Re: [WikiEN-l] Future of this mailing list
Leave the list open! There are lots of important people subscribed, and you never know when an interesting conversation will pop up. I'm the present moderator of a mailing list that's been active since 1988. When an interesting conversation starts, it's fascinating to see all the famous people chime in. That could happen here. Best, On Thu, Aug 13, 2015 at 7:18 AM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote: I've given this some thought, and pretty much come to the conclusion that it would be better to make this list historic rather than keep it open. This is a reflection on the fact that almost none of the subscribers seem to use it, that there are almost no posts to it, that it can easily become a black hole where a new subscriber is unaware that the likelihood they'll get a response to their email, or one that is accurate or actionable, is very small. In an ideal world, this list would be active and lively and chock full of interesting discussions. That's not happening at all. It is better to consider this legacy communication and to lock it down (thus relieving the responsibilities of the probably one or two list admins who are actually moderating through the one real message out of thousands of spam messages). It is obvious that this list is no longer serving the purpose it once had. I'm not sure exactly where people are going to communicate now - there are lots of comments for a lot of blog posts, I understand facebook gets a fair number of responses, and some of the on-wiki noticeboard are quite active. But this list is no longer reaching the target community. Risker/Anne On 11 August 2015 at 17:16, Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com wrote: I don't see much harm in keeping this list alive in a low-activity state. Pine On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 2:15 PM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: Time to once again consider the future of this list and maybe also that of Wikipedia-L (as David suggested back in December)? I think I'm right in saying that apart from this list being used for some discussion of block appeals, nothing was posted here for all of June and July? https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/ Yup. June 2015 and July 2015 join September 2014 as 'dead' months in the archives. :-) On 12/2/14, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 2 December 2014 at 10:12, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: I kinda like the separation between cross-project and cross-language issues on Wikimedia-L and the discussion about English Wikipedia, but if nobody is interested in the existence of this list, I won't be very sad if it shut down. Despite the lengthy moderator list, I'm about it for actually bothering. Not that there's much to do. In the world of mailing lists, en:wp discussion tends to happen on wikimedia-l, if at all. I'd shut down Wikipedia-L first, however - that one is really dead, except occasional people who pop in by mistake every few months. +1 - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Privacy Study Looking for Volunteers
I propose we run a study. We will survey random editors and ask them if they realize that there is a chance they are leaking enough information for their identity to be revealed. *Even if they are logged in.* Regarding comparisons - institutions have structure, and if there is a structure mapping, then it's a matter of fact. A given mapping will have strengths and weaknesses. You may prefer one mapping to another. If you have reasons for preferring one mapping (other than that it offends you), I'm all ears. But be aware: simply changing the vocabulary that you use to describe the space doesn't mean that two different descriptions of institutions aren't in fact describing a construct that is more similar than different, or that is similar in important ways. This is all to say, there are often reasons that institutions like the NSA and WMF are structured the way they are. Given the investment in the topic, it's probably worth exploring how the institutional structures emerged. But given the investment, confirmation bias may prevail in this case: even if there are important similarities, nobody wants to look like a hypocrite. That's OK, though. Much as I am invested in Wikipedia and appreciate the WMF, if I turn out to be a hypocrite, *I* will call myself one. Just as I will do it to others. Best, Brian *Other dogs bite only their enemies, whereas I bite also my friends.* - Diogenes the Cynic On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at 10:32 AM, Oliver Keyes oke...@wikimedia.org wrote: Or perhaps you're reading far too much into it, and in the process, being incredibly rude to the WMF employees reading this thread, who are people too, and don't particularly appreciate being compared to the NSA. If you're trying to have a constructive discussion, you should pick a better format and attitude. On 29 March 2015 at 19:02, Brian J Mingus brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: The notice just says that the IP is public. Most people have no idea what that means. It will absolutely make those problems harder. Perhaps it is the Foundation's trusted role to hide that information from the public and be trusted with it on the backend. This institutional design sounds similar to another institution in certain ways.. On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 6:58 PM, Dustin Muniz dah...@bsugmail.net wrote: People are made aware with each edit as an I am that their information is publicly available. What concerns me about removing IP information is that it'll remove our ability to fight spam, detect socks, and respond to emergency@ issues, unless I've missed something? Sent from Samsung Mobile Original message From: Brian J Mingus Date:03-29-2015 4:36 PM (GMT-05:00) To: David Carson Cc: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Privacy Study Looking for Volunteers Wikipedia is set up such that if you don't take the measures mentioned in the OP, you are dox'ing yourself. Users are not aware of this. On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 4:33 PM, David Carson carson63...@gmail.com wrote: Wikipedia:Free speech ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Free_speech) is probably worth a read. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Free_speech It's not directly about privacy but I think it clearly covers the ground that Wikipedia is a project to create an online encyclopedia, not an experiment in radical free speech. The system is set up to facilitate that goal. If you think that recording IP addresses is invasive, then you should probably be publishing your content on your own website, not Wikipedia. Cheers, David... On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at 5:10 AM, Brian J Mingus brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: In general people do not read privacy policies, nor do they understand what IP addresses are or what you can do with them. But if you recall, I simply stated that recording IP addresses is invasive. And it is. This is especially true when you know that your recordings are faciliating the active de-anonymization of people who are editing Wikipedia. Not just de-anonymization, but often public shaming. For WMF, the principle of neutrality clearly trumps the principles of privacy and free speech. For the NSA, substitute security for neutrality. It's hypocritical. Luckily, it's easy to fix. Just stuff the ip fields with random numbers and deal with the fallout. Stop tracking people. On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 2:02 PM, Oliver Keyes oke...@wikimedia.org wrote: In order: 1. Yes, the WMF is suing the NSA. There are a few threads/blog posts about this people here can point you to. 2. Brian: The NSA needs to store data without the permission or consent of the people generating it, sometimes through forcible interception, decryption and the introduction and maintenance of software exploits that allow them to do
Re: [WikiEN-l] Privacy Study Looking for Volunteers
Just like the Netflix Prize, knowing which topics an entity is interested in, and having access to text they have written, is, in many cases, enough information to reveal who that person is, where they live, etc. You just plug the data into Google and correlate away. On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 7:19 PM, David Carson carson63...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Brian, I'm still not entirely clear on your complaint. Are you talking about Wikimedia (not random users, nor Wikipedia Administrators) having access to IP addresses from system logs? Or something else? What does The IP address is helpful, but not necessary mean? Cheers, David... On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at 10:14 AM, Brian J Mingus brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: Hi David, It is a bit of hyperbole, but reductio arguments have their role in helping to make certain things clear. If you force users to log in, you can still identify them. The IP address is helpful, but not necessary. On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 7:12 PM, David Carson carson63...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Brian, Dox'ing yourself? That's a pretty wild hyperbole. But just to clarify: are you taking issue with the fact that not-logged-in users have their IP addresses publicly visible? Or with the fact that all edits have IP addresses privately recorded? I originally thought you were talking about the latter, but now I'm not sure. If it's actually the former, I've got no disagreement with you. Given that anyone can edit without making their IP public simply by registering a pseudonym and logging in, and given that many new editors might not be aware of the implications of revealing their IP (if they're editing from a static address at work, for instance), it seems to me that the easiest solution - and one which I think would cause absolutely zero astonishment in the minds of new users - would simply be to require users to register a pseudonym and log in in order to edit. But if you're concerned about the effect that this would have on casual drive-by fixes and improvements by people who aren't invested enough in the project to register, then sure, encrypt or hash the IP address before displaying it publicly. I don't think randomizing it on every edit would be a good idea, because I think it's important to be able to tell whether a succession of edits were from the same editor. Cheers, David... On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at 7:36 AM, Brian J Mingus brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: Wikipedia is set up such that if you don't take the measures mentioned in the OP, you are dox'ing yourself. Users are not aware of this. On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 4:33 PM, David Carson carson63...@gmail.com wrote: Wikipedia:Free speech ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Free_speech) is probably worth a read. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Free_speech It's not directly about privacy but I think it clearly covers the ground that Wikipedia is a project to create an online encyclopedia, not an experiment in radical free speech. The system is set up to facilitate that goal. If you think that recording IP addresses is invasive, then you should probably be publishing your content on your own website, not Wikipedia. Cheers, David... On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at 5:10 AM, Brian J Mingus brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: In general people do not read privacy policies, nor do they understand what IP addresses are or what you can do with them. But if you recall, I simply stated that recording IP addresses is invasive. And it is. This is especially true when you know that your recordings are faciliating the active de-anonymization of people who are editing Wikipedia. Not just de-anonymization, but often public shaming. For WMF, the principle of neutrality clearly trumps the principles of privacy and free speech. For the NSA, substitute security for neutrality. It's hypocritical. Luckily, it's easy to fix. Just stuff the ip fields with random numbers and deal with the fallout. Stop tracking people. On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 2:02 PM, Oliver Keyes oke...@wikimedia.org wrote: In order: 1. Yes, the WMF is suing the NSA. There are a few threads/blog posts about this people here can point you to. 2. Brian: The NSA needs to store data without the permission or consent of the people generating it, sometimes through forcible interception, decryption and the introduction and maintenance of software exploits that allow them to do this but also allow any other reasonably technical nation or non-nation actor who is paying attention to exploit the same vulnerability, keeping this data for an indefinite period, with very little legal or political oversight, in order to stop terrorism, where very little evidence exists that this has helped in any way. The WMF needs to store data for a 90 day period, which is explicitly set down in a privacy policy that is transparent, human-readable, linked from every edit interface, written
Re: [WikiEN-l] Privacy Study Looking for Volunteers
I think now that we are suing the NSA that it's deeply hypocritical to be surveilling users. A quick fix: stuff the ip field with random numbers. On Sat, Mar 28, 2015 at 8:38 AM, James Alexander jalexan...@wikimedia.org wrote: The idea of the IP being more private in the history/ public logs (for example a unique hash so that you know it's an IP but not where/what IP ) is one that I know has been discussed and is desired by a good number within the foundation including within legal. I'll try to look for the phabricator task about it tomorrow. I think that's something that is likely to happen, it isn't easy though and requires a fair number of resources to be pointed at it to get it done so it's a question of priorities and convincing those who decide those things that it should be higher. I believe it's something, privacy wise, that legal would really like. I think it is unlikely in the short to medium term, however, to get rid of the IPs in the backend (in server logs and in the checkuser system for example) because the replacements just aren't there. I've spent a good amount of time thinking of a way to make the checkuser system as usable as necessary without revealing IPs for example (including a consultant who looked a lot but didn't really come up with anything we didn't know already). I think it's doable, but it would be a very difficult and long design process and I think it's unlikely in the near future. James Alexander Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation (415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur On Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 10:17 PM, Kyanos someanon...@gmail.com wrote: I don't believe a different license is needed. CC licenses can be used for anonymous works: The author is not given and does not have to be credited, but everything else (attribution of the work and share-alike) would stay the same. So a change in the terms of use to the effect of, Unregistered edits are considered to have no named author, would be sufficient. Kyanos On 03/27/2015 06:41 AM, WereSpielChequers wrote: Perhaps we should move to a different licensing model for future IP edits. CC0 for IP edits would be a more sensible license for edits by an IP where in many cases no-one could attribute the edit to the individual who made it. If people don't want to release their edits as CC0 they can always create an account. Regards Jonathan Cardy On 27 Mar 2015, at 10:28, Elias Friedman elipo...@gmail.com wrote: It's actually required so as to provide attribution as per the Creative Commons and other licenses we operate under. Sent from my Droid 4 Elias Friedman A.S., CCEMT-P אליהו מתתיהו בן צבי elipo...@gmail.com יְהִי אוֹר ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Privacy Study Looking for Volunteers
Do you see the irony here? The NSA needs to keep harvesting metadata in order to stop terrorism. The WMF needs to keep harvesting metadata in order to stop vandalism. On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 9:16 AM, Oliver Keyes oke...@wikimedia.org wrote: .at which point it can no longer be used for checkuser or for rangeblocks. I really don't see the hypocricy there. Are we: 1. Taking user data; 2. Storing it and not saying for how long; 3. Not telling the user we're taking it in the first place, and; 4. Not tellning anyone what we're using it for? If yes to all of the above, the NSA is broadly analogous. If no...a better analogy is needed. On 28 March 2015 at 11:44, Brian J Mingus brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: I think now that we are suing the NSA that it's deeply hypocritical to be surveilling users. A quick fix: stuff the ip field with random numbers. On Sat, Mar 28, 2015 at 8:38 AM, James Alexander jalexan...@wikimedia.org wrote: The idea of the IP being more private in the history/ public logs (for example a unique hash so that you know it's an IP but not where/what IP ) is one that I know has been discussed and is desired by a good number within the foundation including within legal. I'll try to look for the phabricator task about it tomorrow. I think that's something that is likely to happen, it isn't easy though and requires a fair number of resources to be pointed at it to get it done so it's a question of priorities and convincing those who decide those things that it should be higher. I believe it's something, privacy wise, that legal would really like. I think it is unlikely in the short to medium term, however, to get rid of the IPs in the backend (in server logs and in the checkuser system for example) because the replacements just aren't there. I've spent a good amount of time thinking of a way to make the checkuser system as usable as necessary without revealing IPs for example (including a consultant who looked a lot but didn't really come up with anything we didn't know already). I think it's doable, but it would be a very difficult and long design process and I think it's unlikely in the near future. James Alexander Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation (415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur On Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 10:17 PM, Kyanos someanon...@gmail.com wrote: I don't believe a different license is needed. CC licenses can be used for anonymous works: The author is not given and does not have to be credited, but everything else (attribution of the work and share-alike) would stay the same. So a change in the terms of use to the effect of, Unregistered edits are considered to have no named author, would be sufficient. Kyanos On 03/27/2015 06:41 AM, WereSpielChequers wrote: Perhaps we should move to a different licensing model for future IP edits. CC0 for IP edits would be a more sensible license for edits by an IP where in many cases no-one could attribute the edit to the individual who made it. If people don't want to release their edits as CC0 they can always create an account. Regards Jonathan Cardy On 27 Mar 2015, at 10:28, Elias Friedman elipo...@gmail.com wrote: It's actually required so as to provide attribution as per the Creative Commons and other licenses we operate under. Sent from my Droid 4 Elias Friedman A.S., CCEMT-P אליהו מתתיהו בן צבי elipo...@gmail.com יְהִי אוֹר ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l -- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Privacy Study Looking for Volunteers
In general people do not read privacy policies, nor do they understand what IP addresses are or what you can do with them. But if you recall, I simply stated that recording IP addresses is invasive. And it is. This is especially true when you know that your recordings are faciliating the active de-anonymization of people who are editing Wikipedia. Not just de-anonymization, but often public shaming. For WMF, the principle of neutrality clearly trumps the principles of privacy and free speech. For the NSA, substitute security for neutrality. It's hypocritical. Luckily, it's easy to fix. Just stuff the ip fields with random numbers and deal with the fallout. Stop tracking people. On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 2:02 PM, Oliver Keyes oke...@wikimedia.org wrote: In order: 1. Yes, the WMF is suing the NSA. There are a few threads/blog posts about this people here can point you to. 2. Brian: The NSA needs to store data without the permission or consent of the people generating it, sometimes through forcible interception, decryption and the introduction and maintenance of software exploits that allow them to do this but also allow any other reasonably technical nation or non-nation actor who is paying attention to exploit the same vulnerability, keeping this data for an indefinite period, with very little legal or political oversight, in order to stop terrorism, where very little evidence exists that this has helped in any way. The WMF needs to store data for a 90 day period, which is explicitly set down in a privacy policy that is transparent, human-readable, linked from every edit interface, written with the involvement of the people whose data is being stored, administered by a committee of people who come from this population of editors, and explicitly sets out what the data may or may not be used for, even within the Wikimedia Foundation, in order to stop vandalism, where multiple scientific studies have validated the hypothesis that being able to make rangeblocks and prohibit sockpuppetry is beneficial to the community we are all a part of and the wider population of readers. That's what's actually going on, here. If you thing these situations are roughly analogous, that's your prerogative. If you think the storage of this data is unnecessary, I recommend you go to your local project and explain to them that being able to checkuser potential sockpuppets or hard-block users is not needed: gaining consensus there would be a good starting point to changing this. On 29 March 2015 at 11:57, James Farrar james.far...@gmail.com wrote: Wikipedia is suing the NSA? Seriously? On 28 Mar 2015 11:23, Brian J Mingus brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: It has worked up to now, but I'm thinking that, especially given Wikimedia is suing the NSA, it is no longer justifiable. If the NSA can't track citizens, Wikimedia shouldn't be tracking them either. Seems simple :) On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 2:56 PM, Francesco Ariis fa...@ariis.it wrote: On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 01:19:35PM -0400, Brian J Mingus wrote: I think it's rather curious that edits to Wikipedia aren't private. Why log the IP address? Why log anything? It's invasive. I guess it's a sensible choice against abuse (vandalism) while still allowing non registered users editing rights ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l -- Oliver Keyes Research Analyst Wikimedia Foundation ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Privacy Study Looking for Volunteers
Somewhat off topic? That means we're somewhat on topic then, right? It sure seems like we're on topic. I would prefer it of the WMF took the initiative and asked the community what they think about this issue as a whole. The discussion seems to have lacked transparency up to now. We're suing the NSA for something we're doing. Yes, we're aware of that, and we'd like to do something about it, but it's a low priority and that's the final word. I'm not sure everyone will agree with that. Best, On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 2:58 PM, Oliver Keyes oke...@wikimedia.org wrote: At this point we're really getting somewhat off-topic; Brian, if you want to continue this discussion about the trade-offs around privacy and oversight, feel free to drop me an email. In the meantime, we should probably leave the thread for the original subject ;) On 29 March 2015 at 14:55, Oliver Keyes oke...@wikimedia.org wrote: Yes, you did state that, but you equated the explanation and circumstances with the NSA's behaviour, when in actual fact they are very different. I note that while you've argued that privacy policies aren't read, that's as far as your rebuttal goes. There's no trump of one principle over another, and this is nothing to do with content neutrality; again, I invite you to surface your proposal on enwiki. It will completely eliminate the utility of checkuser or hard-blocks or range blocks, but if the community wants it as much as you seem to think I'm sure they'll support the idea. On 29 March 2015 at 14:10, Brian J Mingus brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: In general people do not read privacy policies, nor do they understand what IP addresses are or what you can do with them. But if you recall, I simply stated that recording IP addresses is invasive. And it is. This is especially true when you know that your recordings are faciliating the active de-anonymization of people who are editing Wikipedia. Not just de-anonymization, but often public shaming. For WMF, the principle of neutrality clearly trumps the principles of privacy and free speech. For the NSA, substitute security for neutrality. It's hypocritical. Luckily, it's easy to fix. Just stuff the ip fields with random numbers and deal with the fallout. Stop tracking people. On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 2:02 PM, Oliver Keyes oke...@wikimedia.org wrote: In order: 1. Yes, the WMF is suing the NSA. There are a few threads/blog posts about this people here can point you to. 2. Brian: The NSA needs to store data without the permission or consent of the people generating it, sometimes through forcible interception, decryption and the introduction and maintenance of software exploits that allow them to do this but also allow any other reasonably technical nation or non-nation actor who is paying attention to exploit the same vulnerability, keeping this data for an indefinite period, with very little legal or political oversight, in order to stop terrorism, where very little evidence exists that this has helped in any way. The WMF needs to store data for a 90 day period, which is explicitly set down in a privacy policy that is transparent, human-readable, linked from every edit interface, written with the involvement of the people whose data is being stored, administered by a committee of people who come from this population of editors, and explicitly sets out what the data may or may not be used for, even within the Wikimedia Foundation, in order to stop vandalism, where multiple scientific studies have validated the hypothesis that being able to make rangeblocks and prohibit sockpuppetry is beneficial to the community we are all a part of and the wider population of readers. That's what's actually going on, here. If you thing these situations are roughly analogous, that's your prerogative. If you think the storage of this data is unnecessary, I recommend you go to your local project and explain to them that being able to checkuser potential sockpuppets or hard-block users is not needed: gaining consensus there would be a good starting point to changing this. On 29 March 2015 at 11:57, James Farrar james.far...@gmail.com wrote: Wikipedia is suing the NSA? Seriously? On 28 Mar 2015 11:23, Brian J Mingus brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: It has worked up to now, but I'm thinking that, especially given Wikimedia is suing the NSA, it is no longer justifiable. If the NSA can't track citizens, Wikimedia shouldn't be tracking them either. Seems simple :) On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 2:56 PM, Francesco Ariis fa...@ariis.it wrote: On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 01:19:35PM -0400, Brian J Mingus wrote: I think it's rather curious that edits to Wikipedia aren't private. Why log the IP address? Why log anything? It's invasive. I guess it's a sensible choice against abuse (vandalism) while
Re: [WikiEN-l] Privacy Study Looking for Volunteers
The notice just says that the IP is public. Most people have no idea what that means. It will absolutely make those problems harder. Perhaps it is the Foundation's trusted role to hide that information from the public and be trusted with it on the backend. This institutional design sounds similar to another institution in certain ways.. On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 6:58 PM, Dustin Muniz dah...@bsugmail.net wrote: People are made aware with each edit as an I am that their information is publicly available. What concerns me about removing IP information is that it'll remove our ability to fight spam, detect socks, and respond to emergency@ issues, unless I've missed something? Sent from Samsung Mobile Original message From: Brian J Mingus Date:03-29-2015 4:36 PM (GMT-05:00) To: David Carson Cc: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Privacy Study Looking for Volunteers Wikipedia is set up such that if you don't take the measures mentioned in the OP, you are dox'ing yourself. Users are not aware of this. On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 4:33 PM, David Carson carson63...@gmail.com wrote: Wikipedia:Free speech ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Free_speech) is probably worth a read. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Free_speech It's not directly about privacy but I think it clearly covers the ground that Wikipedia is a project to create an online encyclopedia, not an experiment in radical free speech. The system is set up to facilitate that goal. If you think that recording IP addresses is invasive, then you should probably be publishing your content on your own website, not Wikipedia. Cheers, David... On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at 5:10 AM, Brian J Mingus brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: In general people do not read privacy policies, nor do they understand what IP addresses are or what you can do with them. But if you recall, I simply stated that recording IP addresses is invasive. And it is. This is especially true when you know that your recordings are faciliating the active de-anonymization of people who are editing Wikipedia. Not just de-anonymization, but often public shaming. For WMF, the principle of neutrality clearly trumps the principles of privacy and free speech. For the NSA, substitute security for neutrality. It's hypocritical. Luckily, it's easy to fix. Just stuff the ip fields with random numbers and deal with the fallout. Stop tracking people. On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 2:02 PM, Oliver Keyes oke...@wikimedia.org wrote: In order: 1. Yes, the WMF is suing the NSA. There are a few threads/blog posts about this people here can point you to. 2. Brian: The NSA needs to store data without the permission or consent of the people generating it, sometimes through forcible interception, decryption and the introduction and maintenance of software exploits that allow them to do this but also allow any other reasonably technical nation or non-nation actor who is paying attention to exploit the same vulnerability, keeping this data for an indefinite period, with very little legal or political oversight, in order to stop terrorism, where very little evidence exists that this has helped in any way. The WMF needs to store data for a 90 day period, which is explicitly set down in a privacy policy that is transparent, human-readable, linked from every edit interface, written with the involvement of the people whose data is being stored, administered by a committee of people who come from this population of editors, and explicitly sets out what the data may or may not be used for, even within the Wikimedia Foundation, in order to stop vandalism, where multiple scientific studies have validated the hypothesis that being able to make rangeblocks and prohibit sockpuppetry is beneficial to the community we are all a part of and the wider population of readers. That's what's actually going on, here. If you thing these situations are roughly analogous, that's your prerogative. If you think the storage of this data is unnecessary, I recommend you go to your local project and explain to them that being able to checkuser potential sockpuppets or hard-block users is not needed: gaining consensus there would be a good starting point to changing this. On 29 March 2015 at 11:57, James Farrar james.far...@gmail.com wrote: Wikipedia is suing the NSA? Seriously? On 28 Mar 2015 11:23, Brian J Mingus brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: It has worked up to now, but I'm thinking that, especially given Wikimedia is suing the NSA, it is no longer justifiable. If the NSA can't track citizens, Wikimedia shouldn't be tracking them either. Seems simple :) On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 2:56 PM, Francesco Ariis fa...@ariis.it wrote: On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 01:19:35PM
Re: [WikiEN-l] Privacy Study Looking for Volunteers
Hi David, It is a bit of hyperbole, but reductio arguments have their role in helping to make certain things clear. If you force users to log in, you can still identify them. The IP address is helpful, but not necessary. On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 7:12 PM, David Carson carson63...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Brian, Dox'ing yourself? That's a pretty wild hyperbole. But just to clarify: are you taking issue with the fact that not-logged-in users have their IP addresses publicly visible? Or with the fact that all edits have IP addresses privately recorded? I originally thought you were talking about the latter, but now I'm not sure. If it's actually the former, I've got no disagreement with you. Given that anyone can edit without making their IP public simply by registering a pseudonym and logging in, and given that many new editors might not be aware of the implications of revealing their IP (if they're editing from a static address at work, for instance), it seems to me that the easiest solution - and one which I think would cause absolutely zero astonishment in the minds of new users - would simply be to require users to register a pseudonym and log in in order to edit. But if you're concerned about the effect that this would have on casual drive-by fixes and improvements by people who aren't invested enough in the project to register, then sure, encrypt or hash the IP address before displaying it publicly. I don't think randomizing it on every edit would be a good idea, because I think it's important to be able to tell whether a succession of edits were from the same editor. Cheers, David... On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at 7:36 AM, Brian J Mingus brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: Wikipedia is set up such that if you don't take the measures mentioned in the OP, you are dox'ing yourself. Users are not aware of this. On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 4:33 PM, David Carson carson63...@gmail.com wrote: Wikipedia:Free speech ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Free_speech) is probably worth a read. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Free_speech It's not directly about privacy but I think it clearly covers the ground that Wikipedia is a project to create an online encyclopedia, not an experiment in radical free speech. The system is set up to facilitate that goal. If you think that recording IP addresses is invasive, then you should probably be publishing your content on your own website, not Wikipedia. Cheers, David... On Mon, Mar 30, 2015 at 5:10 AM, Brian J Mingus brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: In general people do not read privacy policies, nor do they understand what IP addresses are or what you can do with them. But if you recall, I simply stated that recording IP addresses is invasive. And it is. This is especially true when you know that your recordings are faciliating the active de-anonymization of people who are editing Wikipedia. Not just de-anonymization, but often public shaming. For WMF, the principle of neutrality clearly trumps the principles of privacy and free speech. For the NSA, substitute security for neutrality. It's hypocritical. Luckily, it's easy to fix. Just stuff the ip fields with random numbers and deal with the fallout. Stop tracking people. On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 2:02 PM, Oliver Keyes oke...@wikimedia.org wrote: In order: 1. Yes, the WMF is suing the NSA. There are a few threads/blog posts about this people here can point you to. 2. Brian: The NSA needs to store data without the permission or consent of the people generating it, sometimes through forcible interception, decryption and the introduction and maintenance of software exploits that allow them to do this but also allow any other reasonably technical nation or non-nation actor who is paying attention to exploit the same vulnerability, keeping this data for an indefinite period, with very little legal or political oversight, in order to stop terrorism, where very little evidence exists that this has helped in any way. The WMF needs to store data for a 90 day period, which is explicitly set down in a privacy policy that is transparent, human-readable, linked from every edit interface, written with the involvement of the people whose data is being stored, administered by a committee of people who come from this population of editors, and explicitly sets out what the data may or may not be used for, even within the Wikimedia Foundation, in order to stop vandalism, where multiple scientific studies have validated the hypothesis that being able to make rangeblocks and prohibit sockpuppetry is beneficial to the community we are all a part of and the wider population of readers. That's what's actually going on, here. If you thing these situations are roughly analogous, that's your prerogative. If you think the storage of this data is unnecessary, I recommend you go to your local project
Re: [WikiEN-l] Privacy Study Looking for Volunteers
Just like the Netflix Prize, knowing which topics an entity is interested in, and having access to text they have written, is, in many cases, enough information to reveal who that person is, where they live, etc. You just plug the data into Google and correlate away. On Sun, Mar 29, 2015 at 7:19 PM, David Carson carson63...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Brian, I'm still not entirely clear on your complaint. Are you talking about Wikimedia (not random users, nor Wikipedia Administrators) having access to IP addresses from system logs? Or something else? What does The IP address is helpful, but not necessary mean? Cheers, David... ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Privacy Study Looking for Volunteers
A very precise timestamp would seem to suffice for attribution. Anyone caring to prove they wrote something could take a video of them making the edit, thus confirming the timestamp is them. On Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 6:28 AM, Elias Friedman elipo...@gmail.com wrote: It's actually required so as to provide attribution as per the Creative Commons and other licenses we operate under. Sent from my Droid 4 Elias Friedman A.S., CCEMT-P אליהו מתתיהו בן צבי elipo...@gmail.com יְהִי אוֹר On Mar 27, 2015 4:15 AM, Francesco Ariis fa...@ariis.it wrote: On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 01:19:35PM -0400, Brian J Mingus wrote: I think it's rather curious that edits to Wikipedia aren't private. Why log the IP address? Why log anything? It's invasive. I guess it's a sensible choice against abuse (vandalism) while still allowing non registered users editing rights ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Privacy Study Looking for Volunteers
I don't see a need to change the copyright. Just switch from the IP address to something that doesn't allow you to personally identify the user, but allows the user to claim ownership over the post if they want to, by recording some bit of information. I think a cryptographer could design a nice scheme here. This scheme should be such that neither WMF nor the public can identify the editor, but the editor can prove that they are the one who wrote the post. On Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 9:59 AM, Elias Friedman elipo...@gmail.com wrote: Nice on paper, but the wiki-drama from the switch from GFDL was bad enough for me. Sent from my Droid 4 Elias Friedman A.S., CCEMT-P אליהו מתתיהו בן צבי elipo...@gmail.com יְהִי אוֹר On Mar 27, 2015 9:41 AM, WereSpielChequers werespielchequ...@gmail.com wrote: Perhaps we should move to a different licensing model for future IP edits. CC0 for IP edits would be a more sensible license for edits by an IP where in many cases no-one could attribute the edit to the individual who made it. If people don't want to release their edits as CC0 they can always create an account. Regards Jonathan Cardy On 27 Mar 2015, at 10:28, Elias Friedman elipo...@gmail.com wrote: It's actually required so as to provide attribution as per the Creative Commons and other licenses we operate under. Sent from my Droid 4 Elias Friedman A.S., CCEMT-P אליהו מתתיהו בן צבי elipo...@gmail.com יְהִי אוֹר On Mar 27, 2015 4:15 AM, Francesco Ariis fa...@ariis.it wrote: On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 01:19:35PM -0400, Brian J Mingus wrote: I think it's rather curious that edits to Wikipedia aren't private. Why log the IP address? Why log anything? It's invasive. I guess it's a sensible choice against abuse (vandalism) while still allowing non registered users editing rights ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Privacy Study Looking for Volunteers
It has worked up to now, but I'm thinking that, especially given Wikimedia is suing the NSA, it is no longer justifiable. If the NSA can't track citizens, Wikimedia shouldn't be tracking them either. Seems simple :) On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 2:56 PM, Francesco Ariis fa...@ariis.it wrote: On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 01:19:35PM -0400, Brian J Mingus wrote: I think it's rather curious that edits to Wikipedia aren't private. Why log the IP address? Why log anything? It's invasive. I guess it's a sensible choice against abuse (vandalism) while still allowing non registered users editing rights ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Privacy Study Looking for Volunteers
I think it's rather curious that edits to Wikipedia aren't private. Why log the IP address? Why log anything? It's invasive. On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 12:53 PM, Andrea Forte andrea.fo...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, I'm representing a team of researchers from Drexel University who are researching privacy practices among Wikipedia editors. If you have ever thought about your privacy when editing Wikipedia or taken steps to protect your privacy when you edit, we’d like to learn from you about it. The study is titled “Privacy, Anonymity, and Peer Production.” Details can be found on meta where the project was discussed before beginning recruitment here: ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Anonymity_and_Peer_Production). If you would like to help us out, you need to read and complete the online consent form linked here and we will get in contact with you: http://andreaforte.net/wp.html. We are planning to conduct interviews that will last anywhere from 30-90 minutes (depending on how much you have to say) by phone or Skype and we can offer you $20 for your time, but you do not need to accept payment to participate. I have been researching Wikipedia since 2004 and have conducted many studies, most of which have resulted in papers that you can find here: http://andreaforte.net. Thanks for considering it, please contact me if you have questions! Andrea Forte http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Andicat and Rachel Greenstadt Nazanin Andalibi ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] ❄ English Wikipedia, Ron Ritzman left a message for you
Isn't this list moderated? On Dec 27, 2014 8:59 PM, Alan Liefting alieft...@ihug.co.nz wrote: Thanks for that. I usually reach for google or wp to answer questions but forgot in this case. So how did they get hold of this list. Is Ron on Badoo??? And did Badoo get hold of Ron's email contacts??? A On 28/12/2014 2:46 p.m., Elias Friedman wrote: See the second item under controversies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badoo Sent from my Droid 4 Elias Friedman A.S., CCEMT-P אליהו מתתיהו בן צבי elipo...@gmail.com יְהִי אוֹר On Dec 27, 2014 8:38 PM, Alan Liefting alieft...@ihug.co.nz wrote: ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Future of this mailing list
What is there to say? On Mon, Dec 1, 2014 at 5:26 PM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: If the moderators of this mailing list are around, would they or anyone else subscribed to the list be able to throw up some statistics about how much the traffic has declined over the past few years? I'm asking because looking at the archives, I think that last month (November 2014) was the first month since the mailing list started in September 2001 that there were no posts to the this mailing list (the wiki-en-l mailing list for discussion of matters related to the English Wikipedia). Admittedly, the list has been moribund for a long time, but I'm not sure exactly when the tipping point was reached (most meta-discussion seems to take place either on-wiki, at meta, or on the Wikimedia-l mailing list). What is the general view in the Wikimedia universe on maintaining low-traffic lists like this? It might be time to discuss what future this mailing list has. https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/ https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l Actually, looking at the list of moderators, how many of them are still around? Carcharoth ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Help finding photos on Flickr
Can you set the parameters of a search to only return openly licensed content? Yes you can.. https://www.google.com/search?site=tbm=ischsource=hpbiw=1920bih=983q=world+war+IIoq=world+war+IIgs_l=img.3..0l10.1355.2641.0.2846.12.11.0.1.1.0.120.997.8j3.11.00...1ac.1.51.img..0.12.987.bGbyYx_-U3Qgws_rd=ssl#q=world+war+Itbm=ischtbs=sur:fc On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 10:24 AM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: Thanks for the tips. Can you set the parameters of a search to only return openly licensed content? The viewing stats are interesting: http://stats.grok.se/en/latest/Centenary_of_the_outbreak_of_World_War_I A peak of 11,000 views yesterday. But the main WWI article (not surprisingly) got large numbers of views: http://stats.grok.se/en/latest/World%20War%20I 376,450 views on 28 July and another peak at 112,239 on 4 August. Reached number three in the most-viewed list for the week of July 27 to August 2, 2014 (and was still at number 15 the following week): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Top_25_Report/July_27_to_August_2,_2014 On 8/11/14, Brian J Mingus brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: You can use Google image search to search for openly licensed content. This includes images from Flickr. On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 6:14 AM, Richard Symonds richard.symo...@wikimedia.org.uk wrote: Of course Carcharoth. Cany promise anything but happy to try! On 11 Aug 2014 13:02, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: Would anyone subscribed to this mailing list have time to help finding suitably licensed photos on Flickr (or elsewhere) for an article I worked on recently? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centenary_of_the_outbreak_of_World_War_I Currently there are four commemoration events listed on that page at which photos were taken, but I'm struggling to find photos from those events on Commons or Flickr under a free license. On Commons I found this image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Liege-Cointe-Tour_Memorial_Interallie-20060605.jpg Which is the venue for one of the events, but ideally any images used would be taken at the events themselves. Carcharoth ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Help finding photos on Flickr
You can use Google image search to search for openly licensed content. This includes images from Flickr. On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 6:14 AM, Richard Symonds richard.symo...@wikimedia.org.uk wrote: Of course Carcharoth. Cany promise anything but happy to try! On 11 Aug 2014 13:02, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: Would anyone subscribed to this mailing list have time to help finding suitably licensed photos on Flickr (or elsewhere) for an article I worked on recently? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centenary_of_the_outbreak_of_World_War_I Currently there are four commemoration events listed on that page at which photos were taken, but I'm struggling to find photos from those events on Commons or Flickr under a free license. On Commons I found this image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Liege-Cointe-Tour_Memorial_Interallie-20060605.jpg Which is the venue for one of the events, but ideally any images used would be taken at the events themselves. Carcharoth ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is now well-known because it's been on Wikipedia for so long
I don't see why this script shouldn't be permanently installed into Common.js assuming it works. On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 10:03 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 28 March 2014 01:02, Richard Farmbrough rich...@farmbrough.co.uk wrote: On 08/03/2014 09:20, David Gerard wrote: I recall finding a list somewhere of article titles that got lots of hits but didn't have articles, but don't recall where. I may be misremembering of course. - d. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Most_missed_articles Yeah, that's the list I was thinking of. Possibly someone should run a report again ... - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is now well-known because it's been on Wikipedia for so long
*Most often requested* nonexistent articles per day (based on *149* days in year *2008*). ? On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 7:02 PM, Richard Farmbrough rich...@farmbrough.co.uk wrote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Most_missed_articles On 08/03/2014 09:20, David Gerard wrote: I recall finding a list somewhere of article titles that got lots of hits but didn't have articles, but don't recall where. I may be misremembering of course. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is now well-known because it's been on Wikipedia for so long
The reason the name stuck is that Baader-Meinhof is a weird name, and one would not expect to see it multiple times independently in short succession. Hence the name Baader-Meinhof phenomenon (which is also the name of a book) is analogous to onomatopoeia in that both represent the thing they are describing in some way - this is also similar to homoiconicity. It's a perfect name - much better than frequency illusion - and a substantial number of people now know it by this name, in part due to its longstanding and interesting history of existence on Wikipedia, which has advertised it to hundreds of thousands of people and generated tens of thousands of websites which use it by that name. The article should clearly stay! On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 2:25 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 8 March 2014 09:20, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 5 March 2014 22:04, Brian J Mingus brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: The article should reinstated, a section concerning the unique nature of its notability should be added. This argument doesn't seem to convince (though that does resemble reasonable popularity). The fourth AFD notes the problem in this case: really crappy sources. The sort of thing that would lead me to !vote delete without prejudice. linkto:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader-Meinhof_phenomenon in Google shows that it hits Reddit and apparently 4chan a bit. Apparently StumbleUpon likes it too. This would account for the hit rates - it's an amusing thing people would like there to be a name for, c.f. The Meaning Of Liff - but still doesn't supply us with sufficient material to base a solid article on. - d. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
[WikiEN-l] The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is now well-known because it's been on Wikipedia for so long
I notice that the article on the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon has recently been deleted, and it has in fact been deleted many times over the years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader-Meinhof_phenomenon However, according to stats.grok.se, this article is quite popular, having been viewed *around 350 thousand times since 2007*. Here's the script I wrote: for i in $(wget --quiet -O- http://stats.grok.se/en/200712/Baader-meinhof%20phenomenon | grep '2' | cut -f2 -d'' | cut -f1 -d'');do wget --quiet -O- http://stats.grok.se/en/$i/Baader-meinhof%20phenomenon | grep 'has been viewed' | sed 's/.*viewed//;s/ //g';done 201402: 67419 201401: 20892 201312: 19924 201311: 5886 201310: 757 201309: 1801 201308: 756 201307: 1019 201306: 1153 201305: 3548 201304: 1092 201303: 1565 201302: 746 201301: 2291 201212: 586 201211: 612 201210: 1062 201209: 586 201208: 360 201207: 326 201206: 238 201205: 277 201204: 286 201203: 298 201202: 392 201201: 743 201112: 392 20: 566 201110: 571 201109: 460 201108: 778 201107: 1735 201106: 452 201105: 368 201104: 409 201103: 336 201102: 649 201101: 475 201012: 295 201011: 274 201010: 373 201009: 325 201008: 363 201007: 609 201006: 844 201005: 751 201004: 810 201003: 522 200712: 454 Total: 348201 Wikipedia's policies are irrelevant: This phenomenon has entered the lexicon, and is now well known simply due to its existence in Wikipedia. Since the phenomenon didn't have a well known name, I've been telling people about it for quite some time now, and it has recently enjoyed a huge surge in popularity, *due to its existence on Wikipedia*. The article should reinstated, a section concerning the unique nature of its notability should be added. Cheers, Brian Mingus ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 11:47 AM, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.comwrote: On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 10:28 AM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote: On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 8:53 AM, Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net wrote: [...] You can't neutrally discuss how a person is compared to shit. Not in any real-world sense. I don't agree for a moment that we can't neutrally discuss how a person is compared to shit. We can and in my opinion we have and do. This is not a more sensitive topic than numerous genocides, racism, sexism, etc. Santorum has handled the situation more maturely than several people on the list here. He is clearly not pleased, but neither is he making any attempt to suppress the incident. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com He has no responsibility for using the resources of a non-profit corporation for political purposes. We do. We are not using the resources for political purposes. The article is NPOV and does not show Santorum in a negative light. George, Your arguments fail to account for the fact that the article is curated by biased anti-Santorum contributors, that the article is covered in too much depth to be neutral, and that the article is being as a launchpad for the campaign against Santorum. As I described in my OP, the use of this article has revealed a boundary condition in our notability guidelines. I believe that what many people find distasteful about this article is that it is a *reductio ad absurdum *case that sets the following precedent for others to follow on Wikipedia: - Person A dislikes Person B. Both persons have name recognition. - Person A creates an offensive definition for Person B's last name. - Person A documents said definition in Wikipedia. - Person A uses Wikipedia's intrinsically high Google ranking, in conjunction with in-bound link-spamming to said article, to *cause* it to appear high in Google's rankings. - When people search for Person B's last name they find a discussion of the smear campaign rather than the BLP. - Wikipedia is now the lauchpad for a smear campaign, and this launchpad's existence is justified by Wikipedian's because documenting the previous five steps is considered encyclopedic according to the guidelines. Suffice it to say that *many* people do not want to see Wikipedia abused in this manner. Additionally, some people, such as myself, find the existence of this article to be *morally wrong.* I find the following counter-arguments unsatisfying: - We have no control over Google. This is actually not true for a number of reasons, some of which have already been elucidated. - The article is NPOV, factual, cites sources and notable, therefore it should exist. This is unsatisfying because it exists only because of anti-Santorum pro-Savage contributors. If it were not for them the article would not have 100 sources, would not be so long, and would not be of such high quality. These several factors have been put there precisely in order to increase its relevance in Google results. This point is not contested to my knowledge. In other words, the quality of the article is not consistent with the historicity, or notability, of the topic. If you can reply to these points in sum, I think we might make some progress. I believe that you should at least agree that the article should be no more than 2-3 paragraphs in length, with a small handful of citations to truly authoritative, and perhaps even academic, discussions of the subject. - Brian ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 5:34 PM, Rob gamali...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 2:56 PM, Brian J Mingus brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: Your arguments fail to account for the fact that the article is curated by biased anti-Santorum contributors, Well, you lost me right there. This is a terrible slur on both the editors of the article as well as all the uninvolved editors who have examined the article and found it compliant with Wikipedia policies. Surely if this broad slur that you've made is true, then uninvolved editors on both sides of this issue would have noticed this rampant bias and its effect on the article. This kind of thing, as well as earlier emails here from another editor with dark hints about how the creator of this article also started an article about a gay porn company, is really distasteful. And ironic that the bold defenders waving the banner of BLP would defend a living individual by slurring other living individuals. I believe you will have a hard time justifying your claim that my comment is false (not to mention that it is a slur). It should be easy to show that the article is curated by at least one, and probably several, biased anti-Santorum contributors. - Brian ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 5:52 PM, Rob gamali...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 7:44 PM, Brian J Mingus brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: I believe you will have a hard time justifying your claim that my comment is false (not to mention that it is a slur). It should be easy to show that the article is curated by at least one, and probably several, biased anti-Santorum contributors. The onus is on you to prove that such a broad slur on other Wikipedia editors is true. Even if we accept this as truth, the solution to such problems is typically the eyes of more editors and not deletion. This strikes me as indirection. If someone claims that an article is biased then they are also claiming that the process governing its creation is biased. Such a claim is not a slur, it is a purported statement of fact. However, you would say that the claim is invalid because to claim that an article is biased is to necessarily not assume good faith. Following your line of indirection, it isn't possible to claim that an article is biased because you would necessary violate the principle of good faith, ie, implicitly or explicitly claiming that particular editors are biased. I believe you would rather follow this line of reasoning because it directs attention away from the real issues at hand. - Brian ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 6:50 PM, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.comwrote: On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 5:27 PM, Brian J Mingus brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 5:52 PM, Rob gamali...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 7:44 PM, Brian J Mingus brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: I believe you will have a hard time justifying your claim that my comment is false (not to mention that it is a slur). It should be easy to show that the article is curated by at least one, and probably several, biased anti-Santorum contributors. The onus is on you to prove that such a broad slur on other Wikipedia editors is true. Even if we accept this as truth, the solution to such problems is typically the eyes of more editors and not deletion. This strikes me as indirection. If someone claims that an article is biased then they are also claiming that the process governing its creation is biased. Such a claim is not a slur, it is a purported statement of fact. However, you would say that the claim is invalid because to claim that an article is biased is to necessarily not assume good faith. Following your line of indirection, it isn't possible to claim that an article is biased because you would necessary violate the principle of good faith, ie, implicitly or explicitly claiming that particular editors are biased. I believe you would rather follow this line of reasoning because it directs attention away from the real issues at hand. I do not read the article as anti-Santorum or biased. If it were anti-Santorum and biased, this discussion would likely have taken place on the article talk page, with specific examples of paragraphs, sentences, sections, quotes, source selection etc. which were improper or unbalanced. The actual discussion has included essentially none of this. It's somewhat of a jump of faith to extrapolate from this that there's nothing wrong at the detail level with the article, but that claim could be made and defended credibly. The claims of things wrong with it that are being made are, in Wikipedia terms, novel interpretations. BOLD allows us to take wider views, but it does not allow one to merely assert a particular wider view to be absolute and unchallengeable truth. Yes, several people here believe that it's a problem. No, not everyone does. No, you do not appear to have a consensus on your side, much less a majority. Under those conditions, BOLD fails, and we revert to the details and to standard interpretations. About which no detailed problems have been asserted so far... -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com If only there were a way to quantify notability I believe this problem would be much easier to tackle. I am personally not inclined to go through the article point by point and try to figure out what ought to be there. In general I think we can show that the article is too long and ought to be rewritten in a shorter, more concise form without also having to debate every sentence there. As was previously stated, Wikipedia is not the end-all-be-all of information on a topic, but in this case it comes pretty close. That's not how it's supposed to be.. - Brian ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 4:25 PM, George Herbert george.herb...@gmail.comwrote: On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 3:21 PM, Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net wrote: Again - I am not Cirt, and I find the article reasonably balanced. Having an article that associates someone with human waste be reasonably balanced is like claiming that an article about the Richard Gere gerbil rumor (as long as it stated the rumor was false) would be reasonably balanced. The association of a living person with shit is inherently unbalanced; it spreads a negative POV towards that person, no matter how many disclaimers we add saying that we don't think he's really like shit. You are conflating the term (which associates someone with human waste) and our coverage of the term (which describes the term, descriptively, historically, and cultural and political contexts). Our coverage of the term is NPOV and balanced, in my opinion. You seem to wish that the term did not exist. That's a fair wish, but not relevant to Wikipedia. What's relevant to Wikipedia is that it does exist, has numerous reliable sources, has had real-world impact, and therefore is at least arguably notable and an appropriate subject for a WP article. We cannot fix the fact that the term exists and was damaging to Mr. Santorum. Censoring Wikipedia to attempt to right wrongs done in the real world is rather explicitly Not the Point. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com George, Can you please address a couple of points that I believe have been brought up in this thread. You may want to read the previous emails that more clearly elucidated the points first, or not. They are as follows: 1) This term deserves a Wiktionary entry at best, not a Wikipedia entry. 2) Wikipedia is being used as a platform to damage Santorum. Thanks, Brian ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
Hi all, I'm not sure about the history of this article, but it it was recently brought to my attention via Facebook. My take on this article is that it is an abuse of Wikipedia's notability guidelines. The article goes out of its way to cite lots of sources, but I do not believe that being mentioned in the mainstream media is both a necessary and sufficient condition for notability. In this particular case it sounds like someone with a lot of name recognition used that name recognition to get media attention for their smear campaign. This media attention was then used to justify a Wikipedia article. This is an excellent reductio ad absurdum case that brings a boundary condition of our notability guidelines to light. It is, quite frankly, manufactured notability and IMO it does deserve an article. When you Google for Santorum's last name this Wikipedia article is the second result. This means that people who are looking for legitimate information about him are not going to find it right away - instead we are going to feed them information about a biased smear campaign rather than the former Senators BLP. Please discuss. -- Brian Mingus Graduate student Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab University of Colorado at Boulder ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]
On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 7:24 PM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: Hi all, I'm not sure about the history of this article, but it it was recently brought to my attention via Facebook. My take on this article is that it is an abuse of Wikipedia's notability guidelines. The article goes out of its way to cite lots of sources, but I do not believe that being mentioned in the mainstream media is both a necessary and sufficient condition for notability. In this particular case it sounds like someone with a lot of name recognition used that name recognition to get media attention for their smear campaign. This media attention was then used to justify a Wikipedia article. This is an excellent reductio ad absurdum case that brings a boundary condition of our notability guidelines to light. It is, quite frankly, manufactured notability and IMO it does deserve an article. When you Google for Santorum's last name this Wikipedia article is the second result. This means that people who are looking for legitimate information about him are not going to find it right away - instead we are going to feed them information about a biased smear campaign rather than the former Senators BLP. Please discuss. Major typo there, sorry. It does *not* deserve an article. Thanks:) ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Rating the English wikipedia
On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 8:16 PM, Ian Woollard ian.wooll...@gmail.comwrote: I therefore award the Wikipedia class C: Considering that 55% of articles are stubs and 21% are start awarding Wikipedia a C overall is quite generous. -- Brian Mingus Graduate student Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab University of Colorado at Boulder ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] References bookmarklet?
On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 3:44 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 5 January 2011 22:40, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: Basically no If you look at even [[Template:Cite web]] it requires stuff that you have to go hunting for (author). You could construct something for popular websites (BBC say) which have a standard format. Sounds like something we could add really quite a lot of special cases to. I wonder how many we would need to have decent coverage in practice. Has anyone done a survey of what sources we actually use in references? The long tail will be *huge*, but does the en:wp community have any favourites? - d. I have created a tool called WikiPapers that my lab has used for several years that does something similar to this. It is designed around scientific papers. It allows you to highlight the title of an article on any web page and then click it a bookmarklet and it will use various APIs on the web to get the associated metadata and add it to your wiki. It can optionally pass the URL to one of many URL scrapers such as Connotea and CiteULike. I am currently refactoring the code for use in a new project called WikiScholar. The old code supports PubMed, Google Scholar, Connotea and CiteULike, whereas the new code only supports PubMed right now. The new code, however, makes it much simpler to add new importers with its class-based infrastructure. If anyone is interested in this project and can code in Python or PHP please let me know. I am actively developing it now. I'm interested in folks who would like to dedicate some time to writing importers for specific APIs. Cheers, Brian ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] References bookmarklet?
On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 3:50 PM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 3:44 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 5 January 2011 22:40, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote: Basically no If you look at even [[Template:Cite web]] it requires stuff that you have to go hunting for (author). You could construct something for popular websites (BBC say) which have a standard format. Sounds like something we could add really quite a lot of special cases to. I wonder how many we would need to have decent coverage in practice. Has anyone done a survey of what sources we actually use in references? The long tail will be *huge*, but does the en:wp community have any favourites? - d. I have created a tool called WikiPapers that my lab has used for several years that does something similar to this. It is designed around scientific papers. It allows you to highlight the title of an article on any web page and then click it a bookmarklet and it will use various APIs on the web to get the associated metadata and add it to your wiki. It can optionally pass the URL to one of many URL scrapers such as Connotea and CiteULike. I am currently refactoring the code for use in a new project called WikiScholar. The old code supports PubMed, Google Scholar, Connotea and CiteULike, whereas the new code only supports PubMed right now. The new code, however, makes it much simpler to add new importers with its class-based infrastructure. If anyone is interested in this project and can code in Python or PHP please let me know. I am actively developing it now. I'm interested in folks who would like to dedicate some time to writing importers for specific APIs. Cheers, Brian PS: The Google Code url is: http://code.google.com/p/wikipapers/ ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Help Beat Jimmy! (The appeal, that is....)
On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 7:23 PM, Deniz Gultekin dgulte...@wikimedia.orgwrote: Wikipedians and Jedi-themed special effects?! *gets popcorn* But yes, I agree, it'd be fantastic to have even more high quality videos of editors *and* readers, with or without lightsabers. On 10/6/10 6:05 PM, Carcharoth wrote: On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 11:26 PM, Casey Brownli...@caseybrown.org wrote: On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 6:15 PM, Carcharothcarcharot...@googlemail.com wrote: Maybe a video clip montage of lots of different Wikipedia contributors talking for a very short time? Haha, like http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2010/09/24/four-videos-of-wikipedias-volunteers/ ? ;-) Something like that yes, but even better, and with Jedi special effects! :-) Carcharoth ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l -- Deniz Gültekin Community Associate Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge http://donate.wikimedia.org/ I would like to add to this that I think the key factor is the personal appeal. You should definitely pick a random Wikimedian and give them a high falutin message akin to the one in Jimmy's appeal and see how it stacks up. Chances are it's going to work very well. After all, people don't know who Jimmy Wales is, and yet his appeal causes them to donate. That boils it down to the personal nature of the appeal and the content of the message. If this turns out to be correct you should, pronto, start making LOTS of these. - Brian ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Annual fundraiser: which banners work
On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 4:14 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/12/11/annual-fundraiser-checking-banner-results/ - d. I am very happy that the Foundation has finally decided to make data driven decisions, both in fundraising and the usability initiative. This has been my largest critique over time. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] WIKIPEDIA FOREVER
On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 3:38 AM, Oleg Alexandrov oleg.alexand...@gmail.comwrote: I have been a Wikipedian for five years. I am an administrator, I have written tens of articles, created hundreds of pictures, and made tens of thousands of edits. I love Wikipedia and all that it represents. I find the current WIKIPEDIA FOREVER banner to be creepy. I don't have good words to express it, but it does not feel the right way of soliciting donations. I would call upon the Wikipedians responsible for the banner to give it a deep thought about what message they want to convey to the millions of visitors to the site. Thank you. I believe the banner will be judged, not based on the almost universally bad impressions of it that I have seen from Wikipedians, but based on how much money it makes. I don't think it's surprising that the banner rubs many Wikipedians the wrong way. It was created by a PR agency with the express purpose of raking in as much cash as possible. It's supposed to hit all the right chords of the hundreds of millions of visitors that will see it, of whom we long time Wikipedians are a miniscule fraction. ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
