Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are we losing out against bad editing?

[James Salsman]

>> Paid professionals work alongside volunteers in fire departments and
>> hospitals throughout the world. Are there any essential
>> characteristics which exclude such cooperation in Wikipedia?

> There is a difference, and that is the degree of professionalization. The
> role of admin is not a profession because there are no stablished bodies
> that have defined who is a professional admin and who is not.

I'm not sure that's true. Whether it started as a game of Nomic or
not, almost all of the admins have been elected through a certainly
established process.




On Fri, May 25, 2018 at 4:48 PM, David Cuenca Tudela  wrote:
> On Fri, May 25, 2018 at 9:16 PM, James Salsman  wrote:
>
>> Paid professionals work alongside volunteers in fire departments and
>> hospitals throughout the world. Are there any essential
>> characteristics which exclude such cooperation in Wikipedia?
>>
>
> There is a difference, and that is the degree of professionalization. The
> role of admin is not a profession because there are no stablished bodies
> that have defined who is a professional admin and who is not. And still it
> would be difficult to professionalize since the distinction between
> volunteer/paid professional could make some people feel excluded (as in,
> "why is this person getting money for something I do for free?").
>
>
>> > the will to cooperate in our mission should have precedence over the
>> will to make a profit out of it
>>
>> Does that exclude the financially disadvantaged?
>
>
> The wikimedia projects assume that you have time to spare without any
> compensation and that everybody can do the same. That is not true. In my
> view the wikimedia projects are already excluding the financially
> disadvantaged, because the people who are part of this project do not have
> the direct experience necessary to understand that their reality is not the
> same as the reality out there, and as a result they might find difficult to
> take the perspective of a person who needs the financial means in order to
> be able to contribute.
>
> However, if the doors of generosity were open towards volunteers and flocks
> of people were attracted because of it, there wouldn't be enough resources
> for everyone, then how could I tell who deserves it most? I would follow a
> progressive approach by offering first little, and then more depending on
> how much the community appreciates the skills and involvement of this
> person in the mission. There are many ways to keep track of said
> appreciation, but writing encyclopedic articles about each
> community-supported volunteer (not on Wikipedia) could be very effective,
> also to create community bonds and to understand better the person behind
> the nickname.
>
> If anything, we would remove the financial barrier that is keeping some
> (many?) people from contributing in the first place.
>
> The thing is that a project like this should start small in order to learn
> from the experience what works socially/practically, and how it integrates
> conceptually into our worldview. I believe that it should be totally in the
> hands of the volunteer community, because appraisal of every day tasks can
> only be done if you are involved in the project and understand the
> challenges, the tasks, the pitfalls, and what it means to do a good job.
> For instance I normally review property proposals for creation in Wikidata,
> it requires a set of skills and dedication that only the handful of people
> who understand the challenge could evaluate. And there is more, how do you
> evaluate the time spent building community and creating a good atmosphere
> unless you are part of it?
>
> I appreciate your questions because they are very interesting to examine.
> Regarding the reputation tracking system I assume that it would only work
> for the restricted use-case of direct article editing (cf. exopedianism),
> but not for the whole range of tasks that volunteers perform. In any case,
> thanks for bringing it to my attention.
>
> Regards,
> Micru
> ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Category: French Jews on en.wp / GPDR

[James Salsman]

Nathan, the Enwiki organic category system is not very good. For
example, there are no consistent ontological constraints placed on the
entire ontological tree (which should not be surprising because the
Library of Congress Card Number system, the Dewey decimal system, the
SIC ontology, and even Wordnet to some extent, are all insufficient
for topic subject matter classification as specializations increase.)
As ontologies go, it barely ranks in the fourth decile. Wikidata
already has inherent ontology patches to the organic category system,
and most if not all of them are compliant with European laws. I am
going to love what happens to Wikipedia's organic categories as they
meet normal forms.

Enjoy!

Best regards,
Jim


On Fri, May 25, 2018 at 6:24 PM, Nathan  wrote:
> I'm not seeing an argument here for why Wikimedia should adhere to this
> law, if it is correctly stated by the OP. If France passed a law banning
> Internet-published photos of living people, how would we approach that law?
> If Germany barred publishing the place of birth, date of birth or religious
> preference of public figures? If the United States banned publishing the
> name of individuals accused of mass murder? Passionate arguments could be
> made in favor of each, but none of them would support the perspective of an
> educational organization dedicated to the freedom of knowledge.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Category: French Jews on en.wp / GPDR

[Nathan]

I'm not seeing an argument here for why Wikimedia should adhere to this
law, if it is correctly stated by the OP. If France passed a law banning
Internet-published photos of living people, how would we approach that law?
If Germany barred publishing the place of birth, date of birth or religious
preference of public figures? If the United States banned publishing the
name of individuals accused of mass murder? Passionate arguments could be
made in favor of each, but none of them would support the perspective of an
educational organization dedicated to the freedom of knowledge.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are we losing out against bad editing?

[David Cuenca Tudela]

On Fri, May 25, 2018 at 9:16 PM, James Salsman  wrote:

> Paid professionals work alongside volunteers in fire departments and
> hospitals throughout the world. Are there any essential
> characteristics which exclude such cooperation in Wikipedia?
>

There is a difference, and that is the degree of professionalization. The
role of admin is not a profession because there are no stablished bodies
that have defined who is a professional admin and who is not. And still it
would be difficult to professionalize since the distinction between
volunteer/paid professional could make some people feel excluded (as in,
"why is this person getting money for something I do for free?").


> > the will to cooperate in our mission should have precedence over the
> will to make a profit out of it
>
> Does that exclude the financially disadvantaged?


The wikimedia projects assume that you have time to spare without any
compensation and that everybody can do the same. That is not true. In my
view the wikimedia projects are already excluding the financially
disadvantaged, because the people who are part of this project do not have
the direct experience necessary to understand that their reality is not the
same as the reality out there, and as a result they might find difficult to
take the perspective of a person who needs the financial means in order to
be able to contribute.

However, if the doors of generosity were open towards volunteers and flocks
of people were attracted because of it, there wouldn't be enough resources
for everyone, then how could I tell who deserves it most? I would follow a
progressive approach by offering first little, and then more depending on
how much the community appreciates the skills and involvement of this
person in the mission. There are many ways to keep track of said
appreciation, but writing encyclopedic articles about each
community-supported volunteer (not on Wikipedia) could be very effective,
also to create community bonds and to understand better the person behind
the nickname.

If anything, we would remove the financial barrier that is keeping some
(many?) people from contributing in the first place.

The thing is that a project like this should start small in order to learn
from the experience what works socially/practically, and how it integrates
conceptually into our worldview. I believe that it should be totally in the
hands of the volunteer community, because appraisal of every day tasks can
only be done if you are involved in the project and understand the
challenges, the tasks, the pitfalls, and what it means to do a good job.
For instance I normally review property proposals for creation in Wikidata,
it requires a set of skills and dedication that only the handful of people
who understand the challenge could evaluate. And there is more, how do you
evaluate the time spent building community and creating a good atmosphere
unless you are part of it?

I appreciate your questions because they are very interesting to examine.
Regarding the reputation tracking system I assume that it would only work
for the restricted use-case of direct article editing (cf. exopedianism),
but not for the whole range of tasks that volunteers perform. In any case,
thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Regards,
Micru
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Category: French Jews on en.wp / GPDR

[Yaroslav Blanter]

Whereas I absolutely agree with Todd, let me note that in the list many
entries are unsourced or poorly sourced and can not be there according to
the policies.

Cheers
Yaroslav

On Fri, May 25, 2018 at 8:55 PM, Todd Allen  wrote:

> We should no more follow French censorship laws than we should follow
> Turkish ones. All editors are responsible for compliance with the laws in
> their jurisdiction.
>
> Todd
>
> On Fri, May 25, 2018, 12:53 PM sashi  wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > I am writing to ask if there are any plans to render the English
> > Wikipedia compliant with French privacy laws.  Currently, if a French
> > high school student goes to a French library, reserves a computer, and
> > types "List of French Jews" into Google, Duckduckgo, or Dogpile, an
> > adhoc en.wikipedia list of over 850 people (approximately half of them
> > living) appears in the #2 position (Category: French Jews). In the first
> > position is the English Wikipedia page "List of French Jews" containing
> > the following text, originally added in 2010, showing that the
> > en.wikipedia community is aware that they are breaking French law:
> >
> > "The French nationality law itself, strongly secular, forbids any
> > statistics or lists based on ethnic or religious membership."
> >
> > A French person tagging biographies of living people in en.wp with the
> > category "French Jews" is a violation of French privacy law which would
> > expose the Wikipedian to a penalty of €300,000 and/or 5 years
> imprisonment:
> >
> > "Le fait, hors les cas prévus par la loi, de mettre ou de conserver en
> > mémoire informatisée, sans le consentement exprès de l’intéressé, des
> > données à caractère personnel qui, directement ou indirectement, font
> > apparaître les origines raciales ou ethniques, les opinions politiques,
> > philosophiques ou religieuses, ou les appartenances syndicales des
> > personnes, ou qui sont relatives à la santé ou à l’orientation ou à
> > l'identité sexuelle de celles-ci, est puni de cinq ans d’emprisonnement
> > et de 300 000 € d’amende." (source:
> > https://www.cnil.fr/fr/les-sanctions-penales )
> >
> > There is, to the best of my knowledge, no such category on fr.wp, as
> > people in France are well aware of the law.
> >
> > See also "List of West European Jews" / Category: French People of
> > Jewish descent / Category: French People of Arab descent / Category:
> > French Freemasons (167), Category: French Atheists (93 including a
> > recent president), etc.
> >
> > I noticed in researching the question that the Category "French rapists"
> > (2 BLP) is associated with the hidden category "No indexed", whereas the
> > category "French Jews" (100s of BLP) is associated with the hidden
> > category: "categories requiring diffusion".  As a temporary measure (to
> > avoid actively feeding this info into search engines), perhaps
> > categories related to racial/ethnic origins, religious & philosophical
> > opinions could be tagged "No indexed" rather than "requiring diffusion"?
> >
> > The WMF hosts their servers in the US, the Netherlands and will soon
> > also be hosting off-shore in Singapore, which probably leads WMF legal
> > to believe that this grants them immunity from French privacy laws.
> > Nevertheless, I thought I would mention that this is a potentially
> > significant problem going forward.  Discussion leading to action
> > correcting this potential avenue of abuse might help the WMF to avoid
> > litigation, given that the current policies on English Wikipedia
> > actively facilitate violation of French laws.
> >
> > (data from petscan.wmflabs.org): French Christians (21 members), French
> > Hindus (17 members), French Buddhists (9 members), French Muslims (0
> > members), French Jews (862 members).
> >
> > Thank you for your time considering how best to address this problem.
> >
> > sashi
> >
> >
> >
> > ___
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Invitation to the Wikimedia Foundation May 2018 Metrics & Activities Meeting: Thursday, May 31, 18:00 UTC

[Leila Zia]

On Fri, May 25, 2018 at 5:08 AM, L3X1 en  wrote:
> What is the YouTube link, or is it not yet available? Thanks

I'm looking at 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_metrics_and_activities_meetings
and I see this YouTube link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOaiU-v7PbE

Best,
Leila

--
Leila Zia
Senior Research Scientist, Lead
Wikimedia Foundation

>> On May 24, 2018, at 6:15 PM, Lena Traer  wrote:
>>
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> The next Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting will take
>> place on Thursday, May 31, 2018 at 6:00 PM UTC (11 AM PDT). The IRC channel
>> is #wikimedia-office on https://webchat.freenode.net, and the meeting will
>> be broadcast as a live YouTube stream.[1] We’ll post the video recording
>> publicly after the meeting.
>>
>> During the May 2018 meeting, we will hear about languages across the
>> Wikimedia projects.
>>
>> Meeting agenda:
>>
>> * Welcome and introduction
>> * Movement update
>> * The Compact Language Links project
>> * Executive update
>> * Questions and discussion
>> * Wikilove
>>
>> Please review the meeting's Meta-Wiki page for further information about
>> the meeting and how to participate:
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_metrics_and_activities_meetings
>>
>> You can also sign up to participate in future meetings on Meta-Wiki:
>> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_metrics_and_activities_meetings/Future_meetings
>>
>> June 2018 Metrics & Activities meeting will take place on Thursday, 28
>> June, starting at 6:00 PM UTC (11 AM Pacific Daylight Time).
>>
>> Thank you,
>> Lena
>>
>> [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOaiU-v7PbE
>>
>> Lena Traer
>> Project Coordinator // Communications // Advancement
>> Wikimedia Foundation
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are we losing out against bad editing?

[James Salsman]

>... about the classical employer-employee relationship, I am totally
> against it. The reason is that there is so much effort wasted tracking
> and keeping people accountable

Priyanka Mandikal implemented a way to keep paid editors accountable
using reputation tracking two years ago:

https://priyankamandikal.github.io/posts/gsoc-2016-project-overview/

Accountability is calculated as an agreement ratio between reviewers:

https://github.com/priyankamandikal/arowf/blob/master/app.py#L462

>...that is not the basis for a healthy relationship for a Wikimedia volunteer

Paid professionals work alongside volunteers in fire departments and
hospitals throughout the world. Are there any essential
characteristics which exclude such cooperation in Wikipedia?

> the will to cooperate in our mission should have precedence over the will to 
> make a profit out of it

Does that exclude the financially disadvantaged?

Best regards,
Jim


On Fri, May 25, 2018 at 5:02 AM, Gerard Meijssen
 wrote:
> Hoi,
> You compare two things that are not related and where there is a conflict
> of interest. As it is, we are severely lacking in information in many of
> our Wikipedias. Given that not even percent of the humans in Wikidata is
> from Africa, the #AfricaGap is bigger than the #GenderGap (no percent vs
> 16/17% of humans). This gets us into issues about English Wikipedia
> administration versus what it covers and how we can get people to write
> about for instance Africa and Gender.
>
> Your interest of keeping up with vandalism and the fight against massive
> POV pushing, paid editing is something else altogether. I have no interest
> at all in your struggles, I will not volunteer to become an admin. I find
> that admins do and what I would expect from them is incompatible with what
> I want to spend time on. The aggression in many conversations I have come
> across makes me cringe.
>
> When you want to improve issues that have to do with vandalism, POV, there
> are possibilities in tooling. One partial solution that I have in mind
> would improve the quality in articles, makes it obvious where there is a
> difference allowing for more focus. The point/problem is that this will not
> be specific to any one Wikipedia, it will show differences between projects
> and consequently it is not specifically a tool with a focus on POV pushing.
> With sufficient UI attention it may get more of the focus you are seeking.
>
> As you seek control of our data, quality is king, it is what we should
> build upon. When you seek to exclude the interest of others over your own,
> I would hate to see you succeed.
> Thanks,
>GerardM
>
> On 25 May 2018 at 11:59, Anders Wennersten  wrote:
>
>> My main worry, during my daily patrolling, is if we manage to neutralize
>> the bad editing (vandalism, POV pushing) or if the destructive editing is
>> slowly successfully degenerating the great content we have created in our
>> projects.
>>
>> In todays Sign-post it indicates an accelerating rate of decrease of
>> admins on enwp, and some likewise tendency on dewp. Is this a sign that the
>> "good" powers are losing out to the "bad" ones?
>>
>> I also seen a very passive response to two massPOV editing . One, on 35
>> versions, is related to Hans Asperger, to state he was a nazi doctor
>> (false, even if he was somewhat passive in some cases). Here dewp reacted
>> quickly and after a while enwp, so these articles are OK, but in most of
>> the other 35 this false info lies unchanged. Also I react to the effort
>> from GazProm promoting their  propaganda article /Football for Friendship /
>> in up to 80 version, and where almost noone has neutralized it.
>>
>> Are  we  slowly losing the battle against the "evil" forces? And if so, is
>> then our new strategy (being good in itself) and the plan to implement  it
>> all too naive? For example I like very much the ambition to help out on
>> areas in the world where Wikipedia etc is not established, but would it be
>> more correct to put effort in regaining control of the very many Wikipedia
>> versions, that is definitely degenerating and we are loosing what has been
>> done on these. (as a test look at "latest changes" on some of the versions
>> with low editing, it is depressing to see that there often are more vandal
>> editing, not being undone, then proper new material)
>>
>> Would it be most appropriate if we all in a 2-3 years effort concentrated
>> on getting (back) control on our material in our projects, before we start
>> efforts in implementing the strategy we have agreed upon. Perhaps a number
>> of paid admins, vandal/pov fighters, about as many as there are stewards
>> today, would be necessary not to lose out.
>>
>> Anders
>>
>>
>>
>> //
>>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Category: French Jews on en.wp / GPDR

[Todd Allen]

We should no more follow French censorship laws than we should follow
Turkish ones. All editors are responsible for compliance with the laws in
their jurisdiction.

Todd

On Fri, May 25, 2018, 12:53 PM sashi  wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I am writing to ask if there are any plans to render the English
> Wikipedia compliant with French privacy laws.  Currently, if a French
> high school student goes to a French library, reserves a computer, and
> types "List of French Jews" into Google, Duckduckgo, or Dogpile, an
> adhoc en.wikipedia list of over 850 people (approximately half of them
> living) appears in the #2 position (Category: French Jews). In the first
> position is the English Wikipedia page "List of French Jews" containing
> the following text, originally added in 2010, showing that the
> en.wikipedia community is aware that they are breaking French law:
>
> "The French nationality law itself, strongly secular, forbids any
> statistics or lists based on ethnic or religious membership."
>
> A French person tagging biographies of living people in en.wp with the
> category "French Jews" is a violation of French privacy law which would
> expose the Wikipedian to a penalty of €300,000 and/or 5 years imprisonment:
>
> "Le fait, hors les cas prévus par la loi, de mettre ou de conserver en
> mémoire informatisée, sans le consentement exprès de l’intéressé, des
> données à caractère personnel qui, directement ou indirectement, font
> apparaître les origines raciales ou ethniques, les opinions politiques,
> philosophiques ou religieuses, ou les appartenances syndicales des
> personnes, ou qui sont relatives à la santé ou à l’orientation ou à
> l'identité sexuelle de celles-ci, est puni de cinq ans d’emprisonnement
> et de 300 000 € d’amende." (source:
> https://www.cnil.fr/fr/les-sanctions-penales )
>
> There is, to the best of my knowledge, no such category on fr.wp, as
> people in France are well aware of the law.
>
> See also "List of West European Jews" / Category: French People of
> Jewish descent / Category: French People of Arab descent / Category:
> French Freemasons (167), Category: French Atheists (93 including a
> recent president), etc.
>
> I noticed in researching the question that the Category "French rapists"
> (2 BLP) is associated with the hidden category "No indexed", whereas the
> category "French Jews" (100s of BLP) is associated with the hidden
> category: "categories requiring diffusion".  As a temporary measure (to
> avoid actively feeding this info into search engines), perhaps
> categories related to racial/ethnic origins, religious & philosophical
> opinions could be tagged "No indexed" rather than "requiring diffusion"?
>
> The WMF hosts their servers in the US, the Netherlands and will soon
> also be hosting off-shore in Singapore, which probably leads WMF legal
> to believe that this grants them immunity from French privacy laws.
> Nevertheless, I thought I would mention that this is a potentially
> significant problem going forward.  Discussion leading to action
> correcting this potential avenue of abuse might help the WMF to avoid
> litigation, given that the current policies on English Wikipedia
> actively facilitate violation of French laws.
>
> (data from petscan.wmflabs.org): French Christians (21 members), French
> Hindus (17 members), French Buddhists (9 members), French Muslims (0
> members), French Jews (862 members).
>
> Thank you for your time considering how best to address this problem.
>
> sashi
>
>
>
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[Wikimedia-l] Category: French Jews on en.wp / GPDR

[sashi]

Hello,

I am writing to ask if there are any plans to render the English 
Wikipedia compliant with French privacy laws.  Currently, if a French 
high school student goes to a French library, reserves a computer, and 
types "List of French Jews" into Google, Duckduckgo, or Dogpile, an 
adhoc en.wikipedia list of over 850 people (approximately half of them 
living) appears in the #2 position (Category: French Jews). In the first 
position is the English Wikipedia page "List of French Jews" containing 
the following text, originally added in 2010, showing that the 
en.wikipedia community is aware that they are breaking French law:


"The French nationality law itself, strongly secular, forbids any 
statistics or lists based on ethnic or religious membership."


A French person tagging biographies of living people in en.wp with the 
category "French Jews" is a violation of French privacy law which would 
expose the Wikipedian to a penalty of €300,000 and/or 5 years imprisonment:


"Le fait, hors les cas prévus par la loi, de mettre ou de conserver en 
mémoire informatisée, sans le consentement exprès de l’intéressé, des 
données à caractère personnel qui, directement ou indirectement, font 
apparaître les origines raciales ou ethniques, les opinions politiques, 
philosophiques ou religieuses, ou les appartenances syndicales des 
personnes, ou qui sont relatives à la santé ou à l’orientation ou à 
l'identité sexuelle de celles-ci, est puni de cinq ans d’emprisonnement 
et de 300 000 € d’amende." (source:  
https://www.cnil.fr/fr/les-sanctions-penales )


There is, to the best of my knowledge, no such category on fr.wp, as 
people in France are well aware of the law.


See also "List of West European Jews" / Category: French People of 
Jewish descent / Category: French People of Arab descent / Category: 
French Freemasons (167), Category: French Atheists (93 including a 
recent president), etc.


I noticed in researching the question that the Category "French rapists" 
(2 BLP) is associated with the hidden category "No indexed", whereas the 
category "French Jews" (100s of BLP) is associated with the hidden 
category: "categories requiring diffusion".  As a temporary measure (to 
avoid actively feeding this info into search engines), perhaps 
categories related to racial/ethnic origins, religious & philosophical 
opinions could be tagged "No indexed" rather than "requiring diffusion"?


The WMF hosts their servers in the US, the Netherlands and will soon 
also be hosting off-shore in Singapore, which probably leads WMF legal 
to believe that this grants them immunity from French privacy laws.  
Nevertheless, I thought I would mention that this is a potentially 
significant problem going forward.  Discussion leading to action 
correcting this potential avenue of abuse might help the WMF to avoid 
litigation, given that the current policies on English Wikipedia 
actively facilitate violation of French laws.


(data from petscan.wmflabs.org): French Christians (21 members), French 
Hindus (17 members), French Buddhists (9 members), French Muslims (0 
members), French Jews (862 members).


Thank you for your time considering how best to address this problem.

sashi



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are we losing out against bad editing?

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
You compare two things that are not related and where there is a conflict
of interest. As it is, we are severely lacking in information in many of
our Wikipedias. Given that not even percent of the humans in Wikidata is
from Africa, the #AfricaGap is bigger than the #GenderGap (no percent vs
16/17% of humans). This gets us into issues about English Wikipedia
administration versus what it covers and how we can get people to write
about for instance Africa and Gender.

Your interest of keeping up with vandalism and the fight against massive
POV pushing, paid editing is something else altogether. I have no interest
at all in your struggles, I will not volunteer to become an admin. I find
that admins do and what I would expect from them is incompatible with what
I want to spend time on. The aggression in many conversations I have come
across makes me cringe.

When you want to improve issues that have to do with vandalism, POV, there
are possibilities in tooling. One partial solution that I have in mind
would improve the quality in articles, makes it obvious where there is a
difference allowing for more focus. The point/problem is that this will not
be specific to any one Wikipedia, it will show differences between projects
and consequently it is not specifically a tool with a focus on POV pushing.
With sufficient UI attention it may get more of the focus you are seeking.

As you seek control of our data, quality is king, it is what we should
build upon. When you seek to exclude the interest of others over your own,
I would hate to see you succeed.
Thanks,
   GerardM

On 25 May 2018 at 11:59, Anders Wennersten  wrote:

> My main worry, during my daily patrolling, is if we manage to neutralize
> the bad editing (vandalism, POV pushing) or if the destructive editing is
> slowly successfully degenerating the great content we have created in our
> projects.
>
> In todays Sign-post it indicates an accelerating rate of decrease of
> admins on enwp, and some likewise tendency on dewp. Is this a sign that the
> "good" powers are losing out to the "bad" ones?
>
> I also seen a very passive response to two massPOV editing . One, on 35
> versions, is related to Hans Asperger, to state he was a nazi doctor
> (false, even if he was somewhat passive in some cases). Here dewp reacted
> quickly and after a while enwp, so these articles are OK, but in most of
> the other 35 this false info lies unchanged. Also I react to the effort
> from GazProm promoting their  propaganda article /Football for Friendship /
> in up to 80 version, and where almost noone has neutralized it.
>
> Are  we  slowly losing the battle against the "evil" forces? And if so, is
> then our new strategy (being good in itself) and the plan to implement  it
> all too naive? For example I like very much the ambition to help out on
> areas in the world where Wikipedia etc is not established, but would it be
> more correct to put effort in regaining control of the very many Wikipedia
> versions, that is definitely degenerating and we are loosing what has been
> done on these. (as a test look at "latest changes" on some of the versions
> with low editing, it is depressing to see that there often are more vandal
> editing, not being undone, then proper new material)
>
> Would it be most appropriate if we all in a 2-3 years effort concentrated
> on getting (back) control on our material in our projects, before we start
> efforts in implementing the strategy we have agreed upon. Perhaps a number
> of paid admins, vandal/pov fighters, about as many as there are stewards
> today, would be necessary not to lose out.
>
> Anders
>
>
>
> //
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Invitation to the Wikimedia Foundation May 2018 Metrics & Activities Meeting: Thursday, May 31, 18:00 UTC

[L3X1 en]

What is the YouTube link, or is it not yet available? Thanks
> On May 24, 2018, at 6:15 PM, Lena Traer  wrote:
> 
> Hello everyone,
> 
> The next Wikimedia Foundation metrics and activities meeting will take
> place on Thursday, May 31, 2018 at 6:00 PM UTC (11 AM PDT). The IRC channel
> is #wikimedia-office on https://webchat.freenode.net, and the meeting will
> be broadcast as a live YouTube stream.[1] We’ll post the video recording
> publicly after the meeting.
> 
> During the May 2018 meeting, we will hear about languages across the
> Wikimedia projects.
> 
> Meeting agenda:
> 
> * Welcome and introduction
> * Movement update
> * The Compact Language Links project
> * Executive update
> * Questions and discussion
> * Wikilove
> 
> Please review the meeting's Meta-Wiki page for further information about
> the meeting and how to participate:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_metrics_and_activities_meetings
> 
> You can also sign up to participate in future meetings on Meta-Wiki:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_metrics_and_activities_meetings/Future_meetings
> 
> June 2018 Metrics & Activities meeting will take place on Thursday, 28
> June, starting at 6:00 PM UTC (11 AM Pacific Daylight Time).
> 
> Thank you,
> Lena
> 
> [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOaiU-v7PbE
> 
> Lena Traer
> Project Coordinator // Communications // Advancement
> Wikimedia Foundation
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Airtasker adds for articles

[L3X1 en]

From discussions I have seen on the en.wiki Village pump and various ANs, I 
believe the WMF has no legal foothold to ask another website to respect our TOU.
> On May 24, 2018, at 5:28 AM, Gnangarra  wrote:
> 
> I find this rather disturbing that Airtasker accepts adds for people
> wanting to have articles written, on wikipedia.
> 
> The person writing the add is asking someone to violate WMF terms &
> Conditions as you can some of the respondents are indicating that they do
> this regularly
> 
> https://www.airtasker.com/tasks/copywriter-for-a-wikipedia-article-10031171/
> 
> Would it  be prudent for the WMF legal to contact Airtasker, highlight our
> T and have them block such requests from being posted.  Airtasker
> themselves also gets paid when people write Wikipedia articles
> 
> -- 
> GN.
> Noongarpedia: https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/nys/Main_Page
> WMAU: http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/User:Gnangarra
> Photo Gallery: http://gnangarra.redbubble.com
> Out now: A.Gaynor, P. Newman and P. Jennings (eds.), *Never Again:
> Reflections on Environmental Responsibility after Roe 8*, UWAP, 2017.  Order
> here
> 
> .
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are we losing out against bad editing?

[Adam Wight]

Thank you for this provocation, I share your concern.  As a reader, it's
disappointing to find material that looks like a press release, and
intimidating to flag or edit without doing research into the editing
history and editors involved.  A quick, "back of the envelope" calculation
I did recently shows an alarming level of paid editing, with 1,017 "Paid"
status disclosures among en.wikipedia editors' user pages [1], which would
amount to 1.4% of active editors if these numbers were directly
comparable.  This doesn't begin to account for any of the undisclosed paid
editing that must be happening.

As a technical contributor, I can offer two concrete initiatives which
might be helpful.  Neither is a quick fix, but they offer spaces of
resistance that we can build upon.

* The JADE project [2] will create a structured namespace for patrolling,
and a talk namespace for coordinating work.  You can think of it as an
enhancement to the patrolled edit flag, where patrollers can provide their
judgment in a format roughly equivalent to ORES predictions.  We'll
eventually use these judgments to improve our training for the ORES AIs,
and our hope is that JADE will be integrated into tools like Huggle, to
make communication between patrollers more explicit.  JADE is available for
experimentation on the Beta cluster [3], and we can move to the production
wikis after we get some feedback from experienced editors, maybe after the
upcoming Wikimania.

* We've also started work on an AI model to detect paid promotional
editing, based on the overly optimistic puffery that's commonly
deployed.[4]  I'm excited about this approach, and once it's active we'll
be able to make good estimates of the scale of the problem, the number of
editors and sockpuppets failing to disclose their conflicts of interest,
and the financial resources pouring in.  I imagine this would give us a
better idea of what next steps to take.

Cheers,
Adam
Wikimedia Scoring Platform Team
[[mw:User:Adamw]]

[1]
https://tools.wmflabs.org/templatecount/index.php?lang=en=10=Paid
[2] https://mediawiki.org/wiki/JADE
[3] For example, https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/JADE:Diff/376901
[4] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T120170


On Fri, May 25, 2018 at 12:00 PM Anders Wennersten 
wrote:

> My main worry, during my daily patrolling, is if we manage to neutralize
> the bad editing (vandalism, POV pushing) or if the destructive editing
> is slowly successfully degenerating the great content we have created in
> our projects.
>
> In todays Sign-post it indicates an accelerating rate of decrease of
> admins on enwp, and some likewise tendency on dewp. Is this a sign that
> the "good" powers are losing out to the "bad" ones?
>
> I also seen a very passive response to two massPOV editing . One, on 35
> versions, is related to Hans Asperger, to state he was a nazi doctor
> (false, even if he was somewhat passive in some cases). Here dewp
> reacted quickly and after a while enwp, so these articles are OK, but in
> most of the other 35 this false info lies unchanged. Also I react to the
> effort from GazProm promoting their  propaganda article /Football for
> Friendship / in up to 80 version, and where almost noone has neutralized
> it.
>
> Are  we  slowly losing the battle against the "evil" forces? And if so,
> is then our new strategy (being good in itself) and the plan to
> implement  it all too naive? For example I like very much the ambition
> to help out on areas in the world where Wikipedia etc is not
> established, but would it be more correct to put effort in regaining
> control of the very many Wikipedia versions, that is definitely
> degenerating and we are loosing what has been done on these. (as a test
> look at "latest changes" on some of the versions with low editing, it is
> depressing to see that there often are more vandal editing, not being
> undone, then proper new material)
>
> Would it be most appropriate if we all in a 2-3 years effort
> concentrated on getting (back) control on our material in our projects,
> before we start efforts in implementing the strategy we have agreed
> upon. Perhaps a number of paid admins, vandal/pov fighters, about as
> many as there are stewards today, would be necessary not to lose out.
>
> Anders
>
>
>
> //
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Are we losing out against bad editing?

[David Cuenca Tudela]

Hi Anders,

I hear your worries. Indeed it seems that resisting the push is taking more
effort than what the community can take under the current circumstances, or
at least it doesn't look sustainable (the RfA chart shown in the last
Signpost [1] is really clear on that regard).

However, by providing different circumstances it could be feasible to keep
the ground or even regain it. It seems to be the case that since people are
editing in their free time, they do not have time for themselves to recover
from the attrition and eventually they give up, or find something more
fulfilling to do. In my case it has been like that. I started as Wikipedia
editor, but over the years I have been changing roles, and now I do not
have so much contact with Wikipedia as I used to have in the past.

You mentioned that paid roles would be helpful. I am concerned about how
this would be implemented. If you were thinking about the classical
employer-employee relationship, I am totally against it. The reason is that
there is so much effort wasted tracking and keeping people accountable,
that in the end the only thing keeping the relationship alive is money and
statistics, and I feel that is not the basis for a healthy relationship for
a Wikimedia *volunteer* (I highlight that because I feel that the will to
cooperate in our mission should have precedence over the will to make a
profit out of it).

It is also realistic to think that if I want a volunteer dedicated 100% to
the mission, and I want to keep them on the project for their whole life,
then I will have to free him somehow from the duties of making a living.
Instead of paid roles, I would be more open to discussing the creation of a
common fund that volunteers could administer themselves to cover their
living expenses, partially or fully, depending on the resources.

In my opinion there should be options for everyone. Options for donating
free time without expecting anything in exchange (already exists), options
to be an employee for when it is difficult to find talent within the
community (already exists), and options to allow the community to take care
of the needs of volunteers (does not exist, grants are not given to a
person, but to a project).

I'm looking forward to hearing more views on the topic.

Regards,
Micru

[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2018-05-24/Op-ed

On Fri, May 25, 2018 at 11:59 AM, Anders Wennersten <
m...@anderswennersten.se> wrote:

> My main worry, during my daily patrolling, is if we manage to neutralize
> the bad editing (vandalism, POV pushing) or if the destructive editing is
> slowly successfully degenerating the great content we have created in our
> projects.
>
> In todays Sign-post it indicates an accelerating rate of decrease of
> admins on enwp, and some likewise tendency on dewp. Is this a sign that the
> "good" powers are losing out to the "bad" ones?
>
> I also seen a very passive response to two massPOV editing . One, on 35
> versions, is related to Hans Asperger, to state he was a nazi doctor
> (false, even if he was somewhat passive in some cases). Here dewp reacted
> quickly and after a while enwp, so these articles are OK, but in most of
> the other 35 this false info lies unchanged. Also I react to the effort
> from GazProm promoting their  propaganda article /Football for Friendship /
> in up to 80 version, and where almost noone has neutralized it.
>
> Are  we  slowly losing the battle against the "evil" forces? And if so, is
> then our new strategy (being good in itself) and the plan to implement  it
> all too naive? For example I like very much the ambition to help out on
> areas in the world where Wikipedia etc is not established, but would it be
> more correct to put effort in regaining control of the very many Wikipedia
> versions, that is definitely degenerating and we are loosing what has been
> done on these. (as a test look at "latest changes" on some of the versions
> with low editing, it is depressing to see that there often are more vandal
> editing, not being undone, then proper new material)
>
> Would it be most appropriate if we all in a 2-3 years effort concentrated
> on getting (back) control on our material in our projects, before we start
> efforts in implementing the strategy we have agreed upon. Perhaps a number
> of paid admins, vandal/pov fighters, about as many as there are stewards
> today, would be necessary not to lose out.
>
> Anders
>
>
>
> //
>
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-- 
Etiamsi omnes, ego non
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[Wikimedia-l] Are we losing out against bad editing?

[Anders Wennersten]

My main worry, during my daily patrolling, is if we manage to neutralize 
the bad editing (vandalism, POV pushing) or if the destructive editing 
is slowly successfully degenerating the great content we have created in 
our projects.


In todays Sign-post it indicates an accelerating rate of decrease of 
admins on enwp, and some likewise tendency on dewp. Is this a sign that 
the "good" powers are losing out to the "bad" ones?


I also seen a very passive response to two massPOV editing . One, on 35 
versions, is related to Hans Asperger, to state he was a nazi doctor 
(false, even if he was somewhat passive in some cases). Here dewp 
reacted quickly and after a while enwp, so these articles are OK, but in 
most of the other 35 this false info lies unchanged. Also I react to the 
effort from GazProm promoting their  propaganda article /Football for 
Friendship / in up to 80 version, and where almost noone has neutralized it.


Are  we  slowly losing the battle against the "evil" forces? And if so, 
is then our new strategy (being good in itself) and the plan to 
implement  it all too naive? For example I like very much the ambition 
to help out on areas in the world where Wikipedia etc is not 
established, but would it be more correct to put effort in regaining 
control of the very many Wikipedia versions, that is definitely 
degenerating and we are loosing what has been done on these. (as a test 
look at "latest changes" on some of the versions with low editing, it is 
depressing to see that there often are more vandal editing, not being 
undone, then proper new material)


Would it be most appropriate if we all in a 2-3 years effort 
concentrated on getting (back) control on our material in our projects, 
before we start efforts in implementing the strategy we have agreed 
upon. Perhaps a number of paid admins, vandal/pov fighters, about as 
many as there are stewards today, would be necessary not to lose out.


Anders



//

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