Re: [Wikimedia-l] Notification about problem identified with a recent CentralNotice banner

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi,

sorry for the late reply to this thread.

On 17/03/2018 08:24, Liam Wyatt wrote:
> “we encourage you to consider tools which block unwanted third-party
> scripts like the one provided by Facebook.”
> - where can I go to learn more about that specifically?

Here's two browser add-ons (free software) with similar behavior. By
default these extensions disable *all* Javascript and then the user can
enable Javascript from trusted sourced.

It would not have helped much in this situation if one listed Twitter
and Facebook as trusted sources (which most probably is true for all
Twitter and Facebook users). In general these extensions protect you
from Javascript when visiting new websites.

For Firefox you can use NoScript:
* website: https://noscript.net/
* add-on page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/

For Chromium/Chrome you can use ScriptSafe:
* website: https://github.com/andryou/scriptsafe
* add-on page:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/scriptsafe/oiigbmnaadbkfbmpbfijlflahbdbdgdf?hl=en

> Thank you Greg, for having the unenviable task of being the bearer of bad
> news, and to all those involved in this; you had with the talent to
> identify and remove this code, and the principles to tell us about it.

I wanted to commend as well how the incident has been reported. Thank
you, Greg.

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Appointment of Esra’a Al Shafei to Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

[Cristian Consonni]

On 01/12/2017 23:22, Michael Peel wrote:
> Thank you, Esra’a, for volunteering!

Welcome,Esra'a!

> However, I’m very concerned by this:
> 
> "P.S. Due to the nature of Esra’a’s work, sharing photos or videos of Esra’a 
> may endanger her safety or the safety of others. To help ensure the privacy 
> and safety of Esra’a and her colleagues, we are not sharing any photographs 
> or videos of Esra'a. We ask that you please join us in supporting this 
> important safety consideration.”
> 
> This is security by obscurity (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q133735) - which 
> is at best a temporary measure that won’t last, particularly in a 
> high-profile position like this. Aside from the potential media coverage, 
> Wikimedia events are very well photographed by Wikimedians who want to 
> illustrate a rather well-read encyclopaedia… This leads to an awkward 
> situation where someone’s safety and Wikimedia’s openness are conflicting, 
> which is not OK.

Sorry, but I have to disagree, Mike.

Openness - as generally understood in Wikimedia - does not conflict with
respecting someone's privacy, much less so with not endangering their
safety. I believe that respecting the privacy and anonymity of our
editors (and readers, as well) is a value of Wikimedia.

Furthermore, I feel that Wikimedians value very highly their privacy and
anonimity, in fact, there are several Wikipedians with whom I have
edited pages for years now, and I still have no idea of their real
names, their age, their gender or where they live. All I know is their
nicknames on the projects and it's perfectly fine like that. There are
several rules that the communities have adopted to protect the privacy
and anonymity of every user.

Even at in-person events, there are usually ways to signal the fact that
one does not want to be photographed or have photos or recordings of
him/her, put online. You can also wear a badge with just your nickname
and not your real name, so that's not new even for our live events.

I agree with the idea that occupying a high-profile position and trying
to limit one's own exposure are conflicting goals, but I am sure that
this was very carefully.

So, I understand that this may seem different from the usual, but,
actually, it is not.

Ciao,



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Experimental onion service for all

[Cristian Consonni]

On 24/11/2017 16:43, Yury Bulka wrote:
> Great to hear!
> 
> I have one caveat with it though - if I understand it correctly, it is
> currently in a man-in-the-middle position between the visitor and WMF,
> as it provides its own self-signed https certificate and performs
> various URL rewriting on the traffic to change the URLs to the onion
> domain.

It is.

> Using Tor <-> clearnet WMF (HTTPS) still provides:
> 1) censorship circumvention;
> 2) location anonymity;
> 3) opaque encryption between the visitor and the WMF;
> 
> The #3 is missing if the onion service is not operated by the WMF
> itself.
> 
> Please correct me if I'm wrong.
> 
> I do think it's very good that such effort is taking place - but we need
> to make sure there's no weak points security-wise that aren't
> communicated prominently enough to the users.

You are absolutely right, but the point of this service is that this is
an experiment(*) (and its maintainer says he will will be running it for
just some time, it is not permanent[1]), It is just a proof of concept
to see that it can be done.

Of course it would make more sense if the WMF would run this service
directly so that we would have an official service (also, in this case
you wouldn't experience the problem with self-signed certificates).

Cristian

(*) Just for reference, Alec is running the whole thing on Amazon Web
Services on a micro instance[2]. Which is a less-than-10USD-a-month
virtual server.

[1]: https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/933735934272704512
[2]: https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/933738958143590401

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[Wikimedia-l] Experimental onion service for all Wikimedia projects set up by Alec Muffett

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi all,

Some months ago, the idea of setting up an onion service for Wikimedia
projects was discussed on this list[1] and as a proposal in IdeaLab on
Meta[2].

Today, Alec Muffett announced on Twitter[3] that he created «as an
experiment» a series of read-only mirrors of all the Wikimedia projects.
He will be running them for some time.

The service is reachable with a Tor-enabled browser at the following
address:
https://www.qgssno7jk2xcr2sj.onion/
































If you want to try out the service, first visit the addresses listed in
this page and add exceptions for the SSL certificates:
https://gist.github.com/alecmuffett/3da587fde6aef90ba3e49e8858fafdae

(this is one of the limits of having a non-official service)

Alec Muffett is the author of the Enterprise Onion Toolkit (EOTK)[4], a
FLOSS project which "does for Onions what LetsEncrypt does for SSL",
that is providing a simple way to transform websites in Onion services
(which are accessible only and contained within the Tor network). Alec
used EOTK for creating this demo. He was also behind the onion service
for Facebook[5].

IMO this service, even with its current limitations, is quite awesome
and I am very happy to see it. It is exactly the kind of proof of
concept that I wanted to create with my proposal. So now there's that.

Enjoy!

Cristian

[1]: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2017-June/087708.html
[2]:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/A_Tor_Onion_Service_for_Wikipedia
[3]:https://twitter.com/AlecMuffett/status/933739816038076419
[4]: https://github.com/alecmuffett/eotk
[5]:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/10/facebook-offers-hidden-service-to-tor-users/

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Berkman Klein Center: Will Wikipedia exist in, 20 years?

[Cristian Consonni]

On 24/10/2017 17:39, mathieu stumpf guntz wrote:
> Hi Andreas,
> 
> I would find interesting to have a copy of that video on Commons. It
> might for example let the community use curration/translation facilities
> of subtitles of our platform. According to the bottomline "Unless
> otherwise noted this site and its contents are licensed under a Creative
> Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.", but the video is stored on
> youtube, so I'm not sure the statement applies.
> 
> Actually, I don't know if that's already something on rails somewhere,
> but encouraging educational establishment to publish their multimedia
> works on commons should be targeted. All the more when they are already
> publishing works under a free license. :)

If you look at the video on Youtube[1], it says that its license is
indeed CC-BY (and indeed CC-BY 3.0 Unported, more info on this page[2])

So, I think that this can be uploaded also on Commons without issue.

On 22/10/2017 04:20, Andreas Kolbe wrote:
> Video featuring Katherine Maher, Executive Director of the Wikimedia
> Foundation, in conversation with Harvard Law School Professor Yochai
> Benkler:
>
> https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/2017/luncheon/10/Maher
>
> The material in this video touches on many points related to the Wikimedia
> movement's strategic direction, as discussed in other current threads on
> this list.

The video us very interesting because on one hand there is basically a
recap of what the strategic process has been, with data and results -
and this is mainly covered during kathering's presentation - but there
are also many insights on the "inner workings" of that process and,
finally, some of Katherine's viewpoints (during the discussion).

So I recommend watching the video as well.

Cristian

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oQF3jdaocM
[2]: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797468

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[Wikimedia-l] US withdraws from Unesco

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi,

I hope this won't any GLAM project we have:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/unesco-us-withdraw-israel-bias-trump-palestine-haram-al-sharif-temple-mount-latest-a7996791.html


Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Welcome the new Board of Wikimedia Argentina!

[Cristian Consonni]

On 19/09/2017 16:27, Anna Torres wrote:
> Last Saturday, September 16, the General Assembly of Wikimedia Argentina
> took place. This was an election year and new authorities were chosen. The
> new Board was define as follows:
> 
>  * President: Ivana Lysholm
> * Vice-president: Galileo Vidoni
> * Secretary: Mariano Pérez
> * Deputy Secretary: Ivana Molena
> * Treasurer: Nicolás Giorgetti
> * Deputy Treasurer: Patricio Molina
> * Board members: Esteban Zárate, Andrea Kleiman, Jorge Abreu
> * Deputy Board members: Beatrice Murch, Leandro Kibisz

¡viva viva la presidenta!

Congratulazioni!

Cristian

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[Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Re: Funding the endowment

[Cristian Consonni]

On 19/08/2017 12:05, Lodewijk wrote:
> Thanks for the link, Rogol. It is wonderful to hear that these generous
> donors have decided to match a deposit of $5 million into the endowment.
> 
> It is always a good thing if someone from the board could expand on what
> (if anything) the board is planning to do with the proposed expenses. The
> way you're framing this decision is not something I consider fair.

I agree with Lodewijk.

On 21/08/2017 18:48, Rogol Domedonfors wrote:
> I'm know that the WMF has determined that it should have some form of
> endowment,  The question is -- as is usual in question of this sort -- one
> of balance: in this case, balance between current spending for the benefit
> of the projects today, and accumulating capital for the benefit of the
> projects tomorrow.  I am asking the Board to say why they decided to
strike
> that balance where they did -- given the obvious need for that support
> right now -- and whether it is appropriate for large donors to apparently
> influence that decision.

This is a much better way to approach this discussion. I recognize the
concern, and - although admittedly I don't know in the detail how the
endowment is managed - I wouldn't say that the donor is influencing the
decision as long as there are no further restrictions on how the money
will be invested.

Cristian



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Amazon Echo' use of Wikipedia; CC license compliance?

[Cristian Consonni]

On 28/07/2017 02:29, Adele Vrana wrote:
> I am Adele Vrana, Director of Strategic Partnerships at the Foundation.
> 
> We have contacts at Amazon and will seek to clarify the questions raised on
> this thread. I will make sure to circle back with you once we have an
> update.

Thanks for your help, Adele!

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Amazon Echo' use of Wikipedia; CC license compliance?

[Cristian Consonni]

On 27/07/2017 16:46, James Heilman wrote:
> We want these devices to read from Wikipedia. We just want attribution as
> appropriate. If they are already attributing when they go beyond fair use
> than all is good.

I agree, but the only way to know for sure is asking, I think.

Also, I am assuming that they already thought about this because in the
end they need to balance what they are legally obliged to do with what
they want to do to have a smooth interaction with the user.

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Amazon Echo' use of Wikipedia; CC license compliance?

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi,

On 27/07/2017 14:36, Andreas Kolbe wrote:
> If you look at the comments under Barbara's piece, Greg linked to this
> YouTube video:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZurOYgQLT44

since I don't own an Amazon Echo, I will have to rely on the video.

> I had a look at that video before posting here. (I think it's kind of a
> daft video, but it does a perfectly good job of demonstrating how the Echo
> works.)
> 
> In this video, the lady asks at the beginning, "Alexa, who is Edward
> Snowden?"
> 
> The response reflects the lead sentence of the Wikipedia article, such as
> it was at the time.
> 
> At 0:30 in the video, she asks "Alexa, who is the FBI?" Again, Alexa
> responds with the lead sentence of Wikipedia's FBI article as it was at the
> time.

The video was posted on March 9th, 2017.

This is the article about Edward Snowden as of March 6th, 2017:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Edward_Snowden=768899605

and this is the article about FBI as of March 7th,2017:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Federal_Bureau_of_Investigation=769027291

The response about Edward Snowden is not verbatim (I had a look also at
some of the previous revisions, and the incipit did not change). It is
very similar for sure and I can see some way to automatically get from
the Wikipedia article incipt to the sentence spoken by Alexa. But at
this point if you rephrase a sentence and use facts I don't think you
are infringing copyright. It could be akin to close paraphrasing[1], but
the quantity of text is limited.

The response about FBI instead is verbatim.

In both cases, they may be within the realm of the "right to quote"[2]
(I am not sure this concept exists in US law per se) or "fair use".

> You say that Alexa reportedly gets some of this from Bing. But even if
> that's the case, how does it make a difference? To me it seems rather like
> Flickrwashing (Bingwashing?).

It may totally make a difference. I am not a lawyer, but I think the
question about the copyright status of search snippets and indexes for
search engines has already been addressed by jurisprudence.

Simply put, the amount of text used changes the situation from "right to
quote"/"fair use" to "derivative work".

Furthermore, to correctly cite Wikipedia, if snippets would not be
considered under fair use/right to quote, they would need to also cite
the license.

In this regard, compare the difference - http://imgur.com/gallery/3FQZS
- between the snippets (both from Google and Bing), which do not have a
license indication and the extensive portion of text which is displayed
in the box in Bing which correctly indicates both the link to the
original work and the license. Interestingly, in the case of the FBI,
the box in Bing has less text and no indication of the license. It may
be that they automatically decide that if they are going to show more
than N words/characters then they do not treat the text as a quotation
but as a derivative work and so they show the license.

I tried with another couple  searches and this behavior seems
consistent. If they shw a short chunk of text (~ 1 sentence), they do
not provide the source and link to the license. If they show a big chunk
of text (with a "+" sign) they do.

The Wikimedia Foundation could ask for a clarification to Amazon, but I
suspect that the answer would not differ very much from above.

Cristian

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Close_paraphrasing
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_quote

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's set up a Tor onion service for Wikipedia

[Cristian Consonni]

ANother relevant academic article:
---
"Chilling Effects: Online Surveillance and Wikipedia Use"[1]

«This article discusses the results of the first empirical study
providing evidence of regulatory “chilling effects” of Wikipedia users
associated with online government surveillance. The study explores how
traffic to Wikipedia articles on topics that raise privacy concerns for
Wikipedia users decreased after the widespread publicity about NSA/PRISM
surveillance revelations in June 2013.»
---

This study has been covered by various articles in the press, here's for
example one from "The Intercept" by Glenn Greenwald:
---
«New Study Shows Mass Surveillance Breeds Meekness, Fear and
Self-Censorship»[2]

A newly published study from Oxford’s Jon Penney provides empirical
evidence for a key argument long made by privacy advocates: that the
mere existence of a surveillance state breeds fear and conformity and
stifles free expression.
---

Cristian

[1]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2769645e
[2]:
https://theintercept.com/2016/04/28/new-study-shows-mass-surveillance-breeds-meekness-fear-and-self-censorship/


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's set up a Tor onion service for Wikipedia

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi,

On 19/06/2017 13:35, Tim Starling wrote:
> The only other argument I saw was that by doing this, we are
> supporting Tor, and Tor is evil. But the hidden service only handles
> traffic which is directed to the service. It does not support the
> network in general. Meanwhile, since 2014 we are operating a relay
> which routinely forwards traffic for script kiddies, terrorists and
> child pornographers, and nobody complains about that?
On 19/06/2017 14:39, Faidon Liambotis wrote:
> The flip side of this is to argue that the Tor network is predominantly
> used for illegimate, ethically bad uses, like the ones you mentioned. In
> that case, I don't see why we would want to spend any of our resources
> on it whatsoever and go anywhere near it. I obviously don't believe
> that, but that would be a consistent PoV that I'd happy to argue against
> and eventually oblige to, if that was the consensus we came to.

This is an interesting discussion and as Tor relay operator I have asked
myself questions along this lines more than once. Here's some of my
opinions on the matter.

There is a "mechanistic" view for which Tor is just a tool, as computers
themselves, which can be used for good and bad. In other words, Tor is
just a technological stack that provides end-to-end encryption for
computers[1]. In this view, Tor is not much different from your modem
and a node operator is not much different from your ISP or a provider of
other internet services. Having been in the position of arguing with a
VPS provider about running a Tor node on their network I have asked them
why in their contract they can decline any responsibility with respect
of the service they use and I can't do the same with respect to the user
of the Tor network.
In short, since Tor is a tool it can be used for good or bad and every
user is responsible for her own use of the network.

On the other hand, I think that some people (myself included) decide to
contribute to Tor because they see some inherent value in it and not
just because it is a fun tool, freely available to use. To be fair, the
Tor legal FAQs say this explicitly[2a]:
---
Should I use Tor or encourage the use of Tor for illegal purposes?

No. Tor has been developed to be a tool for free expression, privacy,
and human rights. It is not a tool designed or intended to be used to
break the law, either by Tor users or Tor relay operators.
---

As Faidon points out the flip side of this argument is that you need
also to consider the bad uses of the network.

You could use an utilitarian approach and try to weigh the goods against
the bad. This is in general very difficult and probably varies very much
from person to person.

In addition to that there is the fact that it is difficult to obtain
data about the usage of Tor, here some sources:
* a blog post from the Tor project "Some statistics about onions"[2b],
which reports that (as of early 2015) "hidden service traffic is about
3.4% of total Tor traffic."
* This talk from 31C3 (the Chaos Communication Congress of 2014) titled
"Tor: Hidden Services and Deanonymisation"[2c] by Dr Gareth Owen of
University of Portsmouth that conducted a survey of hidden services.
From this study it results that the largest proportion of Tor hidden
service traffic is by far child pornography. It may depend on the fact
that there are association and public agencies that monitor this sites
* This paper:  "Content and popularity analysis of Tor hidden
services."[2d] by Biryukov et al. A relevant quote: «We discovered a
huge number of hidden services that are part of the “Skynet” botnet
[...]. The number of hidden services with illegal content or devoted to
illegal activities and the number of other hidden services (devoted to
human rights, freedom of speech, anonymity, security, etc.) is almost
the same;»

Instead, you can have a more proactive vision of your actions (or your
community's actions) and think that you can try to get things better for
the measure that you are able to do it. This is also coherent with what
Faidon says that we contribute to the greater ecosystem of software to
be "good Internet and Linux citizens".

Personally, the latter is the vision I relate the most and the reason
for which I started contributing to the Tor network as a node operator.

Cristian

[1]:
https://medium.com/@alecmuffett/tor-is-end-to-end-encryption-for-computers-to-talk-to-other-computers-34e41d81c9e2
[2a]: https://www.torproject.org/eff/tor-legal-faq.html.en
[2b]: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/some-statistics-about-onions
[2c]:
https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6112_-_en_-_saal_2_-_201412301715_-_tor_hidden_services_and_deanonymisation_-_dr_gareth_owen
[2d]: Biryukov, Alex, et al. "Content and popularity analysis of Tor
hidden services." Distributed Computing Systems Workshops (ICDCSW), 2014
IEEE 34th International Conference on. IEEE, 2014.


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's set up a Tor onion service for Wikipedia

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi Faidon,

On 16/06/2017 20:12, Faidon Liambotis wrote:
>> I would love to know more about what you see as the inhibitors - especially
>> so that I can go fix them for the internet-community-at-large - however
>> this decision is one for the Wikipedia community to take.
>>
>> I'll still happily help if you decide "yes", but WMF should make and own
>> the decision.
> 
> Note that there is a distinction between "the [e.g. English] Wikipedia
> community" and the WMF. We are all part of the same movement but the
> various wiki communities have decision-making capabilities of their own,
> especially when it comes to matters such as who's allowed to edit what,
> when and how. Allowing edits over Tor is not the kind of decision the
> Foundation can unilaterally make, while setting up the Onion service
> would be something that the Foundation would do, since it would just be
> part of our infrastructure and thus our mandate.

Question:
would it be possible to activate it for specific projects, say Italian
Wikipedia?(*).

I don't see major technical obstacles in doing just one project - i.e.
one subdomain - at a time, besides the fact that the value of having
just one project as an onion service would be much less (for the obvious
reason that any time that the user would go to Commons, Wikidata or
another language it would exit the service).

Of course this route would make the "resource balance" even worse at the
beginning, but on the other hand it would be a nice test. For what is
worth, it.wiki was also one of the first projects to opt-in for Wikidata
interwiki transfer, if we want to follow the "test on small projects
first" logic, so I hope to leverage the little (but proud :P) tradition
with testing new features at scale of the it.wiki community.

Cristian

(*) I would also love to mention Turkish Wikipedia, but I don't speak
Turkish and I would not be able to reach out to that community, at least
not enough to start and follow a discussion on such a proposal.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's set up a Tor onion service for Wikipedia

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi Faidon,

Thank you for taking the time to respond to this thread.

On 14/06/2017 16:57, Faidon Liambotis wrote:
> [ I didn't see this email from Alec on the thread, was it off-list? ]

[no, it's on the list and in the archive [1] ]

> I've been in touch with Alec and other Tor project members on emails,
> in-person Tor project meetings and videoconferences on multiple
> occasions in the past couple of years (the last one being a couple of
> months ago), so I can speak a little bit about this idea in general, as
> well as EOTK specifically.
> 
> The EOTK stuff are interesting but not really an option for us -- they
> rely on a edge (nginx) server performing content manipulation blindly,
> which is a bad idea for many reasons, security amongst them.
> 
> It is possible and feasible to actually do it properly, by making some
> modifications across our stack (MediaWiki, Varnish/nginx). Just to
> mention a couple of issues: one of them is that we need MediaWiki to
> emit different URLs for e.g.  upload.wikimedia.org resources to point to
> the onion address that we will designate for media. For other resources
> (like gadgets) it may be even more complicated or even impossible.
> Another challenge would be to make Extension:TorBlock aware of the Onion
> connections, so that they can be appropriately blocked, as well as
> figure out what to log as the users' IP address when they edit, if they
> are pre-approved to do so.
> 
> Overall, it's not a super complicated project but not a trivial one
> either. Maybe a couple of months time for a motivated individual, who is
> already familiar with our stack.
> 
> If it wasn't obvious from the above, I have put quite a bit of thought
> into it and that's because I share your sentiments about how this is an
> important feature we should support and provide to our users, in
> alignment with our mission.

Thank you. Also, I never thought that setting up a production service
would be easy. (I mean, a test service that goes down when somebody
sneezes too hard, yeah, it would be easy and I could do that ;-), a
production service no).

> However, it hasn't been a priority for me or my team for these reasons:
> - As long as communities feel so-and-so about Tor overall, and e.g.
>   block edits from Tor users, it's hard to justify us in the Foundation
>   investing more time into it, at the expense of other projects. It
>   feels at odds with our communities' wishes a little bit.

From what I have read from the previous discussions (and in this thread
as well), the main problem that has been raised is related with editing
over Tor for the issues of vandalism, spamming and (more importantly)
sockpuppeting.

I understand that it is natural to consider editing when discussing
about this, but it is a much harder problem. From what I see in this
thread I would say, "let's think about one problem at a time".

> - Accessing our sites over the Tor network *is* possible, regardless of
>   whether we provide an Onion service or not, via exit nodes. An Onion
>   service is more of a security and performance optimization and,
>   perhaps more importantly, a statement of support. Making a statement
>   of support while at the same time communities continue blocking edits
>   over Tor and we keep maintaining Extension:TorBlock, would be a little
>   hypocritical of us, the Wikimedia movement, IMHO.

I disagree, on one hand we can show that from a technical and a
community perspective reading and editing are two different problems, on
the other hand we have being blocking Tor for more than 10 years, so if
somebody wants to call us hypocrites they can already do that.

Also, let me say that my impression from the past discussions is that
some requests (coming from people more knowledgeable about Tor than our
projects) were overlooking how the projects and our community works. I
do not want to disparage anybody, simply point out that it is not
automatic to know how ours projects work.

All said, though, this is not an excuse not to make a step in the right
direction.

As for the statement of support, this is true. This service would be a
statement of support towards Tor, but as for statements:
  * we oppose blocking of Wikipedia by governments;
  * our flagship organization is suing the NSA because it has been
spying on our users;
We are already making statements about what is aligned and what is
against our movement's mission and values.

Also - and this is a response to the remark made by Risker - let me say
that the "dark web" is dark only for the part that we let it be dark.

Any statement you can make about the dark web is probably true about the
web in general. The web is still full of many places where you don't
want to go - and, case in point, possibly even more so in 2001 - but
this is not a good reason not to broadcast our project as much as we can.

The web would be a worse place if this movement and our project didn't
exist and exactly for this reason they need to get on the "dark 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's set up a Tor onion service for Wikipedia

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi,

On 14/06/2017 04:12, Risker wrote:
> [...] Setting this up is not a
> technical "problem" to be solved (which is essentially what Phabricator is
> for). I will again reinforce: it's a social and ethical issue, and only
> once that is resolved would it be time to consider it a "technical
> problem".

It is also not social problem if we are just talking about reading and
writing only for people who already have IF block exemption, IMHO.

Cristian


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's set up a Tor onion service for Wikipedia

[Cristian Consonni]

On 07/06/2017 20:24, Alec Muffett wrote:
> If it helps, I built an betatest onion for Wikipedia and all(?) the
> Wikimedia Foundation websites using EOTK* a few months ago, and documented
> the build process at:
> 
> https://github.com/alecmuffett/eotk/blob/master/docs.d/RUNBOOK.md
> 
> A basic test onion takes about 5..10 minutes to set up on Ubuntu or
> OSX/Homebrew.
> 
> A scalable full production loadbalanced deployment on some kind of cloud orse
> server(s) should take a day or two, plus time to buy an Onion SSL
> Certificate where appropriate.

Thanks Alec.

I would also point out the offer you made in a tutorial video for EOTK[1]:

"If anyone from Wikipedia or Wikimedia is watching this video I would
gladly help you guys set one of this up officially because it is really
cool"

It is. It also useful, mission-aligned, and important.

So, please read my proposal as "Take this offer from Alec Muffett"

Cristian

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNJaMNVCb-U

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's set up a Tor onion service for Wikipedia

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi,

I have found now this paper that seems relevant to this conversation:

Forte, Andrea, Nazanin Andalibi, and Rachel Greenstadt
"Privacy, anonymity, and perceived risk in open collaboration: a study
of Tor users and Wikipedians."
Proceedings of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
(CSCW). Portland, OR. CSCW 17 (2017): 12.
http://andreaforte.net/ForteCSCW17-Anonymity.pdf

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's set up a Tor onion service for Wikipedia

[Cristian Consonni]

On 06/06/2017 02:10, Risker wrote:
> As far as I can tell (and from comments made in the past by actual Tor
> users), there is no problem whatsoever for Tor users to read Wikipedia
> while using Tor.

Let me put it this way, I am sure that the WMF will always do its best
to protect the privacy of our readers and editors. Alas, I am much more
concerned by third parties trying to snoop on our users. We also know
that this kind of surveillance happened and that's also why the WMF is
currently engaged in a lawsuit against the NSA.

Using Tor to visit (i.e. read) wikipedia.org provides additional privacy
and users can also circumvent blocks in their country, if necessary.
Having an onion service gives similar benefits.

Furthermore, I think it is very important that major Internet websites
provide themselves as an onion service. Even Facebook did it (at
https://www.facebookcorewwwi.onion/) and there are good privacy and
censorship-circumventing reasons for this[1]. I think that the least
difference between the "privacy enhanced" (aka dark) net and the regular
internet there is the more people will consider to use Tor. I think this
is a good thing.

Frankly, I hate it when I hear Tor and onion services nominated by
newspapers and newscasts only when talking about illegal activities.
Then I remind myself that Snowden used Tor extensively and without it we
probably would have not know about the NSA mass surveillance.

I think that having an onion service may be useful, but I also think
that we could have it just because we should.

>  Editing is a completely different situation - and well it
> should be, given the pure unadulterated trash that tends to come in
> whenever a Tor exit node is missed in the routine lockdowns.

I understand the difficulties. Again, I don't think we should conflate
the idea of providing Wikipedia as an onion service with the issues
related to editing Wikipedia over Tor or open proxies.


[1]:
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/facebook-hidden-services-and-https-certs

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's set up a Tor onion service for Wikipedia

[Cristian Consonni]

On 06/06/2017 01:34, MZMcBride wrote:
> And Faidon posted in November 2014 about the establishment of a Tor relay:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2014-November/079392.html

Thanks for the pointer, I did know that the WMF was operating a Tor
relay but I didn't recall where to find the details.

> How does your proposal interact (if at all) with the existing Tor relay
> set up in late 2014?

Relays (both middle relays or exit relays) and hidden services are
separate parts of the Tor network, so I would say that this project does
not intersect with the existing relays.

> It's unclear to me whether "Tor onion service" in this context is
> equivalent to a Tor exit node. I'm fairly sure setting up the latter has
> been discussed previously on wikimedia-l and/or wikitech-l.

Can you point me towards this discussion? I wasn't able to find any
reference to that.

In any case, an exit node and a hidden service are very different things.

Exit nodes are tor relays from where the traffic going to an internet
website (on the "clearnet") emerges from the Tor network to the outside.
They are more problematic to manage then non-exit relays because when
somebody uses the Tor network for nefarious purposes such as spam the
target website will see that this traffic is coming from the exit node.

An onion/hidden service is a website that is served only by the Tor
network. See for example this proxy of the Internet Archive:
http://archivecrfip2lpi.onion/
(you need to use the Tor Browser Bundle from https://torproject.org to
be able to visit that address)

I put a simplified explanation on how Tor works and how a hidden service
work on the proposal page[1], and a more detailed explanation of the
difference between an exit node and an onion service[2].

Cristian

[1]:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/A_Tor_Onion_Service_for_Wikipedia
[2]:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/A_Tor_Onion_Service_for_Wikipedia#What_is_the_difference_between_an_exit_node_and_a_onion.2Fhidden_service.3F

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's set up a Tor onion service for Wikipedia

[Cristian Consonni]

On 05/06/2017 22:19, Todd Allen wrote:
>  With the recent ruling about ISPs being allowed to collect and sell user
> data in the US, we're at "highly exceptional circumstances". Good Internet
> citizens allow anonymous participation. We can soft block them, but surely
> we can revert vandals and block their accounts.
> 
> If we can't even manage that, we have problems far deeper than Tor.

On 05/06/2017 22:34, Gabriel Thullen wrote:
> I agree that sockpuppets are a real problem, but they manage fine
right now
> without going through Tor. There are quite a few ways to connect up using
> different IPs as it is now, so the real problem remains: the
sockpuppeteers
> themselves.

I understand your point of view and I am sympathetic to it. I also would
like to find a solution to this problem right now, but what I have seen
reading the past discussions is that in the last 10+ years our community
has not been able to find a shared, workable proposal for allowing
editing over Tor for everybody. In the end, I trust the opinion of those
who have participated in the past discussions (with many very
experienced users participating in them) to be better informed than
myself on the topic of fighting sockpuppeteers, vandals and spammers.

At the same time, what I am proposing is dealing with a single problem
at a time, and also a different thing. An onion service would be good
regardless of the fact that it can be used just for reading or for
reading and writing.

To the best of my knowledge, the current proposal shouldn't cause any
disruption to the projects with our current policies (and, please, you
are invited point out any issues you may see with it).

Also, if we see that this service is used then we may have an additional
data point to reason about the opportunity of allowing editing over Tor.
In other words, if we have many readers maybe we could have some
editors, too, and it would be more justified to put some resources
towards trying to solve this much harder problem.

Cristian



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Let's set up a Tor onion service for Wikipedia

[Cristian Consonni]

On 05/06/2017 19:43, David Gerard wrote:
> Editing may be a tricky one, particularly on en:wp, which has found
> Tor exit points to overwhelmingly be fountains of garbage, and
> automatically blocks them.

On 05/06/2017 19:47, John wrote:
> enabling read access via Tor shouldn't be an issue, however editing should
> not be allowed due to high volume of known abuse from that vector.

On 05/06/2017 21:01, John wrote:
> Im not going to violate BEANS, but even allowing accounts to edit without
> further hurdles isn't going to work. Because of the anonymity that tor
> provides its fairly easy to cause widespread issues. When the vandals
start
> actually using tactics the flood gates of TOR will cause massive issues
> cross wiki that requires steward level intervention on a regular basis.

Allow me to reiterate that I am not proposing any change to the current
policies regarding editing via Tor or other open proxies. Even with an
onion service, anonymous editing will still be blocked and registered
users will still need to apply for IP block exemption before being able
to edit.

I have read several discussions on the topic (going back to 2006) and
what I have understood from those is that the biggest issue with editing
via Tor is sockpuppeting. Vandals and spammer could be handled (and
blocked), sockpuppets would be much harder to identify. The problem is
hard because it solving it requires to have a way to identify that two
accounts with different IPs are related to the same real person without
at the same time destroying the anonymity provided by Tor. There has
been research on the topic (see, for example, Nymble[1]) but at the very
least it would require some additional technical setup and testing.

With this proposal I am not trying to solve that problem.

I am just pointing out that:
1. having an onion service would increase the privacy of our readers and
the (very few) people who are already allowed to edit via Tor.
2. is harder to block access to an onion service than to wikipedia.org
(you basically need to block all accesses to Tor, but there are ways to
circumvent that, too[2]).
3. supporting privacy-enhancing technology is good and people may need
it or maybe they will start using Tor more.

As it stands now, the biggest impact of this project (if it is
successful) would be on operations and analytics.

Cristian

[1]: https://cgi.soic.indiana.edu/~kapadia/nymble/overview.php
[2]: https://www.torproject.org/docs/pluggable-transports

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[Wikimedia-l] Let's set up a Tor onion service for Wikipedia

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi,

I have written a proposal about setting up an onion (hidden) service to
serve Wikipedia over Tor:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/A_Tor_Onion_Service_for_Wikipedia

I was thinking about this and I also discovered that the Internet
Archive is experimenting with a very similar idea:
www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/750-Freedom-of-Information.html

I would like to have some feedback on this, I am also in contact with
the author of the aforementioned proxy which could be able to give some
help in setting it up.

Thank you.

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Update on Wikimedia Foundation v. NSA

[Cristian Consonni]

On 24/05/2017 00:29, David Gerard wrote:
> For those who missed it in the 10th footnote, this is the link to spread:
> 
> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/05/23/wikimedia-nsa-appeal-standing/

I think this is great news and it should be celebrated :-)
Thanks to the legal team and to our partners and who is assisting us in
this paramount legal battle.

Cristian


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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Widespread perfomance issues

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi Rogol,

On 16/05/2017 15:44, Faidon Liambotis wrote:
> This was a small outage, affecting only a small portion of European
> traffic (and tiny portion of our global traffic) and not what we'd call
> a "widespread" one -- very far from it.

+1
I think I have to apologize to the Operations team for the the wording I
have chosen for the title of this thread. In hindsight, this issue was
minor.

I was taken aback by the combination of the fact that we (at WM-IT) were
contacted by a journalist (which, in hindsight, put on us some pressure
about trying to understand the causes of the problem); we were in fact
experiencing some problems (both Wikimedia Italia's office and myself at
home use Fastweb as ISP); and, finally, I have misjudged the information
contained in the status page.

> This could have been remediated by either a) the intermediate provider
> fixing or working around the issue b) us disabling the use of that
> provider temporarily c) the affected ISPs (like Fastweb) disabling the
> use of that provider temporarily. In this case, we did not wait for (a)
> or (c) and worked around the issue ourselves, faster than Fastweb etc.
> did (and in less than an hour even since the initial report). I think
> the response from our side and our engineers (and especially Arzhel) was
> pretty stellar.

It was.
Thank you, Faidon, and thanks to all the team for the amazing work you do.

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Widespread perfomance issues

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi Faidon,

On 15/05/2017 13:02, Faidon Liambotis wrote:
> Hi Cristian,
> 
> We've had some network connectivity issues with one of our ISPs in our
> European datacenter that were probably the source of your problems
> (FastWeb in Italy were among the affected ISPs). This was a localized
> issue -- only in the European datacenter and one out of six major
> network carriers and dozens of network connectivity partners.
> 
> The issue has been worked around as of 09:26 UTC and the situation is
> being monitored.
> 
> This issue is being tracked at:
> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T165288
> 
> Do let us know if this is not the case for you of if you're experiencing
> any trouble, here, off-list or directly on that Phabricator task.

Thanks for the update.
Keep up the good work.

Ciao,

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Widespread perfomance issues

[Cristian Consonni]

On 15/05/2017 11:02, Cristian Consonni wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> At Wikimedia Italia have been contacted in the last few minutes because
> Wikipedia seems unreachable and very slow from Italy.

(Ah, I forgot to mention. by a journalist from ANSA, the national news
agency)

Cristian

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[Wikimedia-l] Widespread perfomance issues

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi,

At Wikimedia Italia have been contacted in the last few minutes because
Wikipedia seems unreachable and very slow from Italy.

The status pages for servers and services signals several perfomance issues:
https://status.wikimedia.org/

Does somebody know what's going on?

Thank you.

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Ray Saintonge has died

[Cristian Consonni]

For those of you who are not on Facebook, this is the message his
family posted on his Facebook profile:
---
After a courageous battle with cancer, my loving husband, my best
friend, and a wonderful father passed away peacefully yesterday
morning.
Thanks to everyone who helped us through this journey.
We will have a celebration of life in the near future, we will let you
know as soon as we have the details.

Love,

Christine and Darren.

Après une bataille courageuse avec le cancer, mon mari, mon meilleur
ami et un père formidable nous a quité en paix hier matin. Merci à
tous ceux qui nous ont soutenu durant notre voyage. Nous allons avoir
une célébration de sa vie, aussitôt que nous avons les details nous
allons vous avissez.

Avec tout notre amour.

Christine et Darren.
---

I discovered only a few months ago and by chance that he was fighting
cancer. I met Ray in 2010 at Wikimania. This is very sad news.

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Offline medical app

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi,

I'll share here a comment that I made on the "Wikipedia Weekly" group
on Facebook.

---
Is this a good idea? On it.wiki we go to great lengths to tell people
that medical information on Wikipedia may not be complete or accurate,
we have a dedicate template for that[1], see an example here[2].

While I am not saying this is not a bad idea, especially for places
where access to Wikipedia may be discontinuous, I am not sure I would
suggest to have such an application in Italian.
---

Thoughts welcome.

Ciao,

C

[1] https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Disclaimer#Medico
[2] https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infarto

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Direction] WMF Board of Trustees 2016 priorities

[Cristian Consonni]

2016-06-28 19:19 GMT+02:00 Christophe Henner :
> The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees met in Esino Lario during
> Wikimania. The minutes will be published in the coming days, but we deemed
> it too important to wait to share the outcome of this really great meeting.

Thank you for the update, I really appreciate the heads up and the news!

Cristian

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[Wikimedia-l] Damage compensation to photographer for violation of license of a photo taken from Commons

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi,

Last week a small case of copyright violation come to a positive conclusion.

Niccolò Caranti [[User:Jaqen]] is a Wikipedian and as a professional
photographer also a very prolific Commons contributor to the point
that he is a sysop both on itwiki and Commons.

He recently discovered that one of his photos was used for an event
without respecting the terms of the CC-BY-SA license, i.e. without
proper attribution to him and reference to the license.

Supported by Simone Aliprandi - a lawyer specializing in intellectual
property and author of a number of (free/libre) books on the topic of
licenses and Creative Commons in particular - they sent a formal
request to the organizers of the event.

The issue has been resolved amicably with all legal costs paid by the
agency that was working for the organizers of the event (who admitted
their mistake) and a compensation for the author.

You can read more about this case here:
https://aliprandi.blogspot.it/2016/06/photo-from-wikipedia-violation-license-caranti.html

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Fwd: Hello Mr. ccc, Now you can have your own Wikipedia page

[Cristian Consonni]

2016-04-06 22:06 GMT+02:00 Florence Devouard :
> A relationship of mine received the email below and forwarded it to me.
> http://yourprmanager.com/

This is appalling.

C

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] A Massive Online Open Course about Wikipedia

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi Emeric,

2016-04-05 9:20 GMT+02:00 Sandra Rientjes  - Wikimedia Nederland
:
> This is very impressive.  Many thanks to Wikimedia France for being a
> pioneer.

strong +1.
Congratulations to Wikimedia France for this amazing project.

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Access and Participation in the ASBS

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi,

2016-03-11 15:58 GMT+01:00 Sydney Poore :
> I agree with antanana / Nataliia Tymkiv that broader translation of WMF BoT
> election pages is important.

I agree. FWIW I havce asked in the WM-IT members mailing list if
somebody can help with Italian translation. As a member of the board
of WM-IT if our members request it I would also been open to consider
to pay for a translator.

C

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Affiliate-selected Board seats update

[Cristian Consonni]

Il 11/Mar/2016 11:50, "Gordon Joly"  ha scritto:
> Do Chapters have to ask their membership, or are they empowered to vote
> without going back to the members?

Practices vary widely. Some chapters discuss how to vote in their (annual)
general assemblies and they finally vote on who to vote. In other chapters
it's the board that decides. In these cases usually there is a formal
deliberation by the board and those are usually ratified by the members in
the next general assembly.

C
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Armenia candidate for the board

[Cristian Consonni]

2016-03-03 2:06 GMT+01:00 Pete Forsyth :
> I heartily endorse what Asaf has said here, but I'd add one thing:
>
> When someone runs for the board, that introduces a standard that goes
> beyond Assume Good Faith.

Yes, but please also note the difference between "assume good faith"
and the moral duty of refraining from making unsubstantiated claims of
being part of a corrupt and despotic system.

Compare the last email from Andreas in this thread with the first two
and draw your own conclusions.

I would like that everybody on this list tries to hold up to the (much
lower) second standard.

You are of course welcome to ask tough questions to the candidates.
IMHO, tough questions are usually so, because they present evidence to
back their contents.

C

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Armenia candidate for the board

[Cristian Consonni]

2016-03-03 1:20 GMT+01:00 Andreas Kolbe :
> I think that top-level government interference in Wikipedia harms people in
> the movement and its mission, especially if the government in question has
> a less than stellar press freedom record.

Yes, of course, but until you have any proof to link what Susanna and
Wikimedia Armenia have being doing you are "which-hunting" exactly as
those Soviet governments did in the past with the people that opposed
them.

C

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Armenia candidate for the board

[Cristian Consonni]

2016-03-03 0:15 GMT+01:00 Andreas Kolbe :
> I don't know Susanna, and in fact until yesterday had never heard of her.
> She may well be a delightful and charming person with a genuine enthusiasm
> for open knowledge. There are after all many encyclopedic topics that have
> no political sensitivity or relevance at all. But she is clearly part of a
> government-sponsored effort to control the Armenian Wikipedia.

[...]

2016-03-03 0:26 GMT+01:00 Risker :
> Wow, Andreas. That's taking several major leaps of logic.  Sometimes a
> cigar is just a cigar. Any reason why you brought these rather
> extraordinary assumptions to this mailing list before Susanna had even had
> a chance to respond to your question at her nomination page?

[...]

2016-03-03 0:33 GMT+01:00 Nathan :
> Is there any actual connection between Susanna and the high-level
> government interest or effort around the Armenian Wikipedia? What I'm
> asking is if there is anything here, other than supposition that because
> she is Armenian and the Armenian government is interested in Wikipedia that
> Susanna must be guilty of corruption and repression by association?

Andreas,

You are making very strong and, what's worse, completely
unsubstantiated accusations towards a person while admitting of not
knowing her, her history and her contributions to the movement.

The only person that thinks that  "she [Susanna] is clearly part of a
government-sponsored effort to control the Armenian Wikipedia" is you.

As Risker already noted your reasoning contains majors leaps of logic
and I find that your behavior is frankly appalling. As Nathan said you
have no evidence to support anything of what you have said besides the
fact that Susanna is Armenian.

The FDC reviewed in May 2015 the activities of Wikimedia Armenia in
the APG 2014/2015 round 2 [1] and found all programs to be
volunteer-led and well-aligned with the values and the mission of the
Wikimedia movement. The FDC judged Wikimedia Armenia to be "a
grassroots organization with a strong volunteer base. It is small,
flexible, and able to engage with a wide range of volunteers through
its projects."[2]. The evaluation of the FDC of Wikimedia Armenia was
a praise (and a recommendation for full funding)[2]. Not in a single
moment there was the least shred of doubt that the activities of
Wikimedia Armenia could go against the values of the movement. Never
there was even the remote suspicion of Wikimedia Armenia being part of
the government-led "scheme" to oppress people that you are suggesting.
In the occasion of the APG proposal (and besides that, at any time)
there were and there are several avenues to criticize  - also
privately and anonymously, if one so needs or wishes -  what the
chapter does and what the people in the chapter do and there was not a
single instance of any kind of accusation like the ones that you are
making from nothing.

Your accusation are an insult to all the volunteers in Wikimedia
Armenia, and I think you owe them an apology, especially to Susanna.

I want you to know that I find this behavior to be toxic and that in
my opinion you are harming the people in the movement and its mission.

Cristian

[1] 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:APG/Proposals/2014-2015_round2/Wikimedia_Armenia/Proposal_form#Praise_and_one_question
[2] 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_recommendations/2014-2015_round_2#Wikimedia_Armenia

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Katy Love to direct WMF Resources team

[Cristian Consonni]

Congrats Katy!

C
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] An Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation BoT

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi,

2016-02-18 11:44 GMT+01:00 Andrea Zanni :
> Thanks Ido.
> For what is worth, and in my personal capacity (I'm not affiliated with
> Wikimedia Italia any  more) I completely second your concern,
> Discussions are ongoing from months now and BoT seems frozen in silence.
> People really don't understand why.
>
> I would also like to thank you for expressing it in such a delicate, polite
> but clear tone.

strong +1

Thanks Ido for your thoughtful email, which I wholeheartedly support.
I like very much your email because it voices what I think many
Wikimedians are feeling but may not be keen on expressing themselves
publicly.

2016-02-18 9:04 GMT+01:00 ido ivri :
> I’m concerned because it’s evident that the Foundation is undergoing a
> deep, strategic change. But this change is not accompanied by the required
> transparency, honesty and accountability required by the Foundation in
> order to truly transform in a way that's beneficial for the organization
> and its community.

I share this concern completely.

The only thing I would add to what Ido said is: is there a way that we
- as a community - could help?

Remember that the community is not only a shareholder but also the
greatest asset we have.

Cristian

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[Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Looking for Wikipedians in the Balkans, Caucasus and Turkey for project with Osservatorio Balcani-Caucaso

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi all,

I am forwarding you this message from Davide, the Wikipedian in
Residence at Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso in Rovereto (TN).

You find him in copy, please contact him directly if you interested in
the projec.

Cristian
On behalf of Wikimedia Italia

---
Dear Wikimedians,

I am the Wikipedian-in-Residence at Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso
(OBC), an italian research centre, and I am coming to you looking for
help in concluding my project on press and media freedom in East and
South-East Europe.

in in these months at OBC I've been developing a series of pages of
the "Media of " series. I've added information on the media
system and media freedom in several countries of East and South East
Europe (Caucasus is coming soon too), by building upon reports of
international organisations such as the EJC, Freedom House, etc. You
will find the links in the GLAM/OBC page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/OBC.

Now, I would like to ask for your collaboration as citizens and native
speakers. It would be good if one or more of you could "adopt" the
article concerning your own country, check it for mistakes and update
it where needed, with native-language sources too. Secondly, once
verified, it could be good to translate the article in the original
language of the country concerned too.

Will you be able find some time in the coming weeks to help me with
this project? I hope so :) Just get in touch, either here or on the
related page.

Looking forward to hearing from you,
Best regards,
Davide

Davide Denti
Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso - WiR ECPMF
email: de...@balcanicaucaso.org
skype: davide.denti

On Sun, Nov 1, 2015 at 5:02 PM, Cristian Consonni
<kikkocrist...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Wikimedians,
>
> Wikimedia Italia has started since this month a project with
> "Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso" (Balcan and Caucasus Observatory,
> <http://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng>).
>
> Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso (OBC) is a research institute focused on
> South-East Europe, Turkey and the Caucasus which was launched in the
> year 2000 and which is based in Rovereto (Trento), in the north-east
> of Italy. The main focus of OBC is to produce studies and reports
> related to freedom of the press in the 26 countries that they monitor.
> They collaborate with a net of over 50 correspondents, including
> journalists, researchers, and activists in the various countries.
>
> With the help of WM-IT, OBC selected a Wikipedian in Residence for the
> next months. His name is Davide Denti[1] and you can find his contact
> in copy. Davide is a long-time Wikipedian, contributing on it.wiki
> since 2007, he is also a PhD candidate at the University of Trento, in
> Trento in the north of Italy, where is working on his thesis about EU
> enlargement policies with respect to the western balkans and in
> Bosnia-Herzegovina in particular.
>
> The residence is fully founded through a EU project called "European
> Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF)" <http://www.ecpmf.eu/>
> with partners - both individuals, for example journalists, and
> organisations - in several countries[2a][2b].
>
> In the scope of this project we would like to come in touch with
> Wikipedians in the region of Balkans that may find this project of
> interest, we also think that you may be interested in building
> relations with institutions in your country that participate in this
> project.
>
> We look forward to collaborating with you to make this project, and
> the content on Wikipedia about Balkans and Caucasus, better.
>
> Cristian
> on behalf on Wikimedia Italia
>
> [1] https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utente:Davide_Denti_%28OBC%29
> [2a] http://ecpmf.eu/members
> [2b] http://ecpmf.eu/ecpmf/people-and-partners/consortium

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Ethics of launching Wikidata, vs. ethics of WMF plans for Wikidata

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi Andreas,

2016-01-26 13:17 GMT+01:00 Andreas Kolbe :
> In my opinion, Wikidata's CC-0 licence undermines that, because it allows
> re-users to cut the chain between the end user and the data's original
> source.

If I understand, you are concerned about verifiability of information
in Wikidata. What is completely unclear to me is why you are mixing
verifiability and copyright or, in other words, why you think that you
can solve the problem of verifiability with copyright.

TL;DR
Licenses are for copyright, not verifiability. Using a different
license will not solve your verifiability problems.

# Is CC-BY for Wikidata a good idea?

CC-0 or CC-BY (or any license) are based on copyright law. Broadly
speaking (but IANAL), "facts" are not copyrightable because they lack
originality which is one of the conditions required by copyright law.
In this sense, no single statement that you find on Wikidata (e.g.
Barack Obama was born on 4 August 1961) is copyrightable.

For collections of facts (i.e. datasets) the situation is much less
clear and it is not easy to decide if collection of data/facts are
copyrightable at all. The doctrine of the "Sweat of the Brow" [1a][1b]
indeed the originality requirement is relaxed and the fact that "skill
and labour" was put in creating a collection of data is sufficient to
give rise to copyright. This view has been recently rejected in some
court cases by the European Court of Justice (see Football Dataco &
others v. Yahoo UK ! [2a][2b]) ruling that it is not sufficient to say
that putting together a collection of facts required some sort of
effort (even quantifiable in monetary terms) to give rise to
copyright. In Football Dataco v. Yahoo the dataset consisted in sports
event results, but the same applies also to other contexts such as the
digitization of (public domain) photographs or OCR of (public domain)
texts.

As a Wikimedian, I am more than eager to support the idea that scanned
versions of PD photos and texts should remain in the public domain. I
do not want to invoke this kind of principle to be able to claim
copyright on the Wikidata dataset so to be able to apply the CC-BY
license. This is also the position of other projects like Project
Gutenberg [3].

On the other hand, in many jurisdictions the moral rights [4]
associated with any work, e. g. among other the right of having the
paternity of a work attributed, are perpetual and can not be
transferred or waived. In fact the CC-0 legal code says: "A Work made
available under CC0 may be protected by copyright and related or
neighboring rights includ[ing]: moral rights retained by the original
author(s) and/or performer(s); database rights; [...]".

So the problem of which is the justification for having Wikidata
released under CC-BY remains.

# Licenses and verifiability

Besides the problem above, even if we could use CC-BY and make use of
"Sui Generis Database Rights" (see section 4 of CC-BY legal code [5])
I am not sure your verifiability problem would be solved. CC-BY
requires the reuser to provide "[...] attribution, in any reasonable
manner requested by the Licensor".

This means that I could build a page replicating (part of) Wikidata
data, maybe mix them with other sources and the add a link to the
bottom of the saying "Data from Wikidata (c) Wikidata contributors
CC-BY (+link to the item and item history for author names); source A;
source B; ...".

This would completely satisfy the attribution requirement but do
little to solve the verifiability problem because, basically, you can
not use copyright to force anybody to use a particular design of their
website and/or database and maintain the "verifiability chain" for
each statement.

To conclude, the verifiability problem is very important for all the
projects, but I am very skeptic to the idea that  copyright licenses
are the means to solve it

C

[1a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow
[1b] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Sweat_of_the_Brow
[2a] http://curia.europa.eu/juris/liste.jsf?=C-604/10
[2b] 
http://kluwercopyrightblog.com/2012/03/01/football-dataco-skill-and-labour-is-dead/
[3] https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:No_Sweat_of_the_Brow_Copyright
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights
[5] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikidata] Reliable sources list validation for StrepHit

[Cristian Consonni]

2016-01-26 17:20 GMT+01:00 Marco Fossati :
> 2. *third-party*, i.e., not created by users of Wikimedia projects?

Or better, that are not derived from the contect of the Wikimedia
projects, to avoid circular references and citogenesis[1].

C
[1] https://xkcd.com/978/

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Board-l] Fwd: WMF trustee Arnnon Geshuri and part in anticompetitive agreements in Google

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi Dariusz,

2016-01-22 19:21 GMT+01:00 Dariusz Jemielniak :
> we've been working on it, discussing, and introducing improvements. I
> guess that replying here quicker, rather than preparing an elaborate
> document may be more sensible, since you're asking, and we may be perceived
> as entirely inactive ;)

I appreciate the update and the explanation of the changes that are
being made to the process.

However I would like to know if you are tackling the main issue at
hand, i.e. whether Arnnon Geshuri should remain a trustee or not.

Thank you.

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Introducing Jaime Villagomez as our Chief Financial Officer

[Cristian Consonni]

2016-01-12 9:12 GMT+01:00 Pine W :
> Pardon the skepticism, but as you may have heard, it seems that some
> changes are need in WMF screening procedures, and this skepticism is
> understandably affecting other new requisitions.
>
> In any case, welcome to the hurricane known as the Wikimedia movement (:

Welcome Jaime

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcing new Wikimedia Foundation Trustees

[Cristian Consonni]

2016-01-06 2:01 GMT+01:00 Dariusz Jemielniak :
> As Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board Governance Committee, I am happy
> to introduce the two newest members of our Board of Trustees: Kelly Battles
> and Arnnon Geshuri.

I realize that my previous email was not the best welcome.

Welcome Kelly and Arnnon to the vibrant (very very very vibrant,
probably beyond the "flammable" line) Wikimedia world.

C

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[Wikimedia-l] We need to talk about the WMF Board Pledge of personal commitment

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi all,

This discussion is somewhat inspired by what recently happened with
WMF Board of Trustees[1]. Please note that I was to respect the
request from the board (and James himself) to have some more time to
review the situation before providing more details about the recent
resolution.

In some sense, I am following what James said in an email[2]:
---
I have done what I believe is in the best interest of our movement.
---

The Wikimedia Foundation requires every board member to sign a "Pledge
of personal commitment"[3], in one passage it says:
«In every instance in which I represent the Wikimedia Foundation, I
will conduct my activities in a manner to best promote the interests
of Wikimedia Foundation.»

Compare this with the "FDC Pledge of Personal Commitment" signed by
FDC members[4]:
«I, [name], pledge to faithfully pursue the mission and goals of the
Wikimedia movement, namely to empower and engage people around the
world to collect and develop educational content under a free license
or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and
globally. The FDC makes recommendations to the Board of Trustees
regarding the allocation of funds to support the mission goals of the
Wikimedia movement, and I therefore recognize my responsibility to
maintain the highest level of public confidence and trust.»

As a former FDC member I very much prefer the formulation adopted in
the FDC pledge rather than in the BoT pledge.

I think (and I have been thinking this for a while) that the Pledge of
commitment for trustees of WMF should mention the movement as well. In
some sense I am stating the obvious, but I would like the idea that
what constitutes "the best choice for the movement" takes priority
over "the best choice for the WMF", and this is board members pledge
to do.

I know that "doing what is best for the WMF" may be a legal
requirements for WMF board members, but I honestly do not think that
what is the best interest for the movement and what is the best
interest for WMF would ever be actually in conflict. In other words, I
would take the discussion of what constitutes a decision made with the
best interest of the movement in mind to be a debatable choice over
difference of views rather than a case of breaching the pledge because
some action may produce short term harm to the WMF (and thus be
breaching the pledge of commitment for BoT as it is written now) but
greater good in the middle/long term.

Thank you,

Cristian


[1] 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-12-30/News_and_notes
[2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-December/080502.html
[3] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Pledge_of_personal_commitment
[4] 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Pledge_of_Commitment_and_Conflict_of_Interest_Questionnaire#FDC_Pledge_of_Personal_Commitment

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Free Bassel

[Cristian Consonni]

2015-11-24 10:47 GMT+01:00 Andrea Zanni :
> Use the centralnotice.

[...]

> A Wikipedian, a member of our community sentenced to death for believing in
> our Mission and Vision is something extraordinary. I understand the caution
> of setting a precedent, but I think it's worth it.
>
> Also, remember: we have few days before we'll ask money again to all the
> English-speaking countries.
> How could we ask for money when we are not using the power that was
> bestowed upon us by the very same spirit, love and courage that is
> condemning Bassel to death?

I strongly support this.

As for the precedent, recall that the Wikimedia Foundation supports
the users, we did this with User:Diu in Greece:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/02/14/wikimedia-foundation-supports-wikipedia-user-subject-to-defamation-lawsuit-in-greece/

This is much more than a lawsuit.

A message I do not want us to send is that if you enough force or the
threat is big enough, then we, as a movement, will be scared away.

C

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[Wikimedia-l] Looking for Wikipedians in the Balkans, Caucasus and Turkey for project with Osservatorio Balcani-Caucaso

[Cristian Consonni]

Dear Wikimedians,

Wikimedia Italia has started since this month a project with
"Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso" (Balcan and Caucasus Observatory,
).

Osservatorio Balcani Caucaso (OBC) is a research institute focused on
South-East Europe, Turkey and the Caucasus which was launched in the
year 2000 and which is based in Rovereto (Trento), in the north-east
of Italy. The main focus of OBC is to produce studies and reports
related to freedom of the press in the 26 countries that they monitor.
They collaborate with a net of over 50 correspondents, including
journalists, researchers, and activists in the various countries.

With the help of WM-IT, OBC selected a Wikipedian in Residence for the
next months. His name is Davide Denti[1] and you can find his contact
in copy. Davide is a long-time Wikipedian, contributing on it.wiki
since 2007, he is also a PhD candidate at the University of Trento, in
Trento in the north of Italy, where is working on his thesis about EU
enlargement policies with respect to the western balkans and in
Bosnia-Herzegovina in particular.

The residence is fully founded through a EU project called "European
Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF)" 
with partners - both individuals, for example journalists, and
organisations - in several countries[2a][2b].

In the scope of this project we would like to come in touch with
Wikipedians in the region of Balkans that may find this project of
interest, we also think that you may be interested in building
relations with institutions in your country that participate in this
project.

We look forward to collaborating with you to make this project, and
the content on Wikipedia about Balkans and Caucasus, better.

Cristian
on behalf on Wikimedia Italia

[1] https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utente:Davide_Denti_%28OBC%29
[2a] http://ecpmf.eu/members
[2b] http://ecpmf.eu/ecpmf/people-and-partners/consortium

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Recognition of Wikimedians of Republic of Srpska

[Cristian Consonni]

Il 06/Ott/2015 23:11, "Asaf Bartov"  ha scritto:
>
> (As a courtesy for the possibly-confused: [[Republika Srpska
> ]].)

I have to say that it took me a while.
Congrats to the new group!

Cristian
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New Wikimedia Spain board

[Cristian Consonni]

2015-10-04 23:25 GMT+02:00 Santiago Navarro :
> President: Santiago Navarro
> Vice-president: Jorge Sierra
> Secretary: Luis Ulzurrun
> Treasurer: Miguel Ángel García
> Board member: David Abián
> Board member: Diego Delso
> Board member: Jesús Tramullas
> Board member: José Emilio Mori
> Board member: Manuel Palomo
> Board member: Manuel Torío
> Board member: Montserrat Sáez
> Board member: Pablo Machón
> Board member: Pedro Pacheco
>
> I want to thank to the former members of WMES board, Felipe Ortega and Rubén
> Ojeda. I hope that this new periode could help us.

Congrats and thanks to all the new and former board members.

Enhorabuena!

C

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Departure

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi Garfield,

2015-09-10 23:53 GMT+02:00 Garfield Byrd :
> For the last four years, I’ve led the Wikimedia Foundation’s finance,
> administration, and office IT teams. I've had the opportunity to work
> closely with many of you through collaboration with the Wikimedia
> affiliates. They have been remarkable experiences, and I am grateful for
> all I’ve learned from you during my time here. Therefore it is with some
> sadness that today I am letting you know that I’ve decided to take a new
> opportunity outside the WMF, at a California-based foundation focused on
> public education.
>
> It has been a privilege to work with so many exceptional people over the
> years. I’ve watched the WMF mature and take on many new challenges, and our
> community grow and diversify. Our commitment to our free knowledge mission
> is as strong as ever, and now shared by even more people. While I’ll no
> longer be on staff, I plan to find ways to stay involved in the Wikimedia
> community. I look forward to seeing the movement continue to do its
> important work.
>
> My last day will be September 30. I look forward to staying in touch and
> continuing to support our mission.

I am sad to see you go, it was a pleasure working with you during in
the FDC rounds.
I hope the best for your next endeavours.


Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Farewell

[Cristian Consonni]

2015-06-18 18:25 GMT+02:00 Fabrice Florin fflo...@wikimedia.org:
 After three great years working at the foundation, the time has come to say 
 goodbye.

 I will be leaving WMF at the end of June, to spend more time with my family, 
 focus on personal art projects and consult part-time on worthy causes.

 I would like to thank all the community and team members I have had the 
 pleasure to work with over the years. It has been an honor to serve our 
 movement together — and to help our contributors share free knowledge with 
 each other and the world.

 I’m particularly grateful to Katherine Maher and our WMF communications team 
 for being such wonderful collaborators. I really enjoyed working with them to 
 manage and edit the Wikimedia blog, help grow our team and publish some great 
 stories together, to celebrate the heroes of our movement.

 Going forward, WMF's Juliet Barbara will manage the Wikimedia blog, in close 
 collaboration with Ed Erhart. As many of you know, Ed is the former 
 editor-in-chief of the Wikipedia Signpost and has now joined our team for the 
 summer. I've worked with him for nearly a month now and find him uniquely 
 qualified for this project. Starting today, please contact them directly with 
 any questions about the blog (they are Cc:d on this message).

 After June 30, you can reach me at fabriceflo...@gmail.com — or follow me 
 on Twitter ( @fabriceflorin ) or on my blog ( http://fabriceflorin.com ).

 The last three years have been an incredible experience for me, and I am 
 grateful for all that I have learned from so many of you. You’ve been an 
 inspiration to me and I have many fond memories of our time together. I wish 
 you all the best with the next chapter of the Wikimedia movement and can’t 
 wait to see what you’ll come up with next.

Goodbye Fabrice, thanks for your work at WMF and best of luck with
your future endeavours.

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] A Listen Button

[Cristian Consonni]

2015-05-28 12:32 GMT+02:00 Richard Symonds richard.symo...@wikimedia.org.uk:
 This is a very enlightening discussion, but it's painfully apparent that
 there is no input in this discussion from someone who is sight-impaired, or
 input from an organisation like RNIB
 http://www.rnib.org.uk/about-rnib/web-accessibility-statement.

 Getting a wide range of this input is really key before this can go much
 further.

This is for sure a field were chapters and other local affiliates can
make good use of partnerships with local associations of blind or
sight-impaired people.

For exampla, In the Archeowiki project by Wikimedia Italia (developed
in the years 2012 - 2014) we did some outreach work with the Insituto
dei ciechi di Milano (Institute of Blind People of Milan, one of the
oldest charities/foundations in Italy, being founded in 1840). This
comprised some lessons about prehistoric, extra-European archaeology
done by groups of archaeologists and Wikipedia that were specifically
trained. In these lessons there were a set of artefacts that could be
touched and also some 3D printed reproduction.

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan for FY 15-16

[Cristian Consonni]

2015-05-28 17:38 GMT+02:00 Cristian Consonni kikkocrist...@gmail.com:
 This. in particular:
 It would be good if the WMF would *try to set a good example* by following
 the rules that it sets for others, itself.

(as a clarification, I strong agree with Liam, especially in the point above).

I also left out a relevant sentence from the FDC recommedation:
«The FDC recognizes that there have been some attempts by the WMF for
gathering community feedback, but believes that the current approach
has proven insufficient in generating a strategic vision. The FDC
strongly believes that there is a dire need for new ways to generate
strategies and a new strategic vision for the Wikimedia movement, and
urges the Board to make a significant effort to make sure that there
is a roadmap to transition to the next strategic milestones. »[1]

C
[1] (again) 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/FDC_recommendations/2013-2014_round2#Wikimedia_Foundation_.28WMF.29

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan for FY 15-16

[Cristian Consonni]

2015-05-28 11:42 GMT+02:00 Liam Wyatt liamwy...@gmail.com:
 The WMF talks about eating your own dog food[2] in terms of engineering,
 but it would be good if something similar would take place in the annual
 planning too... Chapters are required to submit their annual plans to a two
 *month* period of quite thorough public review before the FDC gives its
 recommendations, and then there's a further period before the actual
 decision/appeals.[3]

[...]

This. in particular:
 It would be good if the WMF would *try to set a good example* by following
 the rules that it sets for others, itself.

And also a little addition (from [1]):
«The FDC would like to encourage the WMF to share more data in
advance, and to do so publicly as much as possible. It was very
difficult to evaluate this proposal when some data were made available
on short notice. Also, the budget submitted to the FDC is not a final
one, and the FDC has to comment on a working version of a proposal. As
a result, the FDC has to work on a proposal with a significant growth
in administration and hiring, although it is also immediately clear
that the suggested numbers were theoretical maximums, not meant to be
met. For all future proposals, the FDC strongly emphasizes the need
for a complete proposal: the WMF should undergo similar procedures as
other entities in the movement. The Board may need to adjust the
calendar of FDC work, but allowing for a comprehensive review by a
committee from the community (such as the FDC) rather than the
Wikimedia Foundation itself is essential, especially in light of the
minimal feedback from the community on the public pages.

[...]

The FDC is worried that the WMF has not followed the FDC’s
recommendations from the previous round (2012–2013 Round 1), and that
the WMF has excused itself from proposing an amount in the current
round. The WMF should either clearly withdraw from the FDC process or
undergo it on equal basis with other organizations in the movement. In
particular, the WMF should apply for an amount, and should submit a
full final proposal. The calendar for the FDC process may need to be
adjusted to accommodate the WMF, but these requirements are important
for the process. Allowing a thorough review of the WMF proposals by a
community-driven body is especially important, since a lot of staffing
and budget increases are not clearly and directly linked with the
strategic priorities.

The WMF has high competencies in governance and in running a large
organization, and should be significantly more proactive in
disseminating its knowledge and supporting chapters and thematic
organizations through training, onboarding plans, and fostering
cross-chapter exchange.

[...]

Some FDC members object to the fact that the FDC is not being asked to
provide a dollar amount for the WMF proposal, as this is a distinct
difference from how the FDC assesses the other organizations that
apply to it. They would like to see the WMF apply with a dollar amount
next year, and to run its annual planning process on a similar
timescale to that expected from other organizations participating in
the FDC process.»

As it was already said above. I, personally, do think that we can
discuss about making some adjustments to the process to make it work
for an organisation of the size of the WMF, but I also would like to
see the WMF play along the rule of everybody else in the movement
(again, considering all the special need and characteristics of this).

Cristian

[1] source: 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/FDC_portal/FDC_recommendations/2013-2014_round2#Wikimedia_Foundation_.28WMF.29

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimédia France] Practical Guide for local groups

[Cristian Consonni]

2015-05-11 12:46 GMT+02:00 Habib M'henni habib.mhe...@gmail.com:
 A big thank you! A very useful document.

Merci Emeric, In Wikimedia Italia we want to implement a similar
regional development plan and we will exploit your work and
documentation.

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] A transition and a new chapter.

[Cristian Consonni]

2015-04-13 21:27 GMT+02:00 Pavel Richter m...@pavelrichter.de:
 Thank you, Q577729!

[...]

 Q15903779

(ROFL, you are the cool kids in town ;-) )

Goodbye Erik, best of luck for your future endeavors.

C

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Ask questions, give feedback on six annual plan grant proposals for the FDC!

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi Pine,

2015-04-08 8:34 GMT+02:00 Pine W wiki.p...@gmail.com:
 I was referring to the qualifications, benefits and limitations of the
 different kinds of grant programs. The way that they're structured provides
 some ups and downs for affiliates when we have the option to choose among
 grant types.

A quick recap of the existing grant programs is available here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Start

In particular, a selected quote about the different types of programs:
* Travel and Participation Support: travel funding to participate in
mission-aligned events.
* Individual Engagement Grants: comprehensive support for individual
and small team projects focused on online impact.
* Project and Event Grants: expenses related to organizing events and
running projects. For individuals, groups and organizations. [The
Grant Advisory Committee (aka GAC) works in the scope of these grants]
* Annual Plan Grants: funding the annual budgets and mission
objectives of affiliated organizations. [The Fund Dissemination
Committee (aka FDC) works in the scope of these grants]

 FDC/APG's structure recieved a lot of attention in the past
 few years. I think it would be good to take a step back and look
 collectively at the grants programs, and to think about how to engineer
 them with today's environment, goals and tools for affiliates, small teams
 and individual grantees in mind; and to think about transition points among
 grant types.

Katy has for sure more details, but the APG/FDC process has built-in
from the start the fact that when the staff reaches out to a potential
applicant there is an initial discussion and assessment to see if the
APG is the best route for the given applicant to apply for funds.
There have been cases in the past (on top of my mind, Wikimedia
Hungary) of entities that have decided to go through the PEG/GAC
instead of the APG/FDC after the initial discussions with the FDC
staff and the committee.

So, possibly this is not completely formalized but as a process it
exists and there are precedents.

 I would love to talk with you more about this at the Wikimedia Conference
 if possible (:

2015-04-08 8:54 GMT+02:00 Christophe Henner christophe.hen...@gmail.com:
 The Advisory group to the FDC actually made that very proposal.

 To have a body who would look At the grant system as a whole and not juste
 At one of its part.

 Not sure if that would ever be implemented sadly.

It seems a most reasonable idea, my 2cents would be not to rehaul
completely the structure of grants because having a structure that is
stable enough (i.e. that is used for some years) is useful to compare
data between different applicants and provide some historical
analysis. (cfr.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Evaluation/Evaluation_at_the_Wikimedia_Foundation)
and if I recall correctly up to date there have been the possibility
to have just one general impact report so far (for this you need
completed grants so we have those up 2013/2014).

C

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Introducing Kourosh Karimkhany, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi Andreas,

2015-04-02 18:25 GMT+02:00 Andreas Kolbe jayen...@gmail.com:
 On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 3:00 PM, Cristian Consonni kikkocrist...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 2015-04-02 15:16 GMT+02:00 Andreas Kolbe jayen...@gmail.com:
 As mentioned previously, what I have seen is recent additions to
 Internet.org, describing Internet.org app launches bundling Wikipedia Zero
 and Facebook Zero (along with a small and varying number of other sites) in
 the following countries:

I need another clarification. As far as I know (and I recall a
question in the board QA at Wikimania in London), it's internet.org
making available Wikipedia content (as per the license) on their app.
It is not an initiative of the Wikimedia Foundation and (therefore) it
is not related to Wikipedia Zero. Also, internet.org/Facebook can do
this thanks to our license (more below). Unless something changed in
the last months you can not say that Wikipedia Zero is bundled with
Facebook Zero.

[...]

 Note that Facebook actually seems to contain a complete mirror of
 Wikipedia, judging by the presence of even fairly obscure Wikipedia
 articles on its pages (selected using Random article). See e.g.

This is failry old news, these pages exists since 2010:
https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/21721

 Given the limitations Wikipedia Zero users labour under, it is actually
 fairly immaterial to users whether they see the Wikipedia article in
 Facebook Zero or Wikipedia Zero. The key difference is that in Facebook
 Zero, they will not see Wikipedia's logo and fundraising banners. (They
 also can't see the talk pages in Facebook.) They will have a less clear
 impression of Wikipedia's brand, and the whole thing will still primarily
 be a Facebook experience to them.

I see the problem, but this is not related at all with Net Neutrality.

This is what you can do with any free/libre content. There is no way
to stop Facebook (or Flickr [sic et simpliciter]) from reusing our
content. Let me quote SJ (again from the Board QA in London) Please
reuse our content. There should be as few limitations as possible to
reusing the content, in principle. Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia
for this very exact reason after all. Even in a world with the
strongest possible Net Neutrality laws in force Facebook will be able
to do this.

Let me weigh in another argument, I know that the idea of a Public
space on the internet is accepted even in the framework of Net
Neutrality. The idea is that some list of websites that offer public
services (e.g. government websites, public libraries websites, schools
and universities websites) should always be accessible with no charge.
In this view Wikipedia could be included in the list as an educational
non-profit (other projects may also be included, e. g. the Khan
Academy). Wikimedia Foundation, in this sense, is leading by example.

C

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcing: The Wikipedia Prize!

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi Brian,

2015-03-30 0:25 GMT+02:00 Brian reflect...@gmail.com:
 Although the initial goal of the Netflix Prize was to design a
 collaborative filtering algorithm, it became notorious when the data was
 used to de-anonymize Netflix users. Researchers proved that given just a
 user's movie ratings on one site, you can plug those ratings into another
 site, such as the IMDB. You can then take that information, and with some
 Google searches and optionally a bit of cash (for websites that sell user
 information, including, in some cases, their SSN) figure out who they are.
 You could even drive up to their house and take a selfie with them, or
 follow them to work and meet their boss and tell them about their views on
 the topics they were editing.

somewhat tangentially, and to bring back this to topic to a more
scientific setting I would like to point out that there has already
been reasearch in the past on this topic.

I highly recommend reading the following paper:

Lieberman, Michael D., and Jimmy Lin. You Are Where You Edit:
Locating Wikipedia Contributors through Edit Histories. ICWSM. 2009.
(PDF 
http://www.pensivepuffin.com/dwmcphd/syllabi/infx598_wi12/papers/wikipedia/lieberman-lin.YouAreWhereYouEdit.ICWSM09.pdf)

For those of you that don't want to read the whole paper, you can find
a recap of the most relevant findings in this presentation by Maurizio
Napolitano:
http://www.slideshare.net/napo/social-geography-wikipedia-a-quick-overwiew

The main idea is associating spatial coordinates to a Wikipedia
articles when possible, this articles are called geopages. Then you
extract from the history of articles the users which have edited a
geopage. If you plot the geopages edited by a given contributor you
can see that they tend to cluster, so you can define an edit area.
The study finds that 30-35% of contributors concentrate their edits in
an edit area smaller than 1 deg^2 (~12,362 km^2, approximately the
area of Connecticut or Northern Ireland[1] (thanks, Wikipedia!)).

For another free/libre project with a geographic focus like
OpenStreetMap this is even more marked, check out for example this
tool «“Your OSM Heat Map” (aka Where did you contribute?)»[2] by
Pascal Neis.

This, of course, is not a straightforward de-anonimization but this
methods work in principle for every contributor even if you obfuscate
their IP or username (provided that you can still assign all the edits
from a given user to a unique and univocal identifier)

C
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_degree
[2a] http://yosmhm.neis-one.org/
[2b] http://neis-one.org/2011/08/yosmhm/

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: Introducing Kourosh Karimkhany, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships

[Cristian Consonni]

2015-04-02 15:16 GMT+02:00 Andreas Kolbe jayen...@gmail.com:
 I pointed out that Lohninger, AccessNow and EFF consider it obvious that
 there is such an effect.

Not so obvious, in my opinion.

The EFF says about Wikipedia zero that it is a laudable effort[1]
even acknowledging that it may harm competition even in the non-profit
world. In another article the EFF says that Wikipedia Zero is an
exception[2] among Zero rating services because his procedures are
more transparent.

This is very different from asking to stop or shut down Wikipedia Zero.

 You cannot seriously argue that there are no facts available to
 demonstrate this. It's business studies 101.

I keep hearing this argument, but what myself (and I think also Mike)
am contesting is this automatic implication that Wikipedia Zero
brings behind itself Facebook Zero, Twitter Zero and all the others
zero rating services.
I don't see this automatism, and I would like therefore see some
evidence for it, with dates possibly. (I have already demanded it in
the past[3])
I do not consider it obvious at all. Please note that I am not saying
that this effect can not exist /a priori/, I am completely agnostic
about it and for this exact reason I would like it to be tested (it is
also worth pointing out that since you are making the claim you are
the one with the burden of proof).

About Thomas Lohninger's opinion, he stated in the talk that you
linked previously [4a] that WMF and Wikimedia Chile ask to withdraw or
amend the Chilean net neutrality law, but if you read the letter sent
(see [4b] for the letter, [4c] has context) the letter asked to
confirm that Wikipedia Zero is not covered by this order [the circular
from Chilean government implementing the Net Neutrality law][*].
Again, this is different: asking that Wikipedia Zero could continue
running in the framework of the net neutrality law is different from
demanding an amendment to the law, in the fact that it is asking to
consider Wikipedia an exception. From what I can gather from the
discussions on the advocacy advisors list I think that this is an
opinion held by several Wikimedians (including myself).

I think, Andreas, that your view (or Jens' or Thomas') is a legitimate
position, but taking a really materialistic stance this is not a zero
sum game. IMHO the exception approach is the only one, at least the
only one I can think of, that may have a net positive outcome (i.e.
giving access to Wikipedia to people and having a very wide-covering
net neutrality protection), your proposition has the negative effect
of eliciting the access to Wikipedia to people (and I very much
understand Josh's reaction in this respect).
Always taking this materialistic approach, I think it is legitimate to
weight competing values, i.e. it is not automatic that Net Neutrality
is a value that has a greater weight than access to knowledge (even if
mediated through the in-many-ways-imperfect Wikipedia).

Cristian

[1] 
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/net-neutrality-and-transparency-principles-must-extend-mobile-internet-access-too
[2] 
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/net-neutrality-and-global-digital-divide
[3] 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/advocacy_advisors/2014-September/000758.html
[4a] 
http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2014/31c3_-_6170_-_en_-_saal_g_-_201412282145_-_net_neutrality_days_of_future_past_-_rejo_zenger_-_thomas_lohninger.html#video
(from 40.45)
[4b] 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carta_a_SUBTEL_ref_Wikipedia_Zero.pdf
[4c] 
https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/advocacy_advisors/2014-September/000752.html

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Introducing Kourosh Karimkhany, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships

[Cristian Consonni]

Welcome, Kourosh!

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Announcement: WMF to file suit against the NSA

[Cristian Consonni]

2015-03-13 10:36 GMT+01:00 Edward Saperia edsape...@gmail.com:
 Education is apolitical.

 I beg to differ.

Me too.

«Growing up, you know, I slowly had this process realizing that all
the things around me that people had told me were just the natural way
of things were, or the way things would be, weren't natural at all.
There were things that could be changed.

And there were things, more importantly, were WRONG and should change.
And once I realized that, there was really kind of no going back

[...]

once I questioned the school I was in, I questioned the society that
built the school, I questioned the businesses that the schools were
training people for, I questioned the government that set up this
whole structure.»
(Aaron Swartz, from the documentary :The Intenet's Own Boy)[*]

I can hardly thing of anything less apolitical as giving the access to
every human being to the sum of all knowledge, let alone education.

C

[*] (min 01:59 -- 02:14 and 12:14 -- 12:24)

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Veteran Malayalam Wikipedian BabuG signed off...

[Cristian Consonni]

Dear Viswa,

I am sorry for this loss that the Malayalam is experiencing.
Please transmit my condoleances to his family and friends if you have
the occasion to do so.

2015-03-05 16:07 GMT+01:00 ViswaPrabha (വിശ്വപ്രഭ) vp2...@gmail.com:
 Yet, we feel, BabuG has made his life stamped immortal for ever and has
 shown us the pathway we should follow in continuing our humble
 contributions to the ultimate cause of mankind.

Indeed he has.

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimediameta-l] Bye

[Cristian Consonni]

2015-02-24 15:52 GMT+01:00 Lane Rasberry l...@bluerasberry.com:
 On English Wikipedia I have met with resistance in documenting crowdfunding
 projects. I would like clarity on the extent to which the Wikimedia
 community feels that it is acceptable to discuss crowdfunding in Wikimedia
 community information channels.

As far as this mailing list [i.e. Wikimedia-l] is concerned I can say
that Wikimedia-related crowdfunding projects have been discussed here
in the past.

The first example is probably the The Vanamo Online Game Museum[1]
campaign and the last is a project to collect funds for a Wimiedian
photographer whose equipment was stolen[2].
Not to mention the WikiCheese campaign[3] by Wikimedia France which
generated more than some 50 messages on this list.

C


[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-November/128695.html
[2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-December/075706.html
[3] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-November/075476.html

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] A Listen Button

[Cristian Consonni]

Il 25/Gen/2015 12:18 Martin Kraft martin.kr...@gmx.de ha scritto:
 Did I miss some aspect? Is there a point in converting something visual
into something visual?

I have been told that people born deaf find more easy to read things in
sign language. I imagine it like the difference between reading something
written in your mother tongue and reading something in another language you
know.
Of course the one above was an experiment (and at least a try at getting a
University to release their software with a FLOSS license, let's not
forget), since I expect some differences from a text converted and one
natively written in sign language.

If you look in the Wikimedia Incubator and Meta there are discusions about
a Wikipedia in ASL, that is American Sign Language.

http://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_American_Sign_Language_2

C
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] A Listen Button

[Cristian Consonni]

Il 24/Gen/2015 23:21 James Heilman jmh...@gmail.com ha scritto:

 While human read articles are great they quickly become out of date and
are
 available for only a fraction of our articles.

 Why don't we have a Listen button beside our read button that when
 clicked will read the article for the person in question?

 There are 37 open source text-to-speech listed here
 http://www.findbestopensource.com/tagged/text-to-speech. Some of them
 support up to 50 languages. This of course would require the support of
the
 Wikimedia Foundation.

 I guess we could also do it with a gadget initially. Thoughts?

(only marginally related, but this is to say that I like this idea)

A couple of years ago I contacted  a professor at the University of Siena
(Tuscany, Italy) which was the head of a project that built a
text-to-sign-language converter. The software was converting text in
Italian to LIS (Lingua Italiana dei Segni, Italian Sign Language) and was
tested also on the public television (see the website below).

The software is called Blue Sign:
http://www.bluesign.it/

Basically, since  the website said that the project was over, I asked them
to re-release the code with a free/libre open license which is a
precondition to use it on Wikipedia.

Despite some initial interest in the end the professor told me that it was
too complicated to contact every author (actually an handful of people) to
obtain their permission, so in the end this resulted in nothing :(.

Cristian
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[Wikimedia-l] EU copyright rules are maladapted to the increase of cross-border cultural exchange on the web

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi,

Julia Reda, a MEP (Member of the European Parliament) for the German
Pirate Party has released a report[1] regarding copyright in the EU
and demanding an ambitious reform agenda for the overhaul of EU
copyright[2].

A shorter version with the most important points is the press release:
[2] https://juliareda.eu/2015/01/press-release-eu-copyright-report/

This work has followed the public consultation on copyright that many
people (and also associations, including some Wikimedia chapters) have
answered[3] in the past months.

From [1] you can also see the work of Dimitar Dimitrov and the Free
Knowledge Advocacy Group EU[4], and of other free knowledge
organisations in Europe as the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE)
and La Quadrature du Net from France.

Well done, Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU!

Cristian

[1]https://juliareda.eu/2015/01/report-eu-copyright-rules-maladapted-to-the-web/
[2] https://juliareda.eu/2015/01/press-release-eu-copyright-report/
[3] https://juliareda.eu/2014/08/the-european-copyright-divide/
[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Statement_of_Intent

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF has lost its path

[Cristian Consonni]

2015-01-20 14:03 GMT+01:00 Dariusz Jemielniak dar...@alk.edu.pl:
 transparency does not always have to mean full public access to information
 (in the cases described by Philippe clearly TMI may be e.g. involving the
 community and the foundation in lengthy legal disputes, or endanger a
 discussed individual). However, I definitely understand that we, as a
 community, may have a need to externally confirm the solidity of reasoning
 behind bans. I think we already have functionaries of high trust (such as
 the Board and/or the stewards) who could oversee the process.

Strong +1.

2015-01-20 13:11 GMT+01:00 Chris McKenna cmcke...@sucs.org:
 As has been explained multiple times in multiple places, the WMF have been
 advised, for very good legal reasons, not to give details.

 Believe it or not, there's a sensible reason behind our refusal to comment:
 we can execute global bans for a wide variety of things (see the Terms of
 Use for some examples - and no, provoking Jimbo is not on the list), some
 of which - including child protection issues - could be quite dangerous to
 openly divulge. Let's say we execute five global bans, and tell you the
 reason behind four of them. Well, the remaining one is pretty clearly for
 something really bad, and open knowledge of that could endanger the user,
 their family, any potential law enforcement case, and could result in a
 quite real miscarriage of justice and/or someone being placed in real
 physical danger. So no, we - as with most internet companies - have a very
 strict policy that we do not comment publicly on the reason for global bans.
 It's a common sense policy and one that's followed by - and insisted upon -
 by almost every reasonable, responsible company that executes this type of
 action. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 04:40, 18 January
 2015 (UTC)

Fair enough, then we should ask the board to oversight the process
i.e., in the end, being able to take responsability for the global ban
infliction. I would not take this as far as require a deliberation
from the BoT for global bans but it my well be a possibility.

If this is too demanding in terms of time to create a commission to do
such a task. These people can be bound by any confidentiality terms
that the legal department consider adeguate.

Don't want to go through community election? Create an appointed board
of external, indipendent experts for this.
(say ask somebody from EFF or similar orgs).

C

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF has lost its path

[Cristian Consonni]

2015-01-20 14:23 GMT+01:00 Chris Keating chriskeatingw...@gmail.com:
 It's worth pointing out that the Board *are* responsible, even if they
 aren't involved in the actual decision-making - as they are ultimately
 responsible for everything WMF does.

Yes, I am aware of that.
What I was advocating for was a more substantial proof of the fact
that the board is aware about  these decisions, with the more
substantial responsability towards the community that this implies.

Of course there are other possible solutions.

2015-01-20 14:13 GMT+01:00 Fæ fae...@gmail.com:
 Dariusz, keep in mind that not all of the functionaries of high
 trust you give as examples in your email are elected officials, or if
 elected have not been elected through a cross-project vote of active
 contributors. The WMF board has a voting majority that is *not elected
 by us*.

 If there is to be a selected governance mechanism to oversee the
 procedures for the exercise of WMF global bans (or whatever they get
 called) which may have the power to commute these to a community run
 global ban, with the benefit of potential appeal and reform, then that
 governance board needs to be credibly elected by the community.
 Unelected officials should be welcome as advisers but not controlling
 members with a power of veto.

The said committee would not be the one deciding the bans or
discussing the *merit* of such bans.
The merit, as far as I understand it, lies within the WMF legal
department and tollows from the projects' terms of use.
This committee would simply oversee the process and verify that -
indeed - the action was legitimate and within the boundaries provided
by the ToS.

With this premise, I do not necessarily see the need for this
committee to be community elected. I think that independent experts,
with a clear (professional) grasp of what our ToU provide, would be
more helpful, but maybe I am wrong.

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Most obnoxious banner yet

[Cristian Consonni]

2015-01-12 13:25 GMT+01:00 Liam Wyatt liamwy...@gmail.com:
 With that busiest time of year now over, but with all the discussions
 still fresh in our mind, I was hoping that the Fundraising team or
 Executive would have the time to respond to the various concerns that were
 raised here (and elsewhere) about the theory and practice of WMF fundraising.
 If responding here isn't appropriate, then at least over on Meta at [[Talk:
 Fundraising Principles]] where a fair amount of detail has been compiled,
 particularly by WMF Board of Trustees member SJ [2].

 There were some practical/specific questions, including:
 - why isn't fundraising using the same software to receive bug reports (
 phabricator) as everyone else?
 - why haven't the crowdsourced banner text suggestions been A/B tested?
 - why were new banners shown to people who had chosen to dismiss previous
 ones, and why were they allowed take up such a large proportion of the
 screen/obscure content?
 - has anyone responded to the Russian community yet to their polite and
 important question?
 [This is a non-exhaustive list, of course]

 But there were also more fundamental/theoretical questions, including:
 - what degree of 'urgency' is morally acceptable in a donation request,
 especially when the financial situation of the WMF has never been
 healthier/stable? (e.g. threatening phrases like keep us online and
 ad-free for another year)
 - Is the practice of finishing the fundraiser period as fast as possible
 by any means the correct interpretation of the the official fundraising
 principle of minimal disruption?
 - Is the official fundraising principle of maximal participation being
 adhered to? That principle calls for empowering individuals to
 constructively contribute to direct messaging, public outreach... Does the
 WMF Board believe this has happened?
 - Is the current we don't like asking for money so just give it to us and
 we'll stop annoying you approach to fundraising (implied by the final
 phrase in the final 2014 campaign email Please help us forget fundraising and
 get back to improving Wikipedia.) potentially damaging to the Wikimedia
 brand value, even if it does raise the money in the short term? Lila said
 that there has been sentiment analysis done about this, what was the
 result?

I would like to see the answers to these questions myself. I have put
them on [[:meta:Talk:Fundraising_principles]] and added a couple of my
own.
Feel free to add your own questions, my suggestion would be to use
that section for questions only and put comments in another section.

C

[1] 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fundraising_principles#Questions_to_the_fundraising_team_from_Wikimedia-l

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please report to Google [was Re: Warning: Wikimedia-l Google Group]

[Cristian Consonni]

2015-01-10 10:56 GMT+01:00 Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org:
 This sounds silly, but somehow it seems quite hard to unsubscribe from this
 group, if you have multiple google accounts (google thinks you're trying to
 unsubscribe with an account that is not subscribed etc).

(sorry for the maybe even sillier answer)
Have you tried logging out and/or uising different browsers?

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fundraising in the Netherlands; informing the donors

[Cristian Consonni]

2014-12-07 11:23 GMT+01:00 Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org:
 Minor correction: this system in the Netherlands works the other way
 around: donors can get back a part of their donation through their tax
 reduction - it is not that the charity gets a bonus.

 Interestingly, the Wikimedia Foundation has obtained this status (ANBI) in
 the Netherlands at the urging of the chapter several years ago (2010/2011).
 However, for some reason the WMF chooses not to advertize this (not so
 obvious) fact on the donation home page; which means that the donors are
 unaware that they can donate and get this reduction of their taxes (indeed
 up to 50% of the donation amount!). This is mindboggling to me - it should
 be an easy fix.

Strong +1.
As an international movement who is fundraising globally this
knowledge is (almost literally) gold.

C

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fundraising in the Netherlands; informing the donors

[Cristian Consonni]

Il 07/Dic/2014 13:12 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com ha
scritto:
 This is something we can easily provide and also when the WMF does not
 quality as an organisation that is intended for the public good who is.

I don't understand this sentence, can you please rephrase?

C
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMIL General Assembly meeting and Board Elections

[Cristian Consonni]

Il 02/Dic/2014 09:14 Itzik - Wikimedia Israel it...@wikimedia.org.il ha
scritto:

 Dear all,

 This last Monday, 1.12.14, Wikimedia Israel (WMIL) held a general assembly
 meeting, during which the members held the elections for members of the
 Board of WMIL.

 The results of the elections are as follows:

 Itzik Edri,(reelected)
 Deror Lin, (reelected)
 Ido Ivri, (reelected)
 Hana Yariv,
 Yan Nasonov (reelected)

Congrats!

C
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] FDC funds allocation recommendation is up

[Cristian Consonni]

2014-11-25 12:05 GMT+01:00 Balázs Viczián balazs.vicz...@wikimedia.hu:
 Despite the little to zero initial experience of its members,
 all-volunteer setup and the ever changing circumstances (global goals,
 focus points, etc.) and how in general awful it sounds if you say it
 out lout that an all-amateur (in the good sense) and inexperienced
 group of people are handling
 out USD 6 million every year in their free time and for free, it works
 pretty well.

I must admit that I am little sad to say that the FDC is not that
special but what we are doing is called participatory grantmaking
and it's hardly new. Participatory grantmaking is a practice that has
been around for a while now (since the 1970s):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_grantmaking

Of course, not all of us have the astounding background of Dariusz
(Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's (cit.)) but that's
acceptable in the framework of participatory grantmaking.

We are also participating with all the other WMF committees volunteers
(IEG, GAC) in a research program from Lafayette Practice
(http://www.thelafayettepractice.com/), I think that Anasuya Sengupta
[WMF's Director of Grantmaking[*]] can give more info about this if
needed.

Of course any feedback is appreciated and process feedback even more.

On a somewhat related note, I want also to take the occasion to point
out that WMF said that they will devise a community review process for
their annual plan. This mechanism has still to be devised, it will
probably not be the FDC[+].

C
[*] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grantmaking_and_Programs
[+] 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Advisory_Group/Recommendations/2014/ED_Response#WMF.E2.80.99s_involvement_as_a_fundseeker_in_the_FDC_process

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] FDC funds allocation recommendation is up

[Cristian Consonni]

2014-11-25 13:49 GMT+01:00 Ilario Valdelli valde...@gmail.com:
 Basically if WMF is asking to find external funds to reduce the risk, the
 consequence is that WMF is also declaring to would be a stakeholder with
 less importance and less impact in the decision of the strategy of the
 chapter.

That's a very good point. but we can rely that entities stay true on
their bylaws that, having been examined as part of the affiliation
process should all point towards the movement mission (in their own
contextualized wa). In other words this is when AffComm work kicks in
(in the long term).

C

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] FDC funds allocation recommendation is up

[Cristian Consonni]

2014-11-24 11:28 GMT+01:00 Ilario Valdelli valde...@gmail.com:
 If you evaluate the ability to do projects, and not to find funds, the
 current measures are inconsistent.

Please note that the ability to raise funds isn't (and wasn't) under
evaluation.
As it has already being said fundraising needs capacity and time.

 I remember that someone in WMF several years ago said that the chapters
 have to focus on projects because there is sufficient money to cut off the
 time of fundraising and to dedicate this time in more profitable time.

 Now the strategy is changing. So the chapters have to find money.

 I read a lot of incoherences in this statement and in general in what was
 said several years ago when the chapters where invited to don't be payment
 processors.

Yes, I remember that until very recently the messages from the Board
were different.
Now, what I am seeing rather clearly is this new general direction.

This was also written in the board guidance for the FDC:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2013-04-18#Guidance_for_the_FDC
(see point n. 6) but basically nobody noticed it.

IMHO avoiding to point it out would now and as cleary as possible
would have been irresponsible towards the chapters.

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] FDC funds allocation recommendation is up

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi,

apologies for the lengthy answer.

2014-11-23 8:27 GMT+01:00 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com:
 I have a few questions, observations. When I read the arguments for cutting
 the request of the German chapter, I get the impression that the Germans
 are punished.

Can you please elaborate on where you get this feeling from, Gerard?

2014-11-23 8:27 GMT+01:00 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com:
 I also find no considerations to the consequences of NOT
 providing the requested funding.

Possible scenarios have been discussed, the final decision is, of
course, in the hands of the upcoming WMDE's board. I think that the
recommendation given highlights some strong and some week points to
work on (and I think this is the point of the recommendation).

2014-11-23 8:27 GMT+01:00 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com:
 When I read about the Dutch request, they are praised for being
prudent and careful planners but they are punished for not being actively
involved in fundraising.

On one hand the need of diversifying the sources of funding is for
sure something that the FDC want to push organisations on, I want this
to be as clear as possible on this point.
I can say that all FDC members are aware that this message has not
been given clearly in the past and that fundraising is a difficult
endeavor where capacity needs to be built and result can not expected
to be immediate.
The main point is that diversification of funds and resources
mitigate risks and maintain sustainability, and also allow
organizations to build meaningful local partnerships and shared
ownership around goals.

On the other hand we considered the fact that WMNL has a significant
amount of reserves, while some reserves are definitely a good thing,
we have to consider the fact that this money are, in some sense,
frozen in their use. We can not ignore this fact. Also remember the
the medium size of IEG is 7500 $[1] (but I recalled an even lower
figure).

 The WIkimedia Foundation deliberately excluded the chapters from the
 fundraising efforts.

As Dariusz noted, the so-called payment processing from the websites
does not necessarily equate fundraising /tout court/.

 Enough comments have been made about this recently; it
 is obvious to many that the WMF seems not to care too much about what funds
 are raised outside the USA.

I disagree on this, but I may add that if this would be the case it
would be one more reason to develop a local fundraising strategy.

 The process of handing out gifts makes beggars of the chapters.

I disagree. Basically *all* the non-profit organisations in the world
raise funds in a number of ways, including applying for grants to
different organisations (at a local, national and international
level), and I can assure you (through personal experience, i.e.
projects done with Wikimedia Italia) that for doing such a thing you
are required to present a (project) proposal, to prepare reports and
basically do all the steps that are part of the FDC process.

 They have
 to comply with the vagaries of what committee members think at a given
 time.

This is a risk associated with any fundraising activity other then
having a very large number of direct small donors.
I can also point out that you have to face the vagaries of the Board,
too (6. We should ensure the diversification of funding for our
movement, and not rely solely on movement resources through our annual
fundraiser.)[2].

In the recommendation for Wikimedia Foundation in May, the FDC asked
for the start of the new strategic process. The Wikimedia Foundation
as an organisation needs its own strategy, I do not know at the moment
if this will be called the Wikimedia movement strategy or not. I do
not know at the moment if this two strategies are better being one or
not. The point is, whatever the Wikimedia Foundation's strategy will
be this will affect the whole movement with a magnitude much greater
than the strategy of every single other Wikimedia entity or group.

One point of this is: make sure that WMF strategy is sensible for what
you as a chapter want to do, or make sure that we have a movement
strategy we agree on. The other point is: WMF strategy will affect
all of us, whether we like it or not (cit. Delphine, I hope you don't
mind me quoting this in public), so participate in the WMF strategy
process when the time comes.

 In my opinion by making chapters second class citizens, the WMF will remain
 USA and English centred. That does not help our goal of sharing in the sum
 of all available knowledge.

I don't think chapters are second class citizens and I think that all
committee members are aware of the fact that sharing in the sum of
all available knowledge goes beyond English (for 7 out of 9 members
English is not the native/primary language) and goes beyond Wikipedia,
this even goes beyond online since many of the very cool projects the
chapters do need a significant offline activity.

 PS there are more chapters where I am not happy 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] FDC funds allocation recommendation is up

[Cristian Consonni]

2014-11-23 13:50 GMT+01:00 Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com:
 Finally, I see hostility towards attempts at technological decentralisation
 (e.g. Kiwix). But here I hope I'm mistaken.

You are:
«Wikimedia CH has been very successful in offline activities/Kiwix,
and is effectively developing tools for broader activities extending
beyond their community, for example in GLAM. It is creating tools and
content that can have impact on a global scale. The offline work done
by the chapter is a very good example of collaboration and
cross-coordination among different movement groups for creation of a
universal tool and its implementation (e.g, the work with Wikimedia
South Africa to implement offline tools).»

C

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] FDC funds allocation recommendation is up

[Cristian Consonni]

2014-11-23 14:52 GMT+01:00 Dariusz Jemielniak dar...@alk.edu.pl:
 I am no certain that we could (or should) account for every 10% cut by
 apportioning it to something (10% because of governance, 10% because of
 lack of clarify of proposal, etc.). But of course this is not necessarily
 what you're proposing, you're asking for MORE detail, basically.

Pajz, in addition to what Dariusz said please also note that, for
example in case of Wikimedia Serbia that presented a very detailed
budget this was exactly what was done (but I would rather consider
this to be an exception, see below).

In general, I would like to point out that single-line cuts in budgets
pose other kinds of problems, e.g. difficulty to evaluate the precise
amount taking in consideration the context (then risking to be forced
to say either keep this or reject), and also the autonomy of the
organisation (if you transform a recommendation in list of this yes
and that other no then what remains to be decided by the chapter?).

In my view, the role of the FDC is to evaluate the general capacity of
an organisation in organizing projects, deliver what planned, measure
the outputs and the outcomes, adjust its activities based on the
results.

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Recognition of Algeria Wikimedians User Group

[Cristian Consonni]

Congratulazioni! Benvenuti!

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Best promo videos?

[Cristian Consonni]

2014-10-22 15:57 GMT+02:00 Ivan Martínez gala...@gmail.com:
 Dear Andy: our friends of Wikimedia Argentina produced this professional
 video about What is Wikipedia? with a nice production and a professional
 actress.

 http://youtu.be/tRbWDGbBAHA

Wikimedia Italia has produced, between 2010 and 2012, these four short
videos about Wikipedia, Commons, Wikisource and Wikiquote called
WikiGuide(s):
* http://wiki.wikimedia.it/wiki/WikiGuida_Wikipedia
* http://wiki.wikimedia.it/wiki/WikiGuida_Wikimedia_Commons
* http://wiki.wikimedia.it/wiki/WikiGuida_Wikisource
* http://wiki.wikimedia.it/wiki/WikiGuida_Wikiquote
They are available on Commons and on other platforms (Youtube, Vimeo).
Subtitles in several languages are already present (at least in
English).

The guy starring in the video, Christian Biasco, whilst maybe less...
gracious... :P than Mariana [if I recall  correctly the name of the
actress starring in WM-AR's video], is a professional video producer
(he his specialised in educational video). Portions of this videos
were used in the help page of the Italian Wikipedia and the other
projects.

The storyboard and dialogues were written collaboratively by Christian
with the help of users from the projects on his working wiki called
Il Cantiere (The Constructiomn Site), here:
http://biasco.ch/wiki/index.php5/WikiGuide

HTH,

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Best promo videos?

[Cristian Consonni]

2014-10-22 16:51 GMT+02:00 Cristian Consonni kikkocrist...@gmail.com:
 Wikimedia Italia has produced, between 2010 and 2012, these four short
 videos about Wikipedia, Commons, Wikisource and Wikiquote called
 WikiGuide(s)

(slightly OT)
You may be also interested  in knowing that WM-IT recently produced
also this guide about OSM:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeG49DxMsvw

It is not yet on Commons, and we are still missing the English subtitles.

(The most careful spectators will notice that most of the interfaces
in the video  are in English, this was a choice make to make easier to
internationalize the video)

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Conference[1] 2015

[Cristian Consonni]

2014-10-21 3:40 GMT+02:00 Asaf Bartov abar...@wikimedia.org:
 Neither I nor WMF are trying to exert undue control over this process;
 rather, I am moving this forward in good faith and relying on other people
 to be equally bold in editing (or reverting!) anything I've stated there.

 Looking forward to making this the most productive WMCON[1] ever! :)

[...]

 [1] I remain entirely uninterested in what this event gets called.  Feel
 free to advocate for calling it The Great Platypus Appreciation Society
 Gathering of 2015 or anything else, here:
 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Conference_2015

Speaking of appreciation, thank you Asaf and Ad for caring about this.

C

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] First Wikipedia Article has been Formally Peer Reviewed and Published

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi James,

first of all, congrats for proving this to be possible. As it has
already been said it is an achievement nothing short of great.

2014-10-04 15:47 GMT+02:00 James Heilman jmh...@gmail.com:
 I agree all Wikipedia articles are sort of peer reviewed. When I speak
 about GA/FA I refer to it as Wikipedia's semi-formal peer review process.

 With respect to authorship, the 5th to 10th contributors by number of
 editors were contacted and asked if they wished to be listed as an author.
 All of them declined feeling that they had not contributed sufficiently to
 justify being listed.

You mean by number of edits? (I do not understand what you mean with
by number of editors).
I think this is a reasonable criteria. (We may discuss on the results,
i.e. everybody declined, so Wikipedian!)

Anyway I would like to suggest other metrics that could be used as a
measure of paternity of the article, e.g. bytes added or removed[1], I
would point you to Dario Taraborelli and the analytics teams for other
ideas.

It also worth pointing out for the readers of this thread that there
is not a single version of the article [[Dengue Fever]] that is
identical to the article published (see [[Talk:Dengue fever]]
here[2]), although I would like to be pointed to one (or a set of)
closest version(s). (Finding automatically close versions would be
super interesting).

Thanks.

Cristian

[1] http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia
[2] 
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ADengue_feverdiff=628032710oldid=628012705

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Damon Sicore joins WMF as Vice President of Engineering

[Cristian Consonni]

2014-09-29 23:37 GMT+02:00 Risker risker...@gmail.com:
 On 29 September 2014 16:32, Cristian Consonni kikkocrist...@gmail.com
 wrote:
[...]
 (for the lazy ones:
 «[Damon] spent six years at the Mozilla Corporation, where he grew a
 small team of 27 people to a team of more than 600 open source
 software engineers, technical leads, managers, and directors in
 developing Mozilla Firefox, the Mozilla open source platform, Firefox
 for Android, and Firefox OS. Most recently Damon served as VP of
 Engineering at Edmodo, Inc., an educational content network, and was
 responsible for all web, platform, and mobile engineering, security,
 IT operations, support, and QA efforts.»)

 I am admittedly amongst the lazy, so thanks, Cristian.

2014-09-30 4:10 GMT+02:00 MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com:
 Hah, yes, my thanks as well. The context was very helpful. :-)

You are welcome :)

That said, I forgot to mention the source:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/09/29/damon-sicore-joins-wmf-as-vice-president-of-engineering/

C

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Damon Sicore joins WMF as Vice President of Engineering

[Cristian Consonni]

2014-09-29 20:41 GMT+02:00 Federico Leva (Nemo) nemow...@gmail.com:
 Lila Tretikov, 29/09/2014 19:38:

 We are excited to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation now has a Vice
 President of Engineering. Damon Sicore will be filling this vital role.


 Nice to see this long story reach an end. Welcome, Damon. It will be
 interesting to see the experience from previous friend orgs merge into ours.

+1
(for the lazy ones:
«[Damon] spent six years at the Mozilla Corporation, where he grew a
small team of 27 people to a team of more than 600 open source
software engineers, technical leads, managers, and directors in
developing Mozilla Firefox, the Mozilla open source platform, Firefox
for Android, and Firefox OS. Most recently Damon served as VP of
Engineering at Edmodo, Inc., an educational content network, and was
responsible for all web, platform, and mobile engineering, security,
IT operations, support, and QA efforts.»)

Welcome Damon!

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Azerbaijani Wikimedians User Group

[Cristian Consonni]

2014-09-19 16:40 GMT+02:00 Carlos M. Colina ma...@wikimedia.org.ve:
 Dear all,

 I am pleased to announce that the Affiliations Committee has recognized
 Azerbaijani Wikimedians [1] as a Wikimedia User Group [2]. They are a group
 of very enthusiastic wikimedians interested in expanding the access to free
 knowledge about Azerbaijan and the development of more reusable content in
 the Azerbaijani language (but not exclusively).

 Let's give them a warm welcome to the family of Wikimedia affiliates!!!

Benvenuti!
Congratulazioni!

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Compare person data

[Cristian Consonni]

Il 19/ago/2014 09:38 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com ha
scritto:

 Hoi,
 Amir has created functionality that compares data from en.wp de.wp and
 it.wp. It is data about humans and it only shows differences where they
 exist. It compares those four Wikipedias with information in Wikidata.

Hi Gerard,

en.wp, de.wp and it.wp are three Wikipedias, so we are missing one :).
Which one is that?

Thanks,

Cristian
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Compare person data

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi Amir,

2014-08-19 10:38 GMT+02:00 Amir Ladsgroup ladsgr...@gmail.com:
 It's three now but the way I designed, it's very easy to extend.

Thanks for this report. I am amazed that over the hundreds of
thousands of Wikipedia biographies[*] it seems that we have only 38
inconsistencies.
Am I understanding your report correctly?

You may want to add some sort of false positives list. For example,
for Jimmy Wales in it.wp[1] there's a through explanation about the
uncertainty related to Jimbo's birth date. So I would consider that
being a false positive. A similar situation occurs for Beethoven.

That said I was able to find that Bob Marley's birth date in Wikidata
was incorrectly set to 6 April 1945, when in fact it is indeed 6
February 1945 as en.wp, de.wp, and it.wp where correctly reporting.
(Fixed[2] now!)

Thanks!

Cristian

[*] 265537 in it.wiki: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categoria:BioBot
[1] https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales
[2] 
https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q409diff=151644019oldid=151167823

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Compare person data

[Cristian Consonni]

Hi,

2014-08-19 12:13 GMT+02:00 Joe Decker joedec...@gmail.com:
 Pretty sure those are just the :first: 38... Note the q numbers. (They
are ascending and don't make to q5000.)

 That suggests the full list will be very large indeed.

This makes a lot of sense. Thanks.

Il 19/ago/2014 12:19 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com ha
scritto:
 You are absolutely right.. What is needed is a report that looks good
 enough for now and a public ie visible place to put it.

A project page on Wikidata with links/redirects from relevant local wikis
project pages?

C
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia User Group China

[Cristian Consonni]

2014-07-30 19:16 GMT+02:00 Tonmoy Khan tonmoy...@gmail.com:
 That's a great news! Congratulations to WM User Group China.

Wow! Great news!

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Deutschland – Transition Team and Interim Executive Director

[Cristian Consonni]

2014-07-22 10:52 GMT+02:00 Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org:
 Thank you very much for this announcement, Tim. My congratulations with
 this tough job to Jan, and thanks to Pavel for this great flexibility.

+1, it is also good that you are taking an occasion to meet the rest
of the movement at Wikimania.

 Tim, I'm afraid that in your email you didn't quite answer the question you
 yourself stated: what is the difference between an ED and an interim ED.
 For example, Will Jan also become the Vorstand during the transition, or
 will this role remain with Pavel? What I get from this email, is that the
 main reason for this interim change is likely to allow Pavel to move
 forward with his life and at the same time clearly signal to the outside
 world that you're looking for talent.

 Is that a correct extrapolation/interpretation?

I second this question. IMHO, your interpretation is correct, Lodewijk.

So, let me say buon lavoro to WM-DE's transition team. :-)

Ciao,

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board decision on FDC member appointments

[Cristian Consonni]

Il 11/lug/2014 22:07 Patricio Lorente patricio.lore...@gmail.com ha
scritto:

 Dear friends:

 We are pleased to inform you that the WMF Board of Trustees has come to a
 decision about which four candidates to appoint to the FDC. It wasn't
easy;
 as is evident from the nominations, the caliber of the candidates was very
 high. The resolution is now published in

https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Funds_Dissemination_Committee_Membership_2014

 We have selected four appointees as follows:

 1)Anne Clin (Risker)

 2)Matanya Moses (matanya)

 3)Dumisani Ndubane (Thuvack)

 4)Osmar Valdebenito (B1mbo)

 On behalf of the Board, we want to thank Anders, Arjuna, Mike and Yuri for
 their service to the inaugural FDC. We deeply appreciate the two years
they
 have served the committee and all the work they have done during four
 rounds of FDC recommendations. They have helped to shape the FDC itself,
 made critical decisions about how to strategically direct movement funds,
 and helped to shape the future of the movement. We hope they will continue
 to remain engaged in the FDC process and the movement in different ways in
 the years ahead.

 We also want to thank all the candidates, and encourage them to consider
 re-applying for the committee next year, when five new members will be
 elected to serve on the committee.

Welcome to the new members and thanks to everybody involved in the process.
Thanks a lot to everyone in the nominations.

Cristian
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Joint office Jakarta - Wikimedia Indonesia, HOT Open Street Map, and World Wide Web Foundation

[Cristian Consonni]

2014-06-23 13:28 GMT+02:00 Tonmoy Khan tonmoy...@gmail.com:
 Congratulations to WMID. Wish you do wonderful activities from your new
 address :)

Go WM-ID! Go!

Congrats!

Cristian

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikipedian in Residence at ORCID

[Cristian Consonni]

Il 10/giu/2014 13:30 Andy Mabbett a...@pigsonthewing.org.uk ha scritto:

 As of today, I am Wikipedian in Residence [1] at ORCID [2].
 The role is described in [3]. Please let me know if I can assist you,
 in that capacity.

 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ORCID

 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORCID

 [3]
http://orcid.org/blog/2014/06/04/announcing-orcid%E2%80%99s-wikipedian-residence

Congrats Andy :-)

Cristian
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Ukraine's anniversary

[Cristian Consonni]

 Today, our organization celebrates anniversary - 5 years from the date
 of creation.

 Exactly 5 years ago, on May 31, 2009, in Kyiv was held the constituent
 meeting, which approved the bylaws and elected its first Board of the new
 organization, known as Wikimedia Ukraine.

 Our community has gone through a long and difficult path. Birthday of
 Wikimedia Ukraine for our community is the third remarkable date this
 year. On January 30 was the 10th anniversary of the establishment of
 Ukrainian Wikipedia and on May 12 Ukrainian Wikipedia has crossed the
 threshold of 500 000 articles.

 We want to thank to Wikimedia Foundation Inc. for their help, to our
 neighboring communities for fruitful cooperation with us and of course
 to our community for their contributions!

 Regards, Levon Azizian
 Deputy chair
 Wikimedia Ukraine

Congratulations!

Cristian

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