Re: [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: A conversation?

[Thomas Morton]

The rights and wrongs of this dispute aside (and, crikey, I really have not
idea who is in the right at this point), and putting aside the right/wrong
of releasing the email (I tend to side with Erik):

This is the form of language that e.g. men use to dismiss women as
"emotional".

It's vile and judgemental.

It poses theories that James is either a liar, mentally ill or just so
angry he can't think straight.

It is not okay to say things like this, even in private. The effect of
words like this can be damaging in the least.

As a movement we should not accept this.

Jimmy, whilst you may not have explicitly meant these words in the way they
are being read, you need to perhaps step back and think about the impact of
what you have written here.

Tom

On Thu, 10 Mar 2016 at 00:56 Pete Forsyth  wrote:

> Below is a message Jimmy Wales sent to James Heilman and myself on Feb. 29.
> I mentioned the existence of this message on the list on March 2:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-March/082901.html
>
> I feel this message can provide important insight into the dynamics
> surrounding James H.'s dismissal, and various people have expressed
> interest in seeing it, so I'm forwarding it to the list. (For what it's
> worth, I did check with James H.; he had no objection to my sharing it.)
>
> For context, as I understand it, Jimmy's message was more or less in
> response to this list message of mine:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-February/082764.html
>
> -Pete
> [[User:Peteforsyth]]
>
> -- Forwarded message --
>
> *From: *Jimmy Wales
>
> *Date: *February 29, 2016 6:21:46 AM
>
> *To: *Pete Forsyth,James Heilman
>
> *Subject: **A conversation?*
>
>
> James, I wonder if you'd be up for a one on one conversation. I've been
> struck in a positive way by some of the things that Pete has said and I
> realize that moving things forward on wikimedia-l, being sniped at by
> people who are as interested in creating drama as anything else, isn't
> really conducive to reaching more understanding.
>
> I have some questions for you - real, sincere, and puzzled questions.
> Some of the things that you have said strike me as very obviously out of
> line with the facts. And I wonder how to reconcile that.
>
> One hypothesis is that you're just a liar. I have a hard time with that
> one.
>
> Another hypothesis is that you have a poor memory or low emotional
> intelligence or something like that - you seem to say things that just
> don't make sense and which attempt to lead people to conclusions that
> are clearly not true.
>
> Another hypothesis is that the emotional trauma of all this has colored
> your perceptions on certain details.
>
> As an example, and I'm not going to dig up the exact quotes, you said
> publicly that you wrote to me in October that we were building a
> Google-competing search engine and that I more or less said that I'm
> fine with it. Go back and read our exchange. There's just now way to
> get that from what I said - Indeed, I specifically said that we are NOT
> building a Google-competing search engine, and explained the much lower
> and much less complex ambition of improving search and discovery.
>
> As another example, you published a timeline starting with Wikia Search.
> It's really hard for me to interpret that in any other way than to try
> to lead people down the path of the conspiracy theorists that I had a
> pet project to compete with Google which led to a secret project to
> biuld a search engine, etc. etc. You know as well as I do that's a
> false narrative, so it's very hard for me to charitably interpret that.
>
> Anyway these are the kinds of things that I struggle with.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] WMF trustee Arnnon Geshuri and part in anticompetitive agreements in Google

[Thomas Morton]

And more to the point; not knowing is a poor defence. Surely any level of
due diligence on new board members would have exposed this troubling
incident?

Tom

On Sat, 9 Jan 2016 09:27 Fæ  wrote:

> On 9 January 2016 at 09:06, Chris Keating 
> wrote:
> ...
> > Dariusz has said the Board is looking into the situation with Arnnon,
> which
> > they were clearly not aware of - that is what needs to happen and yet
> more
> > emails on this list won't mean that happens any more quickly.
> ...
>
> Correction to "they [the board] were clearly not aware":
>
> Yesterday Jimmy Wales confirmed that:[1]
> "I cannot speak for the entire board. As for myself, I was aware (from
> googling him and reading news reports) that he had a small part in the
> overall situation when he was told by Eric Schmidt that Google had a
> policy of not recruiting from Apple, and that a recruiter had done it,
> and that the recruiter should be fired, and he agreed to do so."
>
> It is not true that the WMF board were unaware before Arnnon was
> offered a seat on the board, when there were trustees that knew he
> took part in illegal activities at Google. The first page of results
> of a google search shows that Arnnon was a named defence party in the
> court case.
>
> Links
> 1.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales=698802294=698801520
>
> Fae
> --
> fae...@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae
>
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please report to Google [was Re: Warning: Wikimedia-l Google Group]

[Thomas Morton]

I think the point is that the list owner is deiberately using those tactics
to gain attention :)

Tom
On 11 Jan 2015 13:55, Rui Correia correia@gmail.com wrote:

 Would it not be more practical to ask the list owner at Google to kill
 his list and create a new one with a new name and to NOT add members
 without their permission?

 Rui

 2015-01-11 15:39 GMT+02:00 Bence Damokos bdamo...@gmail.com:
  I found the same issue. The best thing to do is to send a letter to the
  unsubscribe address from your various adresses (change the from field in
  Gmail), and it should do it. (Doesn't work for the opt out option for
  resubscribing.)
 
  Best regards,
  Bence
 
  On Sun, Jan 11, 2015 at 2:36 PM, Cristian Consonni 
 kikkocrist...@gmail.com
  wrote:
 
  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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 --
 _
 Rui Correia
 Advocacy, Human Rights, Media and Language Work Consultant
 Bridge to Angola - Angola Liaison Consultant

 Mobile Number in South Africa +27 74 425 4186
 Número de Telemóvel na África do Sul +27 74 425 4186
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Moderation of messages sent to this list

[Thomas Morton]

At a guess; unpleasant snark.

Tom
On 21 Jun 2014 16:49, Tomasz W. Kozłowski twkozlow...@gmail.com wrote:

 Earlier today, I used the Gmane.org gateway to send a message to this
 mailing list in response to the Iraqi 2014 elections thread started
 by GerardM.

 Here is the content of my message (typed from memory):

 Have you tried Google yet? It is a search engine that lets
 you search for information easily and accurately (most of
 the time).

 The Wikidata entry for Google is at
 https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9366.

 Hope this helps!

 Tomasz

 I was surprised to receive a notification saying that my e-mail was
 rejected by an unnamed moderator (as all e-mails sent to the list
 through Gmane have to be accepted before being sent on), with the
 following reason: Your message was deemed inappropriate by the
 moderator.

 I would like the unknown moderator to — please — explain to me what
 was so inappropriate in my message that they had to reject it.

 Thank you!
 --
 Tomasz

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] A personal note.

[Thomas Morton]

I cannot believe I am saying this; but I totally agree with Russavia.

Wil; why not have a go contributing to some WP articles and seeing what
your experience is.

We have a comment statement that gets made on flame threads, which boils
down to isn't there an article you could be writing?

Tom


On 28 May 2014 21:44, Russavia russavia.wikipe...@gmail.com wrote:

 Wil,

 On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 3:24 AM, Wil Sinclair w...@wllm.com wrote:

 As you can see there is a lot of consternation being directed your
 way, and at some stage, and this will teach you well for the future as
 well, you have to learn to walk away from the keyboard. If you can't
 do this, and I have a feeling you might have difficulty doing so, try
 to at least delay hitting the send button, but this is something else
 you may have trouble doing. This is especially important on this list,
 as there is a sending limit per month that people are able send, and
 this is obviously done to prevent the drowning out of other
 participants by any single personyou would likely be well on your
 way to this limit by now.

 Wil, if you truly wanted to see how the projects work, usually the
 best way is to get involved at the ground level. Some people may want
 to make some edits on Wikipedia to an article on a subject that
 interest them. Others might add some information on one of their
 favourite holiday spots on Wikivoyage. Others might prefer to take a
 photo of their penis and upload it to Commons. There are literally
 plenty of ways for a n00b get involved on our projects.

 You have missed an opportunity here to be able to help Lila with her new
 job.

 Firstly, this is Lila's moment to shine and an opportunity for the
 community to get to know her and vice versa. It's a bit difficult for
 a sense of trust to be built when you have an overbearing partner
 essentially publicly pushing her aside and taking all of our
 attention. For example, I really don't know much about Lila, but I
 know more about you. And that presents a massive problem, and believe
 you me, others are thinking it, I'm willing to say it publicly.

 Secondly, as a n00b, you would have been a great person for Lila to
 use as a sounding board as to how it is for new editors on our
 projects to be able to edit and understand how to navigate our
 projects. You may not be aware but our projects have a dire editor
 retention rate, and your experiences, given that it is evident you are
 green to our projects, may have been able to help Lila understand that
 particular issue.

 Getting involved as you have done has only gone to serve
 Wikipediocracy by handing them the best PSA they could hope for on a
 silver platter.

 Having said that, if you want to get involved on Commons,
 #wikimedia-commons is full of helpful editors who might be able to
 give you some further ideas on how to contribute to that project.

 Learn the ropes first; there's plenty of time for wikipolitics and the
 like later on.

 Cheers

 Russavia

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Child Protection and Harassment Policy

[Thomas Morton]

 Child Protection- I'd like to hear about ways that policy might be
 changed here to better protect children, especially given some of the
 content on Commons. I'd also like to hear about specific examples of
 content on Commons that a parent might not find appropriate for their
 children. Note that this is not a repeat of the discussion to
 understand what policies are in place, as I have already opened a
 specific thread for that.


You seem to have conflated two items here... one is the idea of child
protection, and the other is of objectionable items on commons. I don't
think that in any way works.

Our child protection policies are about protecting children when they
interact online. This is a perennial problem for any internet site, as I am
sure you know. We do have some policies that help a lot (for example,
admins always err on the side of caution and delete personal details that
underage editors post). We have avenues to report potential issues such as
grooming.

Could more be done? Yes, I've thought so; for example publicising the
problem more.

But is WP worse that other communities (note; not site) of similar size?
Probably not. At least not in my experience (which, of course, is pretty
extensive given my former job).

Child protection from porn, etc.? I think it's well established that kids
can come across porn anywhere (apparently, Facebook, if my cousins'
activity on there are anything to go by :S). And frankly, it's never struck
me as an issue under the umbrella of xhild protection.

How far does policing it become our job and not that of a parent? It's a
difficult decision... especially when browser-based content filters are
prevelant and easy to set up.

I've always said; we should educate our users about how to install and use
content filters, as this will benefit them outside WP too!

So then, on the flip side of your comment here you have the global issue of
objectionable images.

This is a much broader issue that the narrow one you're focusing on here.
For example, one of the main (and by main I mean constant and persistent,
beyond any complaints of porn!) complaints we see relate to images of the
prophet mohammed.

How do you, then, feel about Commons hosting images like that?

One of the tenets of the projects are that they are not censored, which I
think is a good thing. However, we've not yet struck a balance between
displaying everything and filtering things an individual doesn't want to
see.

I like the Mohammed example because it emphasises the problem where those
of us who are not Muslim find a subset of images perfectly okay, but a
Muslim might not.




 Since I don't have enough experience with the community and WP yet to
 discuss controversial topics myself, I will not chime in unless the
 thread has very obviously gone off topic. Just to pick an arbitrary
 about of time that is more than the few months that others have
 mentioned here, let's say that you can only participate in this
 discussion if you have at least one year of experience as an active
 contributor.


I'm not sure what purpose it serves to bring up controversial topics, in
this forum, with an express note that you have nothing new to bring? ;)

Not to be too critical; but do you imagine that these issues aren't being
discussed on the various projects - hopefully with incremental improvement
each time. Or that individuals here are not aware of them?

More than anything though, I'm sure you're an experienced internet chap -
what did you expect to recieve in stirring up two relatively ingrained
sides? It wasn't very deft, I have to observe :)

One thing it might be important to communicate is that whilst this list is
useful for global discussion, it's not a venue that any agreement or
consensus is reached. So these discussions are really best conducted
on-wiki. I'm not sure if you've actually attempted to open such topics on
any of the projects, but the discussion you appear to be looking for can
really only happen there (rather than here, or IRC, for example).

Regards,
Tom
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Blocking Wil from this List

[Thomas Morton]

Wil I ask this as a serious, non-snarky question; have you stepped back for
a second and thought about your actions here.

Some responses have been a bit tough. But I don't think you've handled
yourself at all well.

Imagine, for example, I came into your place of work and started asking
questions. Questions which at best are naive or worst leading. What if I
immediately plunged into one of the most controversial topics of
discussion, in a somewhat aloof tone, and revealed that I'd been talking to
a news outlet who'd just run an in depth expose on your bosses sex life.
What if my comments exposed that my research consisted entirely of what I
had been fed from that outlet.

What I'm saying is; this is a community which is established and often
thoughful. For a web community it is quite welcoming to thoughtful new
contributions. But unlike many web communities it's tolerance for bullshit
is extremely low.

We respond positively to things like reasoned arguments, or great
contributions. We respond badly to oddly crafted explorations. Your opening
email reads, and believe me we have years of them for training, like the
typical flamebait.

Remember as a community we face constant disruption and vandalism: and so
our tools to deal with that, and move back onto content, are abrupt and
harsh.

As a regular and vocal critic myself, I think you've crossed the line in
these threads into disruption.

If you want to understand WM culture then the one and only way to do so is
to become a member of the community. It's not simple or easy, it takes work
to produce quality contributions.

Looking from the outside will only get you so far. I hope you'll delve in
and find not only the bad, but the excellent as well.

Take that as you will. I hope it's useful.

Unfortunately your comments about Kohs mean I find your judgement extremely
lacking. I hope you'll be able to regain the respect youve so quickly lost
here.

Tom
On 29 May 2014 00:25, Wil Sinclair w...@wllm.com wrote:

 I'm starting a thread with the correct title, so that everyone knows
 that we're discussing whether I should be banned and for what reasons.

 ,Wil

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] About Wikipedia medical entries

[Thomas Morton]

Osteopathy is one of those “difficult” ones, where it does have some real 
evidence to back it up - but in the UK certain practitioners make exceptional 
and (hokum) claims.

The NHS recommends it for Lower Back Pain 
(http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Osteopathy/Pages/Introduction.aspx, and 
personally I’ve found it the only effective treatment for my back pain) and 
also say may be effective for other forms of muskculoskeletal problems.

But you get plenty of osteopaths claiming that they can fix anything from IBS 
to heart problems (total BS).

Talking about it to my osteopath, those latter claims became popular in the 90s 
during the “hokum-medicine” (his words :P) boom, but fortunately today it seems 
to be falling further out of favour, with a twist to more realistic attitudes.

The US has a much more robust approach to such claims, and hopefully the UK 
will go that way too :D

Anyway, just an interesting aside :) As a note, the WP article on osteopathy 
does a good job of overviewing the topic!

Tom

On 27 May 2014 at 15:23:59, Nathan (nawr...@gmail.com) wrote:

On Tue, May 27, 2014 at 10:18 AM, Martijn Hoekstra 
martijnhoeks...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Tue, May 27, 2014 at 4:01 PM, Marc A. Pelletier m...@uberbox.org
 wrote:

  On 05/27/2014 09:44 AM, Stevie Benton wrote:
   American Osteopathic Association
 
  I'm not an expert on the latest woo-woo, but isn't Osteopathy one of the
  numerous faith-based 'medecine'?
 
  -- Marc
 
 
 That issue was discussed before too. From what I remember from it is that
 what is called Osteopathy in the UK isn't the same thing that's called
 Osteopathy in the US, where the UK one is basically voodoo, and the US one
 a legitimate specialty in medicine (but correct me if I'm wrong)

 -- Martijn

 
  __


You are correct. In the UK osteopathy is a woo woo homeopathic discipline,
in the U.S. (where the study was conducted) the training and degree
granting processes for osteopathy are equivalent to medical doctors and the
two are treated identically.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] United Nation of Wikimedia

[Thomas Morton]

Hi Ting,

It's lovely to see such operatic vision! And I for one would love to see
some of those things happen.

But, just to bring it down a bit; the technological issues rear their ugly
heads. Engineering-wise, hosting Wikipedia is a tough problem. Distributing
Wikimedia hosting across the globe is very definitely a hard problem. If
it could even be considered in a 5 year project scope that would be IMO an
aggressive timescale :)

Also, I am not sure the WMF has attitude for decentralisation to chapters;
nota bene the work relating to Labs and Toolserver. So commercially that
might be a tough sell.

However, despite this, I hope enough people see something in your vision to
push forward change.

Tom




On 7 April 2014 14:39, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote:

 Hello dear all,

 From 2008 on until recently the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) had seen a
 staggering growth to fulfill its mission, and it had pulled a great deal of
 the resources, in money, but as well as in talent, manpower and volunteer's
 effort of the movement.


 From the beginning hosting of the Wikimedia projects was the core
 competency of the WMF. A big part of the WMF budget and staff is dedicated
 to the operation of the servers. Meanwhile the main server farm is moved
 from Tampa, Florida to Ashburn, Virginia.


 In the last years the WMF had evolved to the main development party of the
 MediaWiki software. The software and product development had drawn many
 resources and talents from around the world to San Francisco. Many
 developers were relocated to join the WMF team.


 With the increased prominence of especially Wikipedia the WMF and its
 projects were facing more and more legal challenges in the past years. Law
 suits from around the world were reported since 2005. Because of this the
 WMF had expanded its legal team.


 To improve its role as the leader of the movement and to settle the
 disputes between the WMF and chapters about the processing and distribution
 of the funding the WMF had evolved since 2010 into a grant making
 organization.


 All in all the WMF is without doubt the center peace of the movement and
 claims four fifth of the expanses of the entire movement.


 The recent dispute about the URAA motivated massive content deletions on
 Wikimedia Commons highlights the problem of this strong centralized
 approach.


 In basic, the storage solution of the Wikimedia projects is still a very
 classical approach with two central database centers, both of them located
 in the US. This approach had repeatedly induced conflicts about what
 content can be stored and what cannot. It does not reflect the
 international character of the projects and had repeatedly induced critics
 on the Wikimedia projects to be US biased and it is, measured on today's
 storage technology, outdated. Even though currently the US law is one of
 the most liberal in relation to freedom of speech it does has its bias. The
 US copy right law for example is meanwhile one of the most restrictive and
 backward looking copy right laws in the entire world. Another example of
 the potential hazardous result of this approach are the image files that
 are currently stored in the individual projects. For example on Chinese
 Wikipedia images that are free according to the Chinese and Taiwanese copy
 right laws are stored directly there, and not on Commons. These images are
 nevertheless not free according to the US law and are stored in servers
 that are located in the US and distributed from there. This poses potential
 problems for all parties that are involved here: for the Foundation, for
 the project, for the community that is curating these images and for the
 users that are using these images.


 In a larger sense the problem is not constrained to the file repositories,
 but also to the content. Even though the Foundation had increased its legal
 department and had tentatively tried to work out an approach to support its
 community in legal conflict basically it is still working with the old
 strategy: In case there is a legal case in a foreign country the Foundation
 will avoid the call of the court while the Chapter will deny any
 responsibility for the content. This leaves in the end all potential
 hazards to the volunteer who contributed the content. In case of a court
 suit he is probably the one that have the worse legal support and had to
 take the charge privately, even if he handled legally and in good will.


 In my opinion, since the technology is ripe, it is time for the movement
 as a whole and WMF especially to seriously consider the approach of a
 distributed hosting. Files and contents that let's say are legal in the EU
 but not in the US should be able to be stored on a server located in the EU
 and distributed and operated from there. Files and contents that are legal
 in PRC and Taiwan and may violate copy right law in the US should be able
 to be stored in a server say in Taiwan or Hongkong and be distributed from
 there 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [tangential] Why voting is evil

[Thomas Morton]

 tl;dr: voting creates winners and losers, and losers are unhappy and
 disengage.


We see this effect anyway. Correlation does not imply causation. :)

Tom
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

[Thomas Morton]

I've been watching this unfold over the weekend. And am sorely disapointed
with the rudeness from ALL sides (not from everyone, it should be said)

The action of removing admin access with little warning, and last thing on
a Friday is obnoxious and rude. I'd expect the foundation to review
policies of interacting with community members and remind staff that
important or controversial actions should occur when people are available
to respond in a timely fashion.

I'd also like to see more explanation of foundation actions, in advance
preferably. And will expect to see feedback soon on how to handle
situations such as these better :)

Conversely, a number of community members here should be ashamed. Righteous
anger is ridiculous and pointless. Certainly if you are one of the
ex-admins I can understand a level of furstration and hurt. But with few
exceptions those individuals have been positively expressing that hurt.

It's the others, seizing on the opportunity to swing for the foundation
that are a disappointment. I've pretty much stopped trying to be an admin
on EN wiki because of the attitude of entitlement that takes up so much
time and energy that could be spent writing content

It's sad to see this is a cross movement problem.

Everyone; buck your ideas up.

Tom

On Monday, May 13, 2013, Thomas Goldammer wrote:

 but will circle back when I return to work next Monday. (Gayle)

 Wait for that. Whatever time it actually means. :)

 Th.


 2013/5/13 Huib Laurens sterke...@gmail.com javascript:;

  Thomas,
 
  She is on holiday, she will not be in the office today?
 
  Huib
 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Tweet this page from some or all sites???

[Thomas Morton]

 If you mean publish something on tweeter while browsing a WMF project, I
 can't see the point. I'm sure most users know they can have more than one
 tab/window at a time.


Weren't you asking for evidence to back up similar assertions a minute ago?
:D


 Those said, I don't use Twitter in the first place, so I really have no
 idea what kind of gap you would like to fill with your feature.


*rolls eyes*

Sorry, I don't mean to be snippy but this discussion always frustrates me.
It's the sort of elitest tech snobbery (anti-social-networks, lack of
understanding of how 90% of the world use the web, etc.) we suffer from.

Of course sharing buttons would be wonderful for our readers - that is the
whole point of the internet, facilitating the building of the web of links!

Tom
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Tweet this page from some or all sites???

[Thomas Morton]

Or, you could click a button.

Why is making something easy a problem?

And more to the point; a very large number of people would become confused
with the processes you're describing. You are somewhere in the top 0.1% of
technically literate persons!! So judging what is possible or not based on
your own skills/abilities introduces a critical bias.

A lack of neutrality, if you will :)

Tom


On 18 April 2013 13:46, Mathieu Stumpf psychosl...@culture-libre.orgwrote:

 Le 2013-04-18 14:11, Stevie Benton a écrit :

 [Speaking personally, not from WMUK]

 Not sure how advertisements came in to the discussion, it's totally
 different. If we agree we want to share the sum total of all human
 knowledge, then it makes sense that we make it as easy to share that
 knowledge as possible. Having small, discreet buttons that allow one / two
 click sharing removes some of the barriers that may exist.  Just my
 opinion, of course.

 Stevie


 I really don't understand what's the supposed barriers, you can save the
 whole page to send it, copy/paste the whole page, send the direct URL. What
 the use case where current possibilities would prevent one to share this
 knowledge?




 On 18 April 2013 13:04, Mathieu Stumpf psychosl...@culture-libre.org**
 wrote:

  Le 2013-04-18 11:43, Stevie Benton a écrit :

  [Speaking personally, not from WMUK]


 I like the idea of sharing buttons, as long as they aren't too
 prominent.
 Wikipedia was a social medium before the term was really in widespread
 use.
 I think it also shows that our audience is important. Aren't we
 ultimately
 about sharing?

 Stevie


 To my mind, it's not just about sharing, it's about sharing knowledge in
 a
 form which is as neutral as we can achieve to produce. If you stop to
 sharing, then you may just as well let free to share advertisments
 invade wikipedia.



 On 18 April 2013 10:37, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:

  On 18 April 2013 10:27, Mathieu Stumpf psychosl...@culture-libre.org*
 ***

 wrote:

  I didn't read the tweeter EULA, as I don't use it. Does it feet our
 general
  policy[1]? If no, as one may easily expect, then you have a
 definitive
  answer to your why not.


 You could tweet from a button without WMF sending data to Twitter, so
 that's not a problem.


 - d.

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 Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England
 and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513.
 Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street,
 London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a
 global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the
 Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects).

 *Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal
 control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] Tweet this page from some or all sites???

[Thomas Morton]

On 18 April 2013 14:39, Mathieu Stumpf psychosl...@culture-libre.orgwrote:

 Le 2013-04-18 14:42, Thomas Morton a écrit :

   Those said, I don't use Twitter in the first place, so I really have no

 idea what kind of gap you would like to fill with your feature.


  *rolls eyes*


 Sorry, I don't mean to be snippy but this discussion always frustrates
 me.
 It's the sort of elitest tech snobbery (anti-social-networks, lack of
 understanding of how 90% of the world use the web, etc.) we suffer from.


 All appologies, while I for sure have a tech background, I didn't meant
 to
 sound elitist. On the contrary, I'm asking you to explain me what is the
 obvious need that you hope to fill with such a feature and that couldn't
 be
 achieved within Wikimedia,



 What would it achieve? Well, people share content all over the web to
 their
 network; Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, etc. Facilitating this is
 obvious The reason it hasn't happened yet is that the editing community
 seems generally politically against the idea of social networks, so
 anything relating to them is evil! ;)


 Ok, but what I don't understand is what prevent them to share links to
 Wikimedia projects?


Nothing; as you say they can copy the link and paste it to Facebook. But
that doesn't mean making that process *easier *is a bad thing! :)




 Why should be only be building and sharing content within Wikimedia? The

 vast majority of the consumers of the site could not care one thing about
 within Wikimedia, and that is fine. Foisting it upon them is the poor
 approach :D


 I agree. However if people are intending to give feed back on the page,
 especialy feedback which would be useful to improve it, I think it would be
 far better to keep this comments within the Wikimedia echosystem.


Yeh you're considering the problem too narrowly here; we're not talking
about contributing to the development of an article.

For example; a social news site I hang out on regularly has interesting
Wikipedia articles posted to it. The comments then involve discussing the
topic and putting forward our personal experience, viewpoints or related
information. None of which is relevant to the Wikipedia talk page :) (e.g.
NOTFORUM).

Tom
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] xkcd collecting donations for WMF?

[Thomas Morton]

Heh, the CSV's have some amusing, umm. campaign names in them...

Tom


On 1 April 2013 20:42, Manuel Schneider manuel.schnei...@wikimedia.chwrote:

 Thanks Marc and Michael!

 Am 01.04.2013 21:28, schrieb Marc A. Pelletier:

  http://samarium.wikimedia.org/
 
  My understanding is that this was done in collaboration with Randall,
  but it has obvious general applicability.

 thanks for this link, I didn't know about this site and data. This is
 very useful.


 Regards,


 Manuel
 --
 Wikimedia CH - Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens
 Lausanne, +41 (21) 34066-22 - www.wikimedia.ch

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] xkcd collecting donations for WMF?

[Thomas Morton]

Not uncommon for Xkcd :p

Although the article being used is changing so rapidly that it's unlikely
to cause much disruption.

On an unrelated note; I can't make head nor tails of some of those csv
files... Are we really collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars daily???
:s

Tom

On Monday, April 1, 2013, Deryck Chan wrote:

 As a side note, the first panel of the comic also openly calls its readers
 to edit war over certain articles.


 On 1 April 2013 20:22, Manuel Schneider 
 manuel.schnei...@wikimedia.chjavascript:;
 wrote:

  Did you see this April's Fool Day comic on xkcd, with an interactivly
  growing dog: The dog gains a pound for every $10 donated to the
  Wikimedia Foundation via this link.
 
  http://xkcd.org/
 
  Is this real? How can it tell how much has been donated to WMF through
  this comic? I see that there is a special campaign reference in the
  donation link but how can it fetch the amount?
 
  Has there been any cooperation / negotiation between Randall Munroe and
  the WMF beforehand?
 
  /Manuel
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Adopt a page

[Thomas Morton]

It's a weird dichotomy.

I've spent several hundred quid on source material for my current topic
area. I could easily have spent several grand.

Paid editing is a major issue, because it conflicts with our culture

But if someone were able to buy my sources then it would be of huge
benefit.

And, controversially, if someone could fund me one day a week to write
these articles I could likely expand from one GA per month to covering this
entire field in GAs in a year.

Without that it will take me a good five years

I've come recently to see that funding article work is not inherently an
awful thing. But it needs to be done with extreme care to protect our
ideals and neutrality. And that is a HARD problem.

Tom

On Saturday, March 30, 2013, Thomas Dalton wrote:

 On Mar 30, 2013 1:04 AM, Mono monom...@gmail.com javascript:; wrote:
 
  How so?

 It would be completely against our culture. Wikipedia is a volunteer
 written encyclopedia.

 You would end up with a two-tier system of paid editors and unpaid editors.
 There would inevitably be a lot of conflict between those groups. The whole
 concept would be extremely divisive.
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] New member of staff for WMUK Education

[Thomas Morton]

Hi Toni!

Welcome aboard :) look forward to meeting you at some point over the next
few months.

Tom


On 26 March 2013 14:00, Toni Sant toni.s...@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:

 Hello!

 Some of you may already know me, but I thought it would be good to send out
 a message to this list to let everyone know that I'm a new member of staff
 at Wikimedia UK working on Education matters.

 A blog post announcing this can be seen here:

 http://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2013/03/toni-sant-joins-wikimedia-uk-as-education-organiser/

 Best regards...

  ...Toni

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 toni.s...@wikimedia.org.uk +44 (0)7885 980 536
 --

 Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
 Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered
 Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT.
 United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia
 movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who
 operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects).

 *Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Foundation's support of OTRS

[Thomas Morton]

I offered to look into this some time last year, and apply for a grant to
write an up to date piece of software. However it didn't get a good
response, with the foundation promising an OTRS update early this year...
apparent progress was made at that point, but it petered out very quickly.

Tom


On 21 February 2013 05:18, DeltaQuad Wikipedia deltaquadw...@gmail.comwrote:

 +1, the interface still confuses me at somepoints today.

 But I have to ask, are we getting everything we need with an OTRS update to
 the new version, or are we settling for a medioker (excuse my spelling, it
 is late). Is it a better idea to have wikimedians (maybe through grants,
 idk) build something open source and cc-whatever? That way fixes can be
 made and we can get many devs (broad sense of the term) fixing bugs of a
 new system.

 DeltaQuad - Mobile phone
 English Wikipedia Administrator and Checkuser
 On Feb 20, 2013 11:35 PM, Rjd0060 rjd0060.w...@gmail.com wrote:

  On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 11:25 PM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote:
 
   Hi.
  
   OTRS (https://ticket.wikimedia.org/) is a critical piece of
  Wikimedia's
   infrastructure. It currently handles nearly all customer service
  inquiries
   directed at Wikimedia. Trusted volunteers triage and respond to this
   e-mail.
  
   Wikimedia is currently running OTRS version 2.4. The most recently
   released OTRS version is 3.2. There's been an outstanding request to
  update
   Wikimedia's OTRS installation for just shy of three years now:
   https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/22622. OTRS' inventor kindly offered
 to
   donate his time to help with an upgrade, but due to a number of
 factors,
   this has become an untenable solution.
  
   Given the bug's fast-approaching birthday, the security concerns of
   running outdated software, the Wikimedia Foundation apparently being
   overburdened and uninterested in maintaining this piece of software,
 and
   mounting volunteer frustration, I'm wondering whether this is an area
   where the Wikimedia chapters or some other group might be able to lend
 a
   hand in supporting the maintenance of this piece of important
   infrastructure. Broadly, the Wikimedia Foundation isn't acting on this
   issue and it seems to have little interest in maintaining or supporting
   this software any longer.
  
   Given recent discussion about various Wikimedia movement roles, I'm
   wondering whether a Wikimedia chapter or a grant or some other movement
   player could either take on supporting the existing OTRS installation
 (by
   hiring a contractor), evaluating and implementing better/different
   response software, and/or moving the response system elsewhere.
  
   MZMcBride
  
  
  
  
  
 
  I've been working on OTRS since 2008 and have been an OTRS administrator
  for much of that time.  As somebody who devotes a lot of his time to
  OTRS-related work, I'm extremely disappointed in the lack of support the
  OTRS team has been dealing with.  As MZMcBride points out, there are a
  number of reasons why the software needs to be updated.
 
  Last year, we handled roughly 40,000 general inquiries in over 35
  languages.[1]  This alone should be a convincing reason as to why we
 should
  have at least somewhat up-to-date software, clean of security issues and
  other problems.[2]
 
  While I realize that there have been other priorities, I would have
 thought
  that with 3 years of waiting, eventually OTRS would be important enough
 for
  somebody to give some much needed attention to.
 
  [1] -
 
 
 https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/01/24/the-incredible-work-of-the-wikimedia-volunteer-response-team/
  [2] -
 
 
 https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEWbug_status=ASSIGNEDbug_status=REOPENEDcomponent=OTRSproduct=Wikimedia
 
  --
 
  Ryan
  User:Rjd0060
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Licencing question

[Thomas Morton]

I've always considered this poor policy on the part of Wikipedia; a sort of
intellectual grab that we do so well :(

I've uploaded images before by great photographers, after working to obtain
their permission, and make a point of crediting them when inserting the
image into the article - partly because it's useful to know and partly
because it seems fair.

Tom


On 22 January 2013 17:46, Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org wrote:

 And I'm also unsure all the upload wizards have the same text?

 2013/1/22 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com

  On 22 January 2013 17:41, Philippe Beaudette phili...@wikimedia.org
  wrote:
 
   FYI, each and every edit on Commons has this text above the edit box:
   ...You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under
 the
   Creative Commons license.
 
 
  Yeah, but Commons pulls in stuff from other CC-licenced places, so we
  can't presume the creators have clicked said button.
 
 
  - d.
 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] compromise?

[Thomas Morton]

If you know nothing about surveys or statistics it is probably a good idea
not to describe a properly calculated metric (yes, I sat down and did the
math) as absurd, and then claim efficacy of your own informal survey.

Just sayin.

Incidentally I am not sure your point about the glassdoor reviews really
rebuts mine re the value of paying more money.

If we pay more to the current staff will they be a lot more productive
(hint; this doesn't often equate in the way you'd expect) or wil lthose
hard problems become easier?

And does increased wage offerings attract more competent staff? Again, this
does not always work out as you expect.

James, please don't take this the wrong way but all of your contribution so
far seems to be Google educated, without any practical experience to
guide your words. I'm sorry if that is not the case, but you do appear to
be rolling out a lot of the rookie viewpoints on many different fronts.

Tom

On Saturday, January 5, 2013, James Salsman wrote:

 Again, I am not suggesting canceling anyone's health insurance or
 replacing it with increased salary. I am only trying to say that in
 the case of when a parent or sibling faces catastrophic medical
 expenses in the U.S., just over two years of the difference between
 typical junior software engineer pay at the Wikimedia and Mozilla
 foundations is the same amount that the average American who enters
 bankruptcy because of medical expenses has in debt.

  On 5 January 2013 11:11, Thomas Morton 
  morton.tho...@googlemail.comjavascript:;
 wrote:
 
  So the foundation should NOT throw money at staff without showing that
  paying extra would bring the charity significant increases in value.

 If the nine reviews added to
 http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Wikimedia-Foundation-Reviews-E38331.htm
 over the past two weeks does not establish that, then I can't imagine
 anything will.

  A representative sample of 384 donors is sufficient to establish the
  answer with 95% confidence. I am not suggesting asking all however
  many million there have been.
 
  I call this number the magic 384, it's a common rookie mistake when
  designing surveys for a million people.
 
  With a sample size of 384 you do get 95% confidence, with a confidence
  interval of 5%. So the data is fairly meaningless (if 49% of your
  respondents say X then that could represent anything from 44 to 54
 percent
  of the population).

 If my preliminary informal survey of a much smaller number of donors
 is representative, then the results will be much closer to 100%
 agreeing that the Foundation should meet or exceed market pay than
 50%.

  You need around 12000 for any solid degree of confidence. And I believe
 we
  have a lot more than a million donors across a wide variety of cultures.

 That is absurdly excessive. There has never been a Foundation donor
 survey of more than 3,760 donors, and that number was only chosen
 because of a requirement to measure fine grained demographics in
 categories for which few respondents were expected. 384 is plenty to
 resolve a yes/no or below/meet/exceed question at the 95% confidence
 level unless anyone has any actual evidence that the result is likely
 to be close.

 I am convinced that if asked, donors would think it is irresponsible
 to pay so little that Oracle employees are more satisfied.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] proposed urgent Board of Trustees resolution without a meeting

[Thomas Morton]

From a good governance point of view maximum is a bad idea.

This motion would introduce so very poor governance ideas without clear
aims.

Tom

On Monday, December 24, 2012, James Salsman wrote:

 Federico,

 Thank you for your very helpful reply. I'm sorry, I didn't realize
 that Glassdoor.com results were client location specific. You can use
 a proxy terminating in the U.S. to read about Wikimedia Foundation
 employee satisfaction and compensation relative to other San Francisco
 technology firms.

  Your proposal has already been implemented in 2010:
  «All Wikimedia fundraising activities must aim to raise the maximum
  possible amount of money [...]»
  
 https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Developing_Scenarios_for_future_of_fundraising
 
  «Fundraising activities in the Wikimedia movement should generally be
  directed at achieving the highest possible overall financial support
 [...]»
 
 https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Wikimedia_fundraising_principles

 This is most helpful for allowing fundraising to continue without the
 need for a Board resolution without a meeting, or for more specific
 trustee candidate questions if it does not.

  Are you asking to amend
  
 https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Delegations_of_Financial_and_Spending_Authority
 

 Is there any reason that subsequent specific direction can not be
 provided without amending that resolution?

  Are you asking to amend
  https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vote:Narrowing_Focus?

 Not necessarily, but I am asking that it be reconsidered after
 community consultation. That resolution was approved without a widely
 announced community discussion, which is so completely unprecedented
 for a change of that magnitude that I could not believe it at the
 time. The comments at
 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Sue_Gardner/Narrowing_focus
 show that the Foundation staff and trustees are very much opposed to
 the opinions of the few members of the community who found that page
 in time to comment.

 For that reason I will be recommending specific community initiatives
 during next year's Board elections.

 Best regards,
 James Salsman

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Banners are too bright, too long

[Thomas Morton]

On 4 Dec 2012, at 19:09, Todd Allen toddmal...@gmail.com wrote:

 That's nice and all, but there should also be no sticking. When I scroll
 a page, I expect the -entire page- to scroll. Anything that breaks that and
 moves with or sticks with the page is extremely visually distracting
 and gets hit with AdBlock at once, even if it's just a Share This bar. It
 indicates either poor design or an attempt to deliberately distract, and
 either is unacceptable. If that means more days of banners that can be
 scrolled past, more days it is. And no, I'm not the only one I know who
 thinks so.

That seems a very personal, and technically adept persons, viewpoint.

This IS, as you identify, an attempt to deliberately attract notice.
You are not the target audience, though, so feel free to us Adblock
:-) problem solved!


 Also on the subject of flow:

 A: Because it reverses the normal reading flow.

 Q: ...


I think you might have gotten this the wrong way round ;-)

Tom

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Info action

[Thomas Morton]

On 23 October 2012 11:29, Andy Mabbett a...@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:

 On 22 October 2012 22:41, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote:

  This is just a heads-up that you'll start seeing a Page information
 link
  in the sidebar (under Toolbox) in the coming days on Wikimedia wikis.

 This sounds like a really useful feature.

  for some users (such as administrators), certain additional fields (such
  as the number of page watchers) will be displayed.

 Why is this for admins only?


For the same reason Special:UnwatchedPages is Admin-only I presume :) to
avoid people using this feature to identify unwatched pages to vandalise.

Tom
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Please can someone put 50p in the meter

[Thomas Morton]

And up here in Lincoln.

Tom Morton

On 12 Oct 2012, at 17:23, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote:

 Also working for me.

 John Vandenberg.
 sent from Galaxy Note
 On Oct 12, 2012 11:21 PM, Jim Redmond j...@scrubnugget.com wrote:

 No trouble here either.

 On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 11:08 AM, Philippe Beaudette 
 phili...@wikimedia.org
 wrote:

 They're up for me...
 ___
 Philippe Beaudette
 Director, Community Advocacy
 Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

 415-839-6885, x 6643

 phili...@wikimedia.org


 On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 8:44 AM, WereSpielChequers
 werespielchequ...@gmail.com wrote:
 Does anyone know why Wikipedia and Commons have both gone down?

 WSC

 Writing from a slightly modified editing workshop in London
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Naming for the Travel Guide project

[Thomas Morton]

If anyone has a good idea for a name, but lacks to funds or means to pick
it up (and the WMF declines to do so), feel free to get in touch. I am
happy to handle the purchase and later transfer (if it wins!) for you :)

Hopefully that removes that hurdle :D

Tom

On 27 September 2012 13:48, Philippe Beaudette phili...@wikimedia.orgwrote:

 Hi Lodewijk,

 Currently the process is that the suggested name must be owned by the WMF
 or a volunteer who is willing to transfer it free of charge.  Any
 exceptions would have to be worked out with Kelly and Erik.

 Thanks,
 pb
 ___
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 Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

 415-839-6885, x 6643

 phili...@wikimedia.org



 On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 4:05 AM, Lodewijk lodew...@effeietsanders.org
 wrote:

  Thanks Philippe,
 
  just as clarification: do I understand correctly that people can only
  suggest names that are either owned by the WMF or they are willing to
  invest money to buy the domains for at least the .org and possibly some
  more? Or would the WMF also be willing to buy/reimburse the domains that
  would likely be serious candidates? This wasn't entirely clear from the
  page to me.
 
  Best,
  Lodewijk
 
  2012/9/27 Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com
 
   Thanks for keeping this rolling, Philippe.
   It's great to see the names turned up already.
  
   SJ
  
   On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 4:24 AM, Philippe Beaudette
   phili...@wikimedia.orgwrote:
  
Hi all,
   
The straw poll [1] for the name of the new travel guide project has
   closed.
 While there's been strong support for the name Wikivoyage, there
 have
   also
been strong arguments expressing the desire for a more open-ended
  process
and no overall consensus to go forward without it. The Wikimedia
   Foundation
therefore would like to invite participation in an open process,
 which
  is
described at
  https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Travel_Guide/Naming_Process
   ,
and begins immediately with the submission of suggested names (please
   note
the submission process).  Thank you for your participation.
   
Thanks,
pb
   
   
[1] -
  https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Travel_Guide/Naming_straw_poll/en
___
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Director, Community Advocacy
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
   
415-839-6885, x 6643
   
phili...@wikimedia.org
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   --
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Foundation Seeks Declaratory Relief in response to Legal Threats from Internet Brands

[Thomas Morton]

Of course; if a member of the local Muslim community put on a fake uniform
for the shop in question, and stood outside handing out leaflets about the
better place... that would be a problem.

This is what IB appear to be alleging.

All of these metaphor, however, are very interesting; but not really utile
in advancing the discussion. We can all think up varying metaphors to
support our points - fortunately courts do not rely on metaphors :)

Tom

On 12 September 2012 12:09, FT2 ft2.w...@gmail.com wrote:

 To tackle both these at once:

 *@Deryck Chan, three trivial rebuttals: *

1. WT's mission is stated clearly, *Wikitravel is a project to create
a free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide.*  I
don't see any of the parties that are proposing or wishing to fork, not
endorsing that goal thoroughly. They are merely stating they wish to
 pursue
that goal on a different website, under different hosting behavior.
2. The TOU you cite state that WT is a built in collaboration by
Wikitravellers from around the globe, not a site built in
 collaboration
with IB. The consensus policy speaks to collaboration between members
 of
the public writing, and its pages show that the community did not
 consider
IB to have a heightened right to declare itself the community or the
party obtaining mandatory agreement in that collaboration. The initial
legal agreement (I gather) says as much.  There is no evidence that
 WT'ers
were not willing to collaborate with WT'ers, as the policy states.
 Rather,
WT'ers did not like the hosting service IB provided, or felt they could
obtain better, which is completely separate.
3. At the worst to use your own logic against itself, the departing
WTers did indeed use the service while they felt able to follow the TOU
 you
cite.  When they realised they did not feel like collaborating, they
 did as
it required - indeed demanded or asked they do - namely departed. And
 used
their right to reinstate their CC content at the new host of their
choosing, following discussion. Others had done so previously, and
individuals had departed not en masse due to IB before. No WTer is
 forced
to leave, or impeded in freewill.


 *@Nemo:*
 In fact AFAIK, this is legal
 toohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_billboard.


1. If a supermarket, for example, unreliably stocks Hallal food,
garnering numerous complains over the years, and a person who shops at a
competitor contacts or is contacted by members of the local Muslim
community, or puts members of the community in touch with that other
vendor, on the basis they provide a wider range of Hallal food of the
 types
complained about, and at a better price, and as a result a number of
 local
community members agree in social discussions that many of them feel
 like
switching to shop at the other store. This is completely normal and
 legal,
and happens every day.
2. A clerk is an employee with a contractual obligation of loyalty.
Nobody is suggesting that is the case here, or an IB staffer was
 involved.


 FT2


 On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 11:42 AM, Deryck Chan deryckc...@wikimedia.hk
 wrote:

  One possibility lies within their terms of use:
  If you're not interested in our goals, or if you agree with our goals
 but
  refuse to collaborate, compromise, reach
  consensushttp://wikitravel.org/en/Wikitravel:Consensusor make
  concessions with other Wikitravellers, we ask that you not use this
  Web service. If you continue to use the service against our wishes, we
  reserve the right to use whatever means available -- technical or legal
 --
  to prevent you from disrupting our work together.
 
  The goals page (http://wikitravel.org/en/Wikitravel:Goals_and_non-goals)
  does imply the goal of making Wikitravel the travel guide, not just a
  travel guide. It is therefore possible to make a case against the
  fork-enthusiasts, and James in particular because he spent more time on
  Wikitravel preparing the fork than actually improving Wikitravel, that
  they're violating the Wikitravel terms of use in some fringe way, which
 is
  a form of breach of contract.
 
 
 On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 11:47 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo)
 nemow...@gmail.comwrote:
 
  Actually, a fairer representation of what IB claims is that the members
  of the public are free to choose where to drink their beer, but someone
  with a Pub X cap in front of Pub X stopped all passing people and
  regulars that Pub X was renovating and to go to the new location Pub
 Xb
  across the street instead. Or that a clerk of Y bookshop used the list
 of
  all its customers and its official letter papers to mail them saying to
  send their next mail orders to the new postal address of Yb bookshop.
  Surely it's not trivial to prove, so to say...
 
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Foundation Seeks Declaratory Relief in response to Legal Threats from Internet Brands

[Thomas Morton]

On 12 September 2012 12:29, Deryck Chan deryckc...@wikimedia.hk wrote:

 On 12 September 2012 12:27, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com
 wrote:

  [...] fortunately courts do not rely on metaphors :)
 
  Tom
 

 Oh they do. That's precisely what case law is. Inaccurate metaphors are the
 reason that courts worldwide have a ridiculous view on what constitutes a
 copyright violation.


Ouch, no case law is not metaphors.

You won't see a court asking for metaphorical submissions to demonstrate
guilt (or innocence).

Tom
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Foundation Seeks Declaratory Relief in response to Legal Threats from Internet Brands

[Thomas Morton]

On 12 September 2012 12:34, FT2 ft2.w...@gmail.com wrote:

 *@Tom:*  Case law is all about analogous situations so these matter very
 much.
 The side-suggestion you make is more about tortious deception (I pretend to
 be an employee or official representative of someone, or pretend not to
 be), but that's not alleged here.  Who was involved with whom and
 relationships between those involved were unambiguous by the sound of it.
 (It is hard to imagine any of the individuals now complaining I wouldn't
 have done/agreed that if I'd known who you really were/really represented)


Sure; but it's not a metaphor. It's a cited precedent.

My apologies if your supermarket analogy was a true precedent rather than a
metaphor.

As to your second point; they explicitly make this allegation in the filing.

Tom
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Foundation Seeks Declaratory Relief in response to Legal Threats from Internet Brands

[Thomas Morton]

On 11 September 2012 12:16, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 11 September 2012 09:41, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com
 wrote:
  Reading through it now I have had time, and with my legal cap on..
 
  IB probably have a strong enough case to win some of their claims (which
 is
  how civil suits often work).
 
  The behaviour they describe,* if true*, is disappointing (on a personal
  note) to see. I don't want to see our guys sued over it - but even so..
 not
  pleasant to see our lot acting like this.

 Which claims in particular? I haven't read through their allegations
 thoroughly, but on a quick read through they are mostly complaining
 about people conspiring against IB. Since what they were planning on
 doing (forking the project) wasn't illegal, it can't be a conspiracy.


The particular thing that stands out is the allegation that Ryan emailed
Wikitravel members in a way that implied he represented Wikitravel, and
telling them the site was migrating to the WMF. (#29 onwards)

Of course; the argument hinges on the wording of the email and whether the
intent was to mislead the community.

Also; count IV is interesting. IB seem to be contending that the two (and
perhaps others) conspired to fork the community by undermining IB's
business (i.e. Wikitravel). Obviously the content is freely licensed, but
the community carries no license! What they would have to prove is that
e.g. the email intentionally tried to redirect the WT community to a forked
version by confusing people as to the official status of WT. (you can
commit a civil conspiracy if your ultimate aim is legal, but the way you go
about reaching it is illegal etc.).

No comment on whether they *can* prove this as I haven't seen the email in
question, or the other evidence. But on the face of it there may be some
case to answer. A response from the defendants may clear up the matter.

Seeing as the intent is to replace IB's as the host of the main travel site
wiki then I think IB is justified in defending their position if they
believe they have been unfairly undermined. I do disapprove of doing it via
lawsuits though (they could e.g. just import WT...).

Tom
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikitravel hits spammy oblivion

[Thomas Morton]

Gloating (and throwing insults) is childish, and will not help resolve the
situation.

Tom

On 10 September 2012 12:49, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:

 Noticed by Keegan Peterzell.


 http://wikitravel.org/wiki/en/index.php?title=Special%3ARecentChangeslimit=500

 Turns out you can't replace 48 volunteer admins with one incompetent
 employee. Who'da thunk.


 - d.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Foundation Seeks Declaratory Relief in response to Legal Threats from Internet Brands

[Thomas Morton]

Just to note:

Everyone (including in the recent board statement) seems to be avoiding
mention that this new travel site has come about due to Wiki Travel admins
having an interest in moving away from IB, or that it will be seeded with
Wiki Travel content.

It seems intellectually dishonest to leave this out of public statements.
It doesn't materially affect the issue - but it could well be seen as
underhand by the cynical mind (i.e. if someone as suspicious as me,
approaching this for the first time, later found out this fact it would
certainly be an aha moment).

If we can't defend the right to fork publicly, then we are hypocrites.

Tom

On 6 September 2012 01:46, Kelly Kay k...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 A few moments ago we posted this to the Wikimedia Foundation Blog, it is
 self explanatory.

 Today the Wikimedia Foundation filed a 
 suithttps://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:WMF_complaint_for_declaratory_judgement_September_2012.pdf
  in
 San Francisco against Internet Brands seeking a judicial declaration that
 Internet Brands has no lawful right to impede, disrupt or block the
 creation of a new travel oriented, Wikimedia Foundation-owned website in
 response to the request of Wikimedia community volunteers. Over the summer,
 in response to requests generated by our volunteers, the Wikimedia
 community conducted a lengthy Request For 
 Commenthttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Travel_Guide (RFC)
 process to facilitate public debate and discussion regarding the benefits
 and challenges of creating a new, Wikimedia Foundation-hosted travel guide
 project. The community extended the RFC at the Wikimedia Foundation Board’s
 request to allow for greater community input, and to encourage input from
 Internet Brands. Once concluded, the RFC process revealed the community’s
 desire to see a new travel project created. The Wikimedia Foundation Board
 supports the community’s decision and is moving forward with the creation
 of this new project.

 Unfortunately, Internet Brands (owner of the travel website Wikitravel)
 has decided to disrupt this process by engaging in litigation against two
 Wikitravel volunteers who are also Wikimedia community members. On August
 29, Internet Brands sued two volunteer administrators, one based in Los
 Angeles and one in Canada, asserting a variety of claims. The intent of the
 action is clear – intimidate other community volunteers from exercising
 their rights to freely discuss the establishment of a new community focused
 on the creation of a new, not-for-profit travel guide under the Creative
 Commons licenses.

 While the suit filed by Internet Brands does not directly name the
 Wikimedia Foundation as a defendant, we believe that we are the real
 target. We feel our only recourse is to file this suit in order to get
 everything on the table and deal head on with Internet Brand’s actions over
 the past few months in trying to impede the creation of this new travel
 project.

 Our community and potential new community members are key to the success
 of all of our projects. We will steadfastly and proudly defend our
 community’s right to free speech, and we will support these volunteer
 community members in their legal defense. We do not feel it is appropriate
 for Internet Brands, a large corporation with hundreds of millions of
 dollars in assets, to seek to intimidate two individuals.

 This new, proposed project would allow all travel content to be freely
 used and disseminated by anyone for any purpose as long as the content is
 given proper attribution and is offered with the same free-to-use license.
 Internet Brands appears to be attempting to thwart the creation of a new,
 non-commercial travel wiki in a misguided effort to protect its for-profit
 Wikitravel site.

 The Wikimedia movement stands in the balance and the Wikimedia Foundation
 will not sit idly by and allow a commercial actor like Internet Brands to
 engage in threats, intimidation and litigation to prevent the organic
 expression of community interest in favor of a new travel project, one that
 is not driven by commercial interests.

 The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people
 around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free
 license http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:free_content or in the public
 domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally. We are devoted to
 creating and nurturing free knowledge projects supported by volunteers. Our
 actions today represent the full stride of our commitment to protect the
 Wikimedia movement against the efforts of for-profit entities like Internet
 Brands to prevent communities and volunteers from making their own
 decisions about where and how freely-usable content may be shared.

 http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/09/05/wikimedia-foundation-seeks-declaratory-relief-in-response-to-legal-threats-from-internet-brands/

 Kelly Kay, Deputy General Counsel

 --
 Kelly Kay
 Deputy General Counsel
 

Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Foundation Seeks Declaratory Relief in response to Legal Threats from Internet Brands

[Thomas Morton]

Nonsense; the blog post is the PR release.

So, yes, unfortunately I assert bad faith - hiding it in the brief is
basically standard misdirection, in my experience. And for a movement
dedicated (supposedly) to transparency it is very sad to see.

Tom

On 6 September 2012 15:03, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 6 September 2012 14:53, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com
 wrote:

  Everyone (including in the recent board statement) seems to be avoiding
  mention that this new travel site has come about due to Wiki Travel
 admins
  having an interest in moving away from IB, or that it will be seeded with
  Wiki Travel content.
  It seems intellectually dishonest to leave this out of public statements.
  It doesn't materially affect the issue - but it could well be seen as
  underhand by the cynical mind (i.e. if someone as suspicious as me,
  approaching this for the first time, later found out this fact it would
  certainly be an aha moment).


 It certainly explicitly says just that all over the PDF. Did you read
 it, before asserting bad faith?

 The blog post is somewhat wordy, but it does correctly note The
 Wikimedia movement stands in the balance. I really don't think
 they're soft-pedaling this.


 - d.

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Travel Guide RFC closing in 3,2,...

[Thomas Morton]

I see none of the issues raised were really addressed.

Another spam filled, little populated, project then.

*sigh*

Tom

On 23 August 2012 11:53, Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk wrote:

 On 22 August 2012 22:39, Kim Bruning k...@bruning.xs4all.nl wrote:
  For those interested, a quick reminder:
 
  The travel guide RFC will (soft) close in 1 hour, 17 minutes as of the
  moment this mail is sent. (At 0:00, 23 August 2012 (UTC))
 
  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Travel_Guide

 Thanks for the pointer. For those wondering what the end result was,
 it was just under 4:1 in favour of taking on a new WT type project.

 There seems to have been a flurry of activity in the past few days,
 per the talk page - Internet Brands running a survey of their readers
 opposing the split, attempts to canvass WT editors to contribute to
 the RFC resulting in blocking and desysopping... all very messy.

 WikiVoyage seems to have started preparing for a migration (though
 this may only be an intermediate step) -
 http://www.wikivoyage.org/general/Migration_FAQ

 --
 - Andrew Gray
   andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Copyright on Xrays

[Thomas Morton]

  2) The X ray tech who took the image

 3) The person / institution who paid to have the image taken
  a) The HMO or patient if in the USA
  b) The government if in many parts of the world
 4) The doctor who ordered the image
 5) The doctor who read the image
 6) The hospital / shareholders of the hospital who owns the equipment
 7) All of the above / some of the above / none of the above


I'd suggest; 7.

The person who took the image, by the skilled use of X-Ray equipment
probably holds copyright.

But the image may be covered by data protection laws, and the employees
contract may also deal with things such as these.

And finally the individual being imaged as personality/privacy rights.

So; copyright with the tech, but that is only the tip of the iceberg :)

Tom
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Apparently, Wikipedia is ugly

[Thomas Morton]

One of the key problems with the interface is that it doesn't do a lot to
seperate editing and reading.

I know the point is to make editing easy - and to encourage readers to
become editors. But realistically most of them will not - and we could do
significantly better in streamlining our anon. front end.

Tom

On 25 July 2012 20:33, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hoi,
 Most people are stupid and they still deserve a great reading experience..
 Our aim is to share in the sum of all knowledge with everyone. When people
 fail to read Wikipedia.. and they do..  there is a reason to do better for
 them. Any effective measure that provides a better experience for all the
 different screens helps us share with more people.

 Even stupid people deserve to be educated... eh especially stupid people
 deserve to be educated ...
 Thanks,
   Gerard

 On 25 July 2012 17:22, Michel Vuijlsteke wikipe...@zog.org wrote:

  On 25 July 2012 15:57, Kim Bruning k...@bruning.xs4all.nl wrote:
 
  
   That's default web behaviour. If you want narrower columns, just make
 the
   browser window narrower.
  
   * If your answer is Some people don't know how to use a browser...
   well...
 ARGH
  
 
  Most people never resize their browser windows.
  If your answer is Most people are stupid and don't *deserve* a better
  reading experience… well, sum, yeah. There's that.
 
 
   * Else If your answer is Lets make it narrower for everyone (including
  us
   WIMPs
 who *do* know how to use Windows Icons Menus and Pointers) whether
 they
 want to or not.   I KL YOU
  
 
  It's not about making it narrower. It's about making it *better*.
  Analogy: Let's reduce the amount of words in the lede  Let's make
 the
  lede better.
 
 
   * Else If your answer is better DTPishlayout control in CSS, including
   some sane way to
 do proper columnated text: YES YES, 1000 TIMES YES!
  
 
  Column layout on scrolling web pages doesn't make a lot of sense.
  Some additional DTP-ish layout control in CSS would be nice, sure, but
  that's not the point.
 
 
   * Else If other: Ok, go ahead, I'm listening? :-)
  
 
  Well, see points raised earlier. Making Wikipedia easier to read and use
 is
  not just mollycoddling lazy users who should know better.
 
  Michel
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Apparently, Wikipedia is ugly

[Thomas Morton]

On 25 July 2012 21:01, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 25 July 2012 20:44, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com wrote:

  One of the key problems with the interface is that it doesn't do a lot to
  seperate editing and reading.
  I know the point is to make editing easy - and to encourage readers to
  become editors. But realistically most of them will not - and we could do
  significantly better in streamlining our anon. front end.


 I would disagree. We need to make it easy for people to hit edit,
 and we need to make it easy for them to be able to do something
 useful.

 (This is why I'm so disappointed the mobile app doesn't do editing,
 for example. Or, indeed, some way to take a photo and quickly add it
 to an article.)


Yes.

We also need to be understanding of the 99% - the ones who just want to
read.

Our interface should suit the reader - with a prominent prompt to edit.
Which once clicked opens things up into the world of editing Wikipedia.

But if you don't click that prompt then you don't get useless fluff to
distract you.

This all ties back to my view that we don't think of the average reader
enough :)

Tom
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia goes on strike

[Thomas Morton]

On 12 July 2012 10:27, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 12 July 2012 08:47, Mike Godwin mnemo...@gmail.com wrote:

  At the heart of the Wikipedia/Wikimedia projects' success is
  democratic action, driven by those who are engaged in the process of
  promoting, supporting, and maintaining these projects. So my instinct
  is to believe, respect, and support the Russian-language Wikimedia
  project activists' decision to demonstrate in an effective way that
  what we all are working on here is under threat by ill-considered
  legislation by legacy governmental traditions that are used to having
  their own top-down way.


 The worrying thing is not only that we've done this three times in the
 past year, it's that we've had cause to do it three times in the past
 year.


Oh pish.

Laws like the ones we protested have been created many times over the last
few years (France, UK, etc.) and we've never protested them before.

The change was us, not them.

Tom
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia goes on strike

[Thomas Morton]

On 9 July 2012 20:41, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com wrote:

 In less than half an hour Russian Wikipedia will go on one-day strike
 against SOPA/PIPA-like law in Russia [1] (in Russian).


Unless I am missing something key; whilst this is a crappy law, it is not
much like SOPA/PIPA in that it doesn't seem to threaten the existence of
Russian Wikipedia.

Comparatively; when some ISPs in the UK blacklisted The Pirate Bay at the
behest of the government we didn't black Wikipedia out over it.

Party is on #wikipedia-ru@freenode


Even in lieu of it being a valid action (and we know I am skeptical of us
being too political anyway) this is disgusting to see.

Cutting off access to free knowledge should be a sombre and severe affair;
those doing so should appreciate, deeply, the impact of their actions. They
should not be partying like school children who got access to
dad's liquor cabinet.

As with the pictures of the WMF celebrations around English Wikipedia
blackout, I am sorely disappointed.

Tom
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] crazy deletionists!

[Thomas Morton]

On 3 July 2012 12:02, Tom Morris t...@tommorris.org wrote:

 On Tuesday, 3 July 2012 at 10:15, Svip wrote:
  I can't believe _I_ am not the ultimate ruler on what is valuable
  enough to get on Wikipedia. It seems most of the delete comments on
  the Justin Bieber article are mostly people who dislike Justin Bieber.
 
  Surely Lady Gaga on Twitter[3] should be deleted as well? Or perhaps
  that is different, because they like Lady Gaga more than they like
  Justin Bieber.
 
  [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Gaga_on_Twitter

 To be fair, 'Ashton Kutcher on Twitter' is also up for deletion too. In
 both the Kutcher and Bieber case, there's a lot of I don't like it,
 therefore it can't be notable!

 I just cannot see any legitimate argument for deletion being presented.
 They all basically boil down to don't like it!


Hammersoft makes a compelling argument.

I've been keeping track of the discussion (no particular personal opinion
on it) and currently some of the deletion arguments seems to be holding
strong sway; particularly comments about NOTDIR  content forking etc.

The keep arguments largely centre around ILIKEIT; some assert notability
under GNG but so far no one has presented a source that adequately covers
this. I've been through a big portion of the sources looking for one that
covers this intersection/topic in sufficient depth to assert notability and
so far there isn't one.

It's essentially a collection of trivial mentions  news/gossip reports.

Whether that adds up to GNG I don't know. The keep votes aren't doing a
good job of convincing me.

Tom
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] crazy deletionists!

[Thomas Morton]

On 4 July 2012 00:49, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 4 July 2012 00:48, Marc A. Pelletier m...@uberbox.org wrote:

  There's nothing that prevents a subject from having an article in both
  namespaces.  One can be seen as the complement of the other; mainspace
 would
  become more encyclopedic and there would be a neat space where the more
  recent coverage can be found for further information.


 We could call it Wikinews.



God-dammit, that's my line.

;)

Tom
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] O'Dwyer

[Thomas Morton]

Jimmy's platform is Wikipedia.

The media struggle to seperate the two (note the connect back to SOPA
in this case)

Not that I agree entirely with Andreas. But certainly I think the
community could have a view on this.

Tom Morton

On 27 Jun 2012, at 18:01, Tom Morris t...@tommorris.org wrote:

 On Wednesday, 27 June 2012 at 17:56, Nathan wrote:
 Jimmy is not Wikipedia. What about that is hard to understand?




 The whole point about deliberate obfuscation is that it's supposed to blur 
 that line. ;-)

 --
 Tom Morris
 http://tommorris.org/



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Re: [Wikimedia-l] O'Dwyer

[Thomas Morton]

On 27 June 2012 21:25, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 8:19 PM, geni geni...@gmail.com wrote:

  On 27 June 2012 18:51, Andreas Kolbe jayen...@gmail.com wrote: And
  hell, there really are two points of view about copyright,
 
  I understand you've not really studied the subject but there are far
  more than that.



 Let's just start with the notion that there might be more than just *one*
 view. ;)


It's a question of extremes.

At one extreme there are, for example, music executives who see a risk to
they fat paychecks, and prefer a model where they can control the
distribution and license costs indefinitely.

On the other extreme are people who not only want something for nothing,
but consider it an inherent right they deserve it.

I find both of these people objectionable.

ascends soap box

The aggravating thing about copyright reform lobby is that I often find
myself surrounded by the latter people - the utter dregs of society. As
mentioned somewhere here the idea of intellectual property is a moral
right; lack of respect for this is yet another symptom of our declining
social standards.

/dismounts

O'dwyer is an odd case. I don't begrudge him the opportunity to make good
money he saw (the media seem not to be interested in how much he has
stashed away... but from his own words, I imagine it is a fair amount) He
is far from an impoverished and defenceless individual.

I'm not a fan of extraditing him. But I would like to see a firmer stance
taken in the UK; perhaps a court could rule he must pay compensation to the
copyright holders of the works he linked to.

On the topic of Jimmy; Wikipedia is his calling card, it opens doors. I
think he hasn't done enough in many situations to distance his own views
from us; which is unfortunate. But not necessarily deliberate :)

As I said before; Wikipedia should have it's own view.

It would be interesting to see the community develop its own high profile
media contacts so this view can be communicated to the world!

Tom
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked principle of least surprise for the image filter?

[Thomas Morton]

On 18 June 2012 12:39, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 18 June 2012 12:29, Tobias Oelgarte tobias.oelga...@googlemail.com
 wrote:

  I guess Tom misunderstood my comment. I wrote down a simple plan how an
  external solution could work and how to minimize the effort to maintain
 it.
  If there is a community (it might overlap with our community) that would
 run
  such a filter portal (or even multiple portals) then it should be even
  more sufficient as if we would implement filters inside Wikipedia itself.
  They could really block images and make a child-save zone after their own
  definition, while we could continue as usual without having the burden to
  avoid conflicts.


 The Board acted according to the Harris report, which just said to do
 it on the site itself:


 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Wikimedia_Study_of_Controversial_Content:_Part_Two

 It's still not clear to me (looking over part two or part one) why it
 has to be on the site itself and no post-site solution is acceptable.
 Presumably someone interested can dredge through part one and pick out
 the sentences that back this position as opposed to post-site
 filtering.


Utility; hiding a filter on a lower order site does not make it useful.
Incorporating it into the main site (prefferably client side) makes it the
most accessible for our community.

Tom
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked principle of least surprise for the image filter?

[Thomas Morton]

On 18 June 2012 12:42, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 18 June 2012 12:41, Thomas Morton morton.tho...@googlemail.com wrote:
  On 18 June 2012 12:39, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:


  The Board acted according to the Harris report, which just said to do
  it on the site itself:
 
 http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Wikimedia_Study_of_Controversial_Content:_Part_Two
  It's still not clear to me (looking over part two or part one) why it
  has to be on the site itself and no post-site solution is acceptable.
  Presumably someone interested can dredge through part one and pick out
  the sentences that back this position as opposed to post-site
  filtering.

  Utility; hiding a filter on a lower order site does not make it useful.
  Incorporating it into the main site (prefferably client side) makes it
 the
  most accessible for our community.


 That's not from the Harris report. What was the justification in the
 report?


Because they were investigating solutions to problems *on* Wikipedia. Seems
rather obvious ;)

Or perhaps you didn't read parts in full, this for example:

For example, all of these sites, as WMF pages do, have internally-generated
 policies that determine what content is permitted on their sites at all.


Or

However, on every one of these sites, they also employ a series of
 user-controlled options (options designed by the site) that allow users to
 tailor their viewing experiences to their individual needs. Unique among
 these sites, at the moment, Wikimedia projects employ no such options.


I'm not sure where you are leading with this line of argument.. but it
seems to be down a black hole :)

Tom
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked principle of least surprise for the image filter?

[Thomas Morton]

  It is not convincing since it interferes with the work of our editors
 that aren't interested in such a feature.


Seems unlikely. Although please feel to expand on this with specifics.


 If we tag images inside the project itself then we impose our judgment
 onto it, while ignoring or separating it from the context it is used in.


And yet you allow that we use editorial judgement in articles. This is no
different, it gives a further tool for editorial decisions to be made.



 The first proposal (referendum) mentioned various tagging
 options/categories that would have to be maintained by the community,
 despite existing and huge backlogs.


 A reasonable argument; but almost everything adds to our backlog anyway.

Additionally we are a multi culture project with quite different view
 points and which accepts different view points (main difference between
 Flickr and Co).


This is an argument for an opt-in filter.


 The result will be huge amount of discussions about whether to tag an
 image or not.


Not if well designed. And at the moment we have big discussions about
whether to include images or not.


 This leads me to the simple conclusion that it isn't worth the effort,
 especially if the filter is advertised to make Wikipedia a save place for
 children, while everyone (including children) can disable it at any time.


Think of the children is not really an argument I ascribe to. And not
really one other proponents of the filter, by my observation, ascribe to
either.

It mostly seems to be brought up by opponents to try and invalidate
arguments.


 Separate projects that only focus on one task (providing a whitelisted
 view, an automatically updated subset of Wikipedia) would not be a burden
 for the community or at least for everyone not interested in or against
 filtering. Additionally it could define it's own strict rules and could
 even hide images and articles entirely depending on it's goal.


Please note we define community in significantly different ways. My
community includes a minority, us, who edit and maintain the project. And
also the vast majority who merely read and use the project.

Our goal as maintainers for this main community should be:
* Maximise the ability of individuals to access content by...
* Minimising the road blocks (social, political, etc.) to accessing content

A significant portion of the filter discussion is predicated on our
internal prejudices and POV - basically navel gazing - with a wide
rejection of the idea that a multi-cultural society exists.

A non-WMF filtering project would not be useful to our community due to the
chicken/egg seeding problem.

Tom
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Who invoked principle of least surprise for the image filter?

[Thomas Morton]

On 18 June 2012 15:16, Tobias Oelgarte tobias.oelga...@googlemail.comwrote:

 Am 18.06.2012 15:06, schrieb Thomas Morton:


   It is not convincing since it interferes with the work of our editors

 that aren't interested in such a feature.


 Seems unlikely. Although please feel to expand on this with specifics.

 Any tagging by non neutral definitions would interfere with project. It's
 like to create categories named bad images, uninteresting topics or
 not for ethnic minority X.


Of course; but that is predicated on a bad process design. Solution; design
an appropriate process.



  If we tag images inside the project itself then we impose our judgment
 onto it, while ignoring or separating it from the context it is used in.


 And yet you allow that we use editorial judgement in articles. This is no
 different, it gives a further tool for editorial decisions to be made.

 Editorial judgment is based on how to wrap up a topic a nice way without
 making an own judgment about the topic. A hard job to do, but that is the
 goal.

 If i would write the article pornography then i would have to think
 about what should be mentioned inside this article because it is important
 and which parts are not relevant enough or should be but in separate
 sections to elaborate them in further detail. This is entirely different to
 say pornography is good or evil or this pornographic practice is good or
 evil and thats why it should be mentioned or excluded.

 There is a difference between the relevance of a topic and the attitude
 toward a topic. The whole image filter idea is based on the latter and not
 to be confused with editorial judgment.


Pornography articles, as it stands, have a community-implemented filter
as it is. Which is the tradition that articles are illustrated with
graphics, not photographs. So the example is a poor one; because we already
have a poor man's filter :)

Similarly the decision does this image represent hardcore porn, softcore
porn, nudity or none of the above is an editorial one. Bad design process
would introduce POV issues - but we are plagued with them anyway. If
anything this gives us an opportunity to design and trial a process without
those issues (or at least minimising them).



  The first proposal (referendum) mentioned various tagging
 options/categories that would have to be maintained by the community,
 despite existing and huge backlogs.


  A reasonable argument; but almost everything adds to our backlog anyway.

 I would have nothing against additional work if i would see the benefits.
 But in this case i see some good points and i also see list of bad points.
 At best it might be a very tiny improvement which comes along with a huge
 load of additional work while other parts could be improved with little
 extra work and be a true improvement. If we had nothing better to do then i
 would say yes lets try it. But at the moment it is a plain No, other
 things have to come first.


  Additionally we are a multi culture project with quite different view

 points and which accepts different view points (main difference between
 Flickr and Co).


 This is an argument for an opt-in filter.

 Don't confuse opt-in and opt-out if a filter is implemented on an external
 platform. There is no opt-in or opt-out for Wikipedia as long the WP isn't
 blocked and the filter is the only access to Wikipedia. contains some
 ironyWe have the long story that parents want their children to visit
 Wikipedia without coming across controversial content, which they
 apparently do everytime they search for something entirely
 unrelated./contains some irony In this case an opt-in (to view) filter
 makes actually sense. Otherwise it doesn't.


We may be confusing opt in/out between us. The filter I would like to see
is optional to enable (and then stays enabled) and gives a robust method of
customising the level and type of filtering.



  The result will be huge amount of discussions about whether to tag an
 image or not.


 Not if well designed. And at the moment we have big discussions about
 whether to include images or not.

 We have such discussions. But I'm afraid that most of them do not circle
 around the benefits of the image for the article, but the latter part that
 i mentioned above (editorial judgment vs attitude judgment).


Filtering images would resolve most of these issues.



 Believe me or believe me not. If we introduce such tagging then the
 discussions will only be about personal attitude towards an image, ignoring
 the context, it's educational benefits entirely.


We successfully tag images as pornographic, apparently without drama,
already. So I find this scenario unlikely.



  This leads me to the simple conclusion that it isn't worth the effort,
 especially if the filter is advertised to make Wikipedia a save place for
 children, while everyone (including children) can disable it at any time.

  Think of the children is not really an argument I ascribe to. And not
 really

Re: [Wikimedia-l] speedydeletion.wika.com lauched

[Thomas Morton]

This has been debated numerous times; to what extent does the attribution
have to relate to the exact contribution of each author.

A list of authors has been considered acceptable in the past (including
on-wiki).

Tom

On 12 June 2012 23:48, Kim Bruning k...@bruning.xs4all.nl wrote:

 On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 05:44:40AM +, Mike Dupont wrote:
  Hi,
 
  Again the full history is available on archive.org and i think that no
 one
  is going to think that this data is from me, it is clearly marked as
 being
  from wikipedia.


 You are very concientious, and normally this would indeed be adequate (not
 perfect,
 but definitely adequate :)

 It is adequate because wikipedia itself retains full attribution
 information in
 page history. One can follow the chain from the copy back to the wikipedia
 original
 back to the page history and voila, more than you ever wanted to know.

 The problem with deleted/hidden articles on en.wp is that the history
 information
 is also deleted/hidden; and therefore the attribution chain is broken.

 Attribution information is important for legal and open content reasons of
 course.

 Is it possible to keep a copy of page history somewhere also?

 I know the mediawiki export/import functions support this, and work
 via GET request.
 see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Export

 eg:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Export/Train

 sincerely,
Kim Bruning

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Re: [Wikimedia-l] speedydeletion.wika.com lauched

[Thomas Morton]

Indeed; and so it was...

{{facepalm}}

Tom

On 11 June 2012 17:32, Mike Dupont jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com wrote:

 here is one that is worth keeping!
 http://speedydeletion.wikia.com/wiki/Rootstrikers

 On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 2:57 PM, emijrp emi...@gmail.com wrote:

  Mike is the terror of deletionists.
 
  Good work.
 
  2012/6/10 Mike Dupont jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com
 
   Hi,
   I have launched speedydeletion.wika.com , it is updated every 30
 minutes
   with the proposed deletions and speedy deletion articles (not notable
 and
   hoaxes, not others).
   it is running on the en.wikipedia.org. the sources for the script are
  all
   on git hub and are a merger of pywikipediabot and the wikiteam
 codebases.
   hope you enjoy it,
   thanks,
   mike
   --
   James Michael DuPont
   Member of Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova http://flossk.org
   Contributor FOSM, the CC-BY-SA map of the world http://fosm.org
   Mozilla Rep https://reps.mozilla.org/u/h4ck3rm1k3
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  --
  Emilio J. Rodríguez-Posada. E-mail: emijrp AT gmail DOT com
  Pre-doctoral student at the University of Cádiz (Spain)
  Projects: AVBOT http://code.google.com/p/avbot/ |
  StatMediaWikihttp://statmediawiki.forja.rediris.es
  | WikiEvidens http://code.google.com/p/wikievidens/ |
  WikiPapershttp://wikipapers.referata.com
  | WikiTeam http://code.google.com/p/wikiteam/
  Personal website: https://sites.google.com/site/emijrp/
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 --
 James Michael DuPont
 Member of Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova http://flossk.org
 Contributor FOSM, the CC-BY-SA map of the world http://fosm.org
 Mozilla Rep https://reps.mozilla.org/u/h4ck3rm1k3
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Announcement] James Forrester joins WMF as Technical Product Analyst

[Thomas Morton]

On 17 May 2012 18:19, Chris Keating chriskeatingw...@gmail.com wrote:

 
  It’s my pleasure to announce that James Forrester is joining our San
  Francisco office as a Technical Product Analyst, supporting the Visual
  Editor team. James started his work as a remote contractor yesterday
  and will be joining us in San Francisco later this year as a staff
  member.


 Congratulations, James!

 I hope this means the Visual Editor will use the correct spellings of words
 like colour, axe, and aluminium, and will offer to make people tea. :-)


Oh gods no, don't suggest it makes tea! Shades of Douglas Adams will come
to haunt us.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrimatic_drinks_dispenser#Nutrimatic_Drinks_Dispenser

And probably crash the servers.

Congrats James :)

Tom
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Announcement] James Forrester joins WMF as Technical Product Analyst

[Thomas Morton]

On 17 May 2012 18:25, Kat Walsh k...@mindspillage.org wrote:

 On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 1:22 PM, Thomas Morton
 morton.tho...@googlemail.com wrote:
  On 17 May 2012 18:19, Chris Keating chriskeatingw...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  
   It’s my pleasure to announce that James Forrester is joining our San
   Francisco office as a Technical Product Analyst, supporting the Visual
   Editor team. James started his work as a remote contractor yesterday
   and will be joining us in San Francisco later this year as a staff
   member.
 
 
  Congratulations, James!
 
  I hope this means the Visual Editor will use the correct spellings of
 words
  like colour, axe, and aluminium, and will offer to make people tea. :-)
 
 
  Oh gods no, don't suggest it makes tea! Shades of Douglas Adams will come
  to haunt us.
 
 
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrimatic_drinks_dispenser#Nutrimatic_Drinks_Dispenser

 I should have figured someone would beat me to the Hitchhiker's Guide
 joke...


Your version was better :)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Why the Wikimedia Foundation should openly articulate its political POV by establishing a new neutral wiki for world political knowledge (modeled on Wikipedia)

[Thomas Morton]

 As a fictional example, let's suppose some members of Congress propose
 legislation to build a new Brooklyn Bridge. Under the subject: HR 999
 Proposal to build a new Brooklyn Bridge, there would be one pro and one con
 argument edited only by members of Congress and one pro and one con
 argument edited by the general public.


Why would political knowledge need to presented with a POV? That merely
encourages confirmation bias.

Dividing viewpoints into two different strands doesn't sound much like
informing, it sounds rather a lot like providing a platform for soapboxing
:)

Tom
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Travel Guide Wiki

[Thomas Morton]

  What I think would be important to avoid is too much subjective
 information
  from one individual; for example, where I to write about York, UK I would
  recommend not going to the Jorvik centre (a main attraction) because I
  thought it overpriced and boring.
 


  Whilst my viewpoint on this is subjectively valid, it may not reflect the
  overall viewpoint of travellers to York (I know plenty of people who
 loved
  it)! NPOV aims to make sure that the most mainstream of these viewpoints
 if
  reflected - and any other viewpoints (i.e. hate it) are given space if
  deemed appropriate.
 


 The whole point of a travel guide is subjective information from
 individuals!


Is it? I'd define it as useful advice for travellers.

Subjective information from only a few people can be useless, because most
people will have different viewpoints (for example; I would write about the
beautiful historical parts of Amsterdam, but, say, a younger person could
just have easily been looking for information on drug tourism).

The point of NPOV is balancing these personal priorities to make sure the
readers gets lots of useful information. Rather than say Don't bother
walking up to the Sacré-Coeur, it's a long climb and not worth the bother
you'd say The climb up to Sacré-Coeur can be a long one.



 However, there are travellers with different interests. Jorvik
 actually works out pretty well for travellers with children, for instance,
 but for (young) adults travelling on their own it's pretty overpriced, and
 not so interesting so that's what the guide should say.


Well I went as a child; and would recommend families not to bother
(overpriced, not all that interesting). Which possibly hihglights the point?



 I don't think
 that's NPOV though, because the Jorvik probably think they're pretty
 awesome for everybody.


Well, yes, but that's not NPOV because the Jorvik centre's view is
demonstrably biased :) (i.e. not a travellers perspective).



  So in summary I don't see that there is any real difference in our stance
  on this - it might just need a bit of rethinking.
 

 We'd like to express it as Traveller's Point of View.


I think this is a good name for it.

p.s. I read your fair link with interest - I think that is a good way to
resolve the issue with clashing of personal experience. However one thing a
bigger community brings is a difficulty in resolving these problems (or,
they crop up more often). On Wikipedia we can use sources so that
uninvolved people can voice an opinion and help resolve the situation - but
where this relies on personal experience that is simply not possible. Do
you have an approach to help scale this form of dispute resolution?

Other questions I had:

- What sort of size is the WT community at the moment?

- What are the policies/approach to copyright violations and other issues
such as slander, etc?

- What is the policy r.e. advertising and promotional (quite often, when I
use WT, I see a lot of content that seems quite promotional in quality -
e.g. for a particular restaurant).

Cheers,
Tom
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] Travel Guide Wiki

[Thomas Morton]

Just to highlight my earlier point about sourcing, the article on Florence
currently says:

Opera was invented in Florence.


This happens to be true - but I have no proof of it, and it may well simply
be the opinion of the original writer. Much of the rest of the historical
section is the same; it is encyclopaedic detail about the city, spiced up
for travel guide purposes. I have no issue with the spicing up (it is
appropriate in the context), but I think this is the sort of content that
can/should be sourced to help the reader be assured the material is true in
at least some way (even if there is subjective opinion mixed in).

Tom
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