[Wikimedia-l] next Wikidata office hours
Hi everyone! I will be holding the next round of Wikidata office hours next week. You're all invited to ask questions and discuss. If you can't attend there will be logs. * 30. April, English, 12:00 UTC (see http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?hour=12min=00sec=0day=30month=4year=2012 for different time zones) * 30. April, German, 4:30pm UTC (see http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?hour=16min=30sec=0day=30month=4year=2012 for different time zones) They will happen in #wikimedia-wikidata on freenode. My (virtual) door is open outside these office hours as well of course ;-) Cheers Lydia http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata -- Lydia Pintscher - http://about.me/lydia.pintscher Community Communications for Wikidata Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. Obentrautstr. 72 10963 Berlin www.wikimedia.de Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V. Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter der Nummer 23855 Nz. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/681/51985. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] ombudsmen commission
* How many cases were brought to your attention? around 30, give or take * How many of those did you consider serious enough to warrant investigation beyond direct dismissal? around 10, I'd say * How many cases did you take on *proactively* (without a solid complaint)? none that I would remember * In how many cases in total did the committee take action (or advise the WMF to take action)? we requested user rights changes for the committee or asked for further information we were not able to obtain ourselves several times (thanks to Philippe for helping us all the time with this!), but we never asked/recommended the Board to remove CU/steward rights from anyone. * How many emails did you exchange over the past year on your mailing list? I'd say at least 500. Could also be 1000 or more, I really can't tell you any exact numbers and I won't count it. * Were you able to send a confirmation with the outcome of the case to every complainor? Except for the cases still under investigation, I guess so. We now usually also send a confirmation when we receive a request (we didn't do that in the beginning). * Was the person complained about informed every time of the fact they were under investigation? If someone did not make any mistake we do not tell them that someone complained about them. We contacted them only if we had questions to them or if we deemed it necessary to explain something to them. * Is the process accurately described on meta? Which process do you mean? * Do you have steps in place to ensure every single request gets the follow up it needs, if not will that be improved? We are working on developing a better way of keeping track of the requests at the moment. However, the technical possibilities are limited, for security and privacy reasons. * How many formal complaints were received about the functioning of the committee? I don't know, ask Philippe. ;) I guess some people were not happy about the time it took to get to a result (I'm not, either.), or about the result itself. But there is always a way to improve things. This information could probably be summarized in a few paragraphs. I suspect that the Board already receives such summary (the committee reports directly to the board according to the meta pagehttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman_commission) so an extract from that would probably be easiest. Even if that is not the case I have the feeling it should be doable to create these numbers afterwards for 2011. That is not only a big win for transparancy, but also for future candidate members - they would know what they are getting into. Finally, it allows people to evaluate if they trust the committee enough to send their complaints to. I know several people who in the past (before the current committee probably) have sent complaints but felt it was a black box and have no idea what happened to them. That can be quite damaging for the image and should be avoided. Sorry if someone gets the impression of a black box, but as we are investigating privacy violations, we have to be very careful which information to share and we prefer to share as little as possible. The committee works very simple, we receive a complaint, which we confirm to the complainor, then we discuss if a privacy violation can even be involved. If not, we decline the request and - if possible - we try to tell the complainor where they can get help for their problem. If indeed a privacy violation is possible we investigate on this and then we have a result whether or not there was a breach of the policy and we give that result to the complainor, explaining them why we think there was (or not) a breach of the policy. If we do find a breach of privacy we would have to discuss what we do about it. But as I said, we never recommended to the Board to remove any rights from a CU or steward. I hope that such a recommendation will never be necessary, but of course we are ready for this, *if* it becomes necessary. :) This whole investigation process can take a while and can involve contacting the person about whom the complaint was, if we need to ask them for clarification on the issue, or if we need to tell them how to avoid such issues in the future. It can also involve us doing checks on users ourselves to double-check CU results (of course, in such cases we inform the local CUs why they see us in the log). However, when we will finally have set up our technical aids to keep better track of the cases, we will be able to improve on all this. Th. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] ombudsmen commission
That's not a formal complaint. That's an email to wikimedia-l. For a formal complaint, I'd request documentation of the dates presented, etc. pb ___ Philippe Beaudette Director, Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 415-839-6885, x 6643 phili...@wikimedia.org On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 3:19 AM, Etienne Beaule betie...@bellaliant.netwrote: Abigor did a message to wikimedia-I for his complaint. Let's say 1. Ebe123 On 12-04-23 7:16 AM, Philippe Beaudette phili...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 3:06 AM, Thomas Goldammer tho...@googlemail.comwrote: * How many formal complaints were received about the functioning of the committee? I don't know, ask Philippe. ;) I guess some people were not happy about the time it took to get to a result (I'm not, either.), or about the result itself. But there is always a way to improve things. To my knowledge, none. pb ___ Philippe Beaudette Director, Community Advocacy Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 415-839-6885, x 6643 phili...@wikimedia.org phili...@wikimedia.org ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] ombudsmen commission
On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 3:49 AM, Huib Laurens sterke...@gmail.com wrote: On my behalve a letter has been send to the foundation and the same letter has ben send by fax. How formal do you wish to get it? Nor I or the person that sended this communication on my behalf got a responds about the complaint self, we only got the responds We don't think any office action is needed. Best, Huib Bearing in mind that it's nearly 4AM, but I'm not aware of that letter. If such a letter was sent, of course, we'll increment that to 1 from zero. :) pb ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] ombudsmen commission
2012/4/23 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com: Transparency and privacy are not mutually exclusive. Obviously, the actual content of complaints is usually going to be confidential, but that doesn't preclude the process being transparent. That's why I answered to Lodewijk's questions. I guess the process is more transparent now. You can clearly document the process that you follow. You can publish metrics like those Lodewijk suggested (and actual numbers, not just guesses). It would be nice to have a page on meta that says how many cases are currently at each point in the process and is kept up-to-date. You just volunteered to set up such a page on Meta (for 2012, I mean). I already described the process we use, so this should be possible for you to do. Thanks. The ombudsmen commission has always felt to me to be the most cabalistic of all the committees and groups we have. A lot of people don't know it even exists or what it really does. All I tend to hear about it is when people are complaining that their emails have gone into the black box, never to be seen again. Well, we are not going to advertise our services to everyone in person. If the people do not know that we exist, that's not our fault but the fault of the community. What we are doing is already described on the Meta page. If someone has sent a complaint and never gets any answer, then this is of course our fault, and it shouldn't happen. A little reminder usually does the trick, though. As you know, we are all not 24/7 OC workers doing nothing else in our lives. It can always happen that some email gets stuck in spam filters or just gets overlooked especially on days when you receive a hundred or more wiki-related emails, which is about every day in the year. I think what could really help is if we could use the OTRS ticket system for our work (that's an idea that just now came into my mind)... But I don't know how secure that is and if it is even possible to set it up so closed that only the OC members can access those tickets. (Any suggestions from Philippe about that?) Just because it deals with confidential information doesn't mean that it shouldn't be held to the same standards of transparency as every other part of our movement. Well, traditionally the transparency of the OC was very low, that's true. We just took over these traditions from our predecessors, but that doesn't mean that we can't break with these traditions and set up some new standards. It just needs to be done, which means some work. However, don't ever expect that we will publish anything case-related, including people or wiki projects involved. Th. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] ombudsmen commission
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:02:29 +0200 From: Thomas Goldammer tho...@googlemail.com To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] ombudsmen commission Message-ID: CAL0e-KVCetcaaKNQuiSwX5ckBnxqw=9_6vhkdj988ypz3wd...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 You can clearly document the process that you follow. You can publish metrics like those Lodewijk suggested (and actual numbers, not just guesses). It would be nice to have a page on meta that says how many cases are currently at each point in the process and is kept up-to-date. You just volunteered to set up such a page on Meta (for 2012, I mean). I already described the process we use, so this should be possible for you to do. Thanks. I thought Thomas's requests and suggestions in this case were quite valid and reasonable, and they did not deserve such a condescending and passive-aggressive response. I'm sure you're all very busy but that's no excuse for not continually striving for a higher standard of transparency and accountability (within the obvious restrictions that your work imposes). Regards, Craig Franklin ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] ombudsmen commission
On 23 Apr 2012, at 13:02, Thomas Goldammer tho...@googlemail.com wrote: You can clearly document the process that you follow. You can publish metrics like those Lodewijk suggested (and actual numbers, not just guesses). It would be nice to have a page on meta that says how many cases are currently at each point in the process and is kept up-to-date. You just volunteered to set up such a page on Meta (for 2012, I mean). I already described the process we use, so this should be possible for you to do. Thanks. Touché. I believe that if the process is going to be put on Meta we do need actual numbers as opposed to your guesstimations. Hopefully this shouldn't be too difficult to sort out, if you do some searches on Gmail for all the emails that you have received in the last year from the mailing list you should be able to get a better number of the volume of emails that you got overall in the year. The ombudsmen commission has always felt to me to be the most cabalistic of all the committees and groups we have. A lot of people don't know it even exists or what it really does. All I tend to hear about it is when people are complaining that their emails have gone into the black box, never to be seen again. Well, we are not going to advertise our services to everyone in person. If the people do not know that we exist, that's not our fault but the fault of the community. What we are doing is already described on the Meta page. If someone has sent a complaint and never gets any answer, then this is of course our fault, and it shouldn't happen. A little reminder usually does the trick, though. As you know, we are all not 24/7 OC workers doing nothing else in our lives. It can always happen that some email gets stuck in spam filters or just gets overlooked especially on days when you receive a hundred or more wiki-related emails, which is about every day in the year. I think what could really help is if we could use the OTRS ticket system for our work (that's an idea that just now came into my mind)... But I don't know how secure that is and if it is even possible to set it up so closed that only the OC members can access those tickets. (Any suggestions from Philippe about that?) I don't think that OTRS is the necessarily the best option - unless you use it in collaboration with the mailing list, i.e someone sends a complaint to OTRS, the commission discusses on the mailing list and then send out a response to the user. You would be able to easily keep track of what tickets have been answered, but as far as I am aware the OTRS admins are technically able to view all the emails in any queues - so that would be another 12ish people plus devs that would be able to view the tickets. I'm not saying that they would, but bearing in mind a fair number of the OTRS admins are checkusers/oversighters themselves, I think there will be some issues with using OTRS. Thehelpfulone ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] ombudsmen commission
It was not meant passive-aggressive. ;) I know that his suggestion is a good one and I wanted to push him to just do it on Meta. Sorry if you misunderstood that. ^^ Th. I thought Thomas's requests and suggestions in this case were quite valid and reasonable, and they did not deserve such a condescending and passive-aggressive response. I'm sure you're all very busy but that's no excuse for not continually striving for a higher standard of transparency and accountability (within the obvious restrictions that your work imposes). Regards, Craig Franklin ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] ombudsmen commission
2012/4/23 Thehelpfulone thehelpfulonew...@gmail.com: Touché. I believe that if the process is going to be put on Meta we do need actual numbers as opposed to your guesstimations. Hopefully this shouldn't be too difficult to sort out, if you do some searches on Gmail for all the emails that you have received in the last year from the mailing list you should be able to get a better number of the volume of emails that you got overall in the year. Nope. Thomas should just create the page and format it so we can easily fill in the numbers for 2012. (If he doesn't want, anyone else can do that as well, of course. ^^) Let's just begin with this sort of statistics now, for 2012, and let's not do 2011. It's just too much work to dig everything out again just for counting some numbers. Please bear in mind that it's just statistics anyway. It really doesn't matter if it were 28 or 32 requests (or any other number around that) in 2011. I don't think that OTRS is the necessarily the best option - unless you use it in collaboration with the mailing list, i.e someone sends a complaint to OTRS, the commission discusses on the mailing list and then send out a response to the user. You would be able to easily keep track of what tickets have been answered, but as far as I am aware the OTRS admins are technically able to view all the emails in any queues - so that would be another 12ish people plus devs that would be able to view the tickets. I'm not saying that they would, but bearing in mind a fair number of the OTRS admins are checkusers/oversighters themselves, I think there will be some issues with using OTRS. Hm ok, if that's true, OTRS is clearly not an option. ^^ Th. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] ombudsmen commission
On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 8:23 AM, Craig Franklin cr...@halo-17.net wrote: I thought Thomas's requests and suggestions in this case were quite valid and reasonable, and they did not deserve such a condescending and passive-aggressive response. I'm sure you're all very busy but that's no excuse for not continually striving for a higher standard of transparency and accountability (within the obvious restrictions that your work imposes). Regards, Craig Franklin This might be a digression, but I'm fairly new to this list and would like a clarification. What's the decision-making process within the WMF on issues such as this (a request from the community to document a WMF process)? I understand how processes are implemented (or not), and how tasks are done (or not) on en.wikipedia, but I don't yet understand the relationship between community requests (or requests from individuals in the community) and WMF processes and tasks. What are the expectations for WMF employees' response to a request such as this -- presumably they can assess it and say no if they feel that's appropriate? Is it part of their job description to communicate via lists such as this, and justify their decisions? I don't have a strong opinion on this particular request -- I spent years as a corporate ombudsman and so I understand the concerns about privacy and confidentiality, but the request seems reasonable. However, if Thomas feels that it's not as important as other tasks that he has been given to do, what's the expectation -- that he should post an explanation, but is not obliged to do the task? I suppose this is a special case of a general question: presumably WMF employees have two masters -- the decisions of the board, which should trickle down into directives to each group and employee, and prevailing consensus in the communities, which may occasionally conflict with those directives, or which may lead to vocal minority dissent. I have seen a couple of examples of this in practice but I don't have a clear idea of how those conflicts ought to be resolved. Mike ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] ombudsmen commission
Ok, for the number fans, I did a filter search on my email archive and I found 660 emails archived that were sent to the OC email address since we were appointed (I don't think I deleted any, so this should probably be it). This includes emails sent from within the committee as well as those sent to us from outside. My estimate was around 500, so it's not so bad, actually. :) No, you do *not* want me to read all that stuff again. Let's just keep it at roughly 30 cases, please. Th. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] ombudsmen commission
2012/4/23 Mike Christie coldchr...@gmail.com: This might be a digression, but I'm fairly new to this list and would like a clarification. What's the decision-making process within the WMF on issues such as this (a request from the community to document a WMF process)? I understand how processes are implemented (or not), and how tasks are done (or not) on en.wikipedia, but I don't yet understand the relationship between community requests (or requests from individuals in the community) and WMF processes and tasks. What are the expectations for WMF employees' response to a request such as this -- presumably they can assess it and say no if they feel that's appropriate? Is it part of their job description to communicate via lists such as this, and justify their decisions? Mike, the ombudsman commission does not consist of WMF employees. We are just volunteers. We don't get paid for what we are doing. ;) If I got paid for it, I would happily search all my emails and create all sorts of statistics the community wants to have, but I didn't volunteer for being a statistican or doing anything related to that, so I just won't do it. :) Explaining how we process requests is something else, and I did already explain that process. Th. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] ombudsmen commission
Please have a look at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman_commission#Processing.2FReporting I hope this is sort of satisfying for now? I will not do that for the 2011 term. Already this one cost me more than two hours and it is only from 1st of February to now. :) If you do the maths you end up at ~20 cases for the 2011 term (5 cases in 3 months = 20 in a year). I think there were some more than that but not many more. Also included on that page is the outline of our processing that I gave earlier. Th. 2012/4/23 Delphine Ménard notafi...@gmail.com: Top posting. This is getting a bit ridiculous. Frankly, while I see the need for *some* statistics, I don't see how the number of emails exchanged is in any kind of way relevant to the work this ombudsmen commission, for one. Seriously, if they solve a case with 2 emails or 200, I couldn't care less. Second, I understand Thomas' reluctance to skim through 600 emails to give a report that was not part of his mandate in the first place, if I am not mistaken. Could the interested people, as was asked, draw up a few report guidelines on meta as to what they would like to see, and could the commission can take just a bit of its time to see what's feasible/reasonable and what is not (as per Mike's proposal), and agree to issue a report at given intervals so that the black box is maybe not so black? It seems that something along the lines of X cases, Y accepted, Z rejected (reason for them being rejected if possible), solved succesfully/not solved and time to solve a case (date it came in, date it was solved) would probably answer most of the concerns expressed here. If you know you have to do it in advance, then the task should be bearable. Let's look forward, and not dwell on what we didn't think about before. Cheers, Delphine On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 3:23 PM, Thomas Goldammer tho...@googlemail.com wrote: 2012/4/23 Mike Christie coldchr...@gmail.com: This might be a digression, but I'm fairly new to this list and would like a clarification. What's the decision-making process within the WMF on issues such as this (a request from the community to document a WMF process)? I understand how processes are implemented (or not), and how tasks are done (or not) on en.wikipedia, but I don't yet understand the relationship between community requests (or requests from individuals in the community) and WMF processes and tasks. What are the expectations for WMF employees' response to a request such as this -- presumably they can assess it and say no if they feel that's appropriate? Is it part of their job description to communicate via lists such as this, and justify their decisions? Mike, the ombudsman commission does not consist of WMF employees. We are just volunteers. We don't get paid for what we are doing. ;) If I got paid for it, I would happily search all my emails and create all sorts of statistics the community wants to have, but I didn't volunteer for being a statistican or doing anything related to that, so I just won't do it. :) Explaining how we process requests is something else, and I did already explain that process. Th. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l -- @notafish NB. This gmail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails will get lost. Intercultural musings: Ceci n'est pas une endive - http://blog.notanendive.org Photos with simple eyes: notaphoto - http://photo.notafish.org ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Editor retention implies social features
hi, Please do thank the journalist concerned. I agree with the line of reasoning.But I sway away from one of his conclusions. So I think the answer is that Wikipedia needs to be more social. It needs a different kind of moderation. And it needs more mechanisms for positive feedback. Wikipedia does need a different kind of moderation and more mechanisms for positive feedback but do not think that the reasoning makes the case for making it more social. Harlock. ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
Re: [Wikimedia-l] ombudsmen commission
On 23 April 2012 12:41, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote: 2012/4/23 Delphine Ménard notafi...@gmail.com: Top posting. This is getting a bit ridiculous. Frankly, while I see the need for *some* statistics, I don't see how the number of emails exchanged is in any kind of way relevant to the work this ombudsmen commission, for one. Seriously, if they solve a case with 2 emails or 200, I couldn't care less. Second, I understand Thomas' reluctance to skim through 600 emails to give a report that was not part of his mandate in the first place, if I am not mistaken. I am very surprised that it would require going through 600 emails to find out how many cases the OC has dealt with over the past year. If they don't have that information somewhere, then they can't have been doing a good job. There is no way they can do their job properly without knowing what cases they've received... I don't think your correlation is correct. Simply because they have not maintained a list of case dispositions (not required or expected to this point, and more particularly very difficult to do when there's no confidential place for them to retain it) does not mean that they have failed to do the job properly. I note the plan to create accesses to CRMs for community uses in Q3 of the draft Engineering annual plan. I'd encourage the Ombudsman Committee to ask that they be put at the front of the line for access to this software. Risker/Anne ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
[Wikimedia-l] FDC Advisory Group selection complete
Hi - Per earlier communications, we have selected the Advisory Group to support the design process for the Funds Dissemination Committee in accordance with the formation process we laid out on Meta.[1] The FDC Advisory Group role and the names of the members can be found on Meta.[2] Thanks to all who were nominated for the Group and we hope that everyone will contribute to the process. Please do watch the Funds Dissemination Committee pages and contribute to the design process.[3] [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/FDC_Advisory_Group/Formation [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/FDC_Advisory_Group [3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Funds_Dissemination_Committee Thanks, Barry -- Barry Newstead Chief Global Development Officer Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
