Re: [Wikimedia-l] Profile of Magnus Manske

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
Magnus developed functionality to replace the "red links". Arguably
replacing wikilinks with Wikidata in the background will improve Wikipedia
(in any language) substantially.

It is just not considered.
Thanks,
   GerardM

http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.nl/2016/01/wikipedia-lowest-hanging-fruit-from.html

On 18 January 2016 at 14:34, Andrew Lih  wrote:

> There’s an excellent profile of Magnus Manske in the Wikimedia blog today.
> It’s hard to think of people more important to the movement than Magnus has
> been since 2001.
>
> Selected quotes: "...we have gone from slowdown to standstill; the
> interface has changed little in the last ten years or so, and all the
> recent changes have been fought teeth-and-claw by the communities,
> especially the larger language editions. From the Media Viewer, the Visual
> Editor, to Wikidata transclusion, all have been resisted by vocal groups of
> editors, not because they are a problem, but because they represent
> change... all websites, including Wikipedia must obey the Red Queen
> hypothesis: you have to run just to stand still. This does not only affect
> Wikipedia itself, but the entire Wikimedia ecosystem... if we wall our
> garden against change, against new users, new technologies our work of 15
> years is in danger of fading away... we are in an ideal position to try new
> things. We have nothing to lose, except a little time.”
>
> Link:
>
> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/01/18/fifteen-years-wikipedia-magnus-manske/
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[Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Steinsplitter Wiki]

I found http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/670044

Just FYI for all those who don't read all mailinglists.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnHlksSfMEE
  
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Profile of Magnus Manske

[Jens Best]

Hi,

thanks Andrew for bringing Magnus' words into the mailinglist-discussion. I
would like to balance the direct critic made by Magnus with an attempt to
differentiate the matter at hand a bit.

The obvious attempt to frame "the community" as conservative and not open
to changes is a clever narrative, but it is wrong in its generalizing
conclusion.

The narrative which is trying to tell a story of a progressive,
future-aware and tech-oriented Foundation and a "nothing has to
change"-community is wrong, no matter how often it is told.

There is not only one way to the future of Wikipedia, but many.
There is not only one way to implement tech innovation into the
Wikiprojects.

But tech innovation should support the factual kernel of the movement idea
- which is to build an encylopedia written for humans by humans.
Not primarily for databases, not primarily for crawlers, no primarily for a
"Knowledge Engine" (what ever that supposed to be in the end).

Tech innovations which try to replace quality human editing are not a good
idea.
Tech innovations which try to reduce the encylopedia to a
question/answer-machine are maybe fashionable and trendy, but do not fit to
the idea of an encylopedia. They could be an addition, but not if they
endanger the kernel.

I was an outspoken supporter of the idea of Wikidata. But I now realize
that this great idea is used to work against the human editors of the
Wikipedia. This isn't the way Wikidata was sold to the public in the
beginning. And it is surely not the way it is welcome in Wikipedia.

The idea of connecting the informations in Wikipedia with other sources of
free knowledge to give people the chance to build a variety of better tools
based upon it is a great idea - the way it is done is not good.

The idea of creating tech tools that relieve human editors from reiterating
work and along the way implementing structured data into the workflows of
Wikipedia (and other projects) is a great idea - the way it is done is not
good and is pointing in a wrong direction.

I'm a big fan of new users and while in many different circumstances
introducing new people to Wikipedia I'm trying to think of procedures how
this can be done in more efficient, inviting and understanding ways.

I agree with Magnus when it comes to new users. More new users (specialists
and generalists) are a critical and challenging endeavor.
I don't agree with Magnus when it comes to "new technologies" which are in
the medium term changing the encylopedia in a Q/A-machine.

I believe in people, I don't believe in a Wiki-version of HAL 9000.

Best regards,
Jens Best

2016-01-18 14:34 GMT+01:00 Andrew Lih :

> There’s an excellent profile of Magnus Manske in the Wikimedia blog today.
> It’s hard to think of people more important to the movement than Magnus has
> been since 2001.
>
> Selected quotes: "...we have gone from slowdown to standstill; the
> interface has changed little in the last ten years or so, and all the
> recent changes have been fought teeth-and-claw by the communities,
> especially the larger language editions. From the Media Viewer, the Visual
> Editor, to Wikidata transclusion, all have been resisted by vocal groups of
> editors, not because they are a problem, but because they represent
> change... all websites, including Wikipedia must obey the Red Queen
> hypothesis: you have to run just to stand still. This does not only affect
> Wikipedia itself, but the entire Wikimedia ecosystem... if we wall our
> garden against change, against new users, new technologies our work of 15
> years is in danger of fading away... we are in an ideal position to try new
> things. We have nothing to lose, except a little time.”
>
> Link:
>
> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/01/18/fifteen-years-wikipedia-magnus-manske/
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The documentary film of Wikimedia Argentina now available. Happy birthday Wikipedia!

[Jens Best]

Hi Yury,

attached the srt-file.

If you use the timecode one to one, please check if it matches every line
in the new language. Sometimes timecodes have to be adopted because of
different "flow" of reading in different languages.

Best,

Jens



2016-01-16 12:26 GMT+01:00 Yury Bulka :

> Fantastic work, Anna!
>
> Do you have the subtitles (*.srt) file so we can start translating the
> subtitles? I'd like to translate in into Ukrainian and share here)
>
> Best,
> Yury Bulka
> from Wikimedia Ukraine
>
> Anna Torres  writes:
>
> > Dear all,
> >
> > Wikimedia Argentina has been working the last 6 months on a documentary
> > film based on the community, the editors and their work.
> >
> > Some weeks ago I sent you the trailer and now, after the party for the
> 15th
> > anniversary has passed and the film has already been launched in
> Argentina,
> > we are pleased to be sharing with you the result.
> >
> > Please, find it on the following links (all with subtitles in english)
> >
> > Wikimedia Commons->
> > In spanish:  here
> > 
> > In english -> here
> > 
> >
> > Youtube->here <
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXokeuQFJnM=youtu.be>
> >
> > Vimeo:here 
> >
> > Hope you like it
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Profile of Magnus Manske

[Andrea Zanni]

I'm waiting for the day when Magnus will have a profile on the New Yorker,
but this is nice, for the time being :-)

Aubrey

On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 2:34 PM, Andrew Lih  wrote:

> There’s an excellent profile of Magnus Manske in the Wikimedia blog today.
> It’s hard to think of people more important to the movement than Magnus has
> been since 2001.
>
> Selected quotes: "...we have gone from slowdown to standstill; the
> interface has changed little in the last ten years or so, and all the
> recent changes have been fought teeth-and-claw by the communities,
> especially the larger language editions. From the Media Viewer, the Visual
> Editor, to Wikidata transclusion, all have been resisted by vocal groups of
> editors, not because they are a problem, but because they represent
> change... all websites, including Wikipedia must obey the Red Queen
> hypothesis: you have to run just to stand still. This does not only affect
> Wikipedia itself, but the entire Wikimedia ecosystem... if we wall our
> garden against change, against new users, new technologies our work of 15
> years is in danger of fading away... we are in an ideal position to try new
> things. We have nothing to lose, except a little time.”
>
> Link:
>
> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/01/18/fifteen-years-wikipedia-magnus-manske/
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Proposal for New Project - Wikilore

[Bodhisattwa Mandal]

Hi,

This proposal can fit well into Wikisource and Wikibooks. I dont think,
another new domain is needed for this purpose.

Regards,
Bodhisattwa

On 17 January 2016 at 08:17, Satdeep Gill  wrote:

> Hello Everyone,
>
> I have proposed a new Wikimedia project on Meta. I hope you guys can take
> a look and give your views.
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilore
>
> Regards
> Satdeep Gill
>
>
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> 




-- 
Bodhisattwa Mandal
Administrator, Bengali Wikipedia

''Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free
access to the sum of all human knowledge.''
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Proposal for New Project - Wikilore

[Tanweer Morshed]

Yeah, I do think the same as well. Wikisource is a good option for that.


Regards,
Tanweer Morshed

On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 9:17 PM, Bodhisattwa Mandal <
bodhisattwa.rg...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> This proposal can fit well into Wikisource and Wikibooks. I dont think,
> another new domain is needed for this purpose.
>
> Regards,
> Bodhisattwa
>
> On 17 January 2016 at 08:17, Satdeep Gill  wrote:
>
> > Hello Everyone,
> >
> > I have proposed a new Wikimedia project on Meta. I hope you guys can take
> > a look and give your views.
> >
> > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilore
> >
> > Regards
> > Satdeep Gill
> >
> >
> > ___
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> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > 
>
>
>
>
> --
> Bodhisattwa Mandal
> Administrator, Bengali Wikipedia
>
> ''Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free
> access to the sum of all human knowledge.''
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-- 
Regards,
Tanweer Morshed
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Isaac David]

Le lun. 18 janv. 2016 à 3:17, Andrea Zanni  
a écrit :
On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 9:59 AM, David Goodman  
wrote:


 Nor am I concerned that our information might be used by people who 
oppose

 our
 principles. We ask just the same of our contributors--that the 
information

 they contribute may be used for ''any'' purpose.




My concern is when our CC-BY-SA (or CC0) user-generated information 
is not

shared-alike AND it is a cost for the movement (ie a cost in terms of
bandwidth and electricity).
If Google harvests our information, using massively the API we 
provide, and

they just make it a silo for them to use (for the Knowledge Graph, for
example) and this hurts us, I'm wondering if
we can do something about it. There are only very few players who can 
take
all our information and use it as an internal asset, enriching it and 
NOT

sharing it.

I don't think in binary, so for me there is no contradiction to have a
CC-BY-SA content, but some caveat for big, big, big players.
I'm not saying (nobody is) that we have to shift to a NC license. Just
that  I don't want our movement to be hurt by multi-billion dollars
companies: I'm not an expert of the commons (I bet many people in 
this list
are) so I'm genuinely interested in hearing opinions about this. Is 
such

thing as "tragedy of the digital commons"? Can Google (or Amazon or
Facebook) exploits us?

Now please tell me (gently, :-D) where is my mistake in this line of
thought.

Aubrey


CC-BY-SA allows everyone (including big companies) to modify (for 
instance, to enrich)
and not share-alike AS LONG AS their extended work is kept private. 
That means
Facebook pages and Google infoboxes based on CC-BY-SA content ought to 
carry
the CC-BY-SA license too, because they are distributed to an audience 
wider than the

changes' copyright owners (usually the companies themselves).

CC0 obviously permits everything, including not sharing back at all.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikipedia Workshop for student of Fountain University

[Anthony Cole]

That's excellent news Olatunde Isaac! Well done, and thanks for letting us
know.
Congratulations Olatunde and others who were involved with the effort!

On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 2:33 AM, olatunde isaac 
wrote:

> Dear all,
> On behalf of WUGN,  this is to congratulate all the Wikimedia communities
> for the success of the celebration of Wikipedia at 15.
> We held an event at Fountain University in Osogbo, Osun State, Nigeria as
> a way of commemorating the 15th years anniversary in the country. It was
> also a moment to reflect on the significance of Wikipedia, as the largest
> encyclopedia in the world and her plans for the future.
> No doubt, the event was a great  success. We were hosted by the Vice
> Chancellor of the Institution with over 100 students in Attendance. One of
> the major highlights is the cutting of cake to celebrate the event.
> The event was followed with 3days workshop tagged: Wikipedia Workshop for
> student of Fountain University, to be concluded on the 28th January, 2016.
>
> Best,
>
> Olatunde Isaac,
>
> Secretary, WUGN
> Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN
>
> -Original Message-
> From: wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org
> Sender: "Wikimedia-l" Date: Sun,
> 17 Jan 2016 12:00:17
> To: 
> Reply-To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Wikimedia-l Digest, Vol 142, Issue 102
>
> Send Wikimedia-l mailing list submissions to
> wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
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>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of Wikimedia-l digest..."
>
>
> Today's Topics:
>
>1. Re: Offlist Re: In Support of Community (Philippe Beaudette)
>2. Re: Monetizing Wikimedia APIs (Vituzzu)
>
>
> --
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2016 22:33:38 -0800
> From: Philippe Beaudette 
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Offlist Re: In Support of Community
> Message-ID:
> <
> cab-zubwk9c+innvfhfazhqmqv1bzwrkchujueey2xte-9iy...@mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> You called? :)
>
> On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 1:42 AM, Chris Keating  >
> wrote:
>
> > Ok, spot the idiot who can't send an offlist email offlist.
> > On 13 Jan 2016 09:38, "Chris Keating" 
> wrote:
> >
> > > That's what the Googleplex wants you to think!
> > > On 13 Jan 2016 00:56, "Asaf Bartov"  wrote:
> > >
> > > > (perhaps it would be nice to stop wasting everyone's time with
this.)
> > > >
> > > >A.
> > > >
> > > > On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 4:32 PM, Nathan  wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > I've written a guess on what Damon is hinting at. I will reveal
> this
> > > > guess
> > > > > at some later date, but for now here is the hash value:
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
>
bd17ae9eef103aec4ce75c8e8ba0c0b9cb45bc63c7bb0b52145642b68b1c6bfb586ea67f18e07e6767b5522765a00e096cf29eceadc0450e8840a19bacb692f2
> > > > > ___
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> > > > > Unsubscribe:
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> > > > >  ?subject=unsubscribe>
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > Asaf Bartov
> > > > Wikimedia Foundation 
> > > >
> > > > Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share
in
> > the
> > > > sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
> > > > https://donate.wikimedia.org
> > > > ___
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> > > 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Andrea Zanni]

On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 9:59 AM, David Goodman  wrote:

> Nor am I concerned that our information might be used by people who oppose
> our
> principles. We ask just the same of our contributors--that the information
> they contribute may be used for ''any'' purpose.
>


My concern is when our CC-BY-SA (or CC0) user-generated information is not
shared-alike AND it is a cost for the movement (ie a cost in terms of
bandwidth and electricity).
If Google harvests our information, using massively the API we provide, and
they just make it a silo for them to use (for the Knowledge Graph, for
example) and this hurts us, I'm wondering if
we can do something about it. There are only very few players who can take
all our information and use it as an internal asset, enriching it and NOT
sharing it.

I don't think in binary, so for me there is no contradiction to have a
CC-BY-SA content, but some caveat for big, big, big players.
I'm not saying (nobody is) that we have to shift to a NC license. Just
that  I don't want our movement to be hurt by multi-billion dollars
companies: I'm not an expert of the commons (I bet many people in this list
are) so I'm genuinely interested in hearing opinions about this. Is such
thing as "tragedy of the digital commons"? Can Google (or Amazon or
Facebook) exploits us?

Now please tell me (gently, :-D) where is my mistake in this line of
thought.

Aubrey
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[David Goodman]

Our users are the world in general; the decision not  to make our license
-NC is a basic part of our fundamental understanding. If were were asked by
a commercial entity to provide a service beyond what we could afford, then
I can see the need for some sort of arrangement, for it is better to
provide information even for money than not to provide it. But this is not
the case--we can afford what is asked of us. While people access knowledge
 through commercial systems, we should provide the knowledge. The world is
as it is. It the same principle as  WP Zero.

It is important that we never become a commercial player  in the world of
information. Let others do what they will, our mission is to support the
idea that knowledge can be free, and we prove it by what we do. Nor am I
concerned that our information might be used by people who oppose our
principles. We ask just the same of our contributors--that the information
they contribute may be used for ''any'' purpose.  We ask them to
acknowledge that honest  information is always and unreservedly a good
thing in itself.  Even if a industrial enterprise should pervert out
information, even if a government should use our knowledge to pervert
democracy, the basic provision of the knowledge is our purpose. The evil
will use it for evil, as they use everything else for evil. If we believe
our principles ,that the good will use  - will use it is more important,
and that we not discriminate in favor of what we think to be good is part
of the principle of honest reporting as distinct from advocacy.  We Our
customers are the world in general; the decision not  to make our license
-NC is a basic part of the fundamental understanding. If were were asked by
a commercial entity to provide a service beyond what we could afford, then
I can seethe need for some sort of arrangement, for it is better to provide
information even for money than not to provide it. But this is not the
case--we can afford what is asked of us. I hold no brief for the commercial
world and might not even describe myself as a supporter of the capitalist
system. But while people access knowledge  through commercial systems, we
should provide the knowledge. The world is as it is. It the same principle
as  WP Zero.

It is important that we never become a commercial player  in the world of
information. Let others do what they will, our mission is to support the
idea that knowledge can be free, and we prove it by what we do. Nor am I
concerned that our information might be used by people who oppose our
principles. We ask just the same of our contributors--that the information
they contribute may be used for ''any'' purpose.  We ask them to
acknowledge that honest  information is always and unreservedly a good
thing in itself.  Even if a industrial enterprise should pervert out
information, even if a government should use our knowledge to pervert
democracy, the basic provision of the knowledge is our purpose. The evil
will use it for evil, as they use everything else for evil. If we believe
our principles, that the good will use it is more important, and that we
not discriminate in favor of what we think to be good is part of the
principle of honest reporting and honest research as distinct from
advocacy.

Advocacy is good also. The WMF and the people who support it should engage
in advocacy for free knowledge. That the Foundation supports this freedom,
and opposes those who would restrict it, is important; one of the
justifications for having the Foundation is to concentrate and mobilize the
power of our users for effective action.  This too is part of our mission,
but it is separate from providing access to the encyclopedia.

On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 2:22 AM, Legoktm 
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On 01/16/2016 06:11 PM, Denny Vrandecic wrote:
> > To give a bit more thoughts: I am not terribly worried about current
> > crawlers. But currently, and more in the future, I expect us to provide
> > more complex and this expensive APIs: a SPARQL endpoint, parsing APIs,
> etc.
> > These will be simply expensive to operate. Not for infrequent users -
> say,
> > to the benefit of us 70,000 editors - but for use cases that involve tens
> > or millions of requests per day. These have the potential of burning a
> lot
> > of funds to basically support the operations of commercial companies
> whose
> > mission might or might not be aligned with our.
>
> Why do they need to use our APIs? As I understand it, the Wikidata
> SPARQL service was designed so that someone could import a Wikidata
> dump, and have their own endpoint to query. I'm sure that someone who
> has the need to make millions of requests per day also has the technical
> resources to set up their own local mirror. I don't think setting up a
> MW mirror would be quite so simple, but it should be doable.
>
> One problem with relying on dumps is that downloading them is often
> slow, and there are rate limits[1]. If Google or other some other 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Mitar]

Hi!

I think this conversation is diverging from the question of the
*service* we should offer to others to licensing of the content.
Licensing does not say anything about the service one should offer for
the content. Any service, any API, is more or less something one does
extra on top of the licensing requirements. We could just offer dumps
of data and this is it. But if we offer more, some specialized
services, uptime and availability and so on, that does not have much
with the licensing of the content. That discussion should thus be on
some other layer. Investigating licensing will not give us much
insight into the question if we should go into the business of
offering data services or not.


Mitar

On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 9:02 AM, John Mark Vandenberg  wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 2:38 AM, Isaac David  
> wrote:
>>
>> Le lun. 18 janv. 2016 à 3:17, Andrea Zanni  a
>> écrit :
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 9:59 AM, David Goodman  wrote:
>>>
  Nor am I concerned that our information might be used by people who
 oppose
  our
  principles. We ask just the same of our contributors--that the
 information
  they contribute may be used for ''any'' purpose.

>>>
>>>
>>> My concern is when our CC-BY-SA (or CC0) user-generated information is not
>>> shared-alike AND it is a cost for the movement (ie a cost in terms of
>>> bandwidth and electricity).
>>> If Google harvests our information, using massively the API we provide,
>>> and
>>> they just make it a silo for them to use (for the Knowledge Graph, for
>>> example) and this hurts us, I'm wondering if
>>> we can do something about it. There are only very few players who can take
>>> all our information and use it as an internal asset, enriching it and NOT
>>> sharing it.
>>>
>>> I don't think in binary, so for me there is no contradiction to have a
>>> CC-BY-SA content, but some caveat for big, big, big players.
>>> I'm not saying (nobody is) that we have to shift to a NC license. Just
>>> that  I don't want our movement to be hurt by multi-billion dollars
>>> companies: I'm not an expert of the commons (I bet many people in this
>>> list
>>> are) so I'm genuinely interested in hearing opinions about this. Is such
>>> thing as "tragedy of the digital commons"? Can Google (or Amazon or
>>> Facebook) exploits us?
>>>
>>> Now please tell me (gently, :-D) where is my mistake in this line of
>>> thought.
>>>
>>> Aubrey
>>
>>
>> CC-BY-SA allows everyone (including big companies) to modify (for instance,
>> to enrich)
>> and not share-alike AS LONG AS their extended work is kept private. That
>> means
>> Facebook pages and Google infoboxes based on CC-BY-SA content ought to carry
>> the CC-BY-SA license too, because they are distributed to an audience wider
>> than the
>> changes' copyright owners (usually the companies themselves).
>
> By this logic, and it is reasonable but debatable, if a Google search
> infobox should be CC-BY-SA, then Wikidata items that contain all the
> same infobox values from a Wikipedia article should also be CC-BY-SA.
>
> --
> John Vandenberg
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] The documentary film of Wikimedia Argentina now available. Happy birthday Wikipedia!

[Vira Motorko]

Just for the interest of those who will translate - a Commons page with
subtitles already exists
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/TimedText:Soy_Wikipedista.webm.en.srt
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Proposal for New Project - Wikilore

[John Mark Vandenberg]

in regards to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilore

On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 2:55 AM, Johan Jönsson  wrote:
> 2016-01-18 16:37 GMT+01:00 Tanweer Morshed :
>> Yeah, I do think the same as well. Wikisource is a good option for that.
>
> It could be that the Wikisources I'm familiar with are the exceptions,
> but they tend to be very vary of material that has never been
> published, and this seems to very much be about writing down what's
> passed down orally.
>
> I also imagine the need to do this would be greater the smaller the
> language, or at least the less likely it is someone else would write
> them down, which probably would correlate with fewer persons who are
> potential Wikimedians. Wouldn't that require the creation of a fair
> number of Wikisources that would probably never have a decent chance
> of getting a community?

Wikisource could host most of it, if the oral history is recorded from
a native speaker and direct cultural participant.
There was a good talk about this at the Hong Kong Wikimania.

The recording would be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, and then the
transcription can be created on the Multilingual Wikisource, or a more
appropriate Wikisource if one exists for the language, and it is a
valid source because it has appropriate provenance.

Some Wikisource might reject this type of work, especially if the
provenance was not high quality, but if provenance is high quality it
is a valid type of source.

-- 
John Vandenberg

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Profile of Magnus Manske

[Pine W]

After the assertion "From the Media Viewer, the Visual Editor, to Wikidata
transclusion, all have been resisted by vocal groups of editors, not
because they are a problem, but because they represent change," I would
suggest a very large "citation needed" tag.

Pine
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Profile of Magnus Manske

[David Goodman]

Although  "Tech innovations which try to replace quality human editing are
not a good idea."  Tech innovations which can adequately replace the need
for quality human editing when that editing is not sufficiently available
can be a very good idea, So  can tech innovations which try can assist low
quality human editing to become of higher quality. So can tech innovations
which merely replicate what some people can do at a high quality, but most
people cannot. I saw little need to replace the wikitext editor because I
have worked enough in html for that to be as natural as using a keyboard,
but it is easy to forget the needs of those who have only worked through
WSIWYG interfaces. I find the talk page system quite intuitive, but I'm
aware that many others don't share this feeling.

The difficulty is in differentiating these situations, and I haver seen
here as in many situation elsewhere that the people who develop technology
are willing to use it even when  imperfect and badly documented, and even
pride in their ability to do so. This was certainly true in my own
profession, where we librarians never understood why most of the public
found navigating our manual and early automated system so difficult.

I share in detail Risker's feeling about the visual editor in particular: I
use it now, and the key factor which improved it for me was the recent
addition of the ability  to go back and forth between the two editing modes
without losing work, so I can   use the strengths of each of the as needed.
(But  I am aware of the   pressure to release *something* to the public
after the very slow development; that original slow development was perhaps
the root problem.)





On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 11:44 AM, Risker  wrote:

> Thank you for flagging this for us, Andrew.  I have been unsuccessful in
> accessing this page and have been told by others who tried to do so that
> they were also getting various error messages.  I will try again later
> using different technology - the problem may be that the blog doesn't come
> up well certain types of phones.  Personally, I have always been a bit
> heartbroken that I missed out on the chance for a "Magnus Manske has a
> Posse" t-shirt a while back; his work has genuinely changed the course of
> our project on more than one occasion, and his reputation is solidly
> earned.
>
> With that in mind - that I've not yet got the full context of Magnus's
> comments, but that I believe anything Magnus says is worth listening to and
> considering - I'm a bit concerned about any suggestion that "the community"
> rejected Visual Editor because it was "new".
>
> The English Wikipedia community rejected it because it was really bad
> software that was causing so much damage to the project that even editors
> whose focus was on content writing and improvement wound up wasting their
> time fixing the errors inserted into the text by VisualEditor.  We went
> from a somewhat-difficult-to-use text editor (wikitext) as the default to a
> not-even-beta-level default editor that could not carry out even basic
> editing functions and was actively damaging existing content - without even
> a way for editors to select a "no VE" preference, which had to be written
> after implementation.  While it was available to IP editors, the community
> wound up reverting almost 100% of their edits because the VE-generated
> problems were so severe.  This was not a failure of the community to accept
> change.  This was the failure of the WMF to understand what a minimal
> viable product should be.  The poorly thought out implementation of
> VisualEditor has caused a huge amount of damage to the reputation of the
> software - remember, the community had been asking for something along this
> line as far back as 2003, so it wasn't that we didn't want this type of
> editing interface - and it also caused an entirely predictable backlash
> from the community of 2013.  Remember, this was not the community of 2003
> that understood almost everyone involved in software creation was a
> volunteer too, and thus would tolerate less refined software releases.  The
> community of 2013 (quite correctly, I think) expected much higher quality
> work from paid staff.  Bluntly put, not even when almost all of the
> software was being written by volunteers did we see such a problematic
> "upgrade".
>
> The Visual Editor of January 2016 bears little relationship to that which
> was released on July 1, 2013 - it is dramatically better, easier to use,
> and has some really great features that even experienced editors will find
> useful. I hope more experienced users will give it another try.
>
> I often find it ironic that the great concern about attracting new editors
> and thus creating VisualEditor is then immediately dumped to the bottom of
> the drawer when it comes to Wikidata. First we'll make it easy for them to
> edit. Then we'll include a whole pile of data that they can't edit -or at
> least can't 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[Mitar]

Hi!

Please see below the reply by Rob from MusicBrainz (forwarding because
he is not on the mailing list):

> On Jan 17, 2016, at 04:51, Mitar  wrote:
>
> I would suggest that anyone interested in monetizing APIs check how
> MusicBrainz (https://musicbrainz.org/) is doing it.
>
> An open encyclopedia for music metadata. Their data is all open,
> collaboratively made, and APIs are free to use, but big users are
> asked to pay. In this way they are getting money from Google, for
> example. You should contact them and check how they feel about issues
> raised here: Do they feel that they get strings attached for receiving
> money from Google? How do their contributors feel about them getting
> money in this way? How do they achieve that big players pay, but
> community projects, researchers, and others do not? What is the
> process to determine that? In fact, I am CCing Rob from MusicBrainz
> here.

Hello!

I wanted to give you an update on our business model, since we pivoted
on that back in May. If this sounds bad, it isn't -- we're actually
following along the path that Creative Commons has envisioned for
people using their licenses. For over 10 years we used Creative
Commons licenses to determine if people should or should not pay us
for the data they use in their business. That got us to $250k/year and
then we leveled off. (This is akin to an aspiring CC artist releasing
their content as they work to become known).

But then there comes a point when the business/aspiring artist can
stand on its/their own and start making its/their own rules. And this
is where we've arrived now -- today we have a support model where
people who make commercial use of our data are encouraged to support
us. There is no requirement for supporting us, but we're quick to
point out that a company that makes financial gains using our data
really ought to give something back to us in order for us to keep the
lights on and improve what we do.

And, this is working! Have a look at our growing list of supporters:

   https://metabrainz.org/supporters

The only major music tech company left that isn't supporting us is
Apple and maybe SoundCloud, but they are on my hit list for this year.
Have a look at the tiers of support we setup:

   https://metabrainz.org/supporters/account-type

Note that the tiers have guidelines that are a vague suggestion of
data usage and company size. While people get an idea what "support"
means, it isn't fully clear, so most will sign up as "stealth
start-up", which is great, because it lets us start a conversation
about their data use. In the course of the conversation we can
determine a fair level of support that suits the company's current
needs and ability to pay. Note that we hardly talk about "products" in
this case anymore -- we don't really care how people use our data.
(I've long joked about us operating under a drug dealer business
model, that "the first one is free". But, really, this is exactly what
we're doing. Lots of companies got hooked on our data and now we're
looping around asking for support)

I hope this makes sense -- if not, hit me up for questions!


--

--ruaok Excel is not a database!

Robert Kaye -- r...@musicbrainz.org --http://musicbrainz.org

-- 
http://mitar.tnode.com/
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Profile of Magnus Manske

[Andy Mabbett]

On 18 January 2016 at 13:34, Andrew Lih  wrote:

> There’s an excellent profile of Magnus Manske in the Wikimedia blog today.
> It’s hard to think of people more important to the movement than Magnus has
> been since 2001.

> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/01/18/fifteen-years-wikipedia-magnus-manske/

Since some people are reporting problems accessing the page. here it
is (but you miss out on the lovely photo of a younger Magnus!):


#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#

The world and the Internet have been permanently altered in the last
fifteen years: Altavista and Lycos, for instance, were the popular
search engines of the day, and “Googling” something had three more
years to come about. The concept of social media was nearly
non-existent.

It should come as no surprise, then, that when Magnus Manske started
editing Wikipedia in 2001, the encyclopedia was a very different
place. Its home page in November 2001, now utterly dated, boasts of
having 16,000 English-language articles—and the contributors could
only dream of getting to 100,000. There were no images on the front
page, only black text and blue hyperlinks.

Manske told the blog that he vividly remembers this original front
page: “Back in 2001, Wikipedia was the new kid on the block. We were
the underdogs, starting from a blank slate, taking on entities like
Brockhaus and Britannica, seemingly eternal giants in the encyclopedia
world. I remember the Main Page saying ‘We currently have 15
not-so-bad articles. We want to make 100,000, so let’s get to work.’
‘Not-so-bad’ referred to stubs with at least one comma.”

“It was a ghost town, with just about no content whatsoever.”

Still, humor was not lost on the pioneering editors who were working
towards a seemingly impossible and unattainable goal. When the subject
of replacing the Wikipedia logo came up—at this time, there was no
world-famous Wikipedia ‘globe’ logo; in its place was a quote from
Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan—one contributor referenced the infinite
monkey theorem: “A million monkeys. A million typewriters. Wikipedia.”

At that point in time, even MediaWiki—the software that underpins
Wikipedia and other wiki sites around the word—didn’t exist. However,
the site’s growth posed problems for the original UseModWiki code, as
it could not scale up to meet the demand. Manske coded a replacement
for UseMod, which he called Phase II. It introduced a number of
innovations that Wikipedia editors still use today, such as
namespaces, watchlists, and user contribution lists.

However, even Manske’s code had to be rewritten a year later, as
Wikipedia was growing explosively. That original goal 100,000 articles
would have put Wikipedia in the same category of Brittanica; Manske
said that based on Wikipedia’s initial growth, they thought they would
hit 100,000 in ten years—and “even that seemed overly optimistic.”

In reality, it took only two. “Once we hit exponential growth, it all
became a blur; suddenly, the rocket was off the ground. We tried our
best to hold on and stay on course. Two months ago we passed five
million articles, fifty times the number we hoped for.”

In the succeeding fifteen years, Manske has seen several life
changes—in 2001, he was just another a biology student at the
University of Cologne. His work on Wikipedia since then has heavily
influenced his life. His current job in population genetics actually
sprung out of it: “During my PhD, I got an email from a professor in
Oxford who wanted to run a wiki in his lab, and he somehow heard that
I am the man to talk to. He invited me over to the UK to give a brief
talk and answer some questions, which I did. He then realized I was in
biology and would be looking for a post-doc soon, and he was starting
a group in Cambridge.”

Wikipedia has too. The blog asked Manske for his thoughts on where
Wikipedia is today:

“ While it is fine to grow a little conservative in order to protect
our common achievement that is Wikipedia, I think we should be more
open and enthusiastic for new possibilities. A prime example is the
site itself. People love the site not just for its content, but also
for its calm, ad-free appearance, an island of tranquility in the
otherwise often shrill web; the calm and quiet of a old-fashioned
library, a refuge from the loud and hectic online world.

But we have gone from slowdown to standstill; the interface has
changed little in the last ten years or so, and all the recent changes
have been fought teeth-and-claw by the communities, especially the
larger language editions. From the Media Viewer, the Visual Editor, to
Wikidata transclusion, all have been resisted by vocal groups of
editors, not because they are a problem, but because they represent
change. For these editors, the site has worked fine for years; why
change anything?

To some degree, all websites, including Wikipedia, must obey the Red
Queen hypothesis: you have to run just to stand still. This does not
only affect Wikipedia itself, but the entire 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Profile of Magnus Manske

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
You accuse Wikidata of something. That is ok. However, it helps when it is
clear what problems you see.

When Wikidata was introduced, it improved quality of interwiki links in a
meaningful way. Most Wikipedians do not care about such links so it was an
easy and obvious improvement. Similar improvements are possible as I wrote
earlier when Wikidata technology is used for Wiki links, red links and
disambiguation pages. They do not impact editing in any way but will
increase the quality of Wikipedia in a measurable way.

The big problem with what you write is that you do not make clear what the
problem is. Without such substantiation it is FUD. Please enlighten us why
Wikidata is going about it in the wrong way. That will make this a
meaningful discussion.
Thanks,
   GerardM


>
On 18 January 2016 at 15:17, Jens Best  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> thanks Andrew for bringing Magnus' words into the mailinglist-discussion. I
> would like to balance the direct critic made by Magnus with an attempt to
> differentiate the matter at hand a bit.
>
> The obvious attempt to frame "the community" as conservative and not open
> to changes is a clever narrative, but it is wrong in its generalizing
> conclusion.
>
> The narrative which is trying to tell a story of a progressive,
> future-aware and tech-oriented Foundation and a "nothing has to
> change"-community is wrong, no matter how often it is told.
>
> There is not only one way to the future of Wikipedia, but many.
> There is not only one way to implement tech innovation into the
> Wikiprojects.
>
> But tech innovation should support the factual kernel of the movement idea
> - which is to build an encylopedia written for humans by humans.
> Not primarily for databases, not primarily for crawlers, no primarily for a
> "Knowledge Engine" (what ever that supposed to be in the end).
>
> Tech innovations which try to replace quality human editing are not a good
> idea.
> Tech innovations which try to reduce the encylopedia to a
> question/answer-machine are maybe fashionable and trendy, but do not fit to
> the idea of an encylopedia. They could be an addition, but not if they
> endanger the kernel.
>
> I was an outspoken supporter of the idea of Wikidata. But I now realize
> that this great idea is used to work against the human editors of the
> Wikipedia. This isn't the way Wikidata was sold to the public in the
> beginning. And it is surely not the way it is welcome in Wikipedia.
>
> The idea of connecting the informations in Wikipedia with other sources of
> free knowledge to give people the chance to build a variety of better tools
> based upon it is a great idea - the way it is done is not good.
>
> The idea of creating tech tools that relieve human editors from reiterating
> work and along the way implementing structured data into the workflows of
> Wikipedia (and other projects) is a great idea - the way it is done is not
> good and is pointing in a wrong direction.
>
> I'm a big fan of new users and while in many different circumstances
> introducing new people to Wikipedia I'm trying to think of procedures how
> this can be done in more efficient, inviting and understanding ways.
>
> I agree with Magnus when it comes to new users. More new users (specialists
> and generalists) are a critical and challenging endeavor.
> I don't agree with Magnus when it comes to "new technologies" which are in
> the medium term changing the encylopedia in a Q/A-machine.
>
> I believe in people, I don't believe in a Wiki-version of HAL 9000.
>
> Best regards,
> Jens Best
>
> 2016-01-18 14:34 GMT+01:00 Andrew Lih :
>
> > There’s an excellent profile of Magnus Manske in the Wikimedia blog
> today.
> > It’s hard to think of people more important to the movement than Magnus
> has
> > been since 2001.
> >
> > Selected quotes: "...we have gone from slowdown to standstill; the
> > interface has changed little in the last ten years or so, and all the
> > recent changes have been fought teeth-and-claw by the communities,
> > especially the larger language editions. From the Media Viewer, the
> Visual
> > Editor, to Wikidata transclusion, all have been resisted by vocal groups
> of
> > editors, not because they are a problem, but because they represent
> > change... all websites, including Wikipedia must obey the Red Queen
> > hypothesis: you have to run just to stand still. This does not only
> affect
> > Wikipedia itself, but the entire Wikimedia ecosystem... if we wall our
> > garden against change, against new users, new technologies our work of 15
> > years is in danger of fading away... we are in an ideal position to try
> new
> > things. We have nothing to lose, except a little time.”
> >
> > Link:
> >
> >
> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/01/18/fifteen-years-wikipedia-magnus-manske/
> > ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Proposal for New Project - Wikilore

[Johan Jönsson]

2016-01-18 16:37 GMT+01:00 Tanweer Morshed :
> Yeah, I do think the same as well. Wikisource is a good option for that.

It could be that the Wikisources I'm familiar with are the exceptions,
but they tend to be very vary of material that has never been
published, and this seems to very much be about writing down what's
passed down orally.

I also imagine the need to do this would be greater the smaller the
language, or at least the less likely it is someone else would write
them down, which probably would correlate with fewer persons who are
potential Wikimedians. Wouldn't that require the creation of a fair
number of Wikisources that would probably never have a decent chance
of getting a community?

//Johan Jönsson
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Monetizing Wikimedia APIs

[John Mark Vandenberg]

On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 2:38 AM, Isaac David  wrote:
>
> Le lun. 18 janv. 2016 à 3:17, Andrea Zanni  a
> écrit :
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 9:59 AM, David Goodman  wrote:
>>
>>>  Nor am I concerned that our information might be used by people who
>>> oppose
>>>  our
>>>  principles. We ask just the same of our contributors--that the
>>> information
>>>  they contribute may be used for ''any'' purpose.
>>>
>>
>>
>> My concern is when our CC-BY-SA (or CC0) user-generated information is not
>> shared-alike AND it is a cost for the movement (ie a cost in terms of
>> bandwidth and electricity).
>> If Google harvests our information, using massively the API we provide,
>> and
>> they just make it a silo for them to use (for the Knowledge Graph, for
>> example) and this hurts us, I'm wondering if
>> we can do something about it. There are only very few players who can take
>> all our information and use it as an internal asset, enriching it and NOT
>> sharing it.
>>
>> I don't think in binary, so for me there is no contradiction to have a
>> CC-BY-SA content, but some caveat for big, big, big players.
>> I'm not saying (nobody is) that we have to shift to a NC license. Just
>> that  I don't want our movement to be hurt by multi-billion dollars
>> companies: I'm not an expert of the commons (I bet many people in this
>> list
>> are) so I'm genuinely interested in hearing opinions about this. Is such
>> thing as "tragedy of the digital commons"? Can Google (or Amazon or
>> Facebook) exploits us?
>>
>> Now please tell me (gently, :-D) where is my mistake in this line of
>> thought.
>>
>> Aubrey
>
>
> CC-BY-SA allows everyone (including big companies) to modify (for instance,
> to enrich)
> and not share-alike AS LONG AS their extended work is kept private. That
> means
> Facebook pages and Google infoboxes based on CC-BY-SA content ought to carry
> the CC-BY-SA license too, because they are distributed to an audience wider
> than the
> changes' copyright owners (usually the companies themselves).

By this logic, and it is reasonable but debatable, if a Google search
infobox should be CC-BY-SA, then Wikidata items that contain all the
same infobox values from a Wikipedia article should also be CC-BY-SA.

-- 
John Vandenberg

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Profile of Magnus Manske

[Risker]

Thank you for flagging this for us, Andrew.  I have been unsuccessful in
accessing this page and have been told by others who tried to do so that
they were also getting various error messages.  I will try again later
using different technology - the problem may be that the blog doesn't come
up well certain types of phones.  Personally, I have always been a bit
heartbroken that I missed out on the chance for a "Magnus Manske has a
Posse" t-shirt a while back; his work has genuinely changed the course of
our project on more than one occasion, and his reputation is solidly earned.

With that in mind - that I've not yet got the full context of Magnus's
comments, but that I believe anything Magnus says is worth listening to and
considering - I'm a bit concerned about any suggestion that "the community"
rejected Visual Editor because it was "new".

The English Wikipedia community rejected it because it was really bad
software that was causing so much damage to the project that even editors
whose focus was on content writing and improvement wound up wasting their
time fixing the errors inserted into the text by VisualEditor.  We went
from a somewhat-difficult-to-use text editor (wikitext) as the default to a
not-even-beta-level default editor that could not carry out even basic
editing functions and was actively damaging existing content - without even
a way for editors to select a "no VE" preference, which had to be written
after implementation.  While it was available to IP editors, the community
wound up reverting almost 100% of their edits because the VE-generated
problems were so severe.  This was not a failure of the community to accept
change.  This was the failure of the WMF to understand what a minimal
viable product should be.  The poorly thought out implementation of
VisualEditor has caused a huge amount of damage to the reputation of the
software - remember, the community had been asking for something along this
line as far back as 2003, so it wasn't that we didn't want this type of
editing interface - and it also caused an entirely predictable backlash
from the community of 2013.  Remember, this was not the community of 2003
that understood almost everyone involved in software creation was a
volunteer too, and thus would tolerate less refined software releases.  The
community of 2013 (quite correctly, I think) expected much higher quality
work from paid staff.  Bluntly put, not even when almost all of the
software was being written by volunteers did we see such a problematic
"upgrade".

The Visual Editor of January 2016 bears little relationship to that which
was released on July 1, 2013 - it is dramatically better, easier to use,
and has some really great features that even experienced editors will find
useful. I hope more experienced users will give it another try.

I often find it ironic that the great concern about attracting new editors
and thus creating VisualEditor is then immediately dumped to the bottom of
the drawer when it comes to Wikidata. First we'll make it easy for them to
edit. Then we'll include a whole pile of data that they can't edit -or at
least can't edit on the website they logged into.  They're pretty opposite
ideas, but of course that's considered luddite thinking.

Risker/Anne


On 18 January 2016 at 08:34, Andrew Lih  wrote:

> There’s an excellent profile of Magnus Manske in the Wikimedia blog today.
> It’s hard to think of people more important to the movement than Magnus has
> been since 2001.
>
> Selected quotes: "...we have gone from slowdown to standstill; the
> interface has changed little in the last ten years or so, and all the
> recent changes have been fought teeth-and-claw by the communities,
> especially the larger language editions. From the Media Viewer, the Visual
> Editor, to Wikidata transclusion, all have been resisted by vocal groups of
> editors, not because they are a problem, but because they represent
> change... all websites, including Wikipedia must obey the Red Queen
> hypothesis: you have to run just to stand still. This does not only affect
> Wikipedia itself, but the entire Wikimedia ecosystem... if we wall our
> garden against change, against new users, new technologies our work of 15
> years is in danger of fading away... we are in an ideal position to try new
> things. We have nothing to lose, except a little time.”
>
> Link:
>
> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/01/18/fifteen-years-wikipedia-magnus-manske/
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Profile of Magnus Manske

[Andrew Lih]

I cannot speak for Magnus, but there’s a distinction that needs to be made:

Writing, “… all have been resisted by vocal groups of editors, not because
they are a problem, but because they represent change” is not maligning all
editors who complain.

It simply says that those who resist innovation because it is a change from
the status quo, and without solid reasoning, should reconsider. The
detailed analysis of Jonathan Cardy and Risker criticizing VE’s suboptimal
2013 launch are well-informed and legit. But many, unfortunately, don’t
apply such high standards for analysis.

-Andrew


On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 12:13 PM, Pine W  wrote:

> After the assertion "From the Media Viewer, the Visual Editor, to Wikidata
> transclusion, all have been resisted by vocal groups of editors, not
> because they are a problem, but because they represent change," I would
> suggest a very large "citation needed" tag.
>
> Pine
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[Wikimedia-l] Launch of Community Consultation on strategic approaches

[Lila Tretikov]

Dear Wikimedians,



We are excited to have you participate in an important Community Engagement
regarding our strategic approaches. This is a major step to help us
prioritize the work of the Foundation beginning in July 2016 and running
for the next 12 to 24 months thereafter into a strategic plan.

Throughout 2015 the Foundation has been exploring how to prioritize its
work to best support the movement's goals, set forth, but not yet reached,
in the 2010-15 strategic plan.

The strategic approaches presented here are based on our vision, strategy
consultations in 2010 
and 2015
,
research on external impacts, and input from staff and a few small
community think groups on key challenges and potential solutions.

Timeline: These are our target dates for this process.

   -

   January 11: Put up pages for translation (done)
   -

   January 18: Launch of community consultation on key questions
   -

   February 15: Close of consultation
   -

   By February 26: Release synthesis of consultation
   -

   By March 4: Publish first draft strategy for comment


We appreciate your time and efforts to help guide the Foundation in its
work to support the movement.

Warm regards,

Lila
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Launch of Community Consultation on strategic approaches

[Dariusz Jemielniak]

Many thanks, Lila - this is a good step in our joint conceptualizing, where
we want to go. I'm glad we've made it this year, in spite of a tight
schedule.

dj

On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 8:37 PM, Lila Tretikov  wrote:

> Dear Wikimedians,
>
>
>
> We are excited to have you participate in an important Community Engagement
> regarding our strategic approaches. This is a major step to help us
> prioritize the work of the Foundation beginning in July 2016 and running
> for the next 12 to 24 months thereafter into a strategic plan.
>
> Throughout 2015 the Foundation has been exploring how to prioritize its
> work to best support the movement's goals, set forth, but not yet reached,
> in the 2010-15 strategic plan.
>
> The strategic approaches presented here are based on our vision, strategy
> consultations in 2010 
> and 2015
> ,
> research on external impacts, and input from staff and a few small
> community think groups on key challenges and potential solutions.
>
> Timeline: These are our target dates for this process.
>
>-
>
>January 11: Put up pages for translation (done)
>-
>
>January 18: Launch of community consultation on key questions
>-
>
>February 15: Close of consultation
>-
>
>By February 26: Release synthesis of consultation
>-
>
>By March 4: Publish first draft strategy for comment
>
>
> We appreciate your time and efforts to help guide the Foundation in its
> work to support the movement.
>
> Warm regards,
>
> Lila
> ___
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> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> 




-- 

__
prof. dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak
kierownik katedry Zarządzania Międzynarodowego
i grupy badawczej NeRDS
Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego
http://n wrds.kozminski.edu.pl

członek Akademii Młodych Uczonych Polskiej Akademii Nauk
członek Komitetu Polityki Naukowej MNiSW

Wyszła pierwsza na świecie etnografia Wikipedii "Common Knowledge? An
Ethnography of Wikipedia" (2014, Stanford University Press) mojego
autorstwa http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=24010

Recenzje
Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml
Pacific Standard:
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/killed-wikipedia-93777/
Motherboard: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/an-ethnography-of-wikipedia
The Wikipedian:
http://thewikipedian.net/2014/10/10/dariusz-jemielniak-common-knowledge
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Profile of Magnus Manske

[Magnus Manske]

The iPhone was a commercial success because it let you do the basic
functions easily and intuitively, and looked shiny at the same time. We do
not charge a price; our "win" comes by people using our product. If we can
present the product in such a way that more people use it, it is a success
for us.

I do stand by my example :-)

On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 10:37 PM Michael Peel  wrote:

>
> > On 18 Jan 2016, at 22:35, Magnus Manske 
> wrote:
> >
> > As one can be overly conservative, one can also be overly enthusiastic. I
> > would hope the Foundation by now understands better how to handle new
> > software releases. Apple here shows the way: Basic functionality, but
> > working smoothly first.
>
> But at a huge cost premium? I'm not sure that's a good example to make
> here. :-/
>
> Thanks,
> Mike
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[Wikimedia-l] How to disseminate free knowledge? Was: Profile of Magnus Manske

[Jens Best]

Hi Magnus,

thanks for bringing yourself into the discussion.

I agree on several aspects you point out in the first half of your mail
about improvements, expectations and "prominent subgroups".

When it comes to re-emphasize this "castle"-narrative, I had the feeling
you wanna connect reasonable ideas of other ways into the future with all
the nay-sayers you described so detailed before. Same goes for the
"Wikidata is killing Wikipedia"-statement. Nobody in this
mailinglist-thread used this word "killing" or similiarly hard analogies.


So, what's again is the mission? You say: Dissemination of free knowledge.
Well, who would disagree on that. Nobody. But wait, isn't the whole
strategic debate about *HOW *to disseminate free knowledge? And assuming
that a simple "the more third parties use the Wikiprojects knowledge the
more we fulfill our mission"-answer is…wrong.

Even if 400 million of the 500 million (or so) readers would visit the
Wikipedia just to look up the birthday of Elvis Presley, it is *the
*characteristic
feature of an encylopedia in general and Wikipedia in special that you can
discover more knowledge about Elvis even without asking or even knowing
that you wanna know more about Elvis.

Knowledge unequals information. Knowledge is information plus culture, plus
personal interests, plus serendipity. That's why the same article has
different arrangements in different languages. That's why it is not only
about the facts, but also about the overview of the possible
classifications around the facts a good article is presenting.

Knowledge is about discovering and not about checking some facts with a
Q app. So the question is surely not about should we disseminate
free knowledge, but how can this be done with a spirit that comes from the
idea of an encyclopedia. Information is in the machine. Knowledge is in the
people. Without the (editing, programming, linking) people as an integral
part of the "dissemination procedure" the mission isn't the mission of
Wikipedia.

This idea might be not that fashionably going together with the recent
trends in web tech business developments, but it is surely not
"conservative" or castle-wall-building as some people try to frame it.
It is also not easy. It is even more complicate than good writing good
code, because it is about involving more people in this not so trendy, not
so quick'n'dirty, not so infotainmental, mobile app-stylish way of
"knowledge dissemination".

So the debate is not about castle-building, but about how we together
re-shaping the ship called Wiki(pedia) to sail a daily demanding longterm
mission and not following every techbubble-trends just because "more is
better".

I hope that the upcoming strategic debate is as open as it needs to be. A
strategic debate which framework is already decided upon would only
increase the distance created also by recent events.

I hope this clarifies my POV, and doesn't offend too many people ;-)

Best regards,
Jens Best



2016-01-18 21:33 GMT+01:00 Magnus Manske :

> OK, long thread, I'll try to answer in one here...
>
> * I've been writing code for over thirty years now, so I'm the first to say
> that technology in not "the" answer to social or structural issues. It can,
> however, mitigate some of those issues, or at least show new ways of
> dealing with them
>
> * New things are not necessarily good just because they are new. What seems
> to be an improvement, especially for a technical mind, can be a huge step
> backwards for the "general population". On the other hand, projects like
> the Visual Editor can make work easier for many people, but few of them
> will realize what a daunting undertaking such a project is. The complexity
> of getting this right is staggering. Expectations of getting it all
> perfect, all feature-complete, on the initial release, are unrealistic to
> say the least. And many of the details can not be tested between a few
> developers; things need to be tested under real-world conditions, and
> testing means they can break. Feedback about problems with a software
> release are actually quite welcome, but condemning an entire product
> forever because the first version didn't do everything 100% right is just
> plain stupid. If Wikipedia had been judged by such standards in 2001, there
> would be no Wikipedia today, period. Technology improves all the time, be
> it Visual Editor, Media Viewer, or Wikidata; but in the community, there is
> a sense of "it was bad, it must be still bad", and I have a feeling that
> this is extended to new projects by default these days.
>
> * In summary, what I criticize is that few people ask "how can we make this
> better"; all they ask is "how can we get rid of it". This attitude prevents
> the development of just about any new approach. If the result of a long,
> thorough analysis is "it's bad, and it can't possibly be made better",
> /then/ is the time to scrap it, but no sooner.
>
> * Of course, "the community" is 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Launch of Community Consultation on strategic approaches

[Pine W]

Hi Lila,

A few questions:

1. What is the URL for the 2016 consultation?

2. You wrote, "This is a major step to help us prioritize the work of the
Foundation beginning in July 2016 and running for the next 12 to 24 months
thereafter into a strategic plan." It seems that there will be some overlap
in the development of the 2016-2017 Annual Plan, and that the completion of
the strategic plan process will come too late to significantly influence
the AP until after the AP is already being executed. Can you share with us
which principles are being used to guide the development of the 2016-2017
Annual Plan which this document [1] is scheduled to be published for
community review on March 31, 2016?

3. Could you clarify, in the 2016-2017 AP plan timeline [1], what the
difference is between "core work" and "strategic work"?

4. What methodology is WMF using for developing the 3-year forward revenue
forecast, and is WMF incorporating into this forecast any new potential
varieties of revenue?

I will likely have further questions as we go through these processes.

Thanks!
Pine


[1]
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ys1JLDhpT93BrduEuA4jE3_RYOYHqakiyvR8LASgPCk/edit

On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 5:37 PM, Lila Tretikov  wrote:

> Dear Wikimedians,
>
>
>
> We are excited to have you participate in an important Community Engagement
> regarding our strategic approaches. This is a major step to help us
> prioritize the work of the Foundation beginning in July 2016 and running
> for the next 12 to 24 months thereafter into a strategic plan.
>
> Throughout 2015 the Foundation has been exploring how to prioritize its
> work to best support the movement's goals, set forth, but not yet reached,
> in the 2010-15 strategic plan.
>
> The strategic approaches presented here are based on our vision, strategy
> consultations in 2010 
> and 2015
> ,
> research on external impacts, and input from staff and a few small
> community think groups on key challenges and potential solutions.
>
> Timeline: These are our target dates for this process.
>
>-
>
>January 11: Put up pages for translation (done)
>-
>
>January 18: Launch of community consultation on key questions
>-
>
>February 15: Close of consultation
>-
>
>By February 26: Release synthesis of consultation
>-
>
>By March 4: Publish first draft strategy for comment
>
>
> We appreciate your time and efforts to help guide the Foundation in its
> work to support the movement.
>
> Warm regards,
>
> Lila
> ___
> Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
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> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
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[Wikimedia-l] answers to community consultation questions

[James Salsman]

Re 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2015_Strategy/Community_consultation#The_questions
and given 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Strategy_consultation_qualitative_comment_categories.png
was already published from previous answers, I prefer to answer here:

> What major trends would you identify in addition to mobile and the next 
> billion users?

I predict a continuing arms race between paid advocates and opponents
of bias. (File under the fourth line item from the graph above,
"Neutrality & POV.")

> Based on the future trends that you think are important, what would thriving 
> and healthy Wikimedia projects look like?

I imagine a world in which http://mediawiki.org/wiki/Accuracy_review
is supervised by the WikiEd Foundation, with funding from the
Wikimedia Foundation e.g.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Accuracy_Review_of_Wikipedias
with WikiEd hiring the volunteer doing the work so I don't have to pay her.

Sincerely,
Jim

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Profile of Magnus Manske

[David Gerard]

On 18 January 2016 at 20:33, Magnus Manske  wrote:

> * New things are not necessarily good just because they are new. What seems
> to be an improvement, especially for a technical mind, can be a huge step
> backwards for the "general population". On the other hand, projects like
> the Visual Editor can make work easier for many people, but few of them
> will realize what a daunting undertaking such a project is. The complexity


As a huge VE advocate, I was quite disconcerted how hard the WMF was
trying to force through what was clearly an early beta in need of
real-world testing as if it were a production-ready product; I think
this was the problem and the reason for the backlash. VE *now* has had
a couple of years' development in a real-world environment and is
really quite excellent (and the only sensible way to edit tables). But
the problem here was not fear of change or fear of technology, but
rejecting technology that was being forced on editors when it was
really obviously not up to the job as yet.


- d.

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[Wikimedia-l] Distinction between service and content (Re: Monetizing Wikimedia APIs)

[Rob Lanphier]

Hi everyone,

Splitting the thread off to avoid hijacking it

On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 9:50 AM, Mitar  wrote:

> I think this conversation is diverging from the question of the
> *service* we should offer to others to licensing of the content.
> Licensing does not say anything about the service one should offer for
> the content. Any service, any API, is more or less something one does
> extra on top of the licensing requirements. We could just offer dumps
> of data and this is it. But if we offer more, some specialized
> services, uptime and availability and so on, that does not have much
> with the licensing of the content. That discussion should thus be on
> some other layer. Investigating licensing will not give us much
> insight into the question if we should go into the business of
> offering data services or not.


I think this is a useful way of thinking about the problem.  One thing we
discussed quite a bit at the Wikimedia Developer Summit earlier this month
is the distinction between the content format (see "content format" <
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T119022>) and the APIs that we use to
access the content (see "content access":  <
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T119029>).

The two are incredibly easy to conflate, in part because one could argue
that the content format is merely a translatable expression of the
underlying data model.  That said, it seems to me that we have to stop
abstracting things *somewhere*, to avoid getting deeply lost in too many
layers of abstraction.  If nothing else, we need a "free format" per the
Free Content definition ().

Mitar, is your layer distinction between "service" and "content" the same
one that I'm trying to draw between "content format" and "content access"?
I have further thoughts on this, but I just want to make sure we're talking
about the same distinction.

Rob
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Profile of Magnus Manske

[Michael Peel]

> On 18 Jan 2016, at 22:35, Magnus Manske  wrote:
> 
> As one can be overly conservative, one can also be overly enthusiastic. I
> would hope the Foundation by now understands better how to handle new
> software releases. Apple here shows the way: Basic functionality, but
> working smoothly first.

But at a huge cost premium? I'm not sure that's a good example to make here. :-/

Thanks,
Mike
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Profile of Magnus Manske

[Magnus Manske]

As one can be overly conservative, one can also be overly enthusiastic. I
would hope the Foundation by now understands better how to handle new
software releases. Apple here shows the way: Basic functionality, but
working smoothly first. That said, problems are to be expected, and a new
Wikitext parser-and-back, plus new interface, were bound to produce some
broken edits.

On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 9:46 PM David Gerard  wrote:

> On 18 January 2016 at 20:33, Magnus Manske 
> wrote:
>
> > * New things are not necessarily good just because they are new. What
> seems
> > to be an improvement, especially for a technical mind, can be a huge step
> > backwards for the "general population". On the other hand, projects like
> > the Visual Editor can make work easier for many people, but few of them
> > will realize what a daunting undertaking such a project is. The
> complexity
>
>
> As a huge VE advocate, I was quite disconcerted how hard the WMF was
> trying to force through what was clearly an early beta in need of
> real-world testing as if it were a production-ready product; I think
> this was the problem and the reason for the backlash. VE *now* has had
> a couple of years' development in a real-world environment and is
> really quite excellent (and the only sensible way to edit tables). But
> the problem here was not fear of change or fear of technology, but
> rejecting technology that was being forced on editors when it was
> really obviously not up to the job as yet.
>
>
> - d.
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Profile of Magnus Manske

[Magnus Manske]

OK, long thread, I'll try to answer in one here...

* I've been writing code for over thirty years now, so I'm the first to say
that technology in not "the" answer to social or structural issues. It can,
however, mitigate some of those issues, or at least show new ways of
dealing with them

* New things are not necessarily good just because they are new. What seems
to be an improvement, especially for a technical mind, can be a huge step
backwards for the "general population". On the other hand, projects like
the Visual Editor can make work easier for many people, but few of them
will realize what a daunting undertaking such a project is. The complexity
of getting this right is staggering. Expectations of getting it all
perfect, all feature-complete, on the initial release, are unrealistic to
say the least. And many of the details can not be tested between a few
developers; things need to be tested under real-world conditions, and
testing means they can break. Feedback about problems with a software
release are actually quite welcome, but condemning an entire product
forever because the first version didn't do everything 100% right is just
plain stupid. If Wikipedia had been judged by such standards in 2001, there
would be no Wikipedia today, period. Technology improves all the time, be
it Visual Editor, Media Viewer, or Wikidata; but in the community, there is
a sense of "it was bad, it must be still bad", and I have a feeling that
this is extended to new projects by default these days.

* In summary, what I criticize is that few people ask "how can we make this
better"; all they ask is "how can we get rid of it". This attitude prevents
the development of just about any new approach. If the result of a long,
thorough analysis is "it's bad, and it can't possibly be made better",
/then/ is the time to scrap it, but no sooner.

* Of course, "the community" is an ill-defined construct to begin with.
When I use that phrase above, I do mean a small but prominent subgroup in
that demographic, mostly "old hands" of good editors, often with a "fan
club" of people repeating the opinions of the former on talk pages, without
really investigating on their own. After all, they are good editors, so
they must know what they are talking about, right?

* As I tried to say in the interview, I do understand such a conservative
approach all to well. We worked hard for Wikipedia to get where it is now,
and with trolls, on the left, vandals on the right, and half-done tech
experiments in front, retreating into the safety of the castle seems like a
good choice. And sometimes it is. But while we can defend the castle
comfortably for some years to come, we will never grow beyond its walls. I
think we are already seeing the first fallout from this stagnation, in
terms of dropping page views (not to mention editors). If people stop
coming to a Wikipedia with 5 million articles, 10 million articles would
not make much difference by themselves; more content is good, but it will
not turn this supertanker around on its own. We do have some time left to
change things, without undue haste, but we won't have forever.

* Just to make sure, I am NOT saying to throw away all the things that have
proven to work for us; I'm just saying we shouldn't restrict us to them.

* As for this "Wikidata is killing Wikipedia" sentiment - bullshit. (I
would like to be more eloquent here, but for once, this is the perfect
word.) Wikipedia and Wikidata are two very different beasts, though they do
have an overlap. And that overlap should be used on Wikipedia, where it can
help, even in the gigantic English Wikipedia, which covers but a third of
Wikidata items. Transcluded data in infoboxes; automatically generated
lists; a data source for timelines. Those are functions that will improve
Wikipedia, and will help especially the hundreds of smaller language
editions that are just getting towards critical mass. And there,
automatically generated descriptions can help get to that mass, until
someone writes an actual article in that language.

* So Google is using Wikidata in their search results? Good! In case you
have forgotten, our mission is not to have a nice article about your pet
topic, or have humans write articles that are little better than
bot-generated stubs, or have your name in ten thousand article histories;
the mission is the dissemination of free knowledge. And the more third
parties use the knowledge we assemble, even (or especially!) if it is that
other 800 pound gorilla on the web, the better we fulfil that mission.

I hope this clarifies my POV, and doesn't offend too many people ;-)

On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 7:10 PM Andrew Lih  wrote:

> I cannot speak for Magnus, but there’s a distinction that needs to be made:
>
> Writing, “… all have been resisted by vocal groups of editors, not because
> they are a problem, but because they represent change” is not maligning all
> editors who complain.
>
> It simply says that those