Final_Board_resolutions

all best,
phoebe

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[Foundation-l] Board of Trustees resolutions

[phoebe ayers]

Dear all,

The Board of Trustees had a meeting this weekend in conjunction with
the Wikimedia chapters conference held in Berlin. As an outcome of the
meeting we discussed and passed nine resolutions, which are published
here:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions

* "Recognizing models of affiliation", and "Affiliations committee"
are related to the movement roles project
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_roles) and are in response to
that group's final recommendations. These resolutions recognize three
new models for affiliated Wikimedia groups, and expand the mandate of
Chapcom to cover these new models.

* "Organizational best practices" and "committee standards" are
general best-practices documents that also are related to
recommendations from the movement roles group; these are documents
that we asked the Board audit committee and the Board governance
committee respectively to develop.

* "Board governance committee charter" and "Amendment to Chapter
Committee Rules of Procedure" both relate to creating or amending
committee governing documents. The BGC is an internal board committee
that deals with board appointments and evaluation; the chapter
committee amendments update and clarify the procedure for appointing
new chapters committee members.

* "Funds Dissemination Committee" asks the WMF executive director to
set up a community-led funds dissemination committee structure for
making decisions on movement-wide project funds allocations.
"Fundraising 2012" is about chapter "payment-processing", i.e. chapter
handling of donations to the Wikimedia project sites, and asks that
only the four chapters who are currently payment-processing be allowed
to do so until 2016. These recommendations are the conclusion to our
lengthy discussion this year and last about fundraising, and are in
response to the ED's recommendations on the subject.

* And, lastly, "Board of Trustees Voting Transparency" asks that the
name of trustees be published with their votes in formal resolution
votes.

Please don't hesitate to ask me or us if you have questions about these.

best,
Phoebe
(2011-12 WMF Board secretary)

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Re: [Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 96, Issue 95

[phoebe ayers]

On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 11:40 PM, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
> On 31 March 2012 22:33, Federico Leva (Nemo)  wrote:
>> P.s.: It's a bit weird to focus so much on the reasons to oppose; why should
>> opposing be justified /more/ than supporting?
>
> There's supposed to be a Q&A coming that will explain the supports.

That's true! Soon -- in a couple of days (everyone is traveling
today/tomorrow so it's hard to review quickly). I'll send a note when
we get it done, of course.

In the meantime, if there are any questions for us (as a board) or for
individual trustees I encourage you simply to send those along, either
to me (if you want them to go to the whole board, as I will pass them
along) or privately. That would help make sure that we can address the
questions people actually have, rather than speculating. It sounds
like people are interested in individual trustee motives. I do think
it's better if trustees individually write/talk about where they are
coming from, rather than trying to put that information in an official
document like the minutes, where everything is condensed and there is
the possibility of misrepresentation.

Nemo, thanks for sending around the notes -- that's quite helpful! I
think we have some notes that Joslyn took too, I'll see if there is
anything I can add from that (though etherpad still doesn't seem to
work well in my browser - boo.)

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Board Resolutions from March 30th 2012

[phoebe ayers]

On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 8:16 AM, John Vandenberg  wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 5:07 PM, Thomas Dalton  
> wrote:
>> On 31 March 2012 06:45, John Vandenberg  wrote:
>>> There is no requirement to know everything.  There is a requirement to
>>> make decisions in the best interests of the organisation, *as you see
>>> it*.  If a trustee persistently abstains on the big decisions because
>>> they cant see *it* (no vision), or wish to avoid scrutiny, they are
>>> abusing their right to abstain and failing the organisation as a
>>> trustee.
>>
>> If they do it persistently, then sure. Is there a board member that is
>> doing it persistently?
>
> How could I know that as previously abstainers were not recorded as
> such.  My hope, expressed in my original email to this list, is that
> looking forward abstentions will be well explained in the minutes or
> forcibly curtailed if abused.
>
> --
> John Vandenberg

Abstains have always been recorded, just like yes/no/recusal votes.
The only thing that has changed is attaching names to the vote.

Stu is right that we use the language "recuse" when there is a
conflict of interest and the trustee *should* not vote; abstain is
simply not voting.

-- phoebe

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[Foundation-l] resolution on voting transparency

[phoebe ayers]

During the Board of Trustees meeting today we passed a resolution on
Trustee voting transparency:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Board_of_Trustees_Voting_Transparency

asking that in future resolutions we publish the names of trustees
with their votes for each resolution.

best,
Phoebe


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Re: [Foundation-l] March Board of Trustees meeting agenda

[phoebe ayers]

Hi Thomas,

Yes, of course talking about what we actually do with the money is
important :) We spent a fair amount of time at the February meeting
talking about exactly this with the "annual planning" item, and also
will have at least one, and probably more, online meetings dedicated
to annual planning and included activities between now and signoff of
the plan. Also, though it's not readily obvious, talking about the FDC
structure and movement roles is also related to talking about what we
should be doing -- what kind of community structures can we help build
and support, how to support local and individual initiatives, what
kinds of projects there are *to* support, etc.

In part there's so much time scheduled for talking about
fundraising/funds dissemination because we know that it is not an easy
topic, and especially given the amount of energy we've all spent on it
we want to do it justice. We also want to have enough time to resolve
the issue, at least for the immediate future, so that we can indeed
move on to other things.

best,
phoebe

On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 10:44 AM, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
> Phoebe,
>
> As important as the ongoing discussions and debate over fundraising
> and funds dissemination are, it concerns me that the WMF board is
> using one of its few in-person meetings to discuss almost nothing but
> fundraising and funds dissemination. Fundraising is a means to an end,
> nothing more. Shouldn't you be spending at least some time actually
> discussing that end?
>
> On 25 March 2012 18:33, phoebe ayers  wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> The next WMF Board of Trustees meeting is scheduled for March 30-31,
>> 2012 in Berlin, held with the chapters meeting.
>>
>> The agenda is now posted here:
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Board_meetings/March_30-31,_2012
>> Wikimedia Chapters Meeting information:
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2012
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Phoebe (WMF Board Secretary 2011-12)
>>
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>>  gmail.com *
>>
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[Foundation-l] March Board of Trustees meeting agenda

[phoebe ayers]

Hi all,

The next WMF Board of Trustees meeting is scheduled for March 30-31,
2012 in Berlin, held with the chapters meeting.

The agenda is now posted here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Board_meetings/March_30-31,_2012
Wikimedia Chapters Meeting information:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2012

Thanks,
Phoebe (WMF Board Secretary 2011-12)

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[Foundation-l] Karen Christensen on encyclopedias

[phoebe ayers]

For another take on encyclopedias & EB -- Karen Christensen, who is a
lovely person, fan of Wikipedia and the head of Berkshire publishing,
which publishes specialty encyclopedias, has a few blog posts up:
http://www.berkshirepublishing.com/blog/

I thought this was especially interesting:

"An article in the New York Times today, “After 244 Years,
Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses,” has got everyone excited
because they think this is news. But Britannica has been giving up
print for as long as I’ve been in the reference business, over 15
years. There was a time in the ’90s when the buzz was that there would
not be another print EB, but on and on it went, with new owners and
new strategies
Please keep in mind that EB is an encyclopedia of a type – massively
“everything about everything.” There are other kinds of encyclopedia,
which have different uses."

cheers,
phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] sad news

[phoebe ayers]

I realize in my first note that I forgot to link Ben's meta page...
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Tlogmer

a quick look at his contributions will remind some of us about the old
fundcom, Wikimania 2006 designs, Associations of Wikipedians and the
old store... Ben was one of the strongest advocates of producing good
Wikimedia merchandise!

cheers,
phoebe


On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 7:42 PM, phoebe ayers  wrote:
> Those of you who have been around for a few years may remember
> user:Tlogmer, aka Ben Yates -- co-author with Charles Matthews and I
> on "How Wikipedia Works."
>
> I got an email from his mother this morning with the very sad news
> that Ben passed away yesterday. I do not know the details. He was in
> his 20s and lived in Michigan, USA.
>
> There will be a memorial service in Michigan on Friday; contact me if
> you want that information. His userpages are
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tlogmer
> and http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Tlogmer
>
> For several years Ben wrote a blog about Wikipedia that was incisive
> and widely read. Older posts can be found here:
> http://wikip.blogspot.com/
>
> He also designed the Wikimania logo with the two "w"s; originally
> designed for Wikimania 2006, we use it to this day:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimania_%28spacing%29.png
>
> Ben was a skilled artist and designer and was responsible for all of
> the figures in "How Wikipedia Works." He also designed posters and
> graphic materials for Wikimania and proposed many other merchandise
> designs to promote Wikipedia.
>
> He was funny, smart, and shy; I never had a bad interaction with him.
> I worked with him intensively for many months but never got a chance
> to meet him in person, but I counted him as a friend long after we
> finished the book. He will be missed.
>
> If you have any comments that you would like to be given to his family
> or read at the service, please post them on Ben's talk page or send to
> me directly. Wikimedia was meaningful to Ben, and it would mean a lot
> to let his mom that people cared about her son as a colleague and
> friend.
>
> thanks,
> -- Phoebe



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[Foundation-l] sad news

[phoebe ayers]

Those of you who have been around for a few years may remember
user:Tlogmer, aka Ben Yates -- co-author with Charles Matthews and I
on "How Wikipedia Works."

I got an email from his mother this morning with the very sad news
that Ben passed away yesterday. I do not know the details. He was in
his 20s and lived in Michigan, USA.

There will be a memorial service in Michigan on Friday; contact me if
you want that information. His userpages are
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tlogmer
and http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Tlogmer

For several years Ben wrote a blog about Wikipedia that was incisive
and widely read. Older posts can be found here:
http://wikip.blogspot.com/

He also designed the Wikimania logo with the two "w"s; originally
designed for Wikimania 2006, we use it to this day:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimania_%28spacing%29.png

Ben was a skilled artist and designer and was responsible for all of
the figures in "How Wikipedia Works." He also designed posters and
graphic materials for Wikimania and proposed many other merchandise
designs to promote Wikipedia.

He was funny, smart, and shy; I never had a bad interaction with him.
I worked with him intensively for many months but never got a chance
to meet him in person, but I counted him as a friend long after we
finished the book. He will be missed.

If you have any comments that you would like to be given to his family
or read at the service, please post them on Ben's talk page or send to
me directly. Wikimedia was meaningful to Ben, and it would mean a lot
to let his mom that people cared about her son as a colleague and
friend.

thanks,
-- Phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Stopping the presses: Britannica to stop printing books

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 5:22 PM, phoebe ayers  wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 3:49 PM, Samuel Klein  wrote:
>> 2010's 32-volume set will be its last.  (Now I want to get one, to
>> replace my old set!)  Future versions will be digital only.
>>
>> http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/after-244-years-encyclopaedia-britannica-stops-the-presses/?smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto
>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/mar/13/encyclopedia-britannica-halts-print-publication
>>
>
> I don't use it in print, haven't for years, and have been expecting
> something like this for a while, but am still surprisingly saddened by
> it too; there's something about the shelf of volumes that encapsulates
> the world's knowledge that sort of symbolizes the whole idea of a
> library to me.
>
> I've been asked to write a short editorial about this development from
> a Wikipedian's perspective and am curious about (and would love to
> include) other Wikimedian experiences -- did you use print
> encyclopedias as a kid? Was a love of print encyclopedias part of your
> motivation or interest in becoming a Wikipedian? Is there any value in
> them still? Will you miss it?

All,

This has been one of our best threads in a long, long time :) Thank
you all for sharing your stories.

This is what I was working on, it just went up on the site 5 minutes ago:
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/03/14/britannica-define-outdated/if-you-liked-britannica-youll-love-wikipedia

Thank you so much to Nathan for letting me use his quote, and to SJ
for a little midnight copyediting help -- it was short notice :) I
would have including more quotes but I was already 100 words over
limit, lol!

But reading this thread made me think that there is actually a much
longer piece that could be written with all of these anecdotes about
encyclopedias -- I'd love to work on an essay about our experiences.
Maybe on meta, if anyone else is interested.

thanks,
phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Stopping the presses: Britannica to stop printing books

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 3:49 PM, Samuel Klein  wrote:
> 2010's 32-volume set will be its last.  (Now I want to get one, to
> replace my old set!)  Future versions will be digital only.
>
> http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/after-244-years-encyclopaedia-britannica-stops-the-presses/?smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/mar/13/encyclopedia-britannica-halts-print-publication
>

I don't use it in print, haven't for years, and have been expecting
something like this for a while, but am still surprisingly saddened by
it too; there's something about the shelf of volumes that encapsulates
the world's knowledge that sort of symbolizes the whole idea of a
library to me.

I've been asked to write a short editorial about this development from
a Wikipedian's perspective and am curious about (and would love to
include) other Wikimedian experiences -- did you use print
encyclopedias as a kid? Was a love of print encyclopedias part of your
motivation or interest in becoming a Wikipedian? Is there any value in
them still? Will you miss it?

cheers,
-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Controversial content software status

[phoebe ayers]

2012/3/7 Juliana da Costa José :
> Andreas, you seem really maniac fixed to this theme. I am since 7 years in
> Wikipedia and never saw this pictures.
> For me are pictures from tortured persons, from war and weapons torn bodies
> and shot heads a much more terrifying that sex-pics (I spare posting
> "spectacular" links, just for attending the voyeurism), but for some
> mysterious reasons, this is no "controversial content".

Hey Juliana,

As far as I am concerned pictures of violence certainly fall under
"controversial content"; it's been defined that way in everything the
board has written too. Images that could be shocking or unexpectedly
frightening are definitely part of thinking about this whole issue.

best,
-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Controversial content software status

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 6:30 PM, Kat Walsh  wrote:
...

> Sorry to drag this out--there are definitely more interesting things
> to talk about. But as someone who basically holds Phoebe's position on
> the issue I'd like to say what I am thinking also.
>
> I think, in fact, that I am almost exactly in agreement with Phoebe. I
> voted for the resolution because I thought we had reached a consensus
> that was compatible with everyone's principles and wasn't going to
> compromise anything else that was critically important. And I think we
> were wrong. Maybe it was foolish to think it could have been true, but
> it seemed like a victory to get even that far--the controversial
> content discussion has been the most divisive and difficult in my time
> on the board (since 2006, if you're counting).
>
> We are still divided, as a board, on where to go from here; it is a
> true conflict. The actual words in the statement are fine--they should
> be, after all the effort poured into them. It is the implications that
> we didn't properly foresee and that I think we're still not in
> agreement on.
>
> Traditionally, the way we as a board have dealt with true conflicts is
> not to release a series of resolutions that squeak by with a bare
> majority, but to find some path forward that can get broad or even
> unanimous support. If we cannot even get the board--a very small
> group, with more time to argue issues together and less diversity of
> opinion than the wider community--what hope is there to get the
> broader community to come to agreement that the action we decide on is
> the best decision?
>
> I think it's my responsibility to be open to argument, to have some
> things that cannot be compromised, but to be willing to accept a
> solution that doesn't violate them even if I think it's not the best
> one. And to be willing to delegate the carrying-out of those decisions
> to others. Sometimes I have to take a deep breath and realize
> something is going completely unlike how I would have chosen to do it,
> and that it might still be okay; I have to step back, let everyone do
> their own jobs, and be as fair as possible in evaluating how it is
> turning out even if it is not what I wanted. And sometimes that means
> the most responsible thing for me to do is to shut up so I don't ruin
> the chance of a positive outcome by undermining others' efforts in
> progress.

Yes, this. All of this. Thanks, Kat; you are always more eloquent than I am :)

As a board we've talked a lot about the most responsible way to
comment as a community member vs as part of this consensus-driven,
corporate body we call the board. We've talked about it because it's a
real concern for many of us -- the dilemma hits you pretty much from
day one, especially in our culture of community members talking about
everything. Ideally, of course, you do agree with board decisions and
how they're being carried out, but even in that case it's hard -- is
someone speaking as themselves or for the board if they express
support?

And truth be told you never get taken "as an individual" once you join
-- your opinions are always taken as "those of a board member",
whether you want them to be or not, and are tossed around politically
in consequence; and you are responsible for what the WMF does whether
you agree particularly with any individual action (or even know about
them). If you say something critical, are those opinions going to get
held against the WMF, or make someone's work more difficult, or make
the work of the board more difficult, or somehow shut down community
discussion? Is it safe to express an opinion if you're really not sure
what the right thing to do is, or will exploring a misguided approach
be held against you forever? All of those are questions that we
struggle with in every conversation (but especially in really
contentious discussions), which goes some way towards answering
David's original question.


> So in an ideal universe, I still think it is possible for a solution
> to be developed in line with the resolution that doesn't violate the
> principles of free access to information that we value.
>
> But in the practical universe, I think it is a poor use of resources
> to keep trying along the same path; we have things that will have much
> more impact that aren't already poisoned by a bad start. It was a
> viable starting position at one point and now I believe that we can't
> get anywhere good from it; better to scrap it entirely, perhaps later
> to try something completely different. I would still love to see some
> way to meet the needs of the people who don't want to be surprised by
> what they will find in a search. But I don't think it's going to come
> out of the current approach.

Agreed.

-- Phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Controversial content software status

[phoebe ayers]

On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 5:06 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 6 March 2012 00:57, phoebe ayers  wrote:
>
>> Well, in my opinion I haven't given much indication of what I
>> personally think on the issue at all, as I often explicitly ignored
>> speculation about my own personal views or motivations whether it was
>> right or wrong. I *have* spent a great deal of time explaining and (to
>> some extent) defending board consensus. I didn't think it was
>> especially worthwhile or relevant to talk about anything else, as the
>> board acts as a corporate body.
>
>
> If you act only in support of a view, and do not voice your concerns,
> I hardly think it's unfair to draw a conclusion to your opinions from
> your actions. It then comes across as odd and insincere to later say
> "actually, I disagreed with what I was doing." You can't claim your
> views are being misrepresented when it's your actions doing the
> representing.

That's not actually what I was trying to say. I said that I changed my
mind -- probably around early autumn, if you want to put a date on it.
I haven't done much speaking or writing on the issue in the last few
months. I wouldn't have voted for the resolution if I had thought at
the time it was a truly bad idea; at least give me credit for that.

> What stopped you from voicing your qualms?

Partly, as I said, wanting to represent the board consensus. Partly
because things were so very uncivil in the heat of it. I got called
(among other things) an ugly American, a prude, freedom-hating, and a
poor representative of my profession. I just didn't feel like
dignifying any of that with engagement.

And I think, though I don't have the energy to pull up all the emails
I've sent, that I tried very hard in all my communications to be
moderate, open-minded, and to err on the side of explanation of what
we were doing. Which is pretty much my approach to everything!

So I'm not sure it's a case of voicing qualms or not, as just trying
not to talk about my own personal opinions (up to and including "can't
we please find something more important to argue about?!"). Oh well.

Anyway, there are surely more interesting things to talk about -- like
search! Let's talk about search. I am 100% in favor of better commons
search :)

best,
Phoebe

p.s. John, I misunderstood what David was referring to about it being
an election issue -- When I said that I meant that board
reconsideration of the resolution was raised independently of the
election; it's not meant to be timed for political reasons, as I
thought he was implying. Yes, of course, I did bring this topic up in
my statement.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Controversial content software status

[phoebe ayers]

Hi David,

On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 11:50 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 5 March 2012 17:07, phoebe ayers  wrote:
>> On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 11:32 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
>
>>> You do realise this has become a toxic electoral issue for the board,
>>> with people who voted twice for the resolution now backpedalling?
>
>> Just for the record, not sure where you got "voted twice"... There's
>> been one vote on each resolution.
>
>
> The first was the vote on the resolution:
>
> https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Controversial_content
>
> The second was to send a letter affirming the board still considered
> the resolution a good idea:
>
> http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/253393#253393
>
> "We are not going to revisit the resolution from May, for the moment:
> we let that resolution stand unchanged."

That's actually explicitly not a vote -- as in, we agreed not to
re-vote at the October meeting. We did agree to postponing
development, however, as I noted above; and a re-vote is likely on the
table for the spring.

> You were also the chair of the Controversial Content Working Group
> that *wrote* the resolution.

That is true. And I supported the resolution we wrote, felt that we
did good work to try to come to a consensus between pretty widely
divergent points of view, and proposed the resolution to the other
trustees.

There were plenty of reservations at the time, from me and others;
hence all the language about principles. However, we thought what we
proposed could work.

After publishing that resolution, we had the referendum and (even
more) thousands of pages of discussion, and after all that I am
convinced by the arguments that the image hiding feature specifically
is not an especially appropriate or useful thing to do. Surely that is
not a terrible or outlandish conclusion to reach; one might argue for
the benefit in keeping an open mind. And if I am not mistaken, we are
now closer to being in agreement on the issue, which does make one
wonder why you're hassling me over it.

I'll note that still, there are plenty of good arguments on both
sides, and I don't think all the trustees are in agreement about how
to proceed; as this thread shows, there is still plenty of interest on
both sides as well.

I took on chairing the controversial content group because I wanted to
help the board find consensus on a tough issue, not because I wanted
CC to become the defining issue of my term. If I thought at the
beginning that is what would happen, frankly I wouldn't have
volunteered to do it.


>> And it was not raised as an electoral issue. I think that's a little
>> unfair to people (including myself) who are trying to do their best in
>> a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation.
>
>
> I raised it as one, here.
>
> If you do not support the image filter, you have given *no* sign that
> I have seen of not supporting it before your statement for this
> selection of a board member by the chapters.

Well, in my opinion I haven't given much indication of what I
personally think on the issue at all, as I often explicitly ignored
speculation about my own personal views or motivations whether it was
right or wrong. I *have* spent a great deal of time explaining and (to
some extent) defending board consensus. I didn't think it was
especially worthwhile or relevant to talk about anything else, as the
board acts as a corporate body.

I have all along personally thought that both sides of the issues had
merit but that there were strong principles we needed to adhere to,
which is a thread that shows up in the resolution.

> You appeared (from your actions) to support it before, you claim not
> to support it now. I believe it is relevant to note this.

Sure. If there's a place to note what one thinks about something, why
not a candidacy statement? And I will note, in turn, that the
questions to the candidates so far seem to indicate what the chapters
representatives care most about this election, and it's mostly
finances and related -- if I were, as you imply, only hypocritically
trying to win over hearts and minds for the election I think I would
be focusing on that!

regards,
-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Controversial content software status

[phoebe ayers]

On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 11:32 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 5 March 2012 05:03, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
>
>> I am sorry to say that unless you are prepared to put your foot down, and
>> represent the tens of thousands of people who expressed their views in the
>> (admittedly suboptimal) referendum, you risk becoming an irrelevancy – in
>> exactly the same way that doctors are irrelevant in an asylum where it's
>> the inmates who call the shots, and the doctors are only kept on for show,
>> to keep the public money coming in.
>
>
> Yeah, 'cos that worked so well applied to de:wp.
>
> You do realise this has become a toxic electoral issue for the board,
> with people who voted twice for the resolution now backpedalling?
>
>
> - d.

Just for the record, not sure where you got "voted twice"... There's
been one vote on each resolution.

And it was not raised as an electoral issue. I think that's a little
unfair to people (including myself) who are trying to do their best in
a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation.

all best,
-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Controversial content software status

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 8:49 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:
> Hi.
>
> What happened with implementing software related to controversial content?
> There was quite a bit of hubbub at some point, then Wikimedia pulled back a
> little (and Sue visited Germany to give some assurances)... what's the
> current status of the project? Is it still a project? (If there's a project
> status page somewhere with updated info, feel free to just link that.)

Hi MZ and all --

Project development was put on hold over the winter in favor of more
pressing priorities, with the agreement of the Board. There is
currently an open proposal on the table for the Board to vote on
whether to continue with our original request for an image hiding
feature; and the ED will take direction from the Board on the matter.
We have put that vote off however due to the more time-sensitive and
generally all-consuming financial discussions of the past couple of
months. I haven't reported on it one way or the other because the
timeline for a revote hasn't yet been set.

So, yeah, things are on hold essentially because there are more urgent
things to do, and because given the rather extraordinary scale of the
debate and all of the controversy, serious reconsideration of our
original proposal has been requested.

It seems clear however that regardless, there is both much technical
and social work that needs to be done around controversial content
that has nothing to do with image hiding, e.g. to improve Commons
search, rigorously get model releases, etc. etc.; and also that for
any particular technical proposal around image hiding there would be
many, many (perhaps insuperable) issues and details to work out.

I'd like to point out here that the other points addressed in both of
the controversial content resolutions
(http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Images_of_identifiable_people
and http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Controversial_content),
though much less controversial, are also quite important!

-- phoebe, as WMF secretary

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Re: [Foundation-l] Fundraising Letter Feb 2012

[phoebe ayers]

Hi Lodewijk,

In this board meeting we were trying to see if we had a general
consensus on the direction we wanted to go (rather than take a final
vote). There are still lots of aspects to be resolved, though -- what
the FDC looks like, what criteria are used for payment processing, and
many more things. Our calendar is unchanged: we do intend to discuss
fundraising in Paris with everyone, we will receive Sue's final
recommendations in early-mid March; and we will plan to take a final
vote at (or perhaps just after) the Berlin meeting.

So yes, we all agree that a real life discussion is important. So is
lots of information -- legal analysis, etc. -- which we may not have
seen all of yet (I'm not sure what you mean by an inventory). We also
thought, though, that it would be bad to talk about this for two days
in the Board meeting and not report back to the community about where
we were at :) Hence, this letter. It's not a final decision, but it is
an indication of board consensus and direction.

best,
Phoebe


On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 1:07 AM, Lodewijk  wrote:
> Hi Ting,
>
> thank you for the letter. Could you clarify to what extent this is the end
> decision, and how much discussion/process should be expected ahead of us?
> Going up to this board meeting I have heard both the opinions that the
> final decision would be made quickly, and also that definitely no decision
> would be made, but rather an inventory, which would allow for a real life
> discussion in Paris/Berlin with other stakeholders.
>
> Lodewijk
>
> No dia 9 de Fevereiro de 2012 09:11, Ting Chen escreveu:
>
>> The Board approves the following letter to be sent to the community:
>>
>> Dear members of the Wikimedia Movement,
>>
>> As you are probably aware we have been discussing the the future of
>> fundraising and fund dissemination for the Wikimedia Movement for almost 6
>> months now. After discussing fundraising and funds dissemination at this
>> past meeting, the board has drafted the following statement. It our
>> intention to discuss these matters in the coming weeks to come to a final
>> decision mid March.
>>
>> But first we would like to thank everyone who took part in the discussion
>> so far and spent their valuable time providing us with their viewpoints
>> which we have of course taken into account in our decision making process.
>> We hope that you will continue to participate by giving feedback on this
>> letter.
>>
>> ==Funds dissemination==
>> The board wants to create a volunteer-driven body to make recommendations
>> for funding for movement-wide initiatives (Working title: Funds
>> Dissemination Committee, FDC). The Wikimedia Foundation has decision-making
>> authority, because it has fiduciary responsibilities to donors which it
>> legally cannot delegate. The new body will make recommendations for funds
>> dissemination to the Wikimedia Foundation. We anticipate a process in which
>> the Wikimedia Foundation will review and approve all but a small minority
>> of recommendations from the FDC. In the event that the Wikimedia Foundation
>> does not approve a recommendation from the FDC, and the FDC and the
>> Wikimedia Foundation aren't subsequently able to reach agreement, then the
>> FDC can ask the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees to request the
>> recommendation be reconsidered.
>>
>> #the FDC will be a diverse body of people from across our movement (which
>> may include paid staff) with appropriate expertise for this purpose, whose
>> primary purpose is to disseminate funds to advance the Wikimedia mission;
>> #the WMF staff will support and facilitate the work of the FDC
>> #Proposals can range from one time smaller contributions for small
>> projects from individuals to larger financing for operational costs of
>> chapters or associations
>>
>> The board intends to evaluate this process together with the FDC and see
>> if it is working.
>>
>> ==Fundraising==
>> Our thoughts on fundraising are less specific. We have come to the
>> following two statements which are important
>>
>> * If and when payment processing is done by chapters, it should be done
>> primarily for reasons of tax, operational efficiency (including
>> incentivizing donor cultivation and relations), should not be in conflict
>> with funds dissemination principles and goals, and should avoid a
>> perception of entitlement.
>>
>> * The board is sharpening the criteria for payment processing. Payment
>> processing is not a natural path to growth for a chapter; and payment
>> processing will likely be an exception -- most chapters will not do so.
>>
>>
>> The Wikimedia Board of Trustees
>>
>> NB: Please note that rather than spend a LOT of time on wording at this
>> time, the board preferred to amend the above text if necessary when moving
>> towards a resolution. This letter indicates our intent, and we may
>> "wordsmith as needed" in our final resolutions.
>>
>> --
>> Ting Chen
>> Member of the Board of Trustees
>> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
>> E

[Foundation-l] Congratulations to Wikimedia Kenya!

[phoebe ayers]

The Wikimedia Foundation Board is very pleased to welcome and approve
our 39th chapter, Wikimedia Kenya:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Recognition_of_Wikimedia_Kenya

Congratulations to all for your hard work!
-- Phoebe Ayers
WMF Board of Trustees Secretary

-- 
* I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers
 gmail.com *

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Re: [Foundation-l] Journal Boycott

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 11:17 AM, Kat Walsh  wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 9:19 PM, phoebe ayers  wrote:
>> On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 9:07 AM, Chess Pie  wrote:
>>> Looks like a braindead law.
>>> Does the foundation have a specific position on OpenAccess?
>>
>> The WMF as an entity doesn't have a specific position/policy, though
>> in general we are squarely in the camp of OA supporters; but as Daniel
>> noted the Research Committee is working on an OA policy for funded
>> research studies, which I'm quite pleased about:
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Committee/Areas_of_interest/Open-access_policy
>>
>
> Actually we do have an official position--we are signatories to the
> Berlin Declaration on Open Access:
>
> http://oa.mpg.de/berlin-prozess/berliner-erklarung/
>
> which states that its supporters believe in the importance of open
> access and work to promote it (the full document is actually pretty
> nice).
>
> -Kat

Right! I forgot about that. Thanks, Kat.
-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Journal Boycott

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 9:07 AM, Chess Pie  wrote:
> Looks like a braindead law.
> Does the foundation have a specific position on OpenAccess?

The WMF as an entity doesn't have a specific position/policy, though
in general we are squarely in the camp of OA supporters; but as Daniel
noted the Research Committee is working on an OA policy for funded
research studies, which I'm quite pleased about:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Committee/Areas_of_interest/Open-access_policy

Maybe Daniel knows if there are any general position papers about how
OA in general benefits Wikimedia projects?

Re: the Elsevier journal boycott, I've been following this fairly
closely out of professional and personal interest -- it's not strictly
a protest in favor of OA, but rather a protest around several issues
related to how Elsevier handles and charges for journal content,
including supporting restrictions, like the research works act. It is
true that Elsevier is not especially worse than several other big
publishers, but they have a big name and a long history of unfriendly
moves to the library & academic community which make them perhaps an
easier target. What's interesting about the boycott is that a) it's
grown very quickly, with several thousand people signing in the past
couple weeks; and b) it's a lot of prominent researchers from a wide
variety of institutions. What gives this boycott power is not
institutional support but rather individual researchers and scholars,
who provide both the content and the labor in scientific publishing,
saying that they were not interested in working with Elsevier. If
enough people say that and follow through, Elsevier's entire business
model falls apart.

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Vice President?

[phoebe ayers]

Someday, I can only aspire to be a Vice President of Pencil Sharpeners :)

Sidenote: indeed, on our board we use the terminology Chair &
Vice-Chair, not president.

cheers,
phoebe

On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 10:15 AM, Ryan Kaldari  wrote:
> Many organizations have dozens or hundreds of vice presidents, like Vice
> President of Vending Machines and Vice President of Pencil Sharpeners. It's
> not really analogous to President and Vice President of the U.S. for
> example, which are exclusive positions. Of course I agree that job titles
> are kind of silly, but whatever.
>
> Ryan Kaldari
>
>
> On 1/31/12 8:17 PM, MZMcBride wrote:
>>
>> Hi.
>>
>> Erik took on the temporary title "VP of Engineering and Product
>> Development"
>> after Danese left.[1] Just recently it was codified on wmfwiki.[2]
>>
>> I don't really think much of job titles anywhere, but it seems strange to
>> have a Vice President without having a President.[3] Mostly just noting
>> for
>> posterity.
>>
>> MZMcBride
>>
>> [1] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2011-June/054040.html
>> [2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?diff=78986&oldid=78985
>> [3] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff_and_contractors
>>
>>
>>
>> ___
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>
>

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Re: [Foundation-l] Call for nominations: chapter-appointed seats on the WMF Board of Trustees

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 9:49 PM, Risker  wrote:
> Thanks for your prompt responses, Beria.  I have a few follow-ups.
>
> On 31 January 2012 22:43, Béria Lima  wrote:

>> >
>> > * Will the names of the candidates be published for the entire Wikimedia
>> > community to see?  *
>>
>>
>> The real names, obviously not. The usernames may be published - IF the
>> candidate has no problem with that.
>>
>
>
> I'm sorry, I have a problem with that.  All other candidates for Board
> seats must publicly disclose their real name in their candidate
> presentation (because the identities of Board members are a matter of
> public record, it is not possible to hold a position on the Board of
> Trustees anonymously or under a pseudonym).

Heh, indeed. Whether the candidates are public outside the chapters or
not, if you are not ok with your real name being plastered all over
the place (fame! infamy! occasional random emails!) then being on the
board is probably not for you.

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] WMF Board of Trustees meeting agenda

[phoebe ayers]

On Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 3:18 PM, En Pine  wrote:
>
> Phoebe,
>
> On this agenda, could you give more detail about the topic "Paid editing 
> discussion"? There is a current discussion on EN at the Village Pump 
> regarding, among other things, PR personnel who edit on Wikipedia in ways 
> that might violate NPOV and COI policy. It would be good to know if the Board 
> is taking up this specific subject. Alternatively, if "paid editing 
> discussion" instead is about editors which will be paid by WMF to edit, I 
> think the community would want to know that this is will be discussed.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Pine

Pine: the former, I believe; I haven't heard anything about the latter :)

Beria: the calendar is posted here --
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_and_Funds_Dissemination
As I understand it we are going to try to get quite indepth into the
recommendations at this meeting, and see if there is consensus to
date, but not take a final vote.

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] WMF Board of Trustees meeting agenda

[phoebe ayers]

On Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 2:56 PM, Kat Walsh  wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 5:41 PM, WereSpielChequers
>  wrote:
>> Hi Phoebe, Often the most interesting thing about an agenda is what it
>> omits.  So the first board meeting after the SOPA blackout is not going to
>> discuss blackouts, SOPA and lobbying?
>
> I am assuming Legal will bring it up in the context of the annual plan!
>
> But in our last in person board meeting--very shortly after the
> Italian blackout, though I swear I put it on the agenda before
> that!--we discussed whether this was something we should get involved
> with/devote resources to at all, and what it would mean for us:
>
> https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2011-10-07 (search for 
> "advocacy")
>
> Now we're just into specific implementations. :-)
>
> -Kat

What Kat said -- also, in general, topics that don't make it to the
in-person agenda are usually discussed over email and/or IRC; the
in-person time is so limited that we try to limit to topics that would
really benefit from face-to-face discussions. This meeting in
particular we are trying a slightly different strategy in that we
tried to limit the number of topics discussed, so we can go further
in-depth for each one. Also, I think broad advocacy discussions will
certainly continue for a long time into the future (versus the annual
planning and fundraising discussions, which are time-sensitive).

phoebe

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[Foundation-l] WMF Board of Trustees meeting agenda

[phoebe ayers]

Hi all,

The WMF Board of Trustees is planning our winter meeting for next
weekend. The draft agenda is posted here for comment:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Board_Meetings/February_3-4,_2012

This is a very full agenda, focusing on three main topics: the WMF
annual planning process for 2012/2013, fundraising and funds
dissemination models, and the movement roles process.

-- Phoebe
(Board of Trustees Secretary, 2011-2012)

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Re: [Foundation-l] Policies on wikimediafoundation.org

[phoebe ayers]

On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 4:39 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo)
 wrote:
> MZMcBride, 21/01/2012 01:19:
>
>> https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Policies#Policies lists policies of
>> the
>> Wikimedia Foundation.
>>
>> Would it make sense to sub-divide these policies into sub-lists? It seems
>> very strange to place all of these policies next to each other in a single
>> list.
>>
>> I thought about splitting between "Board-approved" and "Otherwise." Then I
>> considered splitting between "Staff-related", "Contributor-related,"
>> "Meetings-related,"  etc., but I wasn't so sure how many of these policies
>> actually (allegedly) apply to contributors (e.g., the whistleblower
>> policy).
>>
>> Any thoughts on this?
>
>
> It should be easy to divide board-approved policies from legal-approved
> policies and other policies (which are usually "self-policies", and are
> sometimes on Meta only).
>
> Nemo

It would be, though I'm not sure that's the most useful division --
I'd imagine what most people want to know is what policies apply to
all of the global projects vs what policies apply to just the WMF vs
what policies might apply to the WMF & other wikimedia entities
(chapters and groups). It is difficult to figure out what the global
project policies are, and that is a question that comes up pretty
regularly.

I don't have much spare time right this minute to do it, but I can
lend a hand with this; having legal involved would also be helpful.

cheers,
phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion duration and the SOPA shutdown

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 4:24 PM, George Herbert
 wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 3:39 PM, FT2  wrote:
>> It's worth pointing out the discussion was open from 15 December to 16
>> January before any close.
>
> No, there was informal discussion going back into December.  "The
> discussion" - the concrete, date-attached specific policy and
> implementation proposals and so forth - was about 3 days worth.
>
> People talking about it and bandying informal ideas around for a month
> doesn't make it a formal consensus discussion.

That is very true. But it is also true that we would not have gotten
to the formal vote stage in the first place, and certainly not a quick
vote, if there hadn't been quite substantial support shown for the
idea of a protest all the way along in discussion. I don't think that
anyone can say consensus was trending one way and then a quick weekend
vote overturned it and went a totally different way; I think that
weekend vote confirmed what was already becoming quite clear, and the
multiple questions helped iron out the details.

The community no doubt could have kept discussing for another week or
month. But to push out a decision we did have to, well, decide. As it
was there was only barely enough time to get things working
technically (and there are still substantial bugs). I can only
congratulate our amazing staff and volunteer community for working
under immense pressure, over a long weekend and all night, to make it
happen.

So why, you may reasonably ask, was a short deadline set? Well,
politics. Initially we thought that there was going to be a serious
hearing on SOPA on the 18th, so several sites called for a boycott
that day. Then that hearing was postponed at the last moment, but it
was unclear to when or for how long. And PIPA is *still* up for a vote
next week. Time is *short*, by any measure, and it's not always clear
when the best moment to do things on the hill. In 20/20 hindsight I'd
argue today was actually a fantastic day to do it -- the congress is
just back, it's kind of a slow news day otherwise, and we appear to
have hit both bills in a time when people are still making up their
minds and gauging support. And the effect of coordinating with other
sites shouldn't be underestimated -- I've heard this referred to as
"black Wednesday", one of the largest acts of online activism ever. We
made a difference, all speaking as internet citizens, and it does take
time -- and a set date -- to coordinate with other sites. We helped
lead that effort. It was worth it.

I agree with you -- more time is better, and a few days is not enough
to come to full community-wide consensus. While there will always be
people missing from the table, for one reason or another, we should
work hard to minimize that effect whenever possible. But I *do* think
a few days is enough time to make sure that you have a *reasonable*
consensus, especially when you've got 1800 people participating and a
very clear trend; and I think with all these other factors considered
we did a pretty good job of balancing the timing issues. Someone
needed to move for an RfC if we were going to make any decision happen
in a reasonable time frame; the WMF likely wouldn't have gotten
involved at all if we didn't need that buffer time to, well, turn the
site off (and no one wanted to spend a whole lot of extra tech staff
and communications staff time on the protest if it wasn't wanted).

I realize that I speak from a privileged position here, of having been
heavily involved and paying close attention to SOPA discussions for
weeks, and that may be one of the problems -- it is easy to forget,
when you have had something very much on your mind, that not everyone
has paid such attention to it. In future certainly even fast actions
should be better communicated through all our channels, and we should
spend more time on the !votes if we have it.

But I am also pleased that when it comes right down to it -- this
community can still be bold.


> There are a whole raft of nuanced issues that were bulldozed in all of
> this, ranging from the wisdom of WMF / Wikipedia taking political
> stands organizationally, to lack of sufficient consideration for the
> invisible third leg of the stool (the readers / userbase), to rapidity
> of decisionmaking, to aspects of the community majority bullying those
> who for some reason opposed the change.

At least to your first point -- I will say that this was done with
thought, from the WMF's point of view. In fact it was done with a
whole lot of thought -- big discussions around the Italian protest
action, legal analysis from our lawyers, Board discussions around
advocacy, and general consensus that opposing these bills was the
right thing to do.

The community en.wp decision is separate, but it was also nuanced, and
so I don't think it's true that all these issues were bulldozed,
within Wikipedia or the WMF. (I don't know about the bullying aspect;
I hadn't encountered that or heard other complain

Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] English Wikipedia to go dark January 18 in opposition to SOPA/PIPA

[phoebe ayers]

Should be fixed now; right at the very beginning it was blacked out
accidentally. . -- phoebe

On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 9:03 PM, Chris Lee  wrote:
> The "Learn More" link at en.wp is blocked too.
>
> On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 9:02 PM, Minh Huy (WMF) wrote:
>
>> Landing page SOPA on Vietnamese Wikipedia:
>> https://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ph%E1%BA%A3n_%C4%91%E1%BB%91i_SOPA
>>
>> Based on Catalan Wikipedia.
>>
>> 2012/1/18, Nathan :
>> >
>> http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/the-great-wikipedia-blackout-of-2012-media-try-to-fill-the-void/
>> >
>> > #altwiki - a place for various news organizations, including NPR and
>> > Washington Post in the U.S., to answer questions for people while
>> > en.wp is down.
>> >
>> > ___
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>> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>> >
>>
>>
>> --
>> --Minh Huy (Minata Hatsune)
>> ---volunteer and Vietnamese translation coordinator of the Wikimedia
>> Foundation---
>>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikipedia is considering going dark to protest SOPA and PIPA

[phoebe ayers]

On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 1:21 AM, Liam Wyatt  wrote:
> Relatedly, where is the updated, latest discussion on what Wikimedia's
> response (if anything) is going to be?
> Presumably there is are several on-wiki debates, but because there are
> different potential "levels" of blackout (all project blackout, geo-located
> blackout, single-project blackout, protest-banner but not a full blackout,
> etc. etc.) where is the central/official discussion taking place to get
> community consensus for any action?
>
> FWIW, I'm in favour of some form of protest response, probably an
> all-project blackout timed to coencide with the probable blackout of other
> major sites. But, if that actually happened, would it be possible for the
> community to still log in and use that day as a "housekeeping" day to clear
> away lots of behind-the-scenes backlogs?
>
> -Liam

Hey Liam and all,

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Action  for
an RFC page on what (if any) community action to take, and when.

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Bosnia's Top Cultural Institutions Shutting Down

[phoebe ayers]

Thanks Kevin :) Yes, I am a professional librarian who follows such
things (and listens to NPR!) and I somehow missed this story. I don't
think it is a well known or reported on event. Thank you for bringing
it to everyone's attention, it sounds like a tragedy. Following David,
if anyone has suggested actions to take that would be great.

-- phoebe


On Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 12:58 PM, Kevin Gorman  wrote:
> The WMF isn't telepathic, at least to the best of my knowledge.  Before you
> sent this did you have any reason to believe that the WMF was already aware
> of the situation and its significance?  If not - this email chain probably
> would have been more likely to be productive if your first email was
> just "This is kind of a big deal and I don't see any blog post up about it
> yet, can I write one?"  I've always found that all other things being
> equal, people are much more likely to want to assist me if I'm not already
> assuming that their actions are malicious.
>
> 
> Kevin Gorman
> User:Kgorman-ucb
>
> On Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 5:01 AM, emijrp  wrote:
>
>> Dear all;
>>
>> Bosnia's top cultural institutions[1] (National Museum, Historical Museum,
>> National Gallery) and the National Library which was burnt in 1992, are
>> closing their doors for funding disputes.
>>
>> This is a disaster for the spreading of human knowledge, and I don't see
>> any blog post in the Wikimedia blog. Are you so worried and biased with the
>> US bills?
>>
>> Imagine the WMF reaction if Library of Congress closes.
>>
>> Regards,
>> emijrp
>>
>> [1] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=144755322
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Re: [Foundation-l] the limits for fundraising. Was Blnk tag jokes are now obsolete.

[phoebe ayers]

A bit of context for those who haven't been following those pages -- a
draft of those principles (going hand in hand with funds dissemination
principles) was proposed by the WMF board and submitted for community
review and input. After a few months of this, the board is now voting
to approve a final set of principles, which we are going to give to
the WMF & ED to guide future proposals for how monies are raised (not
just during the banner campaign but in general, including the issue of
chapter and group fundraising) and how funds are distributed.

Basically, the board wanted to start from a good set of principles and
go from there, to make sure anything we do fits in with general
community-vetted guidelines. We are also trying to get this process
done quickly enough that chapters and the WMF staff can plan in good
time for 2012's fundraiser (since work on fundraising generally starts
in the spring and goes the rest of the year), and in time for the
annual planning process (the annual plan is approved in the early
summer).

So yes, it is good that this discussion about fundraising mirrors that
discussion :)

-- phoebe
(WMF Board of Trustees)


On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 8:24 AM, Oliver Keyes  wrote:
> Check the IP history; Jan-Bart added them ;p
>
> On 4 January 2012 16:21, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
>
>> Check the page history - I don't think those bits were added by the
>> foundation.
>> On Jan 4, 2012 3:26 PM, "WereSpielChequers" 
>> wrote:
>>
>> > Re Tom's suggestion that we have an RFC on meta to discuss what we are
>> and
>> > aren't prepared to do when fundraising; We already have a discussion at
>> > Meta
>> >
>> >
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Draft_Guiding_principles_with_regards_to_fundraising
>> > .
>> > Funny thing is that debate has almost been the mirror of here with the
>> > Foundation proposing things like "Fundraising in line with our mission
>> and
>> > values: Our fundraising activities should aim to raise a movement budget
>> > using only methods that strengthen our mission and values and communicate
>> > them to all of our users and the world" and even "All Wikimedia
>> fundraising
>> > activities should be truthful with prospective donors."
>> >
>> > May I suggest that we revive that overly quiet discussion?
>> >
>> > WSC
>> >

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Incubator yearly report for 2011

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 2:16 PM, MF-Warburg  wrote:
> On Incubator we have in this year for the first time compiled an
> end-of-the-year review in order to inform people about what is going on on
> Incubator / new wikis.
>
> The version on-wiki can be found on
> http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Incubator:News/2011_report

Thank you very much for the report, and for all of the committee's
hard work this year! (And happy 5th birthday, incubator!)

Phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Blink tag jokes are now obsolete.

[phoebe ayers]

On Sat, Dec 31, 2011 at 11:51 AM, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
> On 31 December 2011 19:28, Zack Exley  wrote:
>> Geni - You're being mean.  On New Years Eve!  Happy New Years!
>
> Neither Geni's meanness or the date are relevant to the point he was
> making. It certainly seems to be the case that the WMF doesn't
> consider reducing expenditure, rather than more aggressive
> fundraising, as a solution to not raising as much as you had hoped.
> What is it that you won't be able to do if you use non-blinking
> banners and therefore don't raise as much money? Is whatever it is
> really worth annoying everyone so much?
>

Thomas, I know you're asking rhetorically about what tactics are worth
it to raise money, and I think a back-and-forth about the boundaries
of what's acceptable in the drive is quite useful -- though it would
be great if everyone could stay polite about it.

I don't love the alternating banners either. But I *am* willing to say
what the hell, let's run them for a few hours and see what happens. If
they are not substantively more productive in terms of donations, then
let's kill them. It's not like running them is a decision that we are
stuck with for the rest of time, or even the rest of today. I feel
confident saying that, even though I haven't talked to *anyone* at
fundraising about it, because I know that the whole team is willing to
be incredibly flexible in the service of seeing what works and staying
tasteful. I suspect that those banners raise a great deal of money,
which means that we will meet a very ambitious goal today and won't
continue the fundraiser into January, which is pretty amazing
considering that just two years ago in 2009 we ran the fundraiser for
*20 days* longer than we are this year[1]. Are more days better than
alternating banners? If the answer is "yes", then let's talk about why
(would more days of banners really be less annoying to the readers??).
But I don't think the *first* answer should be "these banners suck, so
let's give up on the budget that we wrote months ago (and a few
people's jobs with it)" -- the right conversation is probably "what
are the boundaries of keeping the fundraiser in line with Wikimedia
culture and taste, while still raising a whole bunch of donations in a
short time?"

But to take your question seriously, if we don't raise to the proposed
budget for this year, a variety of things will happen -- none of which
are directly under the control of the fundraising team. If the
shortfall is a small amount, we cover it out of reserves, which are
deliberately kept large because the mission and raison d'être of the
WMF requires that we must keep the projects online under any
circumstances, including a failed fundraiser. (And we look to next
year's budget to somehow make up the reserves difference). If there's
a larger gap, we start looking for ways to trim -- this is something
Sue would lead in consultation with the board. We could do a few
things. We could not hire people to work on various initiatives,
cutting back on the staffing plan for next year. We could reduce
grants going to individuals, groups and chapters around the world. We
could drop programs. Over the long term, to recover, we could rethink
our funding strategy and more aggressively go after grants, and/or
lengthen the annual fundraiser, and/or rethink the strategic plan and
what we want to do (can we afford to not try to stem the editor
decline, over the long run? Can we afford to not roll out better
software and a visual editor? Can we afford to not try to support the
community? What are the overall costs of belt-tightening?) [2]

The fundraising team is trying to raise money for the most ambitious
Wikimedia budget yet, with a goal that was handed to them -- and they
have done what I think is a fantastic job this year, really making it
more of a community-focused drive than ever before (banners that
aren't just Jimmy!) and doing it in record time.

And, not rhetorically at all, the question of how much to raise is one
of the important questions to face us strategically. We are incredibly
lucky that we have the ability, through our tremendous readership, to
raise a substantial amount of money. We could raise less, certainly,
and we could probably raise more (and there are lots of evil tactics
to raise more that we won't consider). But every annual planning cycle
(it starts up essentially now and goes through the spring) the WMF
staff and board has to consider exactly that question -- what should
we fund, and is any given new idea worth it, given that it represents
donor dollars and fundraiser time? When are we pushing the outer
limits of what we can raise? I encourage everyone to think and talk
about these questions -- it's not a solved problem, but a complicated
and important one.

But all in all -- I hope everyone in our community celebrates the end
of the fundraiser and feels the achievement that we should all be
feeling. Everyone on this list has spent hundreds and hundreds of
hours w

Re: [Foundation-l] How SOPA will hurt the free web and Wikipedia

[phoebe ayers]

Mateus, you misunderstood me. I am not saying we should only use it
after the bill is approved; that would indeed be pointless. I am
saying that this could be a very good time to strike, but it would
have to be right now, as we speak, this morning. And if the bill does
pass this vote, then it goes on to at least three other votes in the
next several months, all of which would be opportunities to strike.
And I think if we strike at every decision point then people might
stop paying attention. What I mean by the last resort is that it is
the single most dramatic thing we can do on the projects to protest.

-- phoebe

On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 9:13 AM, Mateus Nobre  wrote:
>
> I know, I'm just answering to some guys below, who are sayin' the strike is a 
> last resource/applicable only after approval.
> It's not possible. We've to concentrate our forces  before.
>
> _
> MateusNobre
> MetalBrasil on Wikimedia projects
> (+55) 85 88393509
>              30440865
>
>
>> Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 17:05:30 +
>> From: berial...@gmail.com
>> To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] How SOPA will hurt the free web and Wikipedia
>>
>> Mateus the law is not approved yet. Is still in a committee.
>> _
>> *Béria Lima*
>> (351) 925 171 484
>>
>> *Imagine um mundo onde é dada a qualquer pessoa a possibilidade de ter
>> livre acesso ao somatório de todo o conhecimento humano. Ajude-nos a
>> construir esse sonho. *
>>
>>
>> On 15 December 2011 16:46, Mateus Nobre  wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > It's virtually impossible break down a law when it's already approved.
>> >
>> > We would need more than a strike to do that. Maybe some tents ocuppying
>> > front of White House.
>> >
>> > The Strike can't be our last resource, it have to be used EARLY. It's our
>> > main hope!
>> >
>> > _
>> > MateusNobre
>> > MetalBrasil on Wikimedia projects
>> > (+55) 85 88393509
>> >              30440865
>> >
>> >
>> > > Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 08:40:31 -0800
>> > > From: phoebe.w...@gmail.com
>> > > To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> > > Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] How SOPA will hurt the free web and Wikipedia
>> > >
>> > > On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 4:26 AM, Philippe Beaudette
>> > >  wrote:
>> > > > Hi folks,
>> > > >
>> > > > Just wanted to let you know that I got word a few minutes ago that
>> > today's
>> > > > SOPA markup meeting will be using a new tool that allows for public
>> > input
>> > > > into the markup.  Shortly before 8:30, you'll see the SOPA bill
>> > replace the
>> > > > OPEN bill at Keepthewebopen.com.  If you'd like to have input during
>> > the
>> > > > markup process, this is a nice way to do it.
>> > > >
>> > > > pb
>> > >
>> > > Fascinating! A little late though... clearly these representatives
>> > > haven't had the community lessons of Wikimedia drilled into them, heh.
>> > > (As an aside, I really like the editing interface that keepthewebopen
>> > > is using).
>> > >
>> > > On the question of to strike or not to strike -- my *personal* view is
>> > > to agree that we should a) discuss other measures, such as perhaps a
>> > > text banner on en.wp; and b) use a strike as a last resort, as there
>> > > is no other place to go if we did strike. I think Jimmy's poll was
>> > > just that -- a way to gauge support for any particular action. And all
>> > > the discussions I've seen have run pretty strongly in favor of doing
>> > > something to oppose the bill, with the 'something' tbd.
>> > >
>> > > As with the Italian action though timing is everything. This vote is a
>> > > committee vote; if it dies here it will be exceedingly hard to
>> > > resuscitate, but if it goes on it still has to pass a House floor
>> > > vote, Senate floor vote, get reconciled and get signed. In other
>> > > words, today is a critical time (and especially if you are in the US,
>> > > this is a good time to try to sway judiciary committee members) and we
>> > > really hope it dies here and now. But if it doesn't, this process
>> > > could go on for months, and we should consider what the next best
>> > > timing to do anything is. This is a community question, and must be a
>> > > community-led action.
>> > >
>> > > BTW, Vint Cerf, Paul Vixie and many others just signed a letter of
>> > > internet engineers opposing SOPA:
>> > >
>> > http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-tech/post/top-internet-engineers-warn-against-sopa/2011/12/15/gIQAGRV4vO_blog.html
>> > >
>> > > -- phoebe
>> > >
>> > > ___
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>> >
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>> >
>> 

Re: [Foundation-l] How SOPA will hurt the free web and Wikipedia

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 4:26 AM, Philippe Beaudette
 wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> Just wanted to let you know that I got word a few minutes ago that today's
> SOPA markup meeting will be using a new tool that allows for public input
> into the markup.  Shortly before 8:30, you'll see the SOPA bill replace the
> OPEN bill at Keepthewebopen.com.  If you'd like to have input during the
> markup process, this is a nice way to do it.
>
> pb

Fascinating! A little late though... clearly these representatives
haven't had the community lessons of Wikimedia drilled into them, heh.
(As an aside, I really like the editing interface that keepthewebopen
is using).

On the question of to strike or not to strike -- my *personal* view is
to agree that we should a) discuss other measures, such as perhaps a
text banner on en.wp; and b) use a strike as a last resort, as there
is no other place to go if we did strike. I think Jimmy's poll was
just that -- a way to gauge support for any particular action. And all
the discussions I've seen have run pretty strongly in favor of doing
something to oppose the bill, with the 'something' tbd.

As with the Italian action though timing is everything. This vote is a
committee vote; if it dies here it will be exceedingly hard to
resuscitate, but if it goes on it still has to pass a House floor
vote, Senate floor vote, get reconciled and get signed. In other
words, today is a critical time (and especially if you are in the US,
this is a good time to try to sway judiciary committee members) and we
really hope it dies here and now. But if it doesn't, this process
could go on for months, and we should consider what the next best
timing to do anything is. This is a community question, and must be a
community-led action.

BTW, Vint Cerf, Paul Vixie and many others just signed a letter of
internet engineers opposing SOPA:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-tech/post/top-internet-engineers-warn-against-sopa/2011/12/15/gIQAGRV4vO_blog.html

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] How SOPA will hurt the free web and Wikipedia

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 4:08 AM, emijrp  wrote:
> Hi all;
>
> Looks like Wikimedia Foundation is very worried about censorship and the
> cut off of fundraising payment processors. Now.
>
> What did WMF do when WikiLeaks domains were seized and its fundraising
> payment processors (PayPal, Visa, MasterCard) were cut off? Did WMF protest
> against Internet censorship? No.
>
> WMF did nothing. Well, Wikipedia community wrote this disclaimer "WikiLeaks
> is not affiliated with Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation"[1] on the
> top, and turned a blind eye.
>
> Now it is your turn. Enjoy.
>
> Regards,
> emijrp
>
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks


I think what happened to WikiLeaks is atrocious. But this protest is
to try and prevent a similar thing from happening again to *any* site,
ever. This legislation would make such attacks legally permissible,
and we oppose it, and not just because it could affect Wikimedia too.

best,
-- Phoebe
WMF Board of Trustees

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimania 2011 videos - mission complete!

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 3:48 AM, Itzik Edri  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> *I happy to announce that all the videos from Wikimania 2011 in Haifa are
> now available on our channel in YouTube!: http://www.youtube.com/WikimediaIL
> .*
> Next week I will send a HDD with all the footage and the edited videos to
> the WMF so they will have a copy for archive and so they can upload it to
> commons also.
>
> *Don't forget also to check our Flickr stream!:
> http://www.flickr.com/WikimediaIL*
>
> On the schedule you will find links to the videos:
> http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Schedule

Dear Itzik and the rest of the Wikimania 2011 team -- congratulations!
This is a huge achievement. You continue to set the bar high for
Wikimania. And thank you for continuing to work on the conference long
after it finished to get this done -- I know how hard that can be :)

thank you,
phoebe

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[phoebe ayers]

All,
Minutes for the October 7-8 meeting of the WMF Board are now posted:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2011-10-07

Sorry about the long delay on getting these up.

best,
Phoebe

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[Foundation-l] Board report Sept-Oct

[phoebe ayers]

Hi all,
The Sept-Oct activity report for the Board of Trustees is published on
Meta here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_Reports/September-October,_2011

This is an informal report that we started doing a few months ago to
try and communicate more about what the board and individual trustees
are doing. You can find past reports (July-August and May-June) at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_Reports.

Text of the report follows. Feedback is welcome! -- phoebe
-

Board of Trustees -- activity report September-October 2011

* Resolutions and votes

New chapters: The Board approved three new chapters in
September-October: Wikimedia District of Columbia, Wikimedia
Bangladesh, and Wikimedia Venezuela. Congratulations to all!

Update to the donor policy: The donor privacy policy, an updated
version of which was approved in July by the Board, had some small
amendments which the Board approved; the latest version of the policy
can be found at donor policy.

* Other Board work

Meetings: The Board met for its regularly scheduled meeting on October
7-8, in San Francisco (agenda).
The next IRC meeting is scheduled for November 6, and the next
regular quarterly meeting is scheduled for 3-4 February 2011 in San
Francisco. Agendas will be posted here.

Audit Committee: The Audit Committee met in late September to review
the preliminary results of KPMG's independent audit of the 2010-2011
fiscal year. Other agenda items included an update on the 2011
fundraiser. Stu and also Renata from the Audit Committee spent time
with new Chief of Finance and Admin Garfield Byrd, helping orient him
to the foundation and broad movement.

Future of fundraising process: The Board, led by Jan-Bart, kicked off
a process to develop a fundraising model for 2012 and beyond. The
first step is developing criteria against which fundraising and funds
dissemination models will be judged; the Board will then ask Sue and
the staff, with community input, to develop potential models and judge
them against the criteria. The process is laid out here, with links to
the pages for criteria, which everyone is encouraged to edit and
discuss.

* Trustee outreach and other activities

- Kat attended the Creative Commons Global Summit in Warsaw, Poland.

- Phoebe attended WikiSym 2011, an academic conference about wikis and
open collaborative software that was held this year in Mountain View,
California. There were many papers about Wikipedia research presented;
some of them are summarized here. Phoebe also presented a workshop at
WikiSym, with Reid Priedhorsky, about collecting the literature about
wikis and Wikipedia; see the workshop page for details.

- Ting attended WikiConvention 2011 in Nürnberg, Germany from Sep. 9th
to 11th, a community gathering of German Wikimedians. On Sep. 23rd he
made a speech on the OpenWorldForum in Paris about the Biography of
Living People Policy on Wikimedia projects.

- Stu continued to help develop Reports and started a new
movement-wide transparency page, Financial reports.

- Sam attended the launch of the Digital Public Library of America in
Washington, DC on October 21-22, as part of their Audience and
Participation workstream. He spoke in their plenary session about the
need to improve digital citations and the m:Wikicite project proposal.

- Bishakha was neckdeep in supporting the community team behind
WikiConference India 2011 which will take place from 18 to 20 November
2011.

- Jimmy spoke around the world in September: in Cambridge (YouGov),
Lima, Peru (conference of former South American Presidents),
Indianapolis, Indiana (marketing conference), London (ICT4D
conference), and Austin, Texas (school board members conference).
Additionally, he attended the unveiling of the new Human Rights Logo
in New York (where he was one of the judges). October took him to
London, Istanbul, San Francisco, Frankfurt, Bologna, New York, and
Amsterdam.

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[Foundation-l] Fwd: Open Access to Federally Funded Scientific Research

[phoebe ayers]

Following up on last year's OSTP call for comments (which I also sent
to foundation-l), the US government is seeking public comment on more
technical questions (including policy, repository and standards
development) related to sharing federally-funded scholarly data and
publications. This process is relevant for shaping access to a major
source of free knowledge, and such open access issues are of general
interest to many of us. Comments are due in January.

-- phoebe


- Forwarded Message -

The White House Office for Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has
released two Requests for Information, one on public access to digital
data resulting from federally funded scientific research and one on
public access to peer-reviewed scholarly publications resulting from
federally funded research. Responses are due January.

(1) "[T]his Request for Information (RFI) offers the opportunity for
interested individuals and organizations to provide recommendations on
approaches for ensuring long-term stewardship and encouraging broad
public access to unclassified digital data that result from federally
funded scientific researchResponse Date: January 12, 2012"
http://goo.gl/L1jn3

(2) "[T]his Request for Information (RFI) offers the opportunity for
interested individuals and organizations to provide recommendations on
approaches for ensuring long-term stewardship and broad public access
to the peer-reviewed scholarly publications that result from federally
funded scientific researchResponse Date:
January 2, 2012"
http://goo.gl/vTP18




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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Translations of September 2011 Wikimedia Highlights available in العربية (Arabic), Deutsch (German), Italiano (Italian), 日本語 (Japanese)

[phoebe ayers]

So cool! Thank you, WMF reports team! I look forward to hearing how
the experiment works :)

Phoebe

On Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 2:45 AM, Tilman Bayer  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> as mentioned in last week's announcement of the September 2011
> Wikimedia Foundation report, this time we published a separate
> "Highlights" summary, combining excerpts from the general report and
> the engineering report. It's an experiment, a format which might be
> useful for those who might find the full reports long to read, and it
> facilitates translations.
>
> Several translations are now available (help is welcome in spreading them):
>
> مجموعة من أهم ما جاء في تقرير مؤسسة ويكيميديا وتقرير هندسة ويكيمييديا
> لشهر سبتمبر 2011
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Highlights,_September_2011/ar
>
> Höhepunkte aus dem Monatsbericht und dem technischen Bericht der
> Wikimedia Foundation für September 2011
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Highlights,_September_2011/de
>
> I punti salienti presi dal Wikimedia Foundation Report e dal Wikimedia
> engineering report del mese di Settembre 2011
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Highlights,_September_2011/it
>
> 2011年9月のウィキメディア財団報告書及びウィキメディア技術報告より抄録
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Highlights,_September_2011/ja
>
> Thanks to all translators! Translations can still be added at
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Highlights,_September_2011
>
> As said above, this is an experiment, so it would be nice to hear how
> useful the result is to people, and what could be improved.
>
> I would also like to take the occasion to draw attention to
> "Wikimedia:Woche", an new weekly newsletter run by the German
> Wikimedia chapter, summarizing news from the whole movement in German
> language 
> (http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/vereinde-l/2011-September/005121.html
> ).  To my knowledge it is the first initiative of its kind by a
> chapter (of course there are already volunteer-run publications such
> as the Signpost, Wikizine and Kurier).
>
> --
> Tilman Bayer
> Movement Communications
> Wikimedia Foundation
> IRC (Freenode): HaeB
>
> ___
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> directed to Foundation-L, the public mailing list about the Wikimedia 
> Foundation and its projects. For more information about Foundation-L:
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Re: [Foundation-l] Letter to the community on Controversial Content

[phoebe ayers]

On Sun, Oct 9, 2011 at 9:10 AM, MZMcBride  wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
>> On 9 October 2011 14:18, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
>>> On 9 October 2011 13:55, Ting Chen  wrote:
 The majority of editors who responded to the referendum are not opposed
 to the feature. However, a significant minority is opposed.
>>>
>>> How do you know? The "referendum" didn't ask whether people were opposed or
>>> not.
>>
>> I fear this point will need restating every time someone claims the
>> "referendum" shows support.
>
> I wonder what the image filter referendum results would have had to look
> like in order to get anything other than a rambling "we march forward,
> unabated!" letter from the Board.
>
> MZMcBride

Hi MZM and all! Greetings from the end of a long -- but productive and
inspiring -- meeting weekend.

"Marching forward unabated" is not, in fact, what we are saying. The
board, and individual members of the board, are quite aware of all of
the criticisms from the vote and from the conversations on and off
list -- believe me. This is not an official report on behalf of the
board, but here is what we discussed doing:

* not going ahead with the category-based design that was proposed in
the mockups; it is clear there are too many substantive problems that
have been raised with this. Although this design (or any other) was
actually not specified in the resolution, it is obvious that many of
the critical comments were about using categorization in particular,
and we hear that.
* we are asking the staff to explore alternative designs, e.g. for a
way for readers to flag images for themselves, and collapse individual
images. This isn't fixed yet because it shouldn't be: we need to have
a further period of iterative community & technical design.
* not changing or revoking the Board resolution, because we do still
think that there is a problem with our handling of potentially
controversial content that needs to be addressed. We don't want to
ignore the criticism, and we *also* don't want to ignore the positive
comments from those who identified a problem and thought such a tool
would be helpful and useful in addressing it. Our view is holistic.
The Board discussed amending the resolution (we think, in particular,
that the word 'filter' has led to many assumptions about design), but
decided that for now the language of the resolution is broad enough
that it leaves room for alternative solutions. And we also do not want
to ignore the rest of the resolution -- the parts that call for better
tools for commons, and that lay out that we respect the principle of
least astonishment.

The speculation on this list the last few weeks about what individual
board members think and want has generally been wildly, hilariously
off base -- I have seen many statements about board member motivations
that couldn't have been more wrong -- but so has the speculation that
we don't care and have not been paying attention. My own views on
whether a filter as proposed is workable have changed over the past
couple of months. I appreciate especially the reasoned comments I have
seen from people who have taken the time to think it through and who
have wondered if a design as proposed would even work for readers, or
would be implementable. And I have been gratified to see people dig up
things like library statements of principle; as foundational documents
these are a good place to start from (as someone who has always seen
herself as a free speech advocate inside and outside of the library
world, this tactic has made me glad, even if we may differ on
interpretation). I also am glad for those comments that took the time
to look critically at the vote process -- we did make a lot of
mistakes, but we did learn a lot, and I hope with the help of all of
this input we can do a better job next time we have a broad-scale vote
(did you know that this was the single largest participatory exercise
in wikimedia's history? I could not have imagined that at the
beginning of this summer).

None of us on the board have any intention of being censors; that is
no one's desire and within no one's tolerance. I do think the
resolution principles (neutrality, principle of least astonishment)
that we laid out as guidelines for the tool are still good, strong
principles; and I wouldn't have voted for the resolution in the first
place if I thought what we were proposing encompassed or enabled
censorship. And what hasn't changed for me is the impetus behind the
resolution: a desire to work on behalf of *both* the editing community
and our broad (up to 7 billion!) community of readers, and a desire to
get perspectives from outside our own sometimes narrow conversational
community on the mailing lists and wikis.

We know there are a lot of questions that have been resolved over the
last few weeks about releasing vote data and so on that aren't
addressed in this letter; we did not address everything in our board
meeting either. As a board, we trust Sue to continue to implemen

[Foundation-l] "almost wikipedia" talk

[phoebe ayers]

Of interest:
Benjamin Mako Hill is giving a talk at the Berkman Center on October
11, entitled: "Almost Wikipedia: What Eight Collaborative Encyclopedia
Projects Reveal About Mechanisms of Collective Action"

It will be webcast:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2011/10/makohill

cheers,
phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Blog from Sue about censorship, editorial judgement, and image filters

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 2:46 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 29 September 2011 06:41, Keegan Peterzell  wrote:
>
>> http://suegardner.org/2011/09/28/on-editorial-judgment-and-empathy/
>> Pretty sound blog, no matter which position you take.  Naturally, please
>> discuss the blog on the blog and not thread this too much back to
>> conversation about the image filter.
>
>
> The trouble with responding on the blog is that responses seem to be
> being arbitrarily filtered, e.g. mine.
>
> So here's one that's particularly apposite:
>
> http://achimraschka.blogspot.com/2011/09/story-about-vulva-picture-open-letter.html
>
> He's the primary author of [[:de:Vulva]], and Sue called him all
> manner of names ("who are acting like provocateurs and agitators" that
> "need to be stopped"), but never ... actually ... contacted him to say
> any of this *to* him. Oh, and he's a member of the board of WMDE.
>
>
> - d.

For heaven's sake. This is the worst kind of cutting and pasting to
make a point I have seen in ages (Kim's experiments
notwithstanding)... I can't speak for Sue, of course, but when I read
the blog post I see nothing in there that says she is referring to the
author of this particular article (she refers only to the decision to
put the article on the mainpage, presumably not something that can be
traced to a single person).

The quotation you have made stands as a separate point, and is
unrelated to the discussion of the de main page above. She simply
says: "Those community members who are acting like provocateurs and
agitators need to stop." -- not identifying particular people, or even
particular topics. When I read this, what comes to *my* mind is some
of the recent dialog on Foundation-l -- some of which was certainly
intentionally provocative, and some of which did get very personal and
personally hurtful, to myself and others.

Sue's post is *not about the image filter*. It's about the dialog
around the image filter, some of which has been great and some of
which has sucked. It is, indeed, hard to talk to people when they
attack you for it. But I don't think there was any attacking in Sue's
post.

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions on controversial content and images of identifiable people

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 6:31 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
 wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 10:10 PM, phoebe ayers  wrote:>
>>
>> This seems like an over-hasty statement. There are many possible
>> categorization schemes that are neutral; the ALA in fact makes that
>> distinction itself, since libraries (obviously) use all kinds of labeling
>> and categorization schemes all the time. The ALA and other library
>> organizations have taken a stand against censorious and non-neutral
>> labeling, not all labeling. If you keep reading the ALA page you linked, it
>> says that the kind of labels that are not appropriate are when "the
>> prejudicial label is used to warn, discourage or prohibit users or certain
>> groups of users from accessing the material" -- e.g. a label that reads "not
>> appropriate for children". That does not mean that picture books for kids,
>> or mystery novels, or large-print books, aren't labeled as such in every
>> public library in the country -- and that is the difference between
>> informative and prejudicial labeling.
>
> Would I be incorrect in pointing out that American public librarys routinely
> exclude world famous childrens book author Astrid Lindgrens childrens
> books, because to puritanical minds a man who can elevate himself
> with a propeller beany, and look into childs rooms thereby, smacks too
> much of pedophilia?
>

Uh... yes, you would be incorrect? I certainly checked out Astrid
Lindgren books from the public library when I was a kid. I have never
heard of them getting challenged in the US. Citation needed?

The ALA maintains a list of books that do get routinely challenged in
US libraries here:
http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/frequentlychallenged/index.cfm.
Note, this just means someone *asked* for the book to be removed from
the public or school library, not that it actually was; libraries
generally stand up to such requests.

Also note that challenges are typically asking for the book to be
removed from the library altogether -- restricting access to it for
everyone in the community -- as opposed to simply not looking at it
yourself or allowing your own kids to check it out. It's the 'removal
for everyone' part that is the problem; the issue here is freedom of
choice: people should have the right to read, or not read, a
particular book as they see fit.

-- phoebe

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

[phoebe ayers]

On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 3:15 AM, Tobias Oelgarte
 wrote:
> 86% of the German contributers opposed the feature. Does the same
> pattern apply to the global poll, or was it just the difference in
> question? We don't know as long per project data isn't released. I
> repeatedly asked for this data for more then 2 weeks. So far, no
> additional data was released. It somehow starts to piss me off.
>
> Tobias

Tobias -- we all want to see the by-language correlations. It hasn't
been done yet, as far as I know (I haven't seen anything further
myself, nor has the rest of the board). This information isn't being
kept from you or hidden, the analysis just doesn't exist yet.
Patience!

-- phoebe

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

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 9:13 AM, Fae  wrote:
> Thanks Phoebe. I'm glad to hear that the WMF has used almost no
> donated money in staff costs running this global referendum.
>
> As a member of the board you may want to consider what it means in
> terms of operational accountability if such a large exercise with
> massive impact on our community has no measurable costs due to staff
> not reporting their time against it. I am puzzled at how your
> programme managers ever decide when to cancel projects if the
> resources they are consuming are not reported.
>
> With regard to your comments about massive and possibly excessive use
> of "free" volunteer time, as a UK charity we are interested in
> improving how we measure e-volunteer effort spent on our projects as
> we believe that we should take care to avoid volunteer "burn-outs"
> (which we see too many of) or using up all of the good will that is
> represented by the efforts of our volunteers, of which I am one,
> without maximizing the impact on our mission. Perhaps WMF could
> consider the same issues when judging the success of its projects?
>
> Cheers,
> Fae

Fae -- I'll be really interested to hear the results of what WMUK
finds on the volunteer-burnout front. It's an important issue, and one
we have largely glossed over in our 10-year history -- or just deal
with as individuals.

One note -- me not knowing what kind of staff time was reported
doesn't mean that reports don't exist; the staff don't report to the
board directly. We work on the level of the annual plan, and
divergence from it on a broad scale, so I was just speaking generally
about the resources used... And while this referendum caused way more
discussion than most things the WMF does, and thus had a much higher
volunteer and community time cost, in terms of money and staff time it
is a pretty tiny piece of the overall picture.

-- phoebe

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

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 3:01 AM, MZMcBride  wrote:
> Fae wrote:
>>> Fae wrote:
 Is there a link somewhere to the total budget and actual staff costs
 of the referendum?
>>>
>>> This was asked very early on:
>>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Image_filter_referendum/Archive1#Cost
>>
>> Sorry, not the same question as expected costs of implementation. I am
>> asking for the actual staff costs for running and analysing the
>> referendum itself (so far) plus any further planned costs. This should
>> be entirely known and openly reported.
>
> Oops. My bad.
>
> I don't know of any such link and I doubt you'll ever seen one (unless you
> write the page yourself!). The Wikimedia cost side would largely be focused
> in Philippe (for organizing the referendum) and maybe in a contractor or two
> for some work on SecurePoll. Off-hand, I can't think of anyone else who was
> really involved from Wikimedia's side. I don't know if there's a cost
> associated with the vote hosting (by SPI, I believe), though I'd assume
> there is. (Unless the hosting is donated.)
>
> Philippe organized a committee of users, so their time and resources would
> be calculated separately. All of their work was unpaid, as far as I know.
> Just another thankless task. "On Wikipedia, the reward for a job well done
> is another three jobs," as Mr. Gerard says. :-)
>
> Other than costs noted above, I can't really think of too much else that
> went into this. Some Board people and staffers have commented on this list
> and on the talk page, but most of that is negligible cost and/or volunteer
> cost. There are grey areas to consider as well. For example, would you
> consider the time and resources that went into the mock-ups as part of the
> referendum costs?

Thanks Mzm -- this is all correct. Of course the work on SecurePoll
also translates over for all the other elections; and work on filter
mockups was actually done beforehand and could more accurately be
counted as part of the implementation itself. As for the referendum
committee everyone was a volunteer, just like all the other election
committees, with the exception of Philippe who did this as yet another
task added to his list of things to do (so some percentage but not the
total of his overall time), and Maggie who observed (as she does many
projects).

Other staff time? Sue's spent hundreds of hours thinking about this; I
have no idea how you would separate that out from all the things she
does in her 18-hour days :) There's been a few meetings with tech
staff. Everyone on the staff has had to sort through a million emails
on the subject, because we're all subscribed to the same lists, but
that's a cost for everyone. In terms of people-hours spent replying on
the lists and such... that's awfully hard to calculate. A lot, to be
sure, but mostly volunteer time. I have personally spent heaven knows
how many hundred (unpaid) hours on this, but I just chalk it up to
being yet another Wikimedia project, albeit one that is taking a
disproportionate amount of energy... it's what we do. (Of course I am
not counting my therapy bills after this is all over, LOL).

-- phoebe

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

[phoebe ayers]

On Sun, Sep 11, 2011 at 10:53 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 11 September 2011 17:22, Kim Bruning  wrote:
>> On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 09:38:38AM -0700, Sue Gardner wrote:
>
>>> I wrote the questions, with Phoebe and SJ, in Boston at the Wikipedia
>>> in Higher Ed conference.
>>> It's not a secret -- I wrote about it here:
>>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AImage_filter_referendum%2FResults%2Fen&action=historysubmit&diff=2880100&oldid=2880046
>
>> Awesome. That puts so much into perspective :-)
>> Thank you for answering that question, Sue!
>
>
> Yes, thank you :-)
>
> I note SJ's comment on the lack of a "do you want this?" question:
>
> "I too wish that the separate question had been asked. –SJ talk |
> translate   20:54, 5 September 2011 (UTC)"
>
> SJ, what can now be done to ask this - vital and missing - question?
>
>
> - d.

David -- and all --

I've been away for a week offline, so am trying to catch up. I'm
picking a random point in the thread to try and answer lots of
questions at once, from my own viewpoint.

Re: the problems with the referendum -- it's my understanding that the
committee in charge of running the referendum will be conducting a
formal postmortem. But of course as someone involved I've been doing a
lot of thinking about it, and reading comments, and a lot of what I've
identified is just simple hindsight.

Here are some of those things:

a) In hindsight, of course we should not have called it a referendum;
it was a survey, or a poll, on various design questions. I don't think
anything specific was intended by the nomenclature one way or another
-- it just started out being called a referendum, and the name stuck,
and by the time people identified problems with that name the pages
had already been translated and it seemed too hard to change it.
Perhaps we should have anyway, given all the drama around the name.
But nothing special was meant by it one way or the other; certainly no
deception about intent.

b) In hindsight I would wanted us to get better analysis
infrastructure set up ahead of time, if I'd realized this would be the
single largest vote in Wikimedia history :) That said -- I am glad we
have learned some things about conducting votes, and I think that the
committee did handle the vote quite well. There are always things to
improve, but they did a great job at handling voting problems
gracefully and getting the results out fast, and I would like to thank
them for all of their work, as well as for handling a difficult topic
well -- committee members got a lot of undeserved personal flak as a
result of volunteering for this job.

c) In hindsight I would have done more to clarify the role of the
board in this process. The board didn't ask for the referendum to be
conducted; Sue did, as part of being directed to implement the board's
resolution. The board has naturally been sent the results, and I acted
as board liaison to the referendum committee, and helped think through
the questions -- but the referendum wasn't specifically a board
project. (The board did ask for the feature to be built in the first
place, however).

d) In hindsight I would have made sure that we had more careful review
of the questions for their utility as survey instruments, perhaps
running them past the research committee. There's not much precedent
for that, but we could start!

e) The big question -- should we have asked "yes or no" or not? I
pushed for not asking this directly because of the premise that we
were asking for broad-scale community input on design, and because the
board had already asked for the thing to be built, and because
"importance" felt like a more subtle measure of where people stood. In
hindsight, given all the controversy and the number of people who if
they were consulted at all wanted to be asked simply yes or no, that
was likely a mistake. People certainly made their views known in the
comments and talk pages though, and I am glad we have that rich input.

f) It's not a surprise to me, or the Board, that this is
controversial; from what the referendum did measure, it seems clear
that the community is fairly split. I am glad that we had the
referendum though, because it did reveal that split to be bimodal and
complex. I have reviewed a sampling of the comments, and along with
the negatives and those opposed on practical and philosophical grounds
there are many positives, and many arguments for why such a feature is
needed. And remember, we did broaden the net so that both long-term
heavy editors and occasional, mostly-reader editors had a chance to
say their piece, which I think was a success in getting much wider and
diverse input that we generally do just here on foundation-l or on
meta talk pages.

So given that, I think we owe it to the community to take both the
negatives and the positives seriously; we cannot in good faith ignore
either side.

Contrary to some speculation on this list, the board did try to think
hard through the pros and cons before a

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

[phoebe ayers]

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 3:22 PM, Lodewijk  wrote:
> Hi Phoebe,
>
> thanks a lot!
>
> Reading the minutes, I am wondering - are the reports of the independent
> companies (KPMG and Daniel J. Fusco & Company) available online so that the
> considerations of the board can be better understood? If so, it would
> probably be helpful to link them from the minutes :)
>
> Thanks,
>
> Lodewijk
>
> Am 12. September 2011 19:27 schrieb phoebe ayers :
>
>> FYI: the minutes from the August 3rd, 2011 Board meeting in Haifa (the
>> Wikimania meeting) are now posted:
>> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2011-08-03
>>
>> Regards,
>> Phoebe Ayers


Hey Lodewijk -- they are not online now, but I am checking to see if
they can be.

-- phoebe

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

[phoebe ayers]

Congratulations and welcome to Wikimedia District of Columbia, the
36th Wikimedia chapter and 2nd chapter to be formed in the U.S.:

Board resolution approving the chapter:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Recognition_of_Wikimedia_District_of_Columbia
For more information about the chapter:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_District_of_Columbia

-- Phoebe Ayers

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

[phoebe ayers]

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 1:50 PM, Tempodivalse  wrote:
> Greetings everyone,
>
> I thought the Wikimedia community should know that a large portion of 
> WIkinews' contributor base has forked into its own project 
> (http://theopenglobe.org) after becoming deeply dissatisfied with Wikinews. 
> The new wiki has finished its creation stage and is about ready to publish 
> news articles.
>
> At least nine users have pledged to support this fork, and several others 
> (including non-WN Wikimedians) are interested - more than there are active 
> remaining Wikinews contributors.
>
> -Tempodivalse

Hi Tempodivalse,

Thanks for the notice! I also wish OpenGlobe luck.

I went looking for discussion about this on Wikinews, and couldn't
find anything recent about this on the wikinews mailing list, the
English-language Wikinews (I didn't check the other languages) or on
Meta. I'm sure I just missed something. Can you point us to any
discussion links?

Thanks!
Phoebe

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

[phoebe ayers]

FYI: the minutes from the August 3rd, 2011 Board meeting in Haifa (the
Wikimania meeting) are now posted:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2011-08-03

Regards,
Phoebe Ayers


p.s. Digression on minutes:
Since I recently had to learn the process by which board minutes are
written and approved, I thought I would share it with you all --
possibly of interest to long-time foundation watchers :)

1. both the executive assistant to the board & the board secretary
take notes during the meeting; the executive assistant makes sure that
no important items are lost and their presence as recorder allows the
board secretary to fully participate in the meeting. [in this case
additionally since it was a transition meeting both SJ and I took
notes and shared with each other].
2. notes are typed up in minute form by the the executive assistant,
who then gives the document to the board secretary, who then reviews
and edits, and then shares the minutes with the board. This process
may take some time (e.g. after Wikimania when everyone is traveling or
participating in the conference afterwards).
3. the minutes are voted on as a regular resolution; this means a week
for the full board to discuss/edit onwiki if there are any typos or if
the minutes don't reflect the meeting accurately. After finalization
there is then a two-week period to vote to approve (in practice the
voting period for minutes is generally shortened to a week);
occasionally minutes may get approved by a vote at the next meeting.
4. after approval, the board secretary posts the minutes to the
foundation wiki, as the copy of record for the
community/board/auditors etc.

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

[phoebe ayers]

On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 12:37 AM, Achal Prabhala  wrote:
>
> On Monday 05 September 2011 03:53 AM, Kim Bruning wrote:
>> On Sun, Sep 04, 2011 at 11:54:44PM +0100, Thomas Dalton wrote:
 Yes, exactly! You're smart! :-)

 Now, one definition of censorship is :
 * Filtering on the basis of prejudicial labels.

 We're not actually allowed to censor, because censorship is evil.

 If we want to do this, we'll need to figure out a way to make an image
>>> filter
 which does not use prejudicial labels.
>>> Or we just reject that definition as obviously not applicable. If people are
>>> choosing for themselves whether to filter and, if so, what on then it
>>> clearly isn't censorship.
>> [citation needed]
>>
>> I don't see why it isn't applicable. You have a censorship tool (your
>> prejudicial labelling scheme), and you are applying it for its intended
>> purpose (albeit mildly).
>
> Hi Kim, I find your discussion of labelling schemes (and the American
> Library Associations guidelines) extremely useful and interesting. Thank
> you for taking the time to explain this carefully. It has helped clear
> up, for me, similar questions to the kind that Sarah and others raised
> on this list earlier.
>
>> I think that's pretty much sufficient to cross the line into actual
>> censorship. Even if you can't quite see how right now, AMA probably can
>> and has. (I can easily think of some scenarios myself, if you like. In
>> fact, I gave some tangential examples on this list today.)
>>
>> But... even if we can't agree that *that* is actually across the line,
>> the same censorship tool can still be used by others for more sinister
>> purposes. High quality prejudicial categorization would most certainly
>> be a boon for 3rd party censors, in many many ways.
>>
>> So the options you are advocating are either (arguably) actual
>> censorship, or (if we can't agree to that) the enabling of 3rd party
>> censorship.
>>
>> The board themselves in their decision are very careful not to cross
>> those lines. My one issue with the board is merely that I think it is
>> very hard _not_ to cross the line.
>>
>> Of course, some people don't see the danger, and blithely cross
>> the line anyway. (Thus proving my point for me much better than anything
>> I could say myself O:-) )
>>
>> sincerely,
>>       Kim Bruning
>>
>> citation:
>>       
>> http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/intfreedom/librarybill/interpretations/labelingrating.cfm
>
>
> In relation to the ALA link (which is an exemplar of concision and moral
> clarity), I have a few related questions.
>
> 1) Would the article rating tool (Good? Useful? Reliable? etc.) or
> indeed any other comparable qualitative rating/ranking (for e.g. GA/ FA
> status) similarly classify as prejudicial labelling? I ask this because
> in the article rating tool, I can see it fitting under the same
> category, but can't see how it would lead to the same results. An
> archive or library would never employ a qualitative rating like we did,
> but it makes sense on a place like Wikipedia, and I guess it's because
> we're not a traditionally constructed archive or library - though very
> similar in some aspects.

Achal -- yes, I believe a strong case can be made that qualitative
rating would fall under the ALA's intent (in traditional libraries, a
book might be labeled as "award winner" -- that's an objective fact.
It would not be labeled as "good".)

The difference lies in our role as active editors (vs the librarian
role as curators), making active choices; a reference work is a
different kind of project from a library. It also lies in a difference
in intent -- what the ALA speaks out about is labeling that is
intended to restrict access. None of our labeling intends to restrict
access to anything for anyone.

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Tragedy: videos and slides from presentations Wikimanias (lately 2011 in Haifa)

[phoebe ayers]

On Sat, Sep 3, 2011 at 5:30 AM, Andrea Zanni  wrote:
> Well, it seems that every year we choose locations that for one reason or
> the other are likely not to be accessible to some groups or nationality (I
> hear complaints every year about these issues)(no judgements, just a fact).
> So I agree that this uploading issue should be faced once for all,
> setting up a workflow with WMF technicians that would allow videos and
> slides to be online in reasonable time.
>
> Aubrey
>

Yes!  if we can set up a system for media upload *before* the next
conference to try and address this issue, which does come up every
year, that would be fantastic.

Copying wikitech :) The problem: how and where should we annually
upload video and slides from ~100 conference presentations, keeping
them freely & easily accessible and the metadata (such as links to
papers, submission pages, wikipages of notes, etc) intact?

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions on controversial content and images of identifiable people

[phoebe ayers]

On Sat, Aug 27, 2011 at 1:20 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 27 August 2011 09:04,   wrote:
>> On Aug 26, 2011 11:12am, David Gerard  wrote:
>>> On 26 August 2011 16:06, David Goodman dgge...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> > This labeling is proposed to be done on the basis not of the regular
>>> > commons categories, but of special ones designed for the purpose; not
>>> > on the regular WP editors, but a special committee.
>
>>> Ooh, *really*. Then this initiative will be bitterly resisted at every
>>> turn.
>
>> I am not sure if your wording implies that I am being excessively negative
>> or skeptical. But yes, I very definitely think it should be resisted at
>> every stage of implementation. What else can we do, if the people who
>> should be providing services to us, try to run things for us. the community
>> is sometimes wrong; the board is sometimes right. I would rather go wrong
>> with the community , than right with the board.T, there is no other way of
>> preserving the values of independence and spontaneity which are the essence
>> of our projects. The distinctiveness of Wikipedia is that we are a
>> community-directed project, and no person or group--even groups of our own
>> choosing-- has the authority to lead us.
>
>
> That's what I meant - plans for a special committee, and not a
> community decision, had somehow escaped my notice. That's just a
> ridiculously, amazingly, bad idea. The community is frequently on
> crack, but a special committee for this job can only be worse.
>
> Is it in fact the case that the job is to be handed to a special
> committee? If so, who thought this was a good idea and why?
>
>
> - d.

This is the first I've heard of a special committee :) Not sure where
that idea came from...

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions on controversial content and images of identifiable people

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 8:14 AM, Kim Bruning  wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 05:21:23PM +0200, Milos Rancic wrote:
> > Board was aware of that, as the first Robert Harris' report included
> > very similar text from Canadian librarian association.
>
> I would then like to point out that there is no practical way to
> make a value-neutral categorisation scheme to use for filtering.



This seems like an over-hasty statement. There are many possible
categorization schemes that are neutral; the ALA in fact makes that
distinction itself, since libraries (obviously) use all kinds of labeling
and categorization schemes all the time. The ALA and other library
organizations have taken a stand against censorious and non-neutral
labeling, not all labeling. If you keep reading the ALA page you linked, it
says that the kind of labels that are not appropriate are when "the
prejudicial label is used to warn, discourage or prohibit users or certain
groups of users from accessing the material" -- e.g. a label that reads "not
appropriate for children". That does not mean that picture books for kids,
or mystery novels, or large-print books, aren't labeled as such in every
public library in the country -- and that is the difference between
informative and prejudicial labeling.

The ALA also makes a point of stating that materials should be on open
shelves and accessible to everyone regardless of labeling -- this comes out
of, among other things, the once-common practice of not allowing children in
the adult section of the library. The natural equivalent for us I think is
to make sure that all materials we host are accessible to everyone
regardless of any label, which is certainly a principle we have and continue
to uphold.

The Board didn't specify any particular mechanism or system in our
resolution. What we did was to ask for a particular kind of feature and
spell out some principles for its development. We talked about neutral
language in the interface, and our intent was exactly that distinction I
noted between informative and prejudicial -- we do not wish to set up a
system that privileges certain value judgments about content. We wish
*readers to have a choice* when they use our projects -- one they do not
have now unless they are remarkably technically inclined and
forward-looking.

We didn't address the categorization system in particular because frankly,
it's not our business. It's the community's, and tech's. And the Trustees
didn't all agree on whether we thought categorization as proposed in the
first draft of the system was the best idea, anyway; some of us thought it
was appropriately in line with the principle of least astonishment, and some
of us thought it could lead to problems. But we did come to consensus on the
high-level idea as expressed in the resolution, and we agreed and understood
that the ideas around how to implement it would have to iterate, with
reevaluation along the way. But after all, developing informative, neutral
and useful systems for organizing information is something that the
Wikimedia projects have become world-famous for -- so if anyone can do it I
have faith that we can :)

As I told DGG, there's a lot of caveats in that resolution. And those
caveats are there for a reason. It should not be extrapolated that the Board
as a whole *actually* supports a particular, or different, or more
censorious, filtering scheme. What we want is for people to easily be able
to hide images for themselves if they don't want to see them when using our
projects. (And we also want other things, like better tools for Commons,
that are expressed in other parts of that resolution.)

I know we are all looking forward to seeing the referendum results, and the
data from it will need to be carefully considered. In the meantime I am glad
to see more discussion of this, but I am remembering that it is a stressful
topic!

best,
-- phoebe
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Re: [Foundation-l] Board of Trustees activity report - May-June 2011

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 12:16 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo)
wrote:

> phoebe ayers, 04/08/2011 07:29:
> > The Board has been working on a report of our activities; please find the
> > first report, covering May and June of this year, below. This is a short
> > summary, meant to help share our work with the community and movement,
> and
> > help make Board work and trustee activities more accessible&
>  transparent.
>
> Thank you!
> For the next reports, you might consider to define the scope of the
> report better. For instance, it's probably not suitable for
> blog.wikimedia.org because it's not for the general public, but this
> means that you can worry less about some things which are difficult to
> explain.
> As far as I understand, it's meant to cover the activities of all board
> members and represent the board as a whole: this is going to be very
> hard work! But another consequence is that it will contain only
> "official board positions", as opposed to e.g. the point of view of the
> 3 or 3+2 community members. This is up to you, but then I don't
> understand the purpose of the first half of the report (before "Other
> Board work"): as it is, it might be just a duplicate of the resolutions
> and minutes on the wiki; not more informative, nor significantly
> shorter, nor providing different insights. In other words, you could
> consider to drop that part reducing your work and the community could
> just learn to read the resolutions (which are few and short) and minutes
> (which are not so long after all) on the wiki. For those who don't know,
> there are also feeds for them (as for any wiki page, hence quite raw,
> but still serving the purpose).
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolutions
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Meetings
>
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Resolutions&feed=atom&action=history
>
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Meetings&feed=atom&action=history
>
> Nemo
>
> Thanks Nemo!
It is true that the first part of the report is a duplication of the
resolutions & meeting minutes that we publish. My assumption here was that
not everyone keeps up with all of the board resolutions etc :) It is also
nice to have a single record of everything we did in a given time period; I
was mainly trying to be complete. Of course those who are already familiar
with all of this should feel free to skip over this section. (But if there's
a way to make it more useful, that would be great -- and if others think it
should be dropped as well let me know!)

I'm not sure why you say this is not for the general public. I would not
mind if the general public read it -- there's nothing confidential. The only
reason to not disseminate it as-is on the blog is that it is kind of dry and
not especially well written :)

My hope here is that the reports would be: a) a way for our wider community
(i.e. people who don't follow the wmfwiki) to know what the board is up to;
b) a way for everyone, internally and externally, to see some of the other
work the board does that is not well known -- for instance the board
governance committee stuff; c) highlight some of the awesome work our
trustees do on their own out in the world with communities and outreach.
(And maybe some of these activities will turn into more interesting blog
posts!)

I imagine that the people potentially interested in this might be
Wikimedians, internal folks of all types, and even external people like our
partners. Part of my motivation is to answer the question "what does the
board do???" which seems to come up at every board election :)

At any rate I will be working on July-August this weekend and then I expect
it will take a couple of weeks for the board members to get all of their
submissions in and review the report. And then I hope to refine the schedule
so we can get it out sooner. So please do keep the comments coming and let
me know what needs to be changed.

best,
phoebe
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Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions on controversial content and images of identifiable people

[phoebe ayers]

On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 9:03 AM, Kim Bruning  wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 01, 2011 at 01:17:15PM -0700, phoebe ayers wrote:
> > This week, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees unanimously
> > passed a resolution addressing the issue of controversial content on
> > the projects. The Board also unanimously passed a resolution
> > addressing images of identifiable, living people on the projects. The
> > resolutions are posted at:
>
>
> > http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Controversial_content
>
> Re:
>
> # We ask the Executive Director, in consultation with the
> # community, to develop and implement a personal image hiding
> # feature that will enable readers to easily hide images hosted on
> # the projects that they do not wish to view, either when first
> # viewing the image or ahead of time through preference settings.
> # We affirm that no image should be permanently removed because of
> # this feature, only hidden; that the language used in the
> # interface and development of this feature be as neutral and
> # inclusive as possible; that the principle of least astonishment
> # for the reader is applied; and that the feature be visible,
> # clear and usable on all Wikimedia projects for both logged-in
> # and logged-out readers.
>
> At the time this point looked pretty uncontroversial, especially
> in context. However, I feel that most currently proposed
> mecahnisms for implementation of this point actually (indirectly)
> violate the other points in the resolution.
>
> To wit, the proposed implementation of a category system for
> controversial content (required for many plausible implementations
> of this point) is exploitable by 3rd parties and/or can lead to
> in-community conflicts; depending on the exact chosen
> implementation.
>
> Such exploits and/or conflicts could indirectly end up censoring
> wikipedia, and/or end up violating the Neutral Point Of View
> founding principle.
>
> Also, the consultation with the community is currently rather heavy
> handed; by which I mean that the power balance might not be in
> favor of those who are most influenced by the implementation.
>
> This is something that should certainly be watched carefully, and
> perhaps further amendment, clarification, or retraction by the
> foundation might be needed.
>
> sincerely,
>Kim Bruning
>
>
Thanks Kim; I agree there's a lot of room to figure out the best way to do
this, and problems with possible interpretations or implementations. That's
part of the thought behind putting this up for another round of discussion
(albeit in a different manner than the other rounds).

As for the power balance issue: this tool is ultimately for the readers. We
don't have a good way for readers to vote, though. And I am also personally
sympathetic to the idea that the stakeholders -- i.e. the editing community
-- should be the ones to vote anyway. We did set a very low suffrage bar for
this vote (10 edits, in good standing): I think it might be the lowest ever,
actually. I think one thing that will come out of this, which I'm really
happy about, is that we will learn a lot more about a broadly consultative
vote and how to do it well.

best,
phoebe
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Referendum 2011 mailout — issues

[phoebe ayers]

 Every time we've run an election of any kind with emails, to the best of my
knowledge, the email has caused a huge jump in participation. This time,
sending the email led to an additional 5000 votes overnight, which more than
doubled the total vote count. I don't have the numbers to hand, but we saw a
similar email-bump in the last board election.

So if the goal is lots of participation, then I think email is warranted.
But we just need to iterate and get better at it... as Andrew is indeed
working on :)

-- phoebe



On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 8:32 AM, Huib Laurens  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Maybe we shouldn't e-mail every user every time there is a vote.
>
> There has never been a run that didn't cause any problems and like
> Andrew was saying elsewhere they know the system doesn't check for
> global blocks and multible blocks.
>
> So there will be a lot of false positives. And a lot of people will
> get spam because they did create a account and did some edits...
> People that think Wikimedia is sending spam will leave instead of
> vote.
>
> There is already a global site notice. This e-mails was't needed...
>
>
> 2011/8/19, Andrew Garrett :
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I've just started sending out over 750,000 emails to folks who are
> > eligible to vote in our Wikimedia Referendum. I've learned from past
> > mailouts in trying to exclude more bots, multiple accounts and folks
> > who've already voted. However, if you receive an email which doesn't
> > apply to you (for example, if you're not eligible to vote, or you've
> > requested to be excluded from such mailouts), or if there's a problem
> > with the email that you receive (for example, it's in the wrong
> > language), I've set up a page [1] where you can report it. Remember
> > that you can always opt out from all future mailings [2].
> >
> > I'm hoping that having a central page for this information will help
> > in investigating the issues associated with errant mail, and allow
> > future mail to be better targetted.
> >
> > Thanks a lot for your help,
> >
> > —Andrew
> >
> > [1]
> >
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image_filter_referendum/Email/False_positives
> > [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_nomail_list
> >
> > --
> > Andrew Garrett
> > Wikimedia Foundation
> > agarr...@wikimedia.org
> >
> > ___
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
> --
> Verzonden vanaf mijn mobiele apparaat
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Huib Laurens
> WickedWay.nl
>
> Webhosting the wicked way.
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Movement Roles: my suggestion of "Language Contact Persons"

[phoebe ayers]

On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 7:58 AM, church.of.emacs.ml <
church.of.emacs...@googlemail.com> wrote:

> On 08/14/2011 11:41 PM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote:
> > I support the idea of language contact persons, or ambassadors, but
> > their appointment shouldn't be as rigidly regulated as the appointment
> > of administrators.
>
> I agree, instead of only two responsible persons there should be a group
> of people who are A) in intense communication with each other, B) post
> WMF/foundation-l news on their wiki, C) summarize and post to
> WMF/foundation-l what's bothering the local community (also positive
> feedback).
>
> If they are volunteers, you can't force them to post monthly reports on
> foundation-l (encourage them instead) or demand too much of them. And
> you shouldn't put them through an elaborate voting process, since anyone
> can help and afaik not much harm has been done in that area.
>
> There are already ambassadors, originally for the monobook->vector
> switch, but not much has happened since then. The mailing list is inactive:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-ambassadors
>
> The ideas of wiki ambassadors (general, not restricted to usability or
> technical matters) should be revived. I think it worked okay for the
> usability initiative with much room for improvement.
>
> Regards,
> Tobias
>
>
I love this idea, and of reviving the Wikipedia ambassadors/embassies idea.
One good focus point for reviving them might be to create a language report
the way Ziko suggests -- another idea I love.

Let's do it! What's the best way to encourage embassies, especially on small
projects that may have never had them before?

best,
phoebe
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Re: [Foundation-l] Alec Conroy

[phoebe ayers]

That's really unfortunate :(

The best way I can think of to honor his recent contributions is to have a
look at his meta userpage:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Alecmconroy

which is filled with all sorts of good and ambitious ideas about the future
of our projects, and begin to discuss them.
best,
phoebe


On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 9:14 PM, Milos Rancic  wrote:

> Anyone in contact with him? He has been frustrated with some recent
> events [1]; I got his email during the second day of Wikimania
> [madness] and I hadn't realized that I have to hurry before he closed
> his email account.
>
> I think that his insights are very important for Wikimedia movement
> and that we need people like he is. So, I would appreciate if anyone
> is able to reach him and tell him that we miss him.
>
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Alecmconroy
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Chapters

[phoebe ayers]

On Fri, Aug 12, 2011 at 7:06 AM, Birgitte SB  wrote:

>
>
>
>
>
> >____
> >rom: phoebe ayers 
> >To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List 
> >Sent: Friday, August 12, 2011 8:13 AM
> >Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Chapters
> >
> >On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 10:13 PM, Michael Snow  >wrote:
> >
> >> On 8/11/2011 7:08 PM, phoebe ayers wrote:
> >> > Anyway, thanks for raising the importance of decentralization. The
> >> > Board agrees: there's a reason it was first in our list of principles.
> >> > To my mind "decentralization is important" raises a whole bunch of
> >> > other important questions: is decentralization more important than
> >> > efficiency as a working principle?
> >> I think it is, at least up to a point. We need to have a diversity of
> >> tools and actors involved in fundraising, and decentralization should
> >> help that if done well. Also, we do not have an obligation to maximize
> >> revenue, so efficiency is not necessarily a cardinal virtue. I don't
> >> mean that we should disregard efficiency, but we can choose to sacrifice
> >> a bit of efficiency if, as a tradeoff, this benefits some other value we
> >> think is important like decentralization.
> >> > One thing that struck me about reviewing chapter financials was that
> >> > there are 20+ chapters that don't directly receive donations and
> >> > haven't applied for many grants to date, and thus have little to no
> >> > money to support program work. Though mostly outside the scope of the
> >> > Board's letter, this is for instance one part of our model that I
> >> > would like to see change -- Wikimedians everywhere should have better
> >> > access to resources to get things done. On this specific point, I do
> >> > disagree with Birgitte -- I think a well-developed grants program [and
> >> > it's true we're not there yet, but want to be soon] could actually
> >> > help us decentralize faster, in that to obtain money needed for
> >> > program work chapters or other groups wouldn't have to develop the
> >> > (increasingly difficult) infrastructure needed to directly fundraise
> >> > with all the attendant legal and fiduciary concerns.
> >> I like the sound of this, but with a note of caution about a
> >> "well-developed" grants program. In many contexts, as grants programs
> >> develop and mature, grantees end up needing to develop increasingly
> >> complex infrastructure to secure and manage grants. At that point, it
> >> may not be any more helpful to these objectives than the model we are
> >> trying to move away from.
> >>
> >> --Michael Snow
> >>
> >
> >Fair point. By "well-developed" I just meant "something that works well."
> >One of the criteria of working well could be low overhead... Again, the
> idea
> >of supporting grants is not exclusive to the WMF: I am so pleased to see
> the
> >expansion of the WMDE program, as well.
> >
> >-- phoebe
> >I can't help but point out that is begging the question. [1] It is a
> logical fallacy to say in answer to concerns that a grants program won't
> work well that you are supporting well-developed grants program (defined as
> something that works well).  It is just wishful thinking.
>
> BirgitteSB
>
>
> [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
>
>
Sorry, I didn't intend to beg the question. Maybe I misread Michael's
comment. I thought he was saying that a high-overhead grants program, such
as many granting organizations end up with after a few years, would not be
helpful. My response is that we should strive to build a functional
low-overhead grants program. Yes, that is "wishful thinking", since it's an
aspirational goal, but it's also in response to concern over a hypothetical
future... I think it's totally fair to think about what kind of criteria we
would like to see in a grants program generally (e.g. low overhead, open to
all, etc.), since the program will need to be expanded quite a bit if it
covers funding many more chapters and groups. Now if people don't think it's
*possible* to build a low-overhead grants program, that's a fair point :)

best,
phoebe
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Re: [Foundation-l] Chapters

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 10:13 PM, Michael Snow wrote:

> On 8/11/2011 7:08 PM, phoebe ayers wrote:
> > Anyway, thanks for raising the importance of decentralization. The
> > Board agrees: there's a reason it was first in our list of principles.
> > To my mind "decentralization is important" raises a whole bunch of
> > other important questions: is decentralization more important than
> > efficiency as a working principle?
> I think it is, at least up to a point. We need to have a diversity of
> tools and actors involved in fundraising, and decentralization should
> help that if done well. Also, we do not have an obligation to maximize
> revenue, so efficiency is not necessarily a cardinal virtue. I don't
> mean that we should disregard efficiency, but we can choose to sacrifice
> a bit of efficiency if, as a tradeoff, this benefits some other value we
> think is important like decentralization.
> > One thing that struck me about reviewing chapter financials was that
> > there are 20+ chapters that don't directly receive donations and
> > haven't applied for many grants to date, and thus have little to no
> > money to support program work. Though mostly outside the scope of the
> > Board's letter, this is for instance one part of our model that I
> > would like to see change -- Wikimedians everywhere should have better
> > access to resources to get things done. On this specific point, I do
> > disagree with Birgitte -- I think a well-developed grants program [and
> > it's true we're not there yet, but want to be soon] could actually
> > help us decentralize faster, in that to obtain money needed for
> > program work chapters or other groups wouldn't have to develop the
> > (increasingly difficult) infrastructure needed to directly fundraise
> > with all the attendant legal and fiduciary concerns.
> I like the sound of this, but with a note of caution about a
> "well-developed" grants program. In many contexts, as grants programs
> develop and mature, grantees end up needing to develop increasingly
> complex infrastructure to secure and manage grants. At that point, it
> may not be any more helpful to these objectives than the model we are
> trying to move away from.
>
> --Michael Snow
>

Fair point. By "well-developed" I just meant "something that works well."
One of the criteria of working well could be low overhead... Again, the idea
of supporting grants is not exclusive to the WMF: I am so pleased to see the
expansion of the WMDE program, as well.

-- phoebe
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Re: [Foundation-l] Chapters

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 10:46 AM, David Gerard  wrote:

> On 9 August 2011 18:29, geni  wrote:
> > On 9 August 2011 08:18, David Gerard  wrote:
> >> On 9 August 2011 05:13, Kirill Lokshin 
> wrote:
>
> >>> This is all very true, and very insightful; but what does it have to do
> with
> >>> chapters?
>
> >> That the message from WMF is about a decentralisation not working from
> >> their perspective, so recentralising fundraising.
>
> > However it was the WMF that created that particular model of
> > decentralisation  in the first place.
>
>
> This is begging the question: it presumes ownership. It also assumes
> that destroying that decentralisation is symmetrical with having first
> allowed and encouraged it, which is not in any way the case.
>
> The real problem with the present approach is - *even if* it's a
> correct thing for the trustees to do (once we're actually clear on
> what it is they're doing) - is:
>
> * Number of chapters people who've gone "hey, great idea!": 0.
> * Number of chapters people who've gone "you're pissing us about so
> badly we almost can't work with you": quite a lot.
>
> Hi! It's a little hard to generalize, but this was not actually my
impression of the general tone at Wikimania, which was pretty different from
the list discussions. There, I had a few folks tell me that it was good to
try to crack down on problems that had occurred as a result of the
[past/current] fundraising model, and others said they agreed with the
intent [of improving financial controls] but thought our process sucked --
which I personally agree with; as I told several people, we felt a bit stuck
between a rock & a hard place in wanting to get this out quickly under the
circumstances. Several chapters are unhappy over logistics and timing, which
is understandable; a few feel their autonomy is being taken away, but many
are just as glad to not bother with fundraising.

Note that there are two questions raised in our letter -- one is the issue
of good stewardship of money coming in through WMF-trademarked websites,
which is an issue the Foundation Board does feel responsibility and
ownership for; and second is the question of chapter funding and budgeting,
which is a good deal more controversial and is certainly not a resolved
issue -- we have iterated funding models for many years. (NB for those who
aren't participating in current chapter fundraising, this year's agreement
is different from previous ones -- it requires a chapter budget to be
submitted to the WMF, with direct donation receipt up to that amount.)

I'd say the issues of chapter autonomy that Birgitte raised in her eloquent
mail, and as raised in other threads, do go well beyond the fairly technical
point of "whose bank account does the money enter when donors give through
Wikipedia?" As others have noted in this thread, "fundraising" encompasses a
great deal more than that, which the WMF certainly recognizes. The question
"how should chapters get funded, and how do they or anyone else decide how
much money they need?" is more general and important, but questions of
autonomy even go beyond that. It is my belief, from conversations with all
kinds of Wikimedians, that the fundamental question of "what should a
chapter be?" doesn't currently have consensus or agreement among all of the
stakeholders, including the various chapters themselves -- and it is this
point that will especially need deep and ongoing conversation as we continue
to figure out what we're all doing.

Anyway, thanks for raising the importance of decentralization. The Board
agrees: there's a reason it was first in our list of principles. To my mind
"decentralization is important" raises a whole bunch of other important
questions: is decentralization more important than efficiency as a working
principle? How do we also implement decentralized dispute resolution when
two entities disagree? How do we make sure people who don't consider
themselves aligned with any particular body, including readers and donors,
are represented in decision making? Who allots funds; who makes sure funds
keep coming in? Who is responsible for keeping wikipedia.org up and alive?
How do we align the WMF's specific legal responsibilities with those of a
decentralized movement? (These and many more questions are also part of the
movement roles project discussions, btw; see meta).

One thing that struck me about reviewing chapter financials was that there
are 20+ chapters that don't directly receive donations and haven't applied
for many grants to date, and thus have little to no money to support program
work. Though mostly outside the scope of the Board's letter, this is for
instance one part of our model that I would like to see change --
Wikimedians everywhere should have better access to resources to get things
done. On this specific point, I do disagree with Birgitte -- I think a
well-developed grants program [and it's true we're not there yet, but want
to be soon] could actually help us decentralize

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

[phoebe ayers]

On Sat, Aug 6, 2011 at 6:42 AM, Michael Snow  wrote:

> On 8/5/2011 7:17 PM, Nathan wrote:
> > John's e-mail reads like a suggestion that the Foundation negotiated
> > in bad faith. I hope this isn't the case, although the references made
> > to consulting with outside auditors and meetings of the Audit
> > Committee suggest this decision may have been conceived prior to the
> > Fundraising Summit.
> The audit committee met and discussed this in July, so after the
> fundraising summit. I don't know the exact timeline of everything that
> went into this, but at that point it was my sense that it was only just
> coming together as an actual decision, if you will. That's not to say
> that chapter accountability and reporting, particularly around finances,
> has never come up as a concern before.
>

Yes.

I am going to send this note to both f-l and internal-l; forgive me,
everyone who gets duplications. As to the question of "why internal" --
internal-l has a policy that at least a couple representatives from each and
every chapter are added to it automatically, along with all wmf staff and
board members, so it is the appropriate venue to make an announcement
regarding chapters. The discussions there are not so much confidential
(though they could be, as it's a closed list) as of focused to chapters (but
perhaps not to others).  It is of course also appropriate to discuss in
public, which is why I posted the letter to meta and f-l.

All that said, a note on timing -- yes, this came together quite recently,
and was spurred by a report from our audit committee. The board treasurer
Stu West, who chairs that committee, then brought the issue to the whole
board at our most recent in-person meeting -- three days ago here in Haifa.
We had input and reports from Barry and Moushira about funds raised to date,
current accounts, and reporting practices of the chapters, as well as the
state of the current fundraising agreements; we are of course aware that
people are thinking about the fundraiser now (as is the wmf, of course!)

Our issue in timing our discussion and decision was to find a balance
between appropriate notification and negotiation time with all of the
chapters, and meeting as soon as possible what the Board of Trustees sees as
its legal and financial obligations to safeguard money that comes in through
WMF-trademarked websites. That is the crux of the matter for us -- not to
comment on chapter effectiveness or governance or how great everyone's work
on the fundraiser is (which goes well beyond processing money for both the
WMF and the chapters).

Following the board discussion at the meeting, we drafted the letter you
have read, in a lengthy and often difficult process -- all of the issues
that have been raised here were thought about, and more. At that point we
had a choice. Wait, talk to the chapters, and get even closer to the
fundraiser before sending it out? Or send it out now while we are at
Wikimania and at least have a chance to talk to some chapters in person? We
chose the latter, and I am glad about that, because we are indeed short on
time.

That's what happened. As to the implications, I would encourage all of the
fundraising chapters to read this part:
"In particular, we expect all parties to live up to current fundraising
agreements including full compliance with all reporting deadlines."

We are quite concerned that some chapters who have signed fundraising
agreements (now and in the past) have actually been unable to live up their
requirements of reporting on time and meeting other needs; however, we
expect all parties -- the WMF and the chapters -- to follow the agreements
that have been signed. (If parts of the agreement are not followed on either
side, we also expect that the agreement will be invalidated).  We also
expect all parties to take into account the principles we lay out here, the
very most important one of which is:  "The Foundation can confidently assure
donors to the chapter that their donations will be safeguarded, that our
movement's transparency principles will be met, and that spending will be in
line with our mission and with the messages used to attract donors."

And we appreciate that many chapters (the majority of which don't fundraise
at all, in fact) either cannot or are unable to meet various parts of these
principles or the current agreement. We don't want to leave anyone stranded;
to that end, we are committed to increasing and expanding grants for chapter
operations.

-- phoebe
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[Foundation-l] Board letter about fundraising and chapters

[phoebe ayers]

All,
At the recent Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees meeting at Wikimania,
the Board approved sending the following letter regarding concerns with our
shared fundraising practice, and outlining principles for future fundraising
practices.

This  will also be posted at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_accountability for discussion.
Note: for those currently at Wikimania, please feel free to ask us questions
in person as well as on the list or on meta.

best,
Phoebe Ayers
(2011-12 Board Secretary)

---

The Board of Trustees has recently reviewed our fundraising model and issues
related to the way donor funds are received. This review followed detailed
discussions among the Board's Audit Committee and with our outside auditors,
which highlighted issues about the level of financial controls over donor
funds that go directly to the chapters who act as payment processors. This
review focused on the model established last year, under which donors in
certain countries are exclusively directed to the local chapter during the
annual fundraiser. In our 2010-2011 year, about $4M net went directly to 12
chapters, representing roughly 15% of the total funds donated to the
movement.

There are several problems with this model, and with the current fundraising
situation. Some chapters have received large sums of money early in their
organizational lives, before they have built the capacity and financial
controls to safeguard and best use those resources in pursuit of the
mission. Some chapters have received many times their planned budget in a
single fundraiser. Additionally, in some countries, transferring funds
internationally has been limited by regulatory constraints.

There are also currently no movement-wide controls applied consistently to
all entities that receive donor funds. Some chapters, despite being
well-funded, have not reported in a timely way on their activities, their
financial status, and their use of donor funds, or have had difficulties
following the regulatory requirements of their countries.

This fundraising model has also contributed to significant resource
disparity among chapters. Some of the largest fundraising chapters have
revenue far greater than their stated need and capacity to spend, while
other chapters receive revenue only from Foundation grants or have almost no
revenue at all. The model also suggests that chapters are entitled to funds
proportional to the wealth of their regions, which amplifies the gap between
the Global North and South.

We need to improve our model to address these concerns and to improve the
distribution of donor funds across the Wikimedia movement.
*
==Design principles==*

Our design principles for improving the fundraising model are:

* We are deeply committed to decentralized pursuit of our mission and to
supporting the long-term sustainability of chapters and other movement
partners.

* Because of its role as operator of the websites, the Foundation has to be
satisfied that any organization directly receiving donor funds will treat
them with an appropriately high level of care and transparency.

* An organization can directly receive donor funds as a payment processor if
the following criteria are met:
** There is sufficient money raised in the geography to merit the logistical
effort.
** The organization offers tax deductibility or other incentives to local
donors.
** Regulatory issues about any international funds flows are fully resolved.
** The organization's current financial resources are not enough to fund
proposed program work.
** The Foundation can confidently assure donors to the chapter that their
donations will be safeguarded, that our movement's transparency principles
will be met, and that spending will be in line with our mission and with the
messages used to attract donors.
* The donation process should clearly disclose basic facts about the
organization receiving the donation.
* The Foundation is committed to a grants program to continue to provide
funds to those who can most effectively pursue our mission.

*==Next steps==*

These concerns need to be substantially addressed prior to the start of the
2011 fundraiser. In particular, we expect all parties to live up to current
fundraising agreements including full compliance with all reporting
deadlines.

We appreciate that some chapters have already started working on their
budgets assuming that they would participate as payment processors in the
2011 fundraiser, but may not be able to meet the new criteria outlined
above. The Foundation will work with these chapters to follow through on the
principles of the current Fundraising Agreement to provide the necessary
funds to continue their programmatic work and to meet their operational
needs.

The Foundation will significantly expand its grants program, and should work
closely with the Audit Committee to continue improving the controls and
disclosure

Re: [Foundation-l] Board of Trustees activity report - May-June 2011

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 11:19 AM, phoebe ayers  wrote:

>
>
> On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 8:42 AM, MZMcBride  wrote:
>
>> phoebe ayers wrote:
>> > The Board has been working on a report of our activities; please find
>> the
>> > first report, covering May and June of this year, below. This is a short
>> > summary, meant to help share our work with the community and movement,
>> and
>> > help make Board work and trustee activities more accessible &
>> transparent.
>> > This first report took some time to put together, but we hope to post
>> future
>> > reports on a regular schedule. Please let me know if you have any
>> feedback
>> > or suggestions.
>>
>> Looks pretty good. Thanks for putting this together. :-)
>>
>> I think posting the reports (or links to the reports) on Meta-Wiki or
>> wikimediafoundation.org would be good. There is already some
>> infrastructure
>> in place, e.g., <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Reports>.
>
>
Meta link:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_Report,_May-June_2011

-- phoebe
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Re: [Foundation-l] Board of Trustees activity report - May-June 2011

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 8:42 AM, MZMcBride  wrote:

> phoebe ayers wrote:
> > The Board has been working on a report of our activities; please find the
> > first report, covering May and June of this year, below. This is a short
> > summary, meant to help share our work with the community and movement,
> and
> > help make Board work and trustee activities more accessible &
> transparent.
> > This first report took some time to put together, but we hope to post
> future
> > reports on a regular schedule. Please let me know if you have any
> feedback
> > or suggestions.
>
> Looks pretty good. Thanks for putting this together. :-)
>
> I think posting the reports (or links to the reports) on Meta-Wiki or
> wikimediafoundation.org would be good. There is already some
> infrastructure
> in place, e.g., <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Reports>.
>
> There's also the blog to consider: <http://blog.wikimedia.org/>. It's a
> matter of weighing how much "the outside" would care about Board internals,
> though, I suppose.
>
> A wiki page or blog post might also make adding links easier. For example,
> "In May, Kat visited the WMF offices, to meet with Foundation lawyer
> Geoff Brigham and to help develop a summary of WMF legal practices. This
> has
> been posted for comment." could include a link to the page on Meta-Wiki.
>
> These are minor issues that can be tweaked going forward. Definitely a step
> in the right direction, toward accessibility and transparency.
>
> MZMcBride
>
>
Thanks! All good suggestions. I'll get after it when I'm not at Wikimania
with a dying computer :)

cheers,
Phoebe
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[Foundation-l] Board of Trustees activity report - May-June 2011

[phoebe ayers]

Dear all,
The Board has been working on a report of our activities; please find the
first report, covering May and June of this year, below. This is a short
summary, meant to help share our work with the community and movement, and
help make Board work and trustee activities more accessible & transparent.
This first report took some time to put together, but we hope to post future
reports on a regular schedule. Please let me know if you have any feedback
or suggestions.
-- Phoebe

---

*Board of Trustees -- activity report May-June 2011
Resolutions and votes*

*Controversial content*

   * Controversial content resolution -- this resolution was passed in May
after a year-long process of discussion and research. It reaffirms the
Board's position on censorship, calls for continued community involvement in
image review and asks for the creation of a personal image filter feature
which would allow readers to not choose whether to view certain classes of
images.

   * Images of identifiable people resolution -- this resolution was passed
in May along with the controversial content resolution. It lays out the
Board position on image subject consent, specifying that evidence of consent
should be obtained and documented from the subject of the media for images
and videos of living, identifiable persons in private situations that are
hosted on Wikimedia projects.

*New chapters
*
   * Wikimedia Canada and Wikimedia Chile were recognized. Both are recently
incorporated.

*New advisors and observers*

   * Advisory board additions -- Jessamyn West and Veronique Kessler were
nominated for the advisory board by trustees and approved by Board vote.
Jessamyn is a U.S.-based librarian and blogger who is also a community
manager of Metafilter, a global online community; and Veronique is the WMF's
outgoing Chief Financial Officer.

   * Board Visitors -- passed in May, this resolution lays out parameters
and criteria for inviting visitors to Board meetings, and defines that
approved Board visitors may be invited to one meeting a year for most agenda
items. Visitors will not have voting rights or email list access.

   * Visitor appointment -- the first visitor to be invited was Doron Weber
from the Sloan Foundation, invited in June for the coming year.

*Strategy and planning*

   * Annual plan approval -- The Board unaminously approved the WMF's annual
plan for 2011-2012. The plan is developed by the executive director with
input from the Board and senior staff, and lays out WMF's budgeting, hiring
and programmatic plans for the year. A draft of the plan was shared with the
Board in May, and the final document was reviewed in June, with review led
by Stu as the board Treasurer.
*
Other Board work*

   * The Board Governance Committee (Matt, Jan-Bart and Ting) contracted
with a consultant and scheduled the 2011 trustee evaluation process. They
also kicked off the officer election process by calling for candidates and
candidate statements. Elections will be held in Haifa.

   * The Audit committee, led by Stu, wrapped up its work for its 2010-2011
year. During the year, the committee held three meetings in August, October,
and March. It covered the basics, reviewing the audit plan, audit results,
and the Foundation's annual IRS filing, as well as helping improve the FAQs
and other public disclosures of the Foundation's financial position. The
primary non-routine issue this year involved the transparency and financial
control implications of certain chapters directly receiving donor funds, and
the committee contributed some energetic editing to support the new
consolidated movement-wide reports page on meta. The Committee also weighed
the alternatives for independent auditors over the upcoming year and decided
to re-engage KPMG and expand KPMG's role somewhat to provide further
guidance and assistance around fundraising models. Finally, Stu sent out a
call for volunteers for the 2011-2012 fiscal year.

   * As Board Treasurer, Stu held a few meetings with Sue and her staff to
review the annual plan and then provided a recommendation that the Board
approve the plan.

   * Stu was also active in the interviewing process for the Foundation's
new Chief of Finance and Administration.

   * Movement roles work to define the relative roles of Wikimedia entities
continued on Meta, including Sam, Bishakha, and Arne, producing a set of
draft recommendations to the Board and to movement groups.

   * In May-June 2011 the Board met twice online to review the annual plan.

   * The Board's next in-person meeting is scheduled for Wikimania in Haifa,
Israel.

   * Meeting agendas and details are shared at m:Board meetings.

*Trustee outreach and other activities*

   * In May, Kat visited the WMF offices, to meet with Foundation lawyer
Geoff Brigham and to help develop a summary of WMF legal practices. This has
been posted for comment.

   * In June, Ting attended an event organized by Wikimedians in Almaty,
Kazakhstan a

Re: [Foundation-l] Greg Kohs and Peter Damian

[phoebe ayers]

On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 10:58 AM, Andre Engels  wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 11:25 PM, John Vandenberg  wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 8:12 AM, Risker  wrote:
>> >  I have a hard
>> > time understanding why people think chapters are representative of the
>> > community.  They're representative of people who like to join chapters.
>>
>> I agree with your premise here, however, chapter board members are
>> elected by their membership (afaik, that occurs in all chapters), so
>> their membership has the obvious recourse of electing someone else.
>>
>
>
> Hardly. I don't know what my chapter's opinion was in selecting the
> chapter-selected members, I don't know who from the board members did
> anything about it anyway, and besides the board has been chosen for other
> things they're good at than selecting board members.
>
> So if I don't agree with the chapter-selected board members, my recourse is
> to vote down board members of my own chapter that may or may not have been
> involved in the choice of my chapter to support or not support that board
> member, disregarding other, probably more important factors to choose that
> chapter board member. Doesn't sound to me like a very high of accountability
> to me or other chapter members...
>
> --
> André Engels, andreeng...@gmail.com

So, uh, maybe I haven't been reading F-l as closely as I should have
been, but this seems to have come out of nowhere, in response to a
thread from October? Did I miss something?

At any rate, if you or others would like to talk about the
chapter-selected board members (of which I am one) I'd be glad to do
so, but let's start a new thread -- this is confusing, as I'm pretty
sure it doesn't have much of anything to do with Kohs/Damian.

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Start "questions and answers" site within Wikimedia

[phoebe ayers]

Jan -- thanks for your work exploring systems -- I think it's
definitely worth trying out for a test and agree it's worth trying to
support participation. You note in the bug that there could be
different sections for the different projects -- I've also always
wanted a meta-focused Q&A site for all those questions about how
Wikimedia itself works :)

best,
Phoebe

2011/7/21 Jan Kucera (Kozuch) :
> Stack Exchange is nice, has an acceptable CC-BY-SA license too, but I would 
> host the content ourselves. Looks like SE uses OSQA anyways. Please see my 
> bug 29923 (https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29923) for software 
> options for Wikimedia:
>
> I made a (very quick) research on open source Q&A systems:
>
> Some software options:
> - http://www.osqa.net/ (Python)
> - http://www.question2answer.org/ (PHP 4.3+, MySQL 5)
> - http://shapado.com/ (Ruby)
> - http://www.lampcms.com/
> - http://pligg.com/
> - http://askbot.org
>
> Kozuch
>
>>  Původní zpráva 
>> Od: Samuel Klein 
>> Předmět: Re: [Foundation-l] Start "questions and answers" site within 
>> Wikimedia
>> Datum: 21.7.2011 22:56:08
>> 
>> On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 4:31 PM, Oliver Moran  wrote:
>> > I would absolutely recommend Stack Exchange. The software is far more 
>> > suitable
>> for community Q&A than Mediawiki. The Stack Exchange network of sites also 
>> share
>> much of the free content and community spirit of Wikimedia. For example, Q&As
>> are licensed under CC-BY-SA and the sites are community run.
>>
>> True.  But we don't need to use proprietary software for this.
>>
>> OSQA shares the stackexchange workflow
>>   http://linuxexchange.org/
>>
>> And Question2Answer is the most actively used & updated free-software
>> platform, also php:
>>   http://www.question2answer.org/directory.php
>>
>> SJ
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > Thanks for the heads up, Tom. I wasn't aware of this proposal. For others, 
>> > the
>> link is:
>> >
>> > http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/13716/wikis-and-wikipedia
>> >
>> > The promise to "commit" to the project doesn't require you to log in. The
>> "commitment" is as follows:
>> >
>> > "I commit to participate actively in Wikis and Wikipedia for at least three
>> months, especially during the private beta, and to ask or answer at least ten
>> questions."
>> >
>> > Best,
>> > Oliver
>> >
>> > On 21 Jul 2011, at 21:03, Thomas Morton wrote:
>> >
>> >> There was a push to launch a stackexchange site relating to Wikipedia
>> >> a few months back. It's currently in the commitment phase - needing
>> >> people to commit to seeding it.
>> >>
>> >> SE is a proven QA platform; so worth considering.
>> >>
>> >> Tom Morton
>> >>
>> >> On 21 Jul 2011, at 21:00, Samuel Klein  wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> This is a good idea.  They are using OSQA, yes?   SJ
>> >>>
>> >>> On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 2:55 PM, Jan Kucera (Kozuch) 
>> wrote:
>>  Hi there,
>> 
>>  I propose to start a Q&A system within Wikimedis. We need a central 
>>  place
>> for help. Getting an advise is too complicated now if a person has very 
>> diverse
>> questions, he/she needs to look for various wiki discussion pages. Not very 
>> easy
>> for newbies. Could be inspired by the help site of OpenStreetMap.
>> 
>>  Following bug was filled:
>>  "Install Q&A system at help.en.wikipedia.org"
>>  https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29923
>> 
>>  Discussion and hopefully creation of the site is more that welcome.
>> 
>>  Thanks for your support!
>> 
>>  Cheers,
>> 
>>  Kozuch
>>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kozuch
>> 
>>  ___
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>> 
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>> --
>> >>> Samuel Klein          identi.ca:sj           w:user:sj          +1 617 
>> >>> 529
>> 4266
>> >>>
>> >>> ___
>> >>> foundation-l mailing list
>> >>> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> >>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>> >>
>> >> ___
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>> >
>> > ___
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>> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Samuel Klein          identi.ca:sj           w:user:sj          +1 617 529 
>> 4266
>>
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>>
>>
>
> 

Re: [Foundation-l] Elections email

[phoebe ayers]

On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 8:00 AM, Sarah  wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 08:16, Béria Lima  wrote:
>> I receveid two mails:
>>
>> 1. To my main account (Beria) in portuguese.
>>
>> 2. To one of my bot accounts, in english.
>>
>> So, i will guess that the language is chosen based in the home wiki (my bot
>> has more edits in en.wiki than in pt.wiki)
>> _
>
> I also received two invitations to vote, including to a little-used
> alternative account, one that is obviously mine from the name. This
> suggests among other things that the minimum voting requirements must
> be pretty low.
>
> Sarah

Hey Sarah -- the voting requirements are here --
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2011/en#Requirements

300 edits, 20 recent ones -- the requirements were roughly halved from
the last elections. There's discussion about this on the talk page.

-- phoebe

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[Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wiki-research-l] Summaries of recent Wikipedia research

[phoebe ayers]

Fwd'ing to F-l in case you did not read the Signpost this week... this
is WONDERFUL, thank you so much to the Signpost and to the Research
Committee.

The amount of research done on and about Wikipedia has grown
substantially over the last few years, and has gotten a good deal more
sophisticated as well; studies about participation, editing
experiences, off-line access and how readers use Wikipedia -- such as
those profiled in this issue -- are all deeply relevant to the work we
are doing across Wikimedia.

Because of this I have long hoped for stronger ties between the
academic research community that studies Wikimedia and Wikimedia
itself, and we are now building those ties with, for instance, the
volunteer research committee:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_committee (RCOM, not to be
confused with ARBCOM), and the summer of research:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/06/01/summerofresearchannouncement/

The Signpost summary is a welcome addition and I look forward to
future editions.

-- phoebe


-- Forwarded message --
From: Wikipedia Signpost 
Date: Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 11:33 PM
Subject: [Wiki-research-l] Summaries of recent Wikipedia research
To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities



Hi,

the current issue of the Signpost (the English Wikipedia's
community-written and community-edited weekly news bulletin) contains
a section summarizing some recent academic research about Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-06-06/Recent_research

See also an earlier such overview:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-04-11/Recent_research

In the future, we are planning to publish such surveys of recent
Wikipedia research on a monthly basis, in collaboration with the
Wikimedia Foundation Research Committee - expect further announcements
on this list.

If you know about a newly published academic research paper about
Wikipedia that seems worth covering, a tip is welcome at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions

Regards, HaeB

--
Wikipedia Signpost Staff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost

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Re: [Foundation-l] Global ban - poetlister?

[phoebe ayers]

Hi Andrew! Can you put the proposal on meta without including the
details about the case?
cheers,
Phoebe

On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 5:45 AM, Billinghurst  wrote:
> I also believe that there are special cases where there should be a policy 
> decision made
> by the body that has the responsibility for due diligence, with legal 
> authority and a
> legal basis.  To that end I specifically addressed the why (with detail) and 
> a how
> (possible) to Sue in a separate post.  It contained detail that should not be 
> put onto an
> open mailing list.
>
> My proposal in short was that the stewards are involved and the  conduit for 
> such a
> proposal to the Foundation, and that it could go through any of the 
> discussion points that
> you identified.  It does not circumvent stewards, and is not top-down; it is 
> the close
> with a great big THE END.
>
> Stewards are limited in powers due to the ability for local projects to 
> override.  There
> has to be someone make the call on what is ultimately right for WMF. There 
> will always be
> persons who come and try to avoid blocks, and a ruling from WMF basically 
> means 'no more
> wriggle room'.  Where someone is cyberstalking, close to the line on 
> fraud/identity theft,
> there has to be authority in a ruling.
>
> Regards, Andrew
>
>
> On 4 Jun 2011 at 10:42, MZMcBride wrote:
>
>> Billinghurst wrote:
>> > I disagree, this needs to be a decision by the WMF, not by stewards.  Some
>> > sites are 'independent', and this is a matter that needs to have no wriggle
>> > room, and hence be a definitive statement.  It is simply a case that the
>> > worst of the worst need to be managed from the top and at a policy level,
>> > not as operational issues. This is a due diligence matter.
>>
>> I think it's a fairly dangerous precedent to have the Wikimedia Foundation
>> involved in making individual decisions about who can and can't edit. I
>> realize that in the past, certain system administrators or Jimmy have done
>> this, but as far as I'm aware, the Wikimedia Foundation (as an organization)
>> has not and does not get involved in cases like this for a reason.
>>
>> As Phoebe noted, there have been some efforts at Meta-Wiki (more recently
>> than I thought, actually) to address this. I'd like to see the community
>> give it a good-faith try (or two) to solve this without intervention before
>> seeking top-down involvement. That isn't to say that the two bodies need to
>> be completely separate. One procedure for a global ban committee could be to
>> direct the Wikimedia Foundation to declare particular people as completely
>> unwelcome, or something like that. But I haven't seen too much to suggest
>> that the community can't solve this, only that they haven't yet.
>>
>> Regarding independent projects, a local admin is going to do what a local
>> admin is going to do, no matter whether it's stewards or the Wikimedia
>> Foundation telling them otherwise. That can be handled on a case-by-case
>> basis as appropriate.
>>
>> Honestly, there are other seemingly intractable problems that the community
>> has faced and the response from seeking Wikimedia Foundation help hasn't
>> been great. Controversial content comes to mind. A long study that ended in
>> a report that said "well, yeah, lots and lots of penises on Commons!" I
>> don't really want to see a repeat of that dynamic again. If there are
>> technical or legal aspects to this problem that the Wikimedia Foundation can
>> put resources toward, let's figure out what those are and make it happen.
>> But the community really needs to take charge here, if at all possible.
>>
>> MZMcBride
>>
>>
>
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Global ban - poetlister?

[phoebe ayers]

On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 8:30 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 4 June 2011 15:42, MZMcBride  wrote:
>
>> I think it's a fairly dangerous precedent to have the Wikimedia Foundation
>> involved in making individual decisions about who can and can't edit.
>
>
> They certainly can determine who can and can't use the servers they
> are custodians of.

Frankly, it's not just a question of who has the power to press the
BANNED button; who at the WMF do you think should or has time to sit
around and review the actions of every cross-project problematic user
in every language and decide? We do need to have some sort of clear
mechanism to make and review complaints, and there's simply not those
processes (yet) on a global level. As both a community member and
someone who needs to worry about WMF resources, I want to see a
distributed and scalable process for this sort of thing, one that
involves, serves, and is transparent to the community. If having WMF
office actions to do global (b)locks is helpful or necessary,
especially for these few totally bad actors, fine; but I don't
personally see that as the starting point for a sustainable system. Do
you?

However, as Sue stated earlier in this thread, the WMF is concerned
about this issue, wants to help, and I think further ideas about the
areas in which the WMF could help would be super, especially in
conjunction with community efforts.

-- phoebe

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[Foundation-l] Reminder: IRC general meeting today

[phoebe ayers]

Reminder: general meeting today in a couple hours (1800 UTC). Bring
your agenda items and topics for discussion with others, etc. (see
below for the original idea). Casual, moderated by Mono and myself.
freenode#wikimedia

best,
Phoebe

On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 12:40 PM, phoebe ayers  wrote:
> Hi all! We have not had an open IRC meeting in a while... but next
> Saturday, June 4 is the first Saturday in June, and it would be good
> to have a revival! I've suggested meeting at 18:00 UTC.
>
> Sign up, discuss topics and meeting times on Meta:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_meetings#June_4.2C_2011
>
> best,
> Phoebe
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 10:54 AM, phoebe ayers  wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Back in September we had an open community IRC meeting, where we
>> introduced the new Trustees and talked about various issues. It was
>> pretty successful and we discussed afterwards making such "community
>> meetings" a regular event.
>>
>> I'd like to revive this idea :) I've made a proposal for having
>> community meetings on the first Saturday of the month:
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_meetings
>>
>> Which would make the first upcoming meeting on February 5.
>>
>> I proposed 17:00UTC as a time, but please discuss good days/times on
>> the talk page if you are interested in attending; we'll need to rotate
>> times.
>>
>> I envision this as not really a Q&A session like the staff office
>> hours, but rather as a chance for community members to get together
>> and talk about important issues in a structured way. To that end,
>> please add your proposed agenda items to the wiki. It would also be
>> great to have some volunteers to take notes/moderate.
>>
>> Of course this is just an experiment -- but there seemed to be a lot
>> of interest in having such meetings, so I'd like to try it out. Let me
>> know what you think and if you'd be interested.
>>
>> best,
>> Phoebe
>>
>> --
>> * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers
>>  gmail.com *
>>
>



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Re: [Foundation-l] Introducing the Grant Advisory Committee

[phoebe ayers]

On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 6:47 PM, Asaf Bartov  wrote:
> Hello, everyone.
>
> To those of you not (yet) following the Wikimedia Blog, let me point your
> attention to my (first) blog post, introducing the Grant Advisory Committee:
>
> http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/06/03/gac-it-up-introducing-the-grant-advisory-committee/
>
> Thanks,
>
>   Asaf Bartov
>   Wikimedia Foundation

This is super cool! I am very glad to see this happen. Thanks to
everyone who volunteered for the committee, and I look forward to
seeing lots more awesome grant projects!

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Global ban - poetlister?

[phoebe ayers]

On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 10:18 AM, Scott MacDonald
 wrote:
>
>
>> -Original Message-
>> From: foundation-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-
>> boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Yaroslav M. Blanter
>> Sent: 03 June 2011 18:05
>> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
>> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Global ban - poetlister?
>>
>>
>>
>> > I too would like to see the development of a process for global
>> banning
>> of
>> > users who have created serious problems on either the global or the
>> > multiple-project level.
>> >
>> > Risker/Anne
>>
>> I see your reasoning, but I also see at least two serious deficiencies:
>>
>> 1) Some projects explicitly rejected the community ban after extensive
>> discussion;
>> 2) Any meta-discussion of the community ban would be inevitably
>> dominated
>> by the English Wikipedia users (and thus may be unacceptable for those
>> projects which rejected the community ban).
>>
>> Cheers
>> Yaroslav
>>
>
> These should be surmountable.
>
> First the grounds for a global ban ought to be limited. Where users have
> engaged in activity which goes beyond trolling and disruption towards
> illegality, or the type of harassment that has real-life consequences, or
> endangers vulnerable people, then a global hard ban should be considered -
> which overrides any local agreements to the contrary. In cases where the
> user has simply disrupted two or more projects then a presumptive ban would
> be more appropriate - that is the user cannot participate in any further
> community without specific local consent. (That stops the dumping problem.)
>
> What you need is a mechanism so that one local community, when banning a
> user who meets the criteria, can refer the case to a cross-project review
> group for a global decision. This group needs to be loaded so that en.wp
> cannot dominate - and that other projects can have confidence that this is
> the case. It might simply be a conclave of stewards, or it could be a group
> with each member nominated by a different project.
>
> Scott

I'm glad to see this discussion made more general -- beyond this
particular case, and towards the general process for how and when we
can (and should) globally ban someone. I also think that we need to
have a clear process that can be used -- with care, but also without
requiring debate about *process* for every case. It helps everyone if
there are agreed-upon minimum standards for behavior and a process for
review of problems. More specifically, I think Scott's suggestions
above make a lot of sense.

The stewards do seem like the most obvious global group to enact such
review. There was a lot of discussion about this (and related
mechanisms for dispute resolution) last year among the stewards after
Wikimania, and there's a proposal here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Dispute_resolution_committee;
perhaps people who know more about this idea can weigh in, and we can
build on it.

Also somewhat related, I have been working on and off over the last
few months (with help from a few folks) to collect information about
harassment policies from across the projects, to see if there's any
community consensus about what to do about this kind of bad behavior;
see the list here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Harassment_policies
(I'd love some help with this, too!)

It might also be a useful exercise to collect and analyze other kinds
of "bad actor" guidelines from many projects, to see if there's any
global consensus currently on what our minimum standards for behavior
are. This could have a lot of useful cross-project application,
including perhaps developing grounds for global hard-banning that
would gain consensus.

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request: WMF commitment as a long term cultural archive?

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 11:52 AM, George Herbert
 wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 10:55 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
>> On 2 June 2011 18:48, Fae  wrote:
>>
>>> In 2016 San Francisco has a major earthquake and the servers and
>>> operational facilities for the WMF are damaged beyond repair. The
>>> emergency hot switchover to Hong Kong is delayed due to an ongoing DoS
>>> attack from Eastern European countries. The switchover eventually
>>> appears successful and data is synchronized with Hong Kong for the
>>> next 3 weeks. At the end of 3 weeks, with a massive raft of escalating
>>> complaints about images disappearing, it is realized that this is a
>>> result of local data caches expiring. The DoS attack covered the
>>> tracks of a passive data worm that only activates during back-up
>>> cycles and the loss is irrecoverable due backups aged over 2 weeks
>>> being automatically deleted. Due to no archive strategy it is
>>> estimated that the majority of digital assets have been permanently
>>> lost and estimates for 60% partial reconstruction from remaining cache
>>> snapshots and independent global archive sites run to over 2 years of
>>> work.
>>
>>
>> This sort of scenario is why some of us have a thing about the backups :-)
>>
>> (Is there a good image backup of Commons and of the larger wikis, and
>> - and this one may be trickier - has anyone ever downloaded said
>> backups?)
>>
>>
>> - d.
>
> I've floated this to Erik a couple of times, but if the Foundation
> would like an IT disaster response / business continuity audit, I can
> do those.

Right, when Fae asked her question I was thinking of the more
philosophical type of planning for storage that archives often do ("as
a matter of course we retain documents for 10 years, or in perpetuity,
or whatever"); but disaster and backup planning are also relevant.
That's documented as a part of technical operations rather than as
board-level policies; I think we're all on the same page about caring
about this issue though. It is also relevant that the WMF is a
financially stable non-profit, and thus unlikely to go out of business
through the vagaries of the market.

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions on controversial content and images of identifiable people

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 1:28 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo)  wrote:
> Risker, 02/06/2011 00:53:
>> I think the more important part of this announcement is the resolution on
>> images of identifiable people  [...]
>
> I agree. It's also the first time (if memory serves me well and if I
> understand it correctly) that the board asks for a specific content
> policy of a specific project to be changed in some direction:
> «Strengthen [...] the current Commons guideline», compared to «_continue
> to practice_ rigorous active curation of content» in the other
> resolution. I'm not sure I like it, although the spirit of the
> resolutions is balanced and agreeable.
>
>> It should probably be emphasized that this would apply equally to projects
>> that host "fair use" or other images, and is not simply an expectation on
>> Commons.
>
> That's not what the resolution says, though.

Hi Nemo and all,

I don't want to get into wikilawyering (that dread disease!), but the
resolution does state that we urge the global community to:
"Ensure that all projects that host media have policies in place
regarding the treatment of images of identifiable living people in
private situations."

In other words, we recognize that these concerns apply to any project
that hosts images. However, clearly the vast majority of our photos
are on Commons and Commons already has an example of such a policy
(inspiring this resolution); that policy could be an inspiration for
policies on other projects.

I think that it would be
> more interesting to have some clear legal guideline to understand what's
> /legal/ in different countries (at least the most important ones, or the
> countries whose citizens more frequently ask deletion of images to the
> WMF), because this is something the community is often not able to
> produce and the WMF has the indisputable right to keep the projects
> lawful (at least in some countries, which are tough to define; see e.g.
> the quite generic draft
> ).

I agree this would be helpful. However, I think the spirit of the
consent guideline, and of this resolution, is more in line with other
editorial policies  -- it's a common-sense guideline that is meant to
encourage special editorial care under particular circumstances, and
we are stating that being freely licensed by itself is not enough in
these cases. This is part of being a curated collection.

There are parallels here with the BLP resolution
(http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Biographies_of_living_people),
and those are intentional. In that resolution, we don't tell the
editorial community that they need to understand every detail of libel
law in every country; rather, simply that particular editorial care
should be exercised in those cases. Similarly, image copyright law is
exceedingly complex (though if anyone can figure it out I bet it's
Wikimedians) but that's not quite the point: this is an editorial
discussion. I think Risker laid out some of the issues involved very
well.

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request: WMF commitment as a long term cultural archive?

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 6:21 AM, Fae  wrote:
> Briefly responding to a couple of points raised so far:
>
> Yes, there is a need for a policy as otherwise the WMF would have no
> long term operational archive plan. "Self evident" is insufficient in
> order to budget and plan in a credible way. If as the planned outcome
> of a research project I had a large image donation to make and such a
> commitment was absent, I would prefer to mass donate images of public
> interest to an organization that had one, and assume that at some
> point e-volunteers at Wikimedia Commons would take the initiative and
> port in what they fancied.

Fae,

There is no explicit, official operational archive plan of the type
you are referring to. I am familiar with the type of plan you mean --
archives and libraries in particular often have explicit retention
plans that specify a date range. This kind of plan would likely be
developed by the board as part of our long-range operational planning.
There are difficulties, as others have pointed out, because unlike an
archive we cannot guarantee retention of any particular item --
individual curation and editorial decisions are done by the community.

However, long-term preservation and dissemination of knowledge is an
inherent and explicit part of our mission. You could point to:
* Our mission statement, which says we will retain useful information
from our projects on the Internet, free of charge, in perpetuity
(http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission_statement)
* the fact that a free license enables redistribution and longer-term
preservation support than copyright does, because others have the
ability to preserve our collections even if the WMF itself fails
(dumps are noted as a value, in our values statement:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Values).

As you note, the key part of this is free licensing under a compatible
license. We are interested in supporting the ecosystem of free
knowledge, so that if an organization wanted their primary archive to
be someplace else (but accessible to Commons technically and through
licensing) that's fine; we can upload. However, as an organization, we
are absolutely committed to preserving free knowledge for the long
term.

For this presentation, your preparation turn-around time is pretty
short here, and I personally don't have time to pull together other
community documents on this subject right now (maybe others do), but
you can certainly tell the organizations our about our long-term
commitment. Whether Commons is appropriate for them, however, depends
on what they are looking for. The biggest argument for uploading
collections to Wikimedia is not our function as an archival service
(since we don't fulfill all of the requirements of a traditional
archive), but rather the immense distribution and visibility our
projects can give such collections, far exceeding any other online
service, because of our global reach.

best,
Phoebe (speaking as a member of the Board)

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Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions on controversial content and images of identifiable people

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 3:17 PM, Alec Conroy  wrote:
> I feel that basically _is_ the role of the board.   I feel like my
> dream board personified is a little like a judo master.   When push to
> rule on a dispute, usually they should pull that energy and
> productively deflect that energy back to the community.

That is a lovely metaphor, though I occasionally feel in this role
more like a student of Zen (complete with koans to study!)

I will say that the Board drafted these resolutions with good faith
and a great deal of care, and the one thing I would ask as you debate
them is to consider them as a whole. We think all of the principles we
articulate are important, and have implications for how we manage our
content. And a few of you have noted that these ideas are not new; of
course that's true. We are simply building on the work that many
community members have done over the years on this difficult problem.

If there are specific questions for the board, I or other trustees can
try to answer them; but there are of course many areas of debate and
opinion where we can only speak for ourselves individually. "The
board's opinion", such as it is, is expressed in the resolutions.

best,
-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions on controversial content and images of identifiable people

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 2:14 PM, Milos Rancic  wrote:
> On 06/01/2011 11:05 PM, Michael Snow wrote:
>> On 6/1/2011 2:03 PM, Milos Rancic wrote:
>>> "Wikimedia projects are curated and edited collections, according to
>>> certain principles: namely, we host only content that is both free and
>>> educational in nature."
>>>
>>> So Board said that Wikinews is out of scope. Its nature is
>>> informational, not educational.
>> I'm sorry, but I don't understand what distinction you're trying to
>> make. In this context, those look like synonyms to me.
>
> If so, I am fine with it. What do Board members mean with that?
>

Hi Milos,

We meant what is stated there: that Wikimedia project content should
be at a minimum both free and educational in nature. (In general, you
can assume that language in resolutions like this is intentional).
However, you can also safely assume that the Board did not
specifically discuss the scope of Wikinews when writing this
resolution; we were focused on the topic at hand. I personally think
there is a very valid argument to be made that Wikinews, like most
news sources and like the rest of our projects, is educational (as
well as possessing other qualities, such as the more general quality
of being informative, which also arguably applies to all of our
projects).

If people want to discuss these subtleties of language (or the scope
of wikinews) in depth however, a separate thread might be best.

-- phoebe

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[Foundation-l] Board resolutions on controversial content and images of identifiable people

[phoebe ayers]

This week, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees unanimously
passed a resolution addressing the issue of controversial content on
the projects. The Board also unanimously passed a resolution
addressing images of identifiable, living people on the projects. The
resolutions are posted at:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Controversial_content
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Images_of_identifiable_people

These topics have been the subject of active debate on the Projects,
and particularly on Commons, for a long time. Last June, following
extensive community debate, the Wikimedia Foundation Board requested
the Executive Director undertake a study of the issue of controversial
content on the projects, acknowledging the difficulty of the issue
(http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Commissioning_Recommendations_from_the_Executive_Director).
Robert and Dory Harris were commissioned to do this study, which they
did on meta in consultation with the community, publishing
recommendations in September 2010. Their report is available at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Wikimedia_Study_of_Controversial_Content

At its October 2010 meeting, the Board was presented with this report.
The Board discussed the recommendations in depth, and developed a
working group to act on them. The working group's report was presented
at the Board's next in-person meeting, in March 2011; and these
resolutions were subsequently drafted and voted on. The working group
report has also been posted on meta, at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Controversial_content/Board_report

Note that the controversial content resolution uses the term
"curation." We are using this term to refer to all aspects of managing
images and other content on our projects, including recruiting and
acquiring contributions and uploading, categorizing, placement of
images in articles and other pages (including gallery pages and the
main page), featuring or highlighting, flagging for improvement, and
deletion and removal. All of our projects are curated in line with
broad editorial principles; this is an essential feature that
distinguishes our projects from indiscriminate or general-purpose
repositories.

Not all of the Harris recommendations are addressed in this
resolution. In particular:
* At this time, we refer the recommendation to create a WikiJunior
project to the editing community; the Board would like to see
demonstrated community support before creating such a project.
and
* In agreement with the Harris report, we do not recommend that
changes be made to current editing and/or filtering regimes
surrounding text in Wikimedia projects; we feel editorial mechanisms
regarding text are working well.

Finally, we urge that the community, the Foundation and the Wikimedia
movement continue to discuss the appropriate scope of Commons for
fulfilling Wikimedia's mission; this is a difficult and important
question.

Thank you to everyone who has worked on this issue, and special thanks
to Robert and Dory Harris for their hard work.

-- Phoebe Ayers, on behalf of the Board working group and the Board

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Re: [Foundation-l] IRC general meetings

[phoebe ayers]

Hi all! We have not had an open IRC meeting in a while... but next
Saturday, June 4 is the first Saturday in June, and it would be good
to have a revival! I've suggested meeting at 18:00 UTC.

Sign up, discuss topics and meeting times on Meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_meetings#June_4.2C_2011

best,
Phoebe


On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 10:54 AM, phoebe ayers  wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Back in September we had an open community IRC meeting, where we
> introduced the new Trustees and talked about various issues. It was
> pretty successful and we discussed afterwards making such "community
> meetings" a regular event.
>
> I'd like to revive this idea :) I've made a proposal for having
> community meetings on the first Saturday of the month:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_meetings
>
> Which would make the first upcoming meeting on February 5.
>
> I proposed 17:00UTC as a time, but please discuss good days/times on
> the talk page if you are interested in attending; we'll need to rotate
> times.
>
> I envision this as not really a Q&A session like the staff office
> hours, but rather as a chance for community members to get together
> and talk about important issues in a structured way. To that end,
> please add your proposed agenda items to the wiki. It would also be
> great to have some volunteers to take notes/moderate.
>
> Of course this is just an experiment -- but there seemed to be a lot
> of interest in having such meetings, so I'd like to try it out. Let me
> know what you think and if you'd be interested.
>
> best,
> Phoebe
>
> --
> * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers
>  gmail.com *
>

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Re: [Foundation-l] Scheduled intermittent downtime on all Wikimedia projects on May 24

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 6:32 AM, Thomas Morton
 wrote:
> So, just a quick thought for future reference - during maintenance is it
> possible in future to update the error message to explain that maintenance
> is ongoing?

I work with lots of (library) databases, and standard practice for
these services is to display messages across the top or some other
visible space warning of scheduled maintenance ahead of time. I guess
we could do that with centralnotice, but /goes back to reading
centralnotice thread  :-)

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] 2010 Wikimedia Study of Controversial Content -- update

[phoebe ayers]

Hi Andreas,

Well, as promised a report from the board working group was presented
to the full board (including information on the draft spec that you
linked below, which is open for comment but certainly not set in
stone), the matter was discussed at the March meeting as one of the
many items on the agenda, and after the meeting we have been
discussing a board resolution/next steps. Pretty typical. The minutes
for the march meeting should be out soon.

( Incidentally, a general note on board process for those interested
-- guidelines for board deliberations were passed in July, and can be
seen here: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vote:Board_deliberations

The upshot is that a resolution takes three weeks minimum from the
time of being proposed to passing, except in extraordinary/emergency
cases. Two weeks of discussion, then a week of voting, and that does
not account for extra time spent writing various drafts or discussing,
or delays caused by exhausted committee chairs :) The time period
tries to take into account the schedules of 10 very busy people, at
least a handful of whom are traveling at any given time, as well as
allow for enough time to seriously debate each resolution and take
care with the wording.

So that, in a nutshell, is why sometimes things seem to take forever! )

-- phoebe


On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 11:32 AM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
> Hi Phoebe,
>
> What is the current status with regard to the recommendations from the
> 2010 Wikimedia Study of Controversial Content?
>
> From what I can see, a proposal based on the study was generated at
>
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Personal_image_filter
>
> and the proposal was subsequently presented and discussed at the Board
> Meeting in Berlin, in late March.
>
> How did that go? Any further developments?
>
> Best,
> Andreas
>
>
>
> --- On Sun, 20/2/11, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
>
>> From: Andreas Kolbe 
>> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] 2010 Wikimedia Study of Controversial Content -- 
>> update
>> To: "phoebe ayers" , "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing 
>> List" 
>> Date: Sunday, 20 February, 2011, 22:54
>> Hi Phoebe,
>>
>> Thank you very much for the update.
>>
>> Recommendations 7 and 9 are important points, and I am glad
>> there is some work being done on them.
>>
>> Do let us know again how things are progressing!
>>
>> Best,
>> Andreas
>>
>> --- On Sun, 20/2/11, phoebe ayers 
>> wrote:
>>
>> > From: phoebe ayers 
>> > Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] 2010 Wikimedia Study of
>> Controversial Content -- update
>> > To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" 
>> > Cc: "Andreas Kolbe" 
>> > Date: Sunday, 20 February, 2011, 19:35
>> > On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 5:26 AM,
>> > Andreas Kolbe 
>> > wrote:
>> > > Could Phoebe, Jan-Bart or Kat please give us an
>> update
>> > on the activities of
>> > > the working group looking into the
>> recommendations
>> > resulting from the 2010
>> > > Wikimedia Study of Controversial Content?
>> > >
>> > > Have any conclusions been drawn, and are there
>> any
>> > plans or discussions about
>> > > implementing any of the recommendations?
>> > >
>> > > http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/215066?search_string=working%20group%20controversial%20content;#215066
>> > >
>> > > Andreas
>> >
>> > Hi Andreas! Thanks for asking. Sorry for the slow
>> reply,
>> > I've been
>> > away on holiday the last couple of days and have not
>> been
>> > online.
>> >
>> > Also, my apologies for not posting an update before
>> you
>> > asked. Things
>> > have been slowly moving but as yet no conclusions.
>> >
>> > Here is what has happened since I sent my last
>> update:
>> >
>> > Over the winter holidays the membership of the
>> working
>> > group changed
>> > due to the workload of other board committees.
>> Jan-Bart and
>> > Kat
>> > stepped down and were replaced by Matt, Jimmy and
>> Bishakha;
>> > I am still
>> > involved and agreed to chair the group. Of course any
>> > recommendations
>> > for statements or resolutions will go to the whole
>> board.
>> > The Harrises
>> > are still involved as consultants on a
>> "paid-as-needed"
>> > basis; if we
>> > want them to do any further research or facilitation
>> they
>> > are
>> > available.
>&g

Re: [Foundation-l] happy birthday, Wikipedias

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 10:52 AM, Quim Gil  wrote:
> On 5/10/2011 4:13 PM, ext phoebe ayers wrote:
>> Tomorrow (May 11) is another anniversary date: it's been 10 years
>> since the first group of non-English Wikipedias came online.
>
> Joan and Анатолій have mentioned this already but here goes a bit more
> detail:
>
> The first non-English Wikipedia created was the German on March 16, 2001
>
> The first edit on a non-English Wikipedia was at 21:07 UTC, March 16,
> 2001, made to the Catalan Main Page. The first contribution in a
> non-English article dates from March 17 at 01:41 UTC in the article
> http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%80bac
>
> Sources:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Wikipedia#History
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_Wikipedia#Creation
>
> fwiw I learned all this back in March when the Catalan Wikipedia was
> celebrating the 10th anniversary with a big banner in all
> ca.wikipedia.org pages.
>
> --
> Quim (son of German mother and Catalan father, based in USA)  ;)
>
>
> On 5/11/2011 4:34 AM, ext Анатолій Гончаров wrote:
>  > German and Catalan wikis was created on March 2001
>  >
>  > 2011/5/11
>  >
>  >> Happy birthday.
>  >>
>  >>   If you read carefully the mail you are pointing to there it says:
>  >>
>  >> "Toan and I added 9 new other-language wikis to the mix."
>  >>
>  >> But in the list there are 11 languages.
>  >>
>  >> The difference is because it was not the first group of non-English
>  >> Wikipedias coming online.

Thanks Quim & Анатолій, of course it was the *second* big group of
languages (I knew Catalan was early, but wasn't sure if it was created
before the rest -- it's not well documented). Thanks for the note
about the first edit to Catalan! At any rate, I am sorry to miss
marking March 16 as an anniversary as well -- though perhaps the
lesson is we should just celebrate all spring (and beyond).

-- phoebe

p.s. "The Wikipedia Revolution" does treat this topic briefly; though
I have to say, I am looking forward to the day a historian sits down
and produces a dry and scholarly multi-volume history of Wikipedia,
with appropriate exigesis & footnotes. It's a lovely subject, with
just enough of the records missing to be mysterious.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Welcome Wikimedia Macau

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 12:24 PM, Asaf Bartov  wrote:
> Hello, everyone.
>
> I'd like to publicly welcome our colleagues at Wikimedia Macau on being
> recognized as a Wikimedia Chapter.

congratulations to Macau!

> May you create and share much knowledge!

:) We need to start collecting wiki-toasts for appropriate occasions!
This one's great.

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] happy birthday, Wikipedias

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 11:31 AM, Marco Chiesa  wrote:
> On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 1:13 AM, phoebe ayers  wrote:
>> Tomorrow (May 11) is another anniversary date: it's been 10 years
>> since the first group of non-English Wikipedias came online.
>> Originally with spelled-out names rather than language codes, these
>> sites were:
>>
>> catalan.wikipedia.com
>> chinese.wikipedia.com
>> esperanto.wikipedia.com
>> french.wikipedia.com
>> deutsche.wikipedia.com
>> hebrew.wikipedia.com
>> italian.wikipedia.com
>> japanese.wikipedia.com
>> portuguese.wikipedia.com
>> spanish.wikipedia.com
>> russian.wikipedia.com
>>
>
> In the Italian Wikipedia we are celebrating the birthday with the
> milestone of 800,000 articles!
> http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bar/Discussioni/800.000_voci
>
> Cruccone

That's wonderful! bravo!

-- phoebe

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[Foundation-l] happy birthday, Wikipedias

[phoebe ayers]

Tomorrow (May 11) is another anniversary date: it's been 10 years
since the first group of non-English Wikipedias came online.
Originally with spelled-out names rather than language codes, these
sites were:

catalan.wikipedia.com
chinese.wikipedia.com
esperanto.wikipedia.com
french.wikipedia.com
deutsche.wikipedia.com
hebrew.wikipedia.com
italian.wikipedia.com
japanese.wikipedia.com
portuguese.wikipedia.com
spanish.wikipedia.com
russian.wikipedia.com

(from http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-May/000116.html)

The idea of having Wikipedias in multiple languages came from Jimbo in
March 2001 
(http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-March/48.html);
note that the original German Wikipedia was actually set up at that
time, making it the second-oldest Wikipedia. Though the idea of using
two-letter domain codes was first raised then, after the above sites
were brought online in May there was further discussion, and the sites
were switched to two-letter codes a few days later:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-May/000132.html.

Happy tenth birthday, Wikipedias! (and many more!)  May all of our
language editions flourish.

-- phoebe


-- 
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 gmail.com *

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Re: [Foundation-l] Marjon Bakker working for Wikimedia Nederland

[phoebe ayers]

Hurray! Welcome Marjon to a new role, and congratulations to the Dutch
chapter :)

-- phoebe

On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 8:34 AM, Ziko van Dijk  wrote:
> Dear friends,
>
> Today is Marjon Bakker's first day in the office of the Dutch chapter,
> our first paid coworker in Utrecht. For the next six months she will
> help us with the professionalisation and with building up the office
> of Wikimedia Nederland.
>
> The communication specialist Marjon Bakker is not only a Wikipedian
> but also one of the founders of our association. *Welkom* (welcome)
> and good luck!
>
>
> Ziko van Dijk
> President Wikimedia Nederland
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Board Resolution: Openness

[phoebe ayers]

On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 10:43 AM, Quim Gil  wrote:
> On Sun, 2011-04-10 at 14:50 -0400, ext Pharos wrote:
>> On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 2:49 AM, Nikola Smolenski  wrote:
>> > Perhaps it would be helpful if, when creating a new account, a user could
>> > write a short message about what would they like to do on Wikipedia (this
>> > would become their user page). It would give us an idea on what part of
>> > guidelines to present to the new user, and also very needed insight on why 
>> > do
>> > people just create account and leave.
>>
>> This is the best actually-practical idea I've seen in a long, long time!
>>
>> ++to making user page info for new accounts a simple box to fill in at
>> registration
>
> Agree. Feature request created, otherwise it risks being forgotten:
>
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=28494
>
> Please discuss there, vote, and eventually fix it. Thanks!
>
> --
> Quim
>

This all seems rather closely related to the work going on at the
Accounts Creation Project:
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Account_Creation_Improvement_Project

Which is being actively worked on -- cc'ing Lennart who is leading it.

best,
Phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Board Resolution: Openness

[phoebe ayers]

On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 1:05 PM, Sarah  wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 13:54, phoebe ayers  wrote:
>> * "how do I delete an article?" and its counterpart: "why was my
>> article deleted?"
>> * "how do I merge/split an article?"
>> * "hey, can I reference a blogpost in this article?"
>>
>> There are formatting questions that aren't so easy to figure out either:
>> * "how do I put a footnote in an article?"
>> * "how do I find and insert an infobox?"
>
> In fact a lot of those issues are spelled out very clearly. See
> [[WP:BLOGS]] for whether you can reference a blogpost. See
> [[WP:INCITE]] for a quick way to add a footnote. See
> [[Category:Infobox templates]] for how to add an infobox.

I am pleased that all these areas have been so well documented (I have
a hard time agreeing that AfD is easy to use, though!) Is that true
for everything, though? Would it be worthwhile to fix up other
procedure pages?

I didn't list these particular examples because I thought they were
necessarily the hardest problems on the wiki; I listed them because
they're common questions and have historically been the source of a
lot of discussion. This is by no means an exclusive list :) And
guidelines need to be thought of in context too -- how do you get from
someone asking about their citation to the guideline above? Is there a
clear path? Is it easy to find? Let's think big here about improving
the help pages in general.

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Board Resolution: Openness

[phoebe ayers]

On Sat, Apr 9, 2011 at 9:36 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:
> Risker wrote:
>> I'm particularly interested in policy simplification; I know our project has
>> far, far too many complex and even contradictory policies, guidelines, and
>> miscellaneous pages that result in "alphabet soup" messages that even
>> experienced users find almost impenetrable. I pity the newbie who gets a
>> "welcome" message that leads them to the Manual of Style, for example.
>> Featured article writers "discuss" what it really means on a regular basis,
>> so there's little hope an inexperienced editor will be able to follow the
>> contradictions in it.
>
> I agree that the collection of policies, guidelines, etc. has grown too
> large and too complex, but I'm not sure it's a particular problem (at least
> in the sense that you seem to be describing).
>
> I think most users don't pay any mind to the Manual of Style or the featured
> article requirements or anything like that. They might be inundated with too
> many links in welcome messages (which I view as a largely separate issue
> from policy creep), but I don't think the vast majority of editors pay any
> mind to the details of policies and pages that even established users can't
> be bothered to keep up with. This is what some argue is the actual meaning
> behind "ignore all rules." :-)

Here's my personal take on the complexity of policy/process, and why
it is good to try and simplify, clarify, condense, and otherwise make
it easier to use.

Some things are complicated by nature. Serial commas, citation
styles... I haven't met a style guide yet where such things weren't
spelled out in great and boring detail. Style guides should be easy to
find, easy to refer to, contain clear explanations and
non-contradictory advice, but... we also assume that not everyone will
follow them at every pass, which is just fine; people can still add
citations to articles and other people can fix them according to the
MoS.

But procedure that *impedes* normal, everyday editorial work because
it is so complex, so hard (because of the amount of time it requires
to implement, or because of difficult markup/templates, or difficulty
in finding consensus), so hard to interpret, or so unfriendly is a
problem. Think about these everyday questions and their
policy/procedure page answers:

* "how do I delete an article?" and its counterpart: "why was my
article deleted?"
* "how do I merge/split an article?"
* "hey, can I reference a blogpost in this article?"

There are formatting questions that aren't so easy to figure out either:
* "how do I put a footnote in an article?"
* "how do I find and insert an infobox?"

For any of these (and dozens of others) the official answer is pretty
much "Well, got an hour or three?"

We all know these are trouble spots; if you're like me just looking at
these questions raises the ghosts of a thousand mailing-list and
on-wiki discussions past. ("Nooo! Not blogs again!") But I think it's
useful to sometimes go back to an area of procedure that you don't use
or apply much yourself, and look at it with the eyes of a newbie. Does
it make sense? Sense in context? Is it doable? Is there a simple
version and a more complicated version, and do they contradict each
other? Etc. And then use the same principles to simplify, clarify, and
condense the areas of procedure that you do regularly use and know
well.

For instance, I rarely put articles up for deletion anymore or
otherwise participate in this process, since my editing time is
limited; occasionally I participate in an AfD, occasionally I feel the
need to prod something or rescue a speedy deletion. But every time I
do this these days, I find myself totally daunted and confused by
English Wikipedia deletion procedure -- and I wrote a book on the
subject. That's a pretty high bar to set!

-- phoebe

p.s. I am curious, too, if all languages have the same trouble spots
-- what are the most complicated, confusing, perhaps contentious areas
of process in your wikis? This would be a great cross-wiki embassy
topic.

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