Re: [Wikimedia-l] Board Ratification of Universal Code of Conduct

[Phil Nash via Wikimedia-l]

Maybe I've missed something, but there is still an open consultation process on 
Commons, and one of the points raised there is that of a Wikimedian who 
operates a website (although a blog would be equally applicable) seriously 
libelling another Wikimedian. As it stands this UCoC is silent on such issues. 
Are you implying that the Foundation tolerates such attack sites?

Phil

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- Original Message -
From: María Sefidari 
Reply-To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
To: Wikimedia Mailing List , 

Sent: 02/02/2021 11:58:26
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Board Ratification of Universal Code of Conduct



Hi everyone,


I’m pleased to announce that the Board of Trustees has unanimously approved a 
Universal Code of Conduct for the Wikimedia projects and movement.[1]  A 
Universal Code of Conduct was one of the final recommendations of the Movement 
Strategy 2030 process - a multi-year, participatory community effort to define 
the future of our movement. The final Universal Code of Conduct seeks to 
address disparities in conduct policies across our hundreds of projects and 
communities, by creating a binding minimum set of standards for conduct on the 
Wikimedia projects that directly address many of the challenges that 
contributors face.

The Board is deeply grateful to the communities who have grappled with these 
challenging topics. Over the past six months, communities around the world have 
participated in conversations and consultations to help build this code 
collectively, including local discussions in 19 languages, surveys, discussions 
on Meta, and policy drafting by a committee of volunteers and staff. The 
document presented to us reflects a significant investment of time and effort 
by many of you, and especially by the joint staff/volunteer committee who 
created the base draft after reviewing input collected from community outreach 
efforts. We also appreciate the dedication of the Foundation, and its Trust & 
Safety policy team, in getting us to this phase.

This was the first phase of our Universal Code of Conduct - from here, the 
Trust & Safety team will begin consultations on how best to enforce this code. 
In the coming weeks, they will follow-up with more instructions on how you can 
participate in discussions around enforcing the new code. Over the next few 
months, they will be facilitating consultation discussions in many local 
languages, with our affiliates, and on Meta to support a new volunteer/staff 
committee in drafting enforcement pathways. For more information on the 
process, timeline, and how to participate in this next phase, please review the 
Universal Code of Conduct page on Meta.[2]

The Universal Code of Conduct represents an essential step towards our vision 
of a world in which all people can participate in the sum of all knowledge. 
Together, we have built something extraordinary. Today, we celebrate this 
milestone in making our movement a safer space for contribution for all. 

On behalf of the Board of Trustees,


María Sefidari
Board Chair


[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct/Draft_review 

[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Foundation commitment of support for LGBT+ volunteers

[Phil Nash via Wikimedia-l]

I prefer to let WMF sort this one out. Whether you are correct or not, my block 
has an intolerable odour about it. Will someone please open a window?

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- Original Message -
From: Risker 
Reply-To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
Sent: 09/12/2020 01:06:18
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Foundation commitment of support for LGBT+ volunteers



I'm sorry that you've chosen to hijack this thread, Rodhullandemu.  
Nonetheless, I will point out that it was *me* who indefinitely blocked you in 
the middle of an arbitration case, for reasons that 
didn't actually have anything to do with the case, and for edits that met the 
requirements for suppression.  Those edits were also reported to the 
predecessor of the Trust & Safety department at the time. There was also 
nothing to do with Usenet - it was your own words that resulted in your block.  
I hope that the circumstances that led to your block have improved 
significantly since that time. Your block remains appealable to the current 
Arbitration Committee, and I am certain neither I nor Roger Davies (who 
subsequently reblocked you to remove email access) would object to the block 
being reviewed. 



Returning to the key subject of this thread, I thank Trust & Safety for making 
a statement, and also thank our colleagues for arranging translations into 
other languages.  



Risker/Anne



On Tue, 8 Dec 2020 at 19:07, Phil Nash via Wikimedia-l 
 wrote:

Great news. Vulnerable contributors to Wikimedia projects should be owed a duty 
of care, not least because they make good, well-informed contributions, but 
also that those projects should not become the preserve of a socially and 
politically advantaged elite.

However, what he have here is only much less than half of the story. Those who 
are falsely accused of unacceptable, maybe criminal behaviour, when there is a 
significant lack of evidence to support that, have little or no comeback. Minds 
seem to be irretrievably poisoned against you.

I make no secret of the fact that I am User:Rodhullandemu on multiple Wikimedia 
projects. I was blocked or banned (it's 
not been made clear) on en:WP in 2011 on the basis of some fake Usenet posts 
that Roger Davies found, and for some reason gave credence to, despite the 
policy [[:en:WP:Usenet]]. There is no pretending that this is not the case, 
given 

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the entry in my block log on en:WP. As an experienced user on Wikipedia, I know 
exactly what "Refer all enquiries to Arbitration Committee" means. 
It's a code which everybody understands, and as it stands, is a defamatory 
libel as an innuendo.

I have asked Roger to copy those Usenet posts to me, compete with headers. I 
have no doubt that he will be unable, or will refuse, to do so.

Meanwhile, I cannot trust ArbCom to understand their role in relation to due 
processs and the rules of natural justice, given the recent input into my 
desysop on Commons from two sitting arbs, one of whom was such in 2011, and one 
of their clerks. So I can't 
ask them to unblock me. They are irretrievably poisoned.

Meanwhile, WMF T refused to do anything to intervene when someone misguidedly 
complained about me to them. Shameful, as I said at the time. I deserve at 
least as much as those who are against me. Jimbo 
Wales's decision on my appeal against my block missed the point completely. He 
suggested that I shoud prove myself sane. That's 
both impossible and ridiculous, and mentioned in my RFA on Commons.

Time, perhaps, for the WMF to get its act together and say to people 
"That was the wrong thing to do, and we have no hesitation in correcting it". 
Fortunately I am no longer alone; I have people interested in exposing the 
arbitrariness of arbitration.

Phil Nash/Rodhullandemu









- Original Message -
From: Maggie Dennis 
Reply-To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
Sent: 08/12/2020 15:24:15
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Foundation commitment of support for LGBT+ volunteers



Hello. 


My name is Maggie Dennis. I’m the Vice President of Community Resilience and 
Sustainability at the Wikimedia Foundation.[1] I oversee the Foundation’s Trust 
and Safety teams (operations and policy), the Community Development team, and 
the upcoming Foundation Human Rights lead.


On December 2nd, I met with representatives of the Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group 
along with several Trust and Safety personnel, including Global Head Jan 
Eißfeldt, to understand some of the challenges faced by the members of the 
group as volunteers in our international movement.[2] It is apparent that many 
volunteers openly identifying as LGBTQIA+ are targeted and attacked for their 
identities, with transgender, non-binary, queer, and queer feminist editors in 
particular a

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Foundation commitment of support for LGBT+ volunteers

[Phil Nash via Wikimedia-l]

Great news. Vulnerable contributors to Wikimedia projects should be owed a duty 
of care, not least because they make good, well-informed contributions, but 
also that those projects should not become the preserve of a socially and 
politically advantaged elite.

However, what he have here is only much less than half of the story. Those who 
are falsely accused of unacceptable, maybe criminal behaviour, when there is a 
significant lack of evidence to support that, have little or no comeback. Minds 
seem to be irretrievably poisoned against you.

I make no secret of the fact that I am User:Rodhullandemu on multiple Wikimedia 
projects. I was blocked or banned 
(it's not been made clear) on en:WP in 2011 on the basis of some fake Usenet 
posts that Roger Davies found, and for some reason gave credence to, despite 
the policy [[:en:WP:Usenet]]. There is no pretending that this is not the case, 
given 

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the entry in my block log on en:WP. As an experienced user on Wikipedia, I know 
exactly what "Refer all enquiries to Arbitration Committee" means. It's 
a code which everybody understands, and as it stands, is a defamatory libel as 
an innuendo.

I have asked Roger to copy those Usenet posts to me, compete with headers. I 
have no doubt that he will be unable, or will refuse, to do so.

Meanwhile, I cannot trust ArbCom to understand their role in relation to due 
processs and the rules of natural justice, given the recent input into my 
desysop on Commons from two sitting arbs, one of whom was such in 2011, and one 
of their clerks. So I 
can't ask them to unblock me. They are irretrievably poisoned.

Meanwhile, WMF T refused to do anything to intervene when someone misguidedly 
complained about me to them. Shameful, as I said at the time. I deserve at 
least as much as those who are against me. Jimbo Wales's 
decision on my appeal against my block missed the point completely. He 
suggested that I shoud prove myself sane. That's both impossible and 
ridiculous, and mentioned in my RFA on Commons.

Time, perhaps, for the WMF to get its act together and say to people "That was 
the wrong thing to do, and we have no hesitation in correcting it". Fortunately 
I am no longer alone; I have people interested in exposing the arbitrariness of 
arbitration.

Phil Nash/Rodhullandemu




- Original Message -
From: Maggie Dennis 
Reply-To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
Sent: 08/12/2020 15:24:15
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Foundation commitment of support for LGBT+ volunteers



Hello. 


My name is Maggie Dennis. I’m the Vice President of Community Resilience and 
Sustainability at the Wikimedia Foundation.[1] I oversee the Foundation’s Trust 
and Safety teams (operations and policy), the Community Development team, and 
the upcoming Foundation Human Rights lead.


On December 2nd, I met with representatives of the Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group 
along with several Trust and Safety personnel, including Global Head Jan 
Eißfeldt, to understand some of the challenges faced by the members of the 
group as volunteers in our international movement.[2] It is apparent that many 
volunteers openly identifying as LGBTQIA+ are targeted and attacked for their 
identities, with transgender, non-binary, queer, and queer feminist editors in 
particular at higher risk for such abuse. The members of the group who met with 
us voiced concerns about the safety and wellbeing of other marginalized 
communities and groups as well. 


In my role, and speaking for the Foundation, I am writing today to restate, 
reinforce, and firmly assert our commitment to supporting the LGBTQIA+ 
volunteers in our movement, as well as others who face exclusion and hostility 
on the basis of identity factors.[3]


The Wikimedia movement is based on the value of inclusivity, that anyone may 
play a part in not only receiving but curating and sharing knowledge. What 
volunteers have been able to accomplish in Wikimedia projects is extraordinary, 
but the movement will never reach its full potential if we do not close the 
diversity gap which our communities defined so ably in the Movement Strategy 
process.[4] There continue to be barriers in our movement for LGBTQIA+, women, 
indigenous communities, and other underrepresented groups. We as a movement 
have been called upon by a broad and diverse group of our own movement members 
to promote inclusivity and reduce harms to our participants.


In light of this, one of my teams has been directed by the Board of Trustees to 
(among other requests) facilitate the drafting of the Universal Code of Conduct 
called for in the Movement Strategy recommendations.[5] This collaboratively 
drafted document underwent significant community review in September and 
October and is currently under review by the Board. We will next be launching a 
second phase of that work in Janu

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons

[Phil Nash via Wikimedia-l]

The search has to be done before the category structure is addressed, even if 
that needs to be done. How else would you compartmentalise, what 32 million 
images?
And structured data has to be fixed before either. The reason is that 
structured data does not have unique names, and I don't think people relate to 
the Q numbers as well as names of things they know already. It's actually very 
much worse than that because these automated "Depicts" suggestions do not 
appear to know about Commons categories such that they suggest an obvious 
statement.

We all know it's maybe broken, but I don't see this as a fix, even if we run 
two systems in parallel until the structured data is (a) mature (b) sensible 
and (c) throughly reliable.


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- Original Message -
From: Gnangarra 
Reply-To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
Sent: 18/05/2020 15:53:35
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons


I think we could start to make the category structure obsolete  and focus
on structured data, there's already bots running basic structured data that
could be ramped up. and Having Wikidata game(
https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-game/) thats instead focused on whats in
a file & its description, that would capture more structured data including
licensing. It'd help teach people more about including structured data
62million files is a lot to process so it'll take time but we can run
competitions like 1lib1ref, encourage affiliates to focus on doing Commons
structured data game as outreach events, this will teach people about
licensing, and about what makes a good photograph because everyone knows a
30px by 30px photo is crap we can have structured data items less than
100,200,500px on the long edge.

Next step would be to look at the search function, add in an advance option
with a few optional fields to fill in that searches the structured data.
The advance search option could then sort by pixel size giving the biggest
images first.

On Mon, 18 May 2020 at 22:28, Samuel Klein  wrote:

> Commons needs iterative workflows that tag problems and modify what reuses
> / transfusions are supported, rather than making everything a crude
> delete/keep decision.  Else it will always struggle w scaling to these
> uses.
>
> 
>
> On Mon., May 18, 2020, 9:48 a.m. Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l, <
> wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> >  in the past "99% unproblematic" was true, because most of the things
> were
> > obvious and standard (panorama of towns, ancient portraits), it's not
> > nowadays.
> > You can upload tons of unproblematic pictures because they are easy to
> > find, but you don't need them really. So they mostly clutter the
> workflow.
> > There are a lot of images of kittens that we can upload, good luck
> > categorizing them. Of course, you can switch to very specific projects
> like
> > "documenting all small rivers" but the core issue are also high-quality
> > upload. And everything is potentially problematic there: the right of an
> > important person to privacy, the right of the manufacturer of an
> > instruments, how creative is the lighting of an object? if I upload an
> > image of a town it's probably a very nice one, taken by a competent
> > photographer who clearly show them on line as well. You are in a
> dimension
> > where you need to study, learn, ask around, find a balance. Instead we
> have
> > people acting randomly and superficially, because they do not care about
> > the long-term effect of their actions.
> >
> > This impacts the maintenance of course, because very specific issues
> > requires sophisticated categories, processes and metadata. The effort
> there
> > is quite high, you are always the first one to arrive. the first one to
> > clean up,the first one to explain to a third party. If you add on that
> more
> > unnecessary stress than required, people reduce this job as much as they
> > can as a necessary balance. But that job has an important effect in the
> > overall maintenance, so at a certain point you start to see the effect
> when
> > it is not there.
> >
> > It's not a big surprise, we tried to explain this fact for years, but the
> > community is designed to ignore these aspects and encourage other work
> > attitudes. It's just like that.
> >
> >
> > Il lunedì 18 maggio 2020, 15:28:51 CEST, Yaroslav Blanter <
> > ymb...@gmail.com> ha scritto:
> >
> >  To be fair, in most cases to use Commons for uploading files is totally
> > unproblematic as soon as one has basic understanding of copyright. I am
> > pretty sure 99% of my uploads can not be deleted (I had my files
> > mass-nominated for deletion, once with the claim they are not mine, and
> > once with the claim they are holiday photos and out of scope, but both
> > cases admins were reasonably enough to speedy close 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why renaming to Wikipedia will wreak havoc on otherprojects

[Phil Nash via Wikimedia-l]

I haven't seen any evidence of this on Commons. We do delete selfies of 
non-Wikimedians because we are not Facebook. Apart from that, I'd like to see 
some evidence for this. Thanks

User:Rodhullandemu

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- Original Message -
From: Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l 
Reply-To: Alessandro Marchetti , Wikimedia Mailing List 

To: Wikimedia Mailing List 
Sent: 25/02/2020 16:45:02
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why renaming to Wikipedia will wreak havoc on 
otherprojects


Can you provide some links?
I keep asking images for Wikidata items since years and I do not recall any 
issue at all. I have the feeling that as long everything is formally correct 
(all categories prepared and linked via wikidata infobox) nobody digs into that 
very much.
It's true however that I have a cynical approach. In general, I think that 
whoever spends his/her time on this and not on deleting unused low resolution 
old images or cropping files or improving categorization is probably more 
focused on chasing users than actually cleaning up. As soon as you assume that 
this is the core source of the behavior, you can teach newbies quite well how 
to avoid it. It's not "good faith" but... it kinda works.
Alessandro

Il martedì 25 febbraio 2020, 17:11:44 CET, Gerard Meijssen 
 ha scritto:  

Hoi,
Apparantly at Commons they have standardised themselves to only support
Wikipedia.

At Wikidata we have people who are notable according to our standards. We
are actively asking them for images to illustrate our information. The best
suggestion we get is: do not ask for images because they are deleted at
Commons.

When this is what awaits us when we standardise on one label Wikipedia, it
is obvious that this is the worst scenario for the "other" projects. The
projects who operate to different standards who have notability criteria
different from English Wikipedia.
Thanks,
  GerardM
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia in trouble /yet/ again

[Phil Nash]

- Original Message - 
From: Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net
To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Wednesday, July 10, 2013 4:36 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia in trouble /yet/ again


 On 07/09/2013 08:37 PM, Fred Bauder wrote:
 How is that not theft that we are facilitating?

 Because theft, is to deprive, temporarily or absolutely, the owner of
 it, or a person who has a special property or interest in it, of the
 thing or of his property or interest in it.

 In some jurisdiction, linking to sites that play fast and loose with
 Copyright /may/, in certain circumstances, be facilitating copyright
 infringement.  It certainly isn't theft.

 (I am not saying the latter is okay -- but that calling copyright
 infringement theft is inflammatory rhetoric and intellectually
 dishonest, at best).

 -- Marc

 Interesting notion that plain talk is inflammatory and dishonest. How
 is deliberate copyright infringement is not theft? Why are we the
 pirates' little helpers?

 Fred

I'm tired of having this argument in uk.legal, and I don't want to go 
through it all again here. The essence of theft is that property belonging 
to another is appropriated, i.e. the rights of the owner have been assumed 
by someone else. In the case of a copyright, however many illicit copies are 
made, the copyright remains intact and it would be illogical to say 
otherwise, because then there would come a number of copies beyond which the 
copyright would cease to exist, which is not the case. And that's without 
arguing the point of whether it is possible to form an intention to 
permanently deprive the owner of his copyright when doing so is in fact and 
in law impossible.



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia in trouble /yet/ again

[Phil Nash]

- Original Message - 
From: Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net
To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Wednesday, July 10, 2013 6:01 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia in trouble /yet/ again


 
 - Original Message -
 From: Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net
 To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
 Sent: Wednesday, July 10, 2013 4:36 AM
 Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia in trouble /yet/ again


 On 07/09/2013 08:37 PM, Fred Bauder wrote:
 How is that not theft that we are facilitating?

 Because theft, is to deprive, temporarily or absolutely, the owner
 of
 it, or a person who has a special property or interest in it, of the
 thing or of his property or interest in it.

 In some jurisdiction, linking to sites that play fast and loose with
 Copyright /may/, in certain circumstances, be facilitating copyright
 infringement.  It certainly isn't theft.

 (I am not saying the latter is okay -- but that calling copyright
 infringement theft is inflammatory rhetoric and intellectually
 dishonest, at best).

 -- Marc

 Interesting notion that plain talk is inflammatory and dishonest.
 How
 is deliberate copyright infringement is not theft? Why are we the
 pirates' little helpers?

 Fred

 I'm tired of having this argument in uk.legal, and I don't want to go
 through it all again here. The essence of theft is that property
 belonging
 to another is appropriated, i.e. the rights of the owner have been
 assumed
 by someone else. In the case of a copyright, however many illicit copies
 are
 made, the copyright remains intact and it would be illogical to say
 otherwise, because then there would come a number of copies beyond which
 the
 copyright would cease to exist, which is not the case. And that's without
 arguing the point of whether it is possible to form an intention to
 permanently deprive the owner of his copyright when doing so is in fact
 and
 in law impossible.

 If you post a creative work on a website the purpose which is to share
 files you have assumed the rights of the owner, one of which is to
 determine the conditions which must be met to view or listen to the work.
 The owner can give his work away to the world but not third parties.

 Fred

What are you saying has been stolen here? The work itself, the copy of it, 
or the copyright in the work?
There are serious problems in trying to bend the law of theft to any of 
them.



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Settlement of litigationbetween Internet Brands and the Wikimedia Foundation

[Phil Nash]

A good and just result. However, there is no mention of costs and I would 
hope that the Foundation would have recovered these in the face of what 
seemed to be an optimistic, if not actually frivolous, claim.


Lest history should repeat itself, I'd be glad if it were made clear that 
the Foundation suffered no, or minimal financial loss in taking the action 
it did, and particularly in supporting individual Wikimedians.


- Original Message - 
From: Jay Walsh jwa...@wikimedia.org

To: wikimediaannounc...@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2013 12:10 AM
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Settlement of 
litigationbetween Internet Brands and the Wikimedia Foundation




We've just published a post by Geoff Brigham outlining the settlement
of litigation between Wikimedia Foundation and Internet Brands, which
is great news indeed.

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/02/15/a-victory-for-wikivoyage-and-free-knowledge/

Congratulations to everyone who's been working hard on this effort.

---
A victory for Wikivoyage and free knowledge
Posted by Geoff Brigham on February 15th, 2013

Settlement of litigation between Internet Brands and the Wikimedia 
Foundation


Today we are pleased to announce a settlement in the legal proceedings
between the Wikimedia Foundation and Internet Brands relating to
issues stemming from the creation of Wikivoyage, our community’s
newest free knowledge project. We regard this settlement as a victory
for the Wikimedia movement, and a vindication of our values and
beliefs.

Our community expressed a strong desire to create a new, freely
shareable, non-commercial travel guide. In response, Internet Brands
(owners of a for-profit wiki-based travel project) sued two
Wikimedians visibly involved in supporting the travel guide. Internet
Brands branded the proposed new site an “Infringing Website” and
claimed that the volunteers were acting “for the benefit of the
Wikimedia Foundation” to “usurp” the community of users of Internet
Brands’ site and taking actions that included “deliberately misleading
statements, and Trademark infringement and violation of Internet
Brands’ intellectual property rights.” Internet Brands identified the
“Wikimedia Foundation, members of its Board, and other members of the
Foundation” as potential “co-conspirators” who were “corrupt in this
scheme”.

Unintimidated, the Foundation moved in to defend our volunteers and to
protect our community’s right to an open and meaningful discussion
about the project.

We contacted one of the most respected law firms working in this
field, Cooley LLP, and asked that they represent and defend the two
volunteers facing legal action from Internet Brands. Cooley was
engaged, and with our financial support, the volunteers moved the case
to federal court and also filed an anti-SLAPP motion against Internet
Brands, alleging that their freedom to openly discuss the project was
under threat. Internet Brands responded by abandoning its federal
claim, essentially admitting it had no factual basis. The federal
court then dismissed all of Internet Brands’ remaining claims.

Meanwhile, in September 2012 the Wikimedia Foundation filed its own
lawsuit against Internet Brands seeking a declaration from the court
that Internet Brands had no proper basis to block the wiki travel
project.

The settlement was signed on February 14, 2013, and Internet Brands
has now released the Foundation and Wikivoyage e.V. (the German not
for profit who worked so hard to make the project a success) from any
and all claims related in any manner to the creation and operation of
the wiki travel project. In return, the Foundation will dismiss the
suit.

Wikivoyage is now officially launched and growing, with about 9000 new
entries added in the first month, and new language versions in Polish,
Romanian, Finnish, Hungarian, Chinese and Japanese being opened.

The Wikimedia Foundation believes there is enough room for multiple
travel sites to co-exist, and for community members to contribute to
multiple sites in this area. Our Executive Director, Sue Gardner,
outlined this perspective in a post to the original travel project
discussion. We have stood by this belief from the beginning, and we
believe that a successful, freely-shareable, non-commercial travel
project will help support the overall quantity and quality of travel
information on the web.

We thank and recognize our global community of volunteers,
particularly the pioneers of the Wikivoyage project for their
dedication and focus in making the project possible. I want to thank
my colleagues at the Foundation in many different departments for
their hard work on this case. We are also grateful to our friends at
Cooley LLP for their continuous support, tireless dedication, and
outstanding legal counsel through these challenges.

It’s now possible for the Wikivoyage community to continue their
efforts to build a global free-knowledge travel site unhindered. We
wish them the best of 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] AFT5: what practical benefits has it had?

[Phil Nash]

I found it mostly useless. Not only could I mark the feedback resolved, 
which should not be possible for a banned user (!), but the feedback was 
either gibberish/abuse or unhelpful in the sense of (1) the material 
requested was already in the article, or a linked article, or (2) the 
complaint was too unspecific to be actionable. Since I have about 4700 
articles watchlisted, I feel this is a representative sample, and the result 
is only to be expected from an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Does 
this feature justify its cost? No.



- Original Message - 
From: phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com

To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2012 8:19 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] AFT5: what practical benefits has it had?


On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 4:33 AM, Oliver Keyes oke...@wikimedia.org wrote:

Thank you for enabling it again. I had read about the blind tests in 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Article_feedback/Quality_assessment
before but I see some major changes in the graphs, which are a bit hard to
understand.


1) In Daily moderation actions (percentage) there's a huge spike of
helpful/unhelpful after C (July), did those flags even exist before? Or 
did

helpfulness increase after wider usage according to the finding «the
average page receives higher quality feedback than pages picked for their
popularity/controversial topic»? (There's no change between 5 and 10 %
though.)


*They did; the spike is most probably caused by a deployment from 0.6
percent of articles to 5 percent of articles, with a resulting ooh, 
shiny!

Lets take a look reaction.


Indeed; I remember some (internal) announcements around this, which
caused me and no doubt others to while away an evening just after
deployment clicking helpful/unhelpful :)

Also, not to state the obvious, but 'helpful' feedback in and of
itself doesn't mean the article changed for the better; I've marked
plenty of feedback 'helpful' without doing anything further about it.
Is there any data about rate of change of the articles since AFT was
enabled? (probably pretty hard to measure since articles are
individually fluid at much different rates, depending on topic, and
you'd have to control for the baseline likeliness of random bursts of
editing somehow).

-- phoebe

--
* I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers
at gmail.com *

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] commons promotion

[Phil Nash]

- Original Message - 
From: Risker risker...@gmail.com

To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2012 7:40 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] commons promotion



...old days when everything operated on the assumption that
there were always warm bodies around to clean up these kinds of messes. 
On

many projects, that is no longer the case.


O the irony! 



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[Wikimedia-l] Could someone please fix this article?

[Phil Nash]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_and_television_shows_set_in_Liverpool 



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] O'Dwyer

[Phil Nash]

- Original Message - 
From: Andreas Kolbe jayen...@gmail.com

To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2012 5:48 PM
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] O'Dwyer


Further to Jimbo's championing O'Dwyer, here is the court document from
O'Dwyer's January extradition trial:

http://www.europeanrights.eu/public/sentenze/WMC13gen2012.pdf

Some quotes:

---o0o---

O’Dwyer did not charge users of TVShack.net to download or stream content.
Instead he earned money from hosting advertisements on various portions of
the TVShack.net website.

[...]

According to Alexa.com, an organisation that ranks website popularity based
on frequency of visits, as of on or about June 28, 2010, TVShack.net was
the 1779th most popular website in the world and the 1419th in the United
States”. Following seizure of the original domain name on 29th June 2010
“within one day O’Dwyer and one of his co conspirators… registered a new
domain name, TVShack.net to TVShack.cc which was hosted on a server located
at an ISP either in Germany or the Netherlands.

[...]

TVShack.cc continued to offer copyrighted movies and television programs
under the new domain name without authorisation from the copyright
holders… Also posted on the homepage of this new website was the photograph
of a rap music group and the title of one of their songs “F*ck the Police”.


In interview, relied on in the U.S. Request, he is said to have accepted
owning TVShack.net and TVShack.cc “earning approximately £15,000 per month”
from online advertisements hosted on those sites.

[...]

[The US prosecutor argued] there was no attempt to protect copyright, he,
Richard O’Dwyer, knew materials were subject to copyright and actively
taunted already cited efforts in June 2010 to seize TVShack.net.

---o0o---

So Jimbo is saying that a chap who, according to statements in this court
document, made well over 20,000 advertising dollars a month from copyright
infringement (under the motto fuck the police) reminds him of many great
Internet entrepreneurs.

It looks like these – rather than NPOV – are the values that Wikipedia has
been co-opted to support.
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I might have supported this guy but for two things-

1. It's obviously in issue whether his activities amount to assisting 
copyright infringement, so I don't feel confident in saying yea or nay 
before a full consideration of the facts has occurred, and


2. Wales supports him. This is, in my view wrong for three reasons; (a) see 
1 above (2) it's an overtly political act in which Wales is seeking to use 
his reputation and influence (if any) to gather support for Dwyer and (3) 
having been treated appallingly badly by Wales and his Arbitration 
Committee, I feel disinclined to offer my own support.


Forgive me if I am being less than sanguine, but some pain just does not go 
away, particularly the toothache I am currently suffering. Ask again next 
week, perhaps.



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Watchlist email notifications enabled on all wikis

[Phil Nash]

- Original Message - 
From: Victor Vasiliev vasi...@gmail.com

To: Wikimedia Mailing List wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2012 11:51 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Watchlist email notifications enabled on all 
wikis



Please, do not enable this feature by default. A lot of people do not
like  10 emails/day in their mailbox, and I have such amount of
watchlisted edits even in smaller projects like Meta.

Agree. The whole thing seems a tad unnecessary to me, since most users tend 
to contribute to their home language wikipedia, and perhaps Commons, but 
little else. A talk page edit is therefore unlikely to be important enough 
to need immediate action, but if the issue *is* important, a more focussed 
email may be sent to SUL users. Perhaps this might be a more useful option. 



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