Re: [Foundation-l] Growth vs. maintenance

[Andre Engels]

On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 12:51 AM,   wrote:
> How about this one.  Every arrest (read block for 24 hours or longer) must be 
> approved by an "Admin Supervisor" (let's just call it for now).  That Admin 
> Supervisor, must use a Real Name and be Verified.
>
> That by itself, would greatly cut down on the policing actions of those who 
> are, shall we say, less scrupulous than others.  Of course we'd still need a 
> way to ensure that the Verified admin, is not the same person as a sock 
> running the blocks, and is impartial, unbiased and uninvolved.
>
> No block may be longer than 24 hours without the approval of the 
> community-at-large, no matter what the infraction.  Otherwise, we need a 
> system of judges and juries who are *not* the same persons as the police and 
> prison wardens.  What we have now, essentially allows a single person, or a 
> single group of "friends" to be police, prosecutor, jury, judge, bailiff, and 
> warden.  That in my opinion is what drives away a significant number of good 
> prospects and it should stop.

We tried that on nl: (although with 1 week rather than 24 hours
minimum). The effect of this is that _each and every block_ will get
the whole wiki in flames for a week. You are handcuffing one problem
group here (out-of-control admins), but giving free reign to another
problem group (people using Wikipedia as a means for doing politics,
and considering every admin action admin abuse) at the same time. As a
member of the community-at-large I don't _want_ to have to check the
correctness of each and every block. That's why I favored having an
arbcom. Its workings are not ideal, but at least it finally brought a
few of the greatest troubleseekers to order by saying that they _can_
be blocked if they continue their disruptive actions. It's hard enough
to have to withstand the criticism to each and every block as it is -
it would be much worse if we were to invite that criticism as well.


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Re: [Foundation-l] Growth vs. maintenance

[Andre Engels]

On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 8:33 PM,   wrote:
> In a message dated 11/7/2009 10:56:27 AM Pacific Standard Time,
> andreeng...@gmail.com writes:
>
>
>> We tried that on nl: (although with 1 week rather than 24 hours
>> minimum). The effect of this is that _each and every block_ will get
>> the whole wiki in flames for a week.>>
>
> I would submit that this tells you something very significant.
> The community likes freedom, and they don't like the suppression of
> freedom.

No, it means that whoever you block there will always be *someone* who
is against it and makes an issue out of it that the block is unfair
etcetera. It does not mean that *the community* is of that opinion.

> The police do not like freedom, and they do like to suppress it.
> When a group of police decide to gang up on a contributor, that contributor
> has no "friend" on their side.  You cannot appeal to the police to stop the
> police.

You can appeal to other sysops, to the arbcom, to the community. What
you are proposing is to have *every* case be appealed to the community
automatically. There are always some people who are of the opinion
that if you have made personal attacks 30 times that is still 20 times
too few to be blocked.

> That's my main point.  However it has to be worked out.  We need a
> contrasting force, that is dedicated to the freedom of the contributor.

No, we don't. We need forces to help the encyclopedia get further. We
don't need a force of people who stop people who are helping creating
it, and we don't need a force of people who support people who are not
helping creating it.


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Re: [Foundation-l] Growth vs. maintenance

[Andre Engels]

On Sun, Nov 8, 2009 at 3:05 AM, David Goodman  wrote:

> We need, as does every voluntary society, the involvement of many
> ordinary members in  each aspect of the government of the society.  We
> need, thus, the influence of community opinion--expressed opinion,
> expressed without fear of rejection for not following the established
> forms.
>
> To the extent that we have special cadres, they will be
> self-perpetuating and excluding. To maintain coherence, we   need a
> limitation in the numbers of people able to take the final action--as
> admins or arbs do--but not in the numbers of people who participate in
> making the decision.

I'm sorry, but if that's where you agree with me, you _have_
misunderstood me. I stand for exactly the opposite. I think it is a
terrible waste of energy to get the community involved in each and
every blocking decision. To form  a good opinion about a block will
often cost considerable time (an hour or so) of reading in on the
conflict. Because of that I don _not_ want each and every person doing
that on each and every block. Instead, we appoint a few people that we
trust to do this reading and decision-making in our place - read: the
arbcom.

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[Foundation-l] Banners

[Andre Engels]

It's interesting that this list has been effectively closed just
before it would be getting a true storm of protest... But on the
off-chance that it's actually nobody writing here rather than nobody
being there to get the messages through:

Why o why these ugly, YELLING, unclear banners? At many places there
are storms of protest, and when there is a reaction from 'above' it
can be summarized as "You are always complaining, so we will listen to
what you say, but then just do what we planned before". The distance
between the Wikimedia Foundation and the people from the projects
seems to be growing and growing.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Pedophilia and the Non discrimination policy

[Andre Engels]

On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 10:37 PM, George Herbert
 wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 1:16 PM, Jake Wartenberg
>  wrote:
>> I am not talking about "pedophilia activism", but instances where the
>> individual in question is not disruptively editing.
>
> There are a wide variety of reasons to permanently block people who
> were elsewhere identified (more commonly, self-identified) as
> pedophiles but edit here apparently harmlessly, including bringing the
> project into disrepute (Jimbo's wording, I think), the latent threat
> to underage editors, that they'd have to be watched continuously to
> make sure they did not start advocating or preying on underage users.
>
> The Foundation and en.wp community policies are generally to be
> excessively tolerant of personal opinion and political and religious
> beliefs, etc.  We do not want to let one countries' social mores,
> political restrictions, civil rights restrictions limit who can
> participate and how.
>
> However, there's no country in the world where pedophilia is legal.
> It's poorly enforced in some, but there are laws against it even
> there.
>
> What it comes down to - the very presence of an editor who is known to
> be a pedophile or pedophilia advocate is disruptive to the community,
> and quite possibly damaging to it, inherently to them being who they
> are and them being open about it.

I strongly disagree. We should not judge people by what their opinions
are, however apalling we may find them, but by whether or not they are
capable and willing to edit in an NPOV manner despite their ideas and
opinions. If that brings the project in disrepute, then so be it.
Neutrality to me is important enough an aspect of Wikipedia that I am
willing to take the risk of some disrepute for it.

As for your other arguments: We should be watching _everyone_ to make
sure they don't start advocating or preying on underage users, not
just self-identified pedophile activists. In fact, I think that
pedophile advocacy is a kind of advocacy we actually have to watch
over _less_ than other kinds of advocacy. The farther away a position
is from the mainstream, the more readily advocacy for that advocacy
will be recognized even if one is not looking for it. And few opinions
are as far from the mainstream as pedophile advocacy is.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Andre Engels]

On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 5:32 PM, Teofilo  wrote:

> How about moving the servers (5) from Florida to a cold country
> (Alaska, Canada, Finland, Russia) so that they can be used to heat
> offices or homes ? It might not be unrealistic as one may read such
> things as "the solution was to provide nearby homes with our waste
> heat" (6).

I don't think that's a practical solution. It's not because they need
to be cooled that computers cost so much energy - rather the opposite:
they use much energy, and because energy cannot be created or
destroyed, this energy has to go out some way - and that way is heat.

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Re: [Foundation-l] advertising craigslist

[Andre Engels]

On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 4:19 PM, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
> We've advertised third party for-profits in the past with prominent
> matched donations notices before (albeit controversially). This isn't
> that different.

As you say, that one was controversial and this one isn't that
different. Then it should not surprise you that this one is
controversial too, should it? Or do people lose the right to complain
against something if it happens the second time?


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Re: [Foundation-l] commercial use of wikipedia content

[Andre Engels]

On Sun, Dec 27, 2009 at 3:34 PM, Istvan Soos  wrote:


> For the sake of example we would like to automatically convert the
> page content to a different text and different format (e.g.
> automatically create text extracts and compile it into a pdf document)
> and sell it as part of a subscription service or even better as a
> standalone product. We include all the attributions / links wherever
> possible, and mark that the source of the product is Wikipedia. What
> else are we required to do before the sell can happen?

You have to specify the license (CC-BY-SA) of the material.

> Is there any
> fee or percentage that shall go back to mediawiki foundation in such
> cases?

No, although it will of course be appreciated if you do so on a voluntary basis.

> Can we restrict the copy or re-distribution of such product?

No, there is the so-called virality of the license: You are allowed to
make derivative works or different versions of the product, but they
must also fall under the same license. You have to grant others the
same rights to your product that you have to Wikipedia material.


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Re: [Foundation-l] (no subject)

[Andre Engels]

On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 2:23 AM, C F  wrote:
> With 2 personal phone numbers? Nevermind it seems that one of them has
> the wrong area code (although I might be wrong), which suggests that
> the phone numbers were the only things intended for that email.

Those are probably just their standard signature.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Where do our readers come from?

[Andre Engels]

On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 5:27 AM, Erik Zachte  wrote:
> Today I released 4 new reports, which all focus on:
>
> Where do our readers come from?
>
>
>
>   http://tinyurl.com/yhdej3j

Going through the countries, another remarkable result in my opinion
is the Ukraine - Ukrainian is not a small language by any means, yet
Wikipedia visitors tend to be drawn to the Russian Wikipedia instead.

Also, the Q3-Q4 comparison for most countries shows a shift from
English to the 'vernacular'. Do you have data on this from a longer
period of time? That is, is this part of an ongoing shift, or is it a
seasonal effect (perhaps having to do with Q3 containing the school
holidays in most countries?

To quantify this, I have taken the 50 largest countries, excluding
languages where English is the main language (United States, United
Kingdom, Canada, Australia, India, Philippines, Singapore, Ireland,
New Zealand, South Africa). For all countries I have compared the
percentage going to the main language Wikipedia and those going to the
English Wikipedia (in the Ukrainian case: the Russian Wikipedia), and
also the 'swing' (in the way the term is used in UK politics, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_%28United_Kingdom%29) from English
to the local language (or in the reverse direction, if it is
negative). For countries such as Spain and Belgium which have more
than one local language, the similar data with all local languages are
also given.

Japan: Japanese 92.2% over English (swing -0.4%)
Germany: German 72.2% over English (swing 1.5%)
France: French 67.5% over English (swing 4.1%)
Poland: Polish 71.5% over English (swing 4.0%)
Italy: Italian 71.5% over English (swing 4.7%)
Mexico: Spanish 71.5% over English (swing 3.4%)
Brazil: Portuguese 67.7% over English (swing 1.1%)
Spain: Spanish 60.3% over English (swing 7.0%) - vernaculars 64.4%
over English (swing 8.6%)
Netherlands: Dutch 10.4% over English (swing 6.6%)
Russia: Russian 70.2% over English (swing 4.9%)
Sweden: Swedish 13.8% over English (swing 8.1%)
Switzerland: German 36.6% over English (swing 2.1%) - vernaculars
55.0% over English (swing 2.7%)
Austria: German 65.1% over English (swing -1.1%)
Finland: Finnish 24.7% over English (swing 2.2%) - vernaculars 26.8%
over English (swing 2.8%)
China: Chinese 4.8% over English (swing -7.3%)
Turkey: Turkish 48.7% over English (swing 11.7%)
Belgium: Dutch 9.5% over English (swing 9.2%) - vernaculars 40.1% over
English (swing 9.6%)
Argentina: Spanish 66.2% over English (swing 1.2%)
Norway: Norwegian (Bokmal) 0.9% UNDER English (swing 14.4%) -
vernaculars 0.1% over English (swing 14.5%)
Colombia: Spanish 56.3% over English (swing -3.8%)
Czech Republic: Czech 44.3% over English (swing 10.2%)
Hong Kong: Chinese equal to English (swing 1.0%) - vernaculars 1.4%
over English (swing 1.2%)
Taiwan: Chinese 45.5% over English (swing 3.7%) - vernaculars 45.7%
over English (swing 3.7%)
Chile: Spanish 60.6% over English (swing -2.0%)
Israel: Hebrew 10.9% over English (swing 3.9%) - vernaculars 12.8%
over English (swing 3.9%)
Indonesia: Indonesian 10.2% over English (swing 8.5%) - vernaculars
11.3% over English (swing 8.4%)
Portugal: Portuguese 11.9% over English (swing 2.2%)
South Korea: Korean 2.7% over English (swing 12.8%)
Malaysia: Malay 74.5% UNDER English (swing -1.0%)
Peru: Spanish 74.5% over English (swing 2.1%)
Venezuela: Spanish 77.5% over English (swing 11.1%)
Ukraine: Ukrainian 56.6% UNDER RUSSIAN (swing 4.4%)
Romania: Romanian 21.7% UNDER English (swing 12.6%) - vernaculars
18.5% UNDER English (swing 13.4%)
Thailand: Thai 18.9% over English (swing -3.5%)
Denmark: Danish 12.3% UNDER English (swing 10.7%)
Hungary: Hungarian 23.8% over English (swing 6.1%)
Uruguay: Spanish 72.4% over English (swing 1.1%)
Vietnam: Vietnamese 31.0% over English (swing 8.8%)
Greece: Greek 42.1% UNDER English (swing 9.0%)
Bulgaria: Bulgarian 1.4% over English (swing 8.9%)
United Arab Emirates: Arabic 66.8% UNDER English (swing 5.4%)
Egypt: Arabic 18.5% UNDER English (swing 11.3%)
Lithuania: Lithuanian 9.3% UNDER English (swing -6.4%) - vernaculars
9.3% under English (swing -6.6%)
Iran: Persian 0.6% UNDER English (swing 0.5%)

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Re: [Foundation-l] Where do our readers come from?

[Andre Engels]

On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 2:46 PM, Nikola Smolenski  wrote:
> Ziko van Dijk wrote:
>> Thank you for the numbers, Erik!
>> I wonder why 40 % of the visitors of ksh.WP (the dialect of Cologne) are
>> from Japan. And why 25 % of the visitors of eu.WP (Basque) are from Poland?
>
> Bots?

I think that's a likely explanation in the eu case (unless Erik is
using an algorithm that filters out bots) - I see Poles come up high
in more unexpected small languages (Telugu, Welsh, Alemannic, Frisian,
Cebuan, Norman, Crimean Tartar) - although Basque seems to be the
biggest of the lot.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Jimmy on CNN

[Andre Engels]

On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 7:26 PM, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
> 2010/1/19 Domas Mituzas :
>> Hello dear people,
>>
>> there's something very very very special about the video at 
>> http://cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2010/01/19/ctw.connector.jimmy.wales.cnn
>> You can definitely see that organization just had a critical shift. :-)
>>
>> Domas
>>
>> P.S. You look great! :)
>
> What's special about it? Jimmy gave a good performance, but it was
> nothing we haven't been saying for a while. The only thing that I
> thought interesting was the caption saying Jimmy was co-founder, not
> founder. (The Wikipedia article has been saying that for ages, since
> it is what the reliable sources all say, but for Jimmy to apparently
> support the claim by appearing with that caption underneath him is
> new, as far as I know.)

Jimmy losing his beard perhaps?



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Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] Please HELP save Wikipedia history ! (urgent)

[Andre Engels]

On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 12:15 PM, Chad  wrote:

> While I don't agree that we need to take this away from the community
> and hand it to a team of lawyers, I must say that the "practical training"
> caught my eye.
>
> Would it be possible for the Foundation to get Mike--and other people
> who actually know what they're talking about--to get a "guide to
> handling copyright questions" together? It would probably help a lot of
> people who are unclear on some points, as well as help remove some
> grey areas (like the scenario that brought us here now). This may be a
> terrible idea, but I'm just throwing it out there.

The problem is that removing grey areas won't help. No grey area would
become 100.00% white, and if it's not 100.00% white, then people will
delete it. I upload a picture under a free license, stating author and
license. A few years down the road someone deletes it, because I have
not given any evidence that it is. Of course I have only been a
Wikipedian for nine years. We cannot go and trust people like that,
can we?

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Re: [Foundation-l] Swedish Wikipedians removes Wikimedia logos

[Andre Engels]

On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 2:36 AM, The Cunctator  wrote:
> No, this is a profoundly stupid decision that has no logical sense. A "free"
> license is a copyright license.

So? What does that have to do with the post you are quoting, or
anything else in this thread?

> On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 6:11 PM, Marcus Buck  wrote:
>
>> The Swedish Wikipedia decision is consequent and logical. Logos are
>> copyrighted. Copyrighted material cannot be included. So no logos. It's
>> plain and simple. The problem is not the reasonable decision of the
>> Swedish Wikipedia, but the unreasonable decision of the Foundation to
>> claim copyright for the logos. The foundation did that because they
>> thought that would make it easier to defend the brand. But that's just
>> intermingling trademarks and copyright. Trademark protection does
>> everything we need. No need for additional copyright protection. The
>> Coca Cola logo is PD-old (and in many jurisdictions also PD-ineligible)
>> and they have no problem defending their brand. Why should Wikimedia
>> logos be any different?
>>
>> Just release the logos under a free license and the problem will be gone.



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Re: [Foundation-l] Swedish Wikipedians removes Wikimedia logos

[Andre Engels]

On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 12:58 AM, Przykuta  wrote:
>> > Or just use common sense that it's silly for a Wikimedia project to say 
>> > it's
>> > not allowed to use a logo own by Wikimedia Foundation
>>
>> It is not "common sense" to depend on the relationship between the
>> project and the hosting organisation when dealing with free content.
>> downstream users of the content are not Wikimedia projects.
>>
>> --
>> John Vandenberg
>>
> Hmm. It could be uploaded under cc-by-sa (3.0) by 
> user:This_logo_is_one_of_the_official_logos_used_by_the_Wikimedia_Foundation 
> with OTRS ticket

They could, but that doesn't make it right. If someone uploads this
image under cc-by-sa that would be just as much copyright violation as
doing the same with any other image, if that person did not have
permission from the Wikimedia Foundation to do so.


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Re: [Foundation-l] Swedish Wikipedians removes Wikimedia logos

[Andre Engels]

On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 2:10 AM, Mike Godwin  wrote:

> It's crazy. sv.wiki still has "unfree" logo on every page :)
>> It is "unfree" to protect wiki identity.
>>
>
> This is exactly right.  If we had no copyright or trademark restrictions on
> the Wikimedia logos and marks, it would be trivial for proprietary vendors
> to use the unrestricted logos in association with unfree content.

But how about with trademark and without copyright restrictions? Or

> My guess, admittedly based on nothing but anecdotal evidence, is that the
> Swedish Wikipedians who created this largely artificial and unnecessary
> dispute have not consulted independent trademark and copyright experts with
> regard to the rationale for their decision.

Suppose they had, what would those experts have answered. I am not an
expert, but I think I know enough of it to say that the type of
organization that owns the copyright on a logo makes no difference
regarding the question whether it is or is not allowed to include the
logo.


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Re: [Foundation-l] Copyrighted maps and Derived works from copyrighted sources.

[Andre Engels]

On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 10:19 PM, James Alexander  wrote:
> I would say claiming copyright on a map is legitimate but I think the big
> issue here is the geotag's themselves (i.e the locations) since so many
> people use google maps or another tool to find the geo location. The
> locations themselves is what we have decided are facts and therefore
> copyrightable and I would think that openstreetmap should both be able to
> use those and should use those. I don't totally understand the thought
> process behind not allowing them to use actual geo locations from wikipedia.

The thought process (note: I do not agree with it) goes like this:
* A map or a sattelite photograph is copyrighted material
* Taking a location from a map or a photograph is getting a derivative
work from it
* You are not allowed to make a derivative work from a copyrighted source


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Re: [Foundation-l] Copyrighted maps and Derived works from copyrighted sources.

[Andre Engels]

On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 2:28 PM, jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com
 wrote:
> Guys,
> Lets get back to one point : terms of service.
>
> We are talking about copyright here the whole time, but the contract
> agreement in the terms of service are much more binding, they override
> your copyright.
>
> If the terms of service do not allow mass database extraction, WP is
> violating that on a large scale.

How? By having people look on their pages every now and again, and see
around which coordinates they are at a certain point? If that is "mass
database extraction" then simply looking at the maps is "mass database
extraction on a truly enormous unprecedented scale". Besides, even
_if_ we would agree that pulling some bits of data from a map or a
picture based on a database which probably is not even _in_ that
database as such would entail "mass database extraction", then still
the only one breaking anything would be the person who originally
determined that village X is at coordinates Y, not the people who next
copy this bit of knowledge.


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Re: [Foundation-l] Reflections on the recent debates

[Andre Engels]

On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 6:21 PM, Mike Godwin  wrote:

> It wasn't a response -- I hadn't read your comment yet.  But when I did see
> your comment, I thought it missed the point that Fox was always going to
> congratulate itself on its story, regardless of what we did or didn't do in
> response. I've been dealing with media strategy, both as a reporter and as
> someone who has to respond to media, for nearly three decades now. The issue
> isn't whether you can persuade Fox of anything -- Fox is not the kind of
> organization you can have a discussion with.

So instead we just give in to them? We get attacked and decide to just
sit up like a good dog? We don't just say they're wrong, we join in to
congratulate them.

>> Perhaps I simply misunderstand how irresponsible and influential Fox
>> news is, but I would have thought that being able to show that the
>> images aren't illegal while also showing that we're having a reasoned
>> discussion about whether we want the legal ones or not would have been
>> an effective counter to the negative PR Fox is creating.
>
> I promise you, this would almost certainly not be an effective counter.

Not towards Fox, but how about other news avenues? And in the end, I
think our policy here should be based on our own principles, not on
what others may or may not say about us. Maybe for US members this is
different, but to me, our own ideas and values (as exemplarized in the
board statement on this subject - the question should be whether the
image has educational value) should not be sacrificed to our
popularity with a part of our audience. Even less should they be
sacrificed in a way that is likely to be uneffective (you yourself
said that Fox will present whatever we do as a proof of them being
right and us being wrong).

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Re: [Foundation-l] Reflections on the recent debates

[Andre Engels]

On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 7:10 PM, Mike Godwin  wrote:
> On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 9:56 AM, Andre Engels  wrote:
>>
>> So instead we just give in to them? We get attacked and decide to just
>> sit up like a good dog?
>
> No one is acting "like a good dog." Bad metaphor. When your village is
> attacked and subject to future attacks, you build defenses. (Better
> metaphor.) All defenses compromise your ability to do something besides
> defend yourself -- that's the economics of biology. But we can't change the
> way the world works by denying it.

Defending means lessening the chance of the opponent to succeed. If
you throw all the riches that are demanded and then some over the city
wall, that's not defending, that's capitulating.

>> but to me, our own ideas and values ... should not be sacrificed to our
>> popularity with a part of our audience.
>
> I agree and posted nothing to the contrary.

Not implicitly, no. But you were defending actions that in my eyes did
just that, namely by deleting material apparently using the criterium
"what might Fox object to?" rather than using the criterium "what does
not in any way add to our mission of spreading knowledge?"


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Re: [Foundation-l] Removing questions about me and my role from this discussion

[Andre Engels]

On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 11:59 AM, Alec Conroy  wrote:
> On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 5:46 AM, Jimmy Wales  wrote:
>>
>> I've just now removed virtually all permissions to actually do
>> things from the "Founder" flag.
>
> I appreciate this step, but the community has now firmly rejected your
> continued status as "Founder flagged"-- you have not been asked to cut
> back on your privileges, you are being ordered to relinquish your
> founder flag.
>
> I'm happy that you're beginning to question your earlier actions, but
> your founder status is not for you to decide.   Currently it's 3-to-1
> against you continuing in this role.   If that doesn't change, you
> need to abide by it.

I disagree. Those objections are not against the idea of a founder
flag, but against his rights, or rather the way he used these rights.
If those rights are significantly curtailed, we have a different
situation, and not everyone who was against the extensive rights will
be against the narrower ones as well. In fact, I would say that
letting Jimbo remain Founder, but remove several rights from that
position would be very fitting in the Wikimedia way of working: Not
voting, but searching consensus for a compromise.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content

[Andre Engels]

On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 7:09 AM, K. Peachey  wrote:

> Bugzilla 982[1]  MediaWiki should support ICRA's PICS content labeling.
> From my understanding without reading much about it, It [ICRA] is ment
> to be a "international" or at least a standard for these things which
> most people seem to abide by (i see it splashed around on a lot of
> education sites that they are compliant with that standard).

I'm not sure if it was PICS, but in general I have bad experience with
trying to rate the content of my page. I had a website (it still
exists, but I cannot reach it any more to change it) that contained a
number of biographies. It was sometimes used by middle and high school
children for schoolwork. However, trying to rate it, it came out in
one of the heaviest categories. Why? As said, it contained
biographies. And some were of people who died in a violent way. Thus,
the pages were portraying extreme violence. That's when I decided that
this rating system wasn't really useful for my site.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Commons:Sexual content

[Andre Engels]

On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 11:43 PM, Adam Cuerden  wrote:
> Okay, I've complained a lot, time to give something back.
>
> I think I've managed to create a sexual content policy that's
> consistent with the core values of commons and previous decisions,
> such as the artworks of Muhammed,  while dealing with the problems and
> assuring that any sexual content that remains is, at the least,
> defensible as serving our educational purpose.
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Sexual_content
>
> It'll probably need  a bit more work, but a policy based on forwarding
> our goals, rather than censorship... Well! Think we might have summat
> here.

I am of the opinion that "clear educational purpose" is a much too
stringent criterium. Does this mean that any picture (not including
artwork) that might possibly have another reason to be taken must be
deleted? I'm not so fond of your list of examples either. Apparently
you have decided for all of us already that we should not have
photographs of sexual positions? I think with these rules you are
_still_ throwing out the baby with the bathwater. You still have
Commons decide for Wikimedia as a whole what is and what is not to be
put on the project pages. I think this should be the other way around.
Being educational should be just another word for being in scope, and
in scope are, in my opinion, in the first place those files that are
usable for the projects. That is the first thing that we should be
judging things by.


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Re: [Foundation-l] Commons:Sexual content

[Andre Engels]

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 2:23 AM, Kim Bruning  wrote:
> On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 12:23:28AM +0200, Andre Engels wrote:
>> Being educational should be just another word for being in scope, and
>> in scope are, in my opinion, in the first place those files that are
>> usable for the projects. That is the first thing that we should be
>> judging things by.
>
> I've already emphasized that a bit already on the page, but more from
> the WARNING angle.

That only says that pictures that are _used_ should not be deleted
indiscriminately. Used and usable are not the same.

> Could you edit or comment on the page in a way that reflects what you
> just stated? :-)

Hardly. The page as it is now seems to go from the point of view that
we should not host any pornography, then restricts itself by trying to
get a narrow definition of 'pornography'. For me, whether or not
something is pornographic is at best a secondary issue.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Commons:Sexual content

[Andre Engels]

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 8:02 PM, Noein  wrote:
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On 10/05/2010 05:51, Andre Engels wrote:
>> On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 2:23 AM, Kim Bruning  wrote:
>>> On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 12:23:28AM +0200, Andre Engels wrote:
>>>> Being educational should be just another word for being in scope, and
>>>> in scope are, in my opinion, in the first place those files that are
>>>> usable for the projects. That is the first thing that we should be
>>>> judging things by.
>>>
>>> I've already emphasized that a bit already on the page, but more from
>>> the WARNING angle.
>>
>> That only says that pictures that are _used_ should not be deleted
>> indiscriminately. Used and usable are not the same.
>>
>>> Could you edit or comment on the page in a way that reflects what you
>>> just stated? :-)
>>
>> Hardly. The page as it is now seems to go from the point of view that
>> we should not host any pornography, then restricts itself by trying to
>> get a narrow definition of 'pornography'. For me, whether or not
>> something is pornographic is at best a secondary issue.
>>
>
> Then would the http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Censorship page be
> more appropriate?

I have now tried to set down my point of view in
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Sexual_content#Wrong_direction




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Re: [Foundation-l] Another board member statement

[Andre Engels]

On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 7:05 AM, stevertigo  wrote:
> Kat Walsh  wrote:
>> "Commons should not be a host for media that has very
>> little informational or educational value
>
> This is too broad. Confine the scope toward dealing with what does not
> belong, rather than trying to suggest that everything be purposed as
> stated above. "Prurient" and "exhibitionist" are terms which seem to
> adequately define what doesn't belong.

I disagree. Pictures should be judged on their value for Commons, not
on something else. And that value is decided by what the picture _is_
(as Kat says, informational and/or educational) not by what it _is
not_. If the best (from an informational perspective) picture we have
of a subject is prurient or exhibitionist, then I want to keep it. If
on the other hand a picture has been done very tasty, but nobody can
find a reason to call it informational, then I won't shed a tear about
it being deleted.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Another board member statement

[Andre Engels]

On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 11:13 AM, stevertigo  wrote:
> Stephen Bain wrote:
>>It is not too broad; Commons has always distinguished itself in this
>>way from general purpose photo/media hosting services like Flickr or
>>YouTube.
>
> Andre Engels wrote:
>> I disagree. Pictures should be judged on their value for Commons, not
>> on something else. And that value is decided by what the picture _is_
>> (as Kat says, informational and/or educational) not by what it _is
>> not_. If the best (from an informational perspective) picture we have
>> of a subject is prurient or exhibitionist, then I want to keep it. If
>> on the other hand a picture has been done very tasty, but nobody can
>> find a reason to call it informational, then I won't shed a tear about
>> it being deleted.
>
> I had thought Sam said it nicely when he noted that Commons won its
> independence years ago. Not all 6 million and growing media items on
> Commons are going to be used on encyclopedia, news, and book articles.
> 'Twas not long after Commons went live that people started
> understanding the wisdom in the proposer/founder's design. Normal
> Commons usage was vastly exceeding objective media "requirements," and
> an crafting an exclusive policy for a free culture (Wikimedia) project
> just didn't make sense.
>
> There are whole entire art and curated art projects on Commons which
> have little connection to other Wikimedia projects other than that
> they advance free culture by being freely licensed.

So? I am not denying that. If you think, and others think, that such
art projects belong on Commons, then by all means put them there. And
then by all means get the images for it, and keep them. If they are
useful in such a project, then they have value for Commons. Commons,
in my opinion, should hold pictures that our projects can use - but
those projects do include Commons itself. Are these art projects
educational and/or informational? I think they are. And if they are,
then the pictures in them should be considered such too.

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Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2

[Andre Engels]

On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 10:42 AM, Gerard Meijssen
 wrote:
> Hoi,
> When you look where what languages have their biggest audience, you will be
> surprised. The notion of most likely languages is either based on such
> statistics or it is only guess work. The best performance is when people can
> choose the languages involved.

However, 'letting people choose' is only workable for regular,
logged-in users. If we're talking about anonymous users, guessing is
more or less our only option. It's not an easy task, but luckily we
can choose to have 3 or 4 languages rather than just one, so there is
some margin of error. Still - geolocation usually doesn't go beyond
country level, and for some countries we already have quite a number
of languages. Usually one or a few languages will be enough to give
everyone something they can speak well, but if we show only those,
regional languages would not be shown to anyone at all, and thus miss
out on a good advertising location.


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Re: [Foundation-l] Texts deleted on French Wikisource

[Andre Engels]

On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 3:54 PM, Mike Godwin  wrote:

>> Is that possible without putting WMF lawyers in a tight spot?
>
> Sometimes. Sometimes not. (The issue is not so much putting lawyers in a
> tight spot as it is one of making WMF more vulnerable, e.g., by revealing
> defense strategies.)

Surely having a known defense strategy would beat having no defense
strategy at all, which basically is the situation now. I can accept
that the WMF cannot refuse take-down notices itself, because that
would increase its liability not only to the current claim, but to
future claims as well. But why not support the community in issuing
counter-claims, by telling them that the possibility is there, and
what the consequences are (both the positive one that the WMF is then
likely to re-instate the material, and the negative one that the one
doing the claim will be the one liable to get sued if the other party
decides to do so).

The situation now is that a single take down notice will have the WMF
take down the material, basically saying to the community "we have to
do this". How do you expect people to issue counter-claims if they
don't even know about the possibility of doing so?

> Or we can reasonably expect them to ask for real legal advice from (or
>> paid by) the WMF and _then_ accept the _known_ risk to file a
>> counter-notice.
>>
>
> What happens if they follow the legal advice from WMF and then face
> liability anyway? (This sometimes happens even when the best advice is
> given.)  WMF is not insured against the malpractice lawsuit that community
> members might bring in that case.

I'm sorry, but I am getting more and more the feeling that for the
board and the executive the foundation is more important than the
projects. To me, this answer is an example to that. Surely, it is easy
enough to put an answer in such wordings that the likelihood of losing
such a suit (in the already unlikely circumstance that such a suit
would actually be brought forward) are negligible. And because of the
remaining minute chance that there is a minute chance that the
foundation loses a non-negligible sum of money, you leave the
community on its own. It's sad. The foundation exists to support the
projects, not the projects to give the foundation a reason to exist.

> John Vandenberg writes:
>
> .. find generic legal advice ... or ...
>>
>> .. find a lawyer among the community who can help.
>>
>
> There is plenty of generic legal advice about how to respond to takedown
> notices. A little Googling will turn up some for you.

So that's the foundation's reaction? If you don't like us taking down
material, just find out yourself what can be done about that - and
then find out how that something is done that can be done about that?
You seem to be more tightly bedded with not only valid but also
invalid copyright claimers than I ever had thought possible.



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Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: change of registered TMs in Persian wikipedia

[Andre Engels]

I think that we cannot decide this for you, this is typically
something you (that is, the Persian Wikipedia community) have to
decide themselves. Having said that, the best strategy in my opinion
would be to do whatever is usual in Persian texts - which might well
be different for different trademarks.

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Re: [Foundation-l] encouraging women's participation

[Andre Engels]

On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 2:56 PM, Aphaia  wrote:
> One thing we can do would be to make contributors' names more visible.
> Translators for WMF stuff too (Ting Chen made a good point about the
> latter in Alexandria). Many websites gives clear credits to
> contributors - not only for-profit media, but websites whose content
> is mainly written by volunteers, like Global Online. In TED related
> translations, their translators' names are on the same webpage of
> video or transcript,   and much visible than in MediaWiki history
> pages.

I think that would be a great idea, although it does have some nuts
and bolts - some way or another, one will have to filter out those who
did just minor edits, for example, or people who do not want their
edits to be named. Then again, the strength of our system is that our
system doesn't need to be perfect, if it's community-editable things
will probably work out quite reasonable. I myself would be much in
favor of it, and if I did not fear the "that's not how we do things"
and "that's unwiki" crowd, I might even have considered doing a test
with it.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikisource and reCAPTCHA

[Andre Engels]

On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 4:37 PM, Samuel Klein  wrote:
> I love those proofreading features, and the new default layout for a
> book's pages and TOC.  Wikisource is becoming AWESOME.
>
> Do we have PGDP contributors who can weigh on on how similar the
> processes are?  Is there a way for us to actually merge workflows with
> them?

I am quite active on PGDP, but not on Wikisource, so I can tell about
how things work there, but not on how similar it is to Wikisource.

Typical about the PGDP workflow are an emphasis on quality above
quantity (exemplified in running not 1 or 2 but 3 rounds of human
checking of the OCR result - correctness in copying is well above
99.99% for most books) and work being done in page-size chunks rather
than whole books, chapters, paragraphs, sentences, words or whatever
else one could think of.

There's a number of people involved, although people can and often do
fill several roles for one book.

First, there is the Content Provider (CP).

He or she first contacts Project Gutenberg to get a clearance. This is
basically a statement from PG that they believe the work is out of
copyright. In general, US copyright is what is taken into account for
this, although there are also servers in other countries (Canada and
Australia as far as I know), which publish some material that is out
of copyright in those countries even if it is not in the US. Such
works do not go through PGDP, but may go through its sister projects
DPCanada or DPEurope.

Next, the CP will scan the book, or harvest the scans from the web,
and run OCR on them. They will usually also write a description of the
book for the proofreaders, so those can see whether they are
interested. The scans and the OCR are uploaded to the PGDP servers,
and the project is handed over to the Project Manager (PM) (although
in most cases CP and PM are the same person).

The Project Manager is responsible for the project in the next stages.
This means:
* specifying the rules and guidelines that are to be followed when
proofreading the book, at least there where those differ from the
standard guidelines
* answer questions by proofreaders
* keep the good and bad words lists up to date. These are used in
wordcheck (a kind of spellchecker) so that words are considered
correct or incorrect by it

The project then goes through a number of rounds. The standard number
is 5 rounds, of which 3 are proofreading and 2 are formatting, but it
is possible for the PM to make a request to skip one or more rounds or
go through a round twice.

In the first three, proofreading, rounds, a proofreader requests one
page at a time, compares the OCR output (or the previous proofreader's
output) with the scan, and changes the text to correspond to the scan.
In the first round (P1) everyone can do this, the second round (P2) is
only accessible to those who have been at the site some time and done
a certain amount of pages (21 days and 300 pages, if I recall
correctly), for the third round (P3) one has to qualify. For
qualification one's P2 pages are checked (using the subsequent edits
of P3). The norm is that one should not leave more than one error per
five pages.

After the three (or two or four) rounds of proofing, the foofing
(formatting) rounds are gone through. In these, again a proofreader
(now called formatter) requests and edits one page at the time, but
where the proofreaders dealt with copying the text as precisely as
possible, the formatter will deal with all other aspects of the work.
They denote when text is italic, bold or otherwise in a special
format, which texts are chapter headers, how tables are laid out,
etcetera. Here there are two rounds, although the second one can be
skipped or a round duplicated, like before. The first formatting round
(F1) has the same entrance restrictions as P2, F2 has a qualification
system comparable to P3.

After this, the PM gives the book on to the Post-Processor (PP).
Again, this is often the same person, but not always. In some other
cases, the PP has already been appointed, in others it will sit in a
pool until picked up by a willing PP. The PP does all that is needed
to get from the F2 output to something that can be put on Project
Gutenberg: they recombine the pages into one work, move stuff around
where needed, change the formatters' mark-up in something that's more
appropriate for reading, in most cases generate an HTML version,
etcetera.

A PP that has already post-processed several books in a good way can
then send it to PG. In other cases, the book will then go to the PPV
(Post-Processing Verifier), an experienced PP, who checks the PP's
work, and gives them hints on what should be improved or makes those
improvements themselves.

Finally, if the PP or PPV sends the book to PG, there is a whitewasher
who checks the book once again; however, that is outside the scope of
this (already too long) description, because it belongs to PG's
process rather than PGDP's.

To stop the rounds from overcrowding with books

Re: [Foundation-l] ASCAP comes out against "copyleft"

[Andre Engels]

On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 2:07 AM, Jeffrey Peters
<17pet...@cardinalmail.cua.edu> wrote:

> Thank you for clarifying. I put forth another email based on the expectation
> of the point you just made (so, thus, I am sorry for assuming you were
> speaking against the law and not in support of the license itself).

We can only go with the information we have. And the information in
this case was the actual letter. That letter _nowhere_ specifies what
law they are fighting for or against. Instead, it says that they are
fighting against groups that "promote Copyleft in order to undermine
our Copyright." When _I_ read that, I get the impression that they are
fighting against copyleft. Clearly, others have understood the same
thing. Apparently to you the combination of having that understanding
and being in favor of copyleft is enough for you to attack people and
flame them to death. I find that worrysome.

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Re: [Foundation-l] ASCAP comes out against "copyleft"

[Andre Engels]

On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 12:17 PM,   wrote:

> When I go to YouTube, the number of videos which are some bad amateur
> singer trying to sing some good song far outweigh the number of original 
> videos
> of that song/group.  The amount of free content in music, in general is
> rapidly approaching or perhaps past par with all professional music ever 
> created
> to this day.

A video of an amateur singer trying to sing a song is also a copyright
violation - they are publishing the song, and do not own the copyright
on either text or melody. They probably won't be prosecuted over it,
but legally they are violating copyright.

Copyright laws were mostly created in a time when situations were
different. There used to be a group of content creators, and a general
public. Copyright was mostly a right from one content creator to
another - you should not publish the book, song, whatever that I own
the copyright on. The public at large did not have the means to
publish, so copyright laws might as well not apply to them. What they
could do was so inconsequential (write over a chapter of a book, sing
a song in presence of their coworkers) that nobody minded exceptions
being made for them.

In the last few decades this changed. Automatic copying became cheaper
and simpler with photocopiers, tape recorders, video recorders
becoming mass products. Still, their impact was relatively minor.
Although copyright industry saw these things as very problematic, they
were mostly used to make single or few copies. Few people would make
hundreds of copies of a single work to send them out. Fewer still did
so for money. Many more people had the ability to become content
publishers, but most of them did not use it.

Then came the internet, enabling every single one of us to make our
work available on an unprecedented scale. And with that the borderline
between public and content publishers really came down. And with that,
copyright became applied to situations totally different from the ones
for which it was created. It used to be clear that if you put a poem
in a book that sold in the shops, part of the proceedings should go to
the poet. It used to be clear that nobody had anything to do with it
if you put that same poem in your diary. But now, people are making
their diaries (blogs) available for everyone, without getting any kind
of compensation for the effort. Large amounts of non-professional,
non-commercial publishing to potentially huge audiences is a situation
that copyright laws did not foresee. Unfortunately, instead of
realizing that the effect of copyright laws, intended to protect the
rights of one commercial publisher against another are draconian when
applied to such a different situation, where the average citizen is
the one being affected, the main reaction seems to be to make the laws
even stricter.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Your abuse of moderator status

[Andre Engels]

On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 3:32 PM, Jeffrey Peters
<17pet...@cardinalmail.cua.edu> wrote:
> Austin,
>
> Maybe you didn't realize but I am the top organizer of Wikiversity. Gerard's
> call for political activism against that organization is completely
> unacceptable and harms projects like my own that have to deal with large
> institutions and the rest.
>
> If you want to claim that I should be moderated, then push that fringe
> political view as you just did, then there is something very wrong here.
> Your statements about the legality have been 100% wrong, to an embarrassing
> extent. These two combined represent a very major problem.
>
> The Foundation-l is for Foundation discussion, and not for pushing fringe
> views that would embarrass our projects. You do realize that, right?
> Moderators serve only as long as they enforce that, and are you going to
> demonstrate in the above that you will be doing 100% opposite of your job?
>
> Sincerely,
> Jeffrey Peters
> aka Ottava Rima
>


1. My name is André, not Austin
2. The first one to call for moderation was you
3. If copyleft is embarassing wikiversity, then I propose you leave
the Wikimedia Foundation, because it happens to be  one of our
principles
4. I did not abuse my moderator status, i donáf [pyojh[- n[  ¾»bnyttfg


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Re: [Foundation-l] Your abuse of moderator status

[Andre Engels]

On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 4:42 PM, Austin Hair  wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 3:44 PM, Andre Engels  wrote:
>> On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 3:32 PM, Jeffrey Peters
>> <17pet...@cardinalmail.cua.edu> wrote:
>>> Austin,
>>>
>>> Maybe you didn't realize but I am the top organizer of Wikiversity. Gerard's
>>> call for political activism against that organization is completely
>>> unacceptable and harms projects like my own that have to deal with large
>>> institutions and the rest.
>>>
>>> If you want to claim that I should be moderated, then push that fringe
>>> political view as you just did, then there is something very wrong here.
>>> Your statements about the legality have been 100% wrong, to an embarrassing
>>> extent. These two combined represent a very major problem.
>>>
>>> The Foundation-l is for Foundation discussion, and not for pushing fringe
>>> views that would embarrass our projects. You do realize that, right?
>>> Moderators serve only as long as they enforce that, and are you going to
>>> demonstrate in the above that you will be doing 100% opposite of your job?
>>>
>>> Sincerely,
>>> Jeffrey Peters
>>> aka Ottava Rima
>>>
>>
>>
>> 1. My name is André, not Austin
>> 2. The first one to call for moderation was you
>> 3. If copyleft is embarassing wikiversity, then I propose you leave
>> the Wikimedia Foundation, because it happens to be  one of our
>> principles
>> 4. I did not abuse my moderator status, i donáf [pyojh[- n[  ¾»bnyttfg
>
> Hm, I suspect he meant to send that to me.  Good reply though,
> Andre—I'm happy to let you field list administrator e-mails any day.

I'm not sure whether I am though. This message plus the discussion
that was the base of it has cost me 50 Euros in things I broke
throwing them through my room, plus a severe loss of feeling of
self-worth. I don't think that's worth it.



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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikisource and reCAPTCHA

[Andre Engels]

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 12:42 PM, Samuel J Klein  wrote:

> < PGDP has a very strict and arduous workflow...  The
>> result is quality, however only the text is sent downstream.
>
> Why not send images and text downstream?

Because PGDP produces for Project Gutenberg, which publishes text and
html versions, not scans.

> Perhaps we have competing interfaces / workflows.  but I expect we
> would be glad to share 99.99%-verified high-quality
> texts-unified-with-images if it were easy for both projects to
> identify that combination of quality and comprehensive data... and
> would be glad to share metadata so that a WS editor could quickly
> check to see if there's a PGDP effort covering an edition of the text
> she is proofing; and vice-versa.

For the PGDP side, it's possible to check at PGDP itself (one will
need to get a login for that, but it's as free and unencumbered as the
same on Wikimedia), but there is also a useful superset at
http://www.dprice48.freeserve.co.uk/GutIP.html (warning! I'm talking
of a 7 megabyte html file here). This contains, sorted by author
(books by more than one author given multiple times) all books that
have a clearance for Project Gutenberg.

For cooperation, one idea could be to get the PGDP material either
after the P3 stage or after the F2 stage. As long as a project is
still active, it isn't hard at all to get both the text and the scan
pages.


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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikisource and reCAPTCHA

[Andre Engels]

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 1:24 PM, John Vandenberg  wrote:

> Good question! ;-)
> Storage is one issue.
> It would be interesting to estimate the storage requirements of
> Wikisource if we had produced the PGDP etexts.

I think it is the main reason; however, a back-of-the-envelope
calculation (20.000 books, 300 pages, 100k per page; the first is
quite a good estimate, the other two could be a factor 2 off) tells me
that the total storage requirements would be measured in 100s of
gigabytes - which means that one or two state of the art hard disks
should be enough to contain it.

> They don't have an 'export' function, and I doubt they are going to
> build one so that they can interoperate with us.
>
> My 'import' function was a scraper; not something that can be used in
> a large scale without their permission.

On the other hand, if you _do_ get permission, there might well be a
more elegant ftp-based method.

> The wikisource workflow is a *symptom* of it being a "wiki", with all
> that entails.  There is a lot more than merely the workflow which
> distinguishes the two projects.

Certainly. I think the deeper-laying difference is one of attitude,
which as you write is for WS a symptom of being a wiki. As a wiki, WS
uses such attitudes/principles as "make it easy for people to
contribute", "publish early, publish often", "let people do what they
want, as long as it's a step, however small forward". PGDP on the
other hand derives its attitudes/principles from a wish to create high
quality end products. As such it uses "check and doublecheck", "limit
the amount of projects we work on", "quality control" and "division of
tasks".


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Re: [Foundation-l] Boycott in a...@wiki

[Andre Engels]

On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 4:43 PM, Muhammad Yahia  wrote:
>> Acehnese Wikipedia is ready to boycott Wikipedia if there is fatwa from
>> competent ulama.
>
>
> In addition to trying to have a dialog with them and explain NPOV and the
> rest of the pillars, I think someone should explain that the money that made
> it possible for them to post such a notice actually comes from Wikipedia and
> its volunteers...

Wouldn't it be better to explain to them that they are part of
Wikipedia, so they cannot boycott Wikipedia without boycotting
themselves? Although of course if they stick to their point, they have
the right to fork.


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Re: [Foundation-l] Boycott in a...@wiki

[Andre Engels]

On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 7:25 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 16 July 2010 17:58, Excirial  wrote:
>
>> If a culture sees these images as highly offensive, and if the main
>> complement of editors / readers agrees with this i wouldn't object to such a
>> rule, as long as it remained in their local Wiki, with no attempts to force
>> it on other wikipedia's. Every culture has its own inherent bias towards
>> certain topics, and i don't believe that we should try to enforce a certain
>> "Morale" on other people - in other words, country specific Wikipedia's
>> should be granted some lenience in setting their own rules.
>
>
> No, that's completely incorrect. Wikipedias are per language, not per
> country, and no country owns the wiki in its language. Neutral point
> of view is not local point of view.

So? Is every single rule on Wikipedia completely determined by NPOV?
If not, then there apparently is some leeway, some possibility of
having different rules. And if that is the case, then isn't the
Wikipedia thing to do to have those be decided by the local community?


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Re: [Foundation-l] Boycott in a...@wiki

[Andre Engels]

On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 8:14 PM, David Gerard  wrote:

> That there is ambiguity at the edges does not disprove NPOV. Day fades
> into night, but they're different things. This template is blatant
> advocacy to violate NPOV, and indeed to do so across all Wikimedia
> sites. They had it up on the main page, too.

So? Apparently the fact that there exists some  template that is not
NPOV means that we should  be forcing our morals on others and not
give them any leniency?

> It's reasonably clear that there is a deep and serious discussion very
> much needed regarding neutral point of view on ace:wp.

And because there is a problem with neutral point of view somewhere we
should forbid everyone to make a choice for their own?

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Re: [Foundation-l] Boycott in a...@wiki

[Andre Engels]

On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 8:15 PM, Pavlo Shevelo  wrote:
>> So? Is every single rule on Wikipedia completely determined by NPOV?
>
> As to the best of my understanding
> Each and every single rule on Wikipedia is completely determined by
> WP:5P (and NPOV is one of them) in sense that no rule may contradict
> to 5P.

May not contradict.  That's something far different from being
completely determined by it. Apparently accordingly to you and others
in this thread, not just a rule to not include Mohammed depiction but
any rule in Wikipedia whatsoever that is based on morality would go
coutner NPOV. I disagree with that.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Boycott in a...@wiki

[Andre Engels]

On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 8:35 PM, Bod Notbod  wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 7:24 PM, Andre Engels  wrote:
>
>>> As to the best of my understanding
>>> Each and every single rule on Wikipedia is completely determined by
>>> WP:5P (and NPOV is one of them) in sense that no rule may contradict
>>> to 5P.
>>
>> May not contradict.  That's something far different from being
>> completely determined by it.
>
> I disagree, although it depends on your definition of "may". My
> reading of "no rule may contradict" is that contradiction is
> unacceptable in which case you are indeed "completely determined by
> it".

We agree on the definition of "may", but we disagree on the definition
of "determined". When I said "completely determined by NPOV", I meant
that NPOV decides on exactly how the rule should look. That there
would be only one decision in each case covered by the rule that
conforms to NPOV. What you are talking about is not determination but
compliance. Every rule has to be compliant with NPOV - but some rules
could be different, or even completely opposite, without causing
serious problems with it.

>> Apparently accordingly to you and others > in this thread, not just a rule 
>> to not include Mohammed depiction but
>> any rule in Wikipedia whatsoever that is based on morality would go
>
> But this I agree with. Whether something is forbidden or not is a
> product of time and place. In the UK (where I live) it was once
> acceptable to burn people alive. In modern Britain that would get you
> into trouble. If I were to travel back in time I'm not sure I could
> argue that my position on witches was "neutral" and therefore they
> should put down that flaming torch. I think I would have to seek a
> different form of reasoning.

So, to get back to the original question: Is it or is it not
acceptable to you that the community of one Wikipedia decides that
certain pictures will not be shown on their wiki? And is it or is it
not acceptable that they use the morality of the nationality or other
group that most of them belong to in doing so?

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Re: [Foundation-l] Boycott in a...@wiki

[Andre Engels]

On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 11:14 PM, Mark Williamson  wrote:
> Andre, I personally don't have a problem with the mere existence of
> the template. I have a huge problem with it appearing at the top of
> the mainpage of a Wikipedia.

And the reason for telling this to me is what?


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Re: [Foundation-l] Privacy policy, statistics and rankings

[Andre Engels]

On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 9:13 AM, emijrp  wrote:

> Also, reading the Privacy Policy[10] of the Wikimedia Foundation, you can
> see:
>
> User contributions are also aggregated and publicly available. User
> contributions are aggregated according to their registration and login
> status. Data on user contributions, such as the times at which users edited
> and the number of edits they have made, are publicly available via user
> contributions lists, and in aggregated forms published by other users.
>
> The privacy policy is clear. Your number of edits is public. And it can be
> published in aggregated forms by other uses. And if you edit Wikipedia, you
> accept the Privacy Policy. Also, on the top of the Privacy Policy page you
> can read:
>
> The content of this page is an official policy approved by the Wikimedia
> Foundation Board of Trustees. This policy may not be circumvented, eroded,
> or ignored on local Wikimedia projects.
>
> But now, German Wikipedia has an "official local privacy policy" which is
> opposed to that.

No. The privacy policy tells which information, and under which
circumstances *may* be divulged. It is not against the policy to
provide less information than that, only to provide more information.
At least, that is how I always read the privacy policy.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Movement roles letter, Feb 2012

[Andre Engels]

On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 8:45 AM, Mathias Damour
 wrote:
> Why would both "Associations" and "Affiliates" both need to use Wikimedia
> marks ?

Because they might feel a need to identify themselves as part of
Wikimedia. Yes, there is much talk about use of Wikimedia trademarks
here, but I think that that is because it is the major, if not only,
legal consequence of association or affiliance. If an organization has
no need for Wikimedia marks, the necessity of it being an associate or
affiliate would be much less.

> Does OpenStreetMap need it if it gets some grants from the WMF ?

What makes you think they do?

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Re: [Foundation-l] Controversial content software status

[Andre Engels]

On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 7:29 PM, Marc Riddell  wrote:

> Phoebe, does this sound familiar? "We want you to imagine a world in which
> every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That
> is our commitment". "We're in it for the long haul". (From: "Ten things you
> may not know about Wikipedia")
>
> Should this read, "...the sum of all knowledge (except any controversial
> content that may upset some people."

No. Re-read what it says there. _Can_, not _must_. We are there to
freely provide knowledge _to those who want that knowledge_. If
someone does not want some knowledge, we are not there to force them
to read and watch it nevertheless.



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Re: [Foundation-l] Plethora of overlapping Categories

[Andre Engels]

On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 11:44 AM, Rui Correia  wrote:

> I know I am in the wrong place for this. Normally this kind of thing would/
> should go on the "discuss" pages, but category discuss pages don't attract
> much attention.
>
> If you consult Categories: Sailors/ Navigators/ Explorers, you will see that
> quite a number of people are listed in these arguably (or not) overlapping
> categories for the same activity/ feat/ achievement.
>
> To put it into perspective, it makes sense to list a person in the
> categories of [[poet]], [[playwright]], etc, but in each of these categories
> such people would be different 'personae', with different works that make
> them merit being classified a poet or a playwright.
>
> On the other hand, to list - for example - Henry the Navigator/ Captain Cook
> as [[sailor]], [[navigator]], [[explorer]] looks odd as the activity
> undertaken to merit being given that title is only one. This is like calling
> a farmer a tiller/ sower/ weeder/ harvester/ etc.

Perhaps correct for sailor and navigator, but explorer is a different
thing. There's many sailors who are not explorers (because they only
sailed to places already known), and many explorers who are not
sailors (because they did their exploration by land (or in rare cases
by air)). Henry the Navigator belongs in none of these categories, by
the way, he neither sailed nor navigated nor explored himself, but
sent out and supported others who did these things.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Amicus Brief Filed in Golan v. Holder: Fighting for the Public Domain

[Andre Engels]

On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 11:07 AM, teun spaans  wrote:


> None of these 5 seem to qualify as fitting into the gap of death of the
> author between 50 and 70 years ago, though for File:Alicebeggar.png and
> File:AliceSilvy.png: this is not 100% sure - if the artist was 20 years old
> in 1861, and became 91, he died in 1942, just 69 years ago.
>

You don't have to do any guesswork, as for both of these the author is
given, including year of death. Alicebeggar.png is by Charles Dodgson,
better known as Lewis Carroll, died 1898, and AliceSilvy.png by Camille
Silvy, died 1910.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Privacy concerns

[Andre Engels]

On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 12:03 PM, David Gerard  wrote:

> The relevant paragraph appears to be
> http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sokpop#Ontsnappingsclausule
>
> The Google translation is "In order to be unblocked, the person behind
> the corresponding IP address is a letter (paper) to a community trust
> staff."
>
> Does it actually mean "staff" in Dutch? Does it imply *in any way*
> that the person to contact is officially sanctioned to deal with
> private information?
>

The Dutch word is "medewerker" which most closely translates to "coworker",
it does not have official connotations.


>
> http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blokkeringsmeldingen#Ontsnappingsclausule
>
> The Google translation for this one appears to quite definitely be
> trying to imply official status. Does it carry such implications in
> the original Dutch?
>

 I don't think so, but to be sure I would want to know from which wording
you are drawing these implications.


> It doesn't matter if Huib was blocked for good reason. This still
> looks very like a privacy disaster in the making, and the Foundation,
> and particularly the staff relating to privacy concerns, need to look
> into it very closely.
>

I do think it's a bad policy - apart from the privacy concerns I see no good
reason for it either. It's not like it's easier to check whether someone is
using a sock puppet when we know who they are (that's a part of the policy
that I DO agree with: that when someone who has abused sock puppets is
allowed re-entry in the project, they may not use sock puppets any more even
non-abusively).

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Re: [Foundation-l] List of Wikimedia projects and languages

[Andre Engels]

On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 11:32 AM, emijrp  wrote:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinct_language
>
> "It is believed that 90% of the circa 7,000 languages currently spoken in
> the world will have become extinct by 2050, as the world's language system
> has reached a crisis and is dramatically restructuring."
>
> How is Wikipedia going to affect this language disaster? WMF 2050 goals
> ideas : ) ?
>

Assuming your ideas of affecting this would be through getting projects in
these languages, I think there is very little we can or should do. The very
factors that make them likely to go extinct soon are also the factors that
make them not very suitable to inclusion in our projects: They are in the
great majority languages with a small number of speakers and without a
written tradition. They are also mostly spoken by villages and tribes that
until recently lived in relative isolation (in regions that have been
influenced by nation states for several centuries like Europe or eastern
China, most languages incapable of surviving for a few generations more have
already gone extinct). All of these seem contra-indications against having a
viable Wikimedia project. Which does not mean we should say no to them if
they knock on our door, but I think it would be a waste of resources to
actively promote them. Those resources I think would be better put to
languages that have a larger user base, but a relatively much too small
Wikimedia and general internet presence. That is, I'd rather work on getting
20 or 50 of the 1500 Niger-Congo languages to have large, useful, active
Wikipedias in 10 years than on getting 500 of them started.

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Re: [Foundation-l] They do make or break reputations

[Andre Engels]

On Sat, Jul 16, 2011 at 10:49 AM, Krinkle  wrote:

> I haven't fully read the context of this thread, but something that
> did cross my
> mind recently, why do we treat YouTube-links different from other
> links here?
>
> Aren't most of our sources and external linked websites atleast as
> copyrighted
> as YouTube ?
>
> Consider links to IMDb for example, the content we link to, through
> that, is all copyrighted!
>
> Or just a good old "Official website"-link on an article about person
> X or
> organization Y, likely also "All rights reserved."
>
> YouTube atleast is partially (and soon more) under a CC-license.
>

There's a big difference - those are copyrighted _by the person who put the
material on the web site_. On YouTube the videos are often uploaded by
people who do not own the copyright, nor are connected to them. It's not
copyright that is the problem, it is copyright violations.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Greg Kohs and Peter Damian

[Andre Engels]

On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 11:25 PM, John Vandenberg  wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 8:12 AM, Risker  wrote:
> >  I have a hard
> > time understanding why people think chapters are representative of the
> > community.  They're representative of people who like to join chapters.
>
> I agree with your premise here, however, chapter board members are
> elected by their membership (afaik, that occurs in all chapters), so
> their membership has the obvious recourse of electing someone else.
>


Hardly. I don't know what my chapter's opinion was in selecting the
chapter-selected members, I don't know who from the board members did
anything about it anyway, and besides the board has been chosen for other
things they're good at than selecting board members.

So if I don't agree with the chapter-selected board members, my recourse is
to vote down board members of my own chapter that may or may not have been
involved in the choice of my chapter to support or not support that board
member, disregarding other, probably more important factors to choose that
chapter board member. Doesn't sound to me like a very high of accountability
to me or other chapter members...

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Re: [Foundation-l] Pending Changes development update: September 27

[Andre Engels]

On Tue, Aug 2, 2011 at 6:06 PM, Keegan Peterzell wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 2, 2011 at 10:47 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter  >wrote:
> >
> > Did the idea of the second trial get any momentum in the end of the day?
> > As a en.wp newbie, I could only find the poll that the trial has been
> > discontinued, but nothing after that.
> >
> > Cheers
> > Yaroslav
> >
> > ___
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> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
> Nope.
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Pending_changes/Request_for_Comment_February_2011&oldid=428618051#Closure
>

So, the conclusion is that after months of hard work for getting this
working for the English Wikipedia it still failed. I guess I should be happy
that my opinion to implement it on nl: failed too then? But how come it does
work on de:?


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Re: [Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced

[Andre Engels]

On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 11:54 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:

> The selection of labels isn't supposed to be unbiased. Users select
> whichever labels they want. All you have to do is make sure it's easy
> for people to create new labels if none of the existing ones fit their
> needs, and you're sorted.
>

That won't work, for several reasons. First, the proposal as made in the
referendum talks about 5 to 10 categories. Thus, after 10 people have
created their labels, there are none left. Second, even if they create
labels, there needs to be someone to do the labelling - asking someone who
doesn't want to see certain pictures to select all such pictures himself by
hand doesn't seem to be a very effective way of working if he really does
not want to see the pictures.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced

[Andre Engels]

On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 5:04 PM, Risker  wrote:

> On 5 September 2011 11:02, Marc A. Pelletier  wrote:
>
> > On 05/09/2011 10:55 AM, Andrew Gray wrote:
> > > As to why no-one is distributing a "filtered" version of Wikipedia, I
> > > think that falls more under the general heading of "where are the
> > > major third-party reusers that anyone actually cares about?" - the
> > > non-existence of a commercial filtered version is less of a surprise
> > > when we consider the dearth of commercial packaged versions at all...
> >
> > You'd think a "safe" version would be a valuable service that many would
> > be willing to pay for, given the hordes of people beating down our doors
> > demanding just that...
> >
> > oh, wait.
> >
> >
>
> They already exist, and have for years.  We call them "mirrors.
>

Yes, but most mirrors are just that - mirrors. As far as I know, there is no
Wikipedia mirror that actually contains extra functionality - like improved
searching, wisiwyg editing, automatic translation, image filtering, or
whatever else one could think of.


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Re: [Foundation-l] The systematic and codified bias against non-Western articles on Wikinews

[Andre Engels]

On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 1:56 PM, Thomas Morton
wrote:


> But as Tom say, online media has quickly found that the traditional
> editorial process doesn't work so well on the internet. On the other hand
> the net does allow very quick rewrite & expansion for a developing story.
>
> It's this last step that WN perhaps hasn't learned or adopted yet.
>

That sounds weird. Basically what you're saying is that Wikinews is less
wiki-like than traditional news venues.

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Re: [Foundation-l] The systematic and codified bias against non-Western articles on Wikinews

[Andre Engels]

On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 7:00 PM, Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote:

> Can not you just introduce a flag of a "trusted editor", similar to an
> autoreviewer? I mean, if the news creator is a en.wp administrator most
> probably he/she is not a vandal trying to post junk in the Google News. Why
> this message should have been reviewed at all?
>

I'd go even further - Wikinews was born from the wiki movement, wasn't it?
Having extensive, multi-tier checks before something is accepted is
decidedly unwiki. The wiki way is to assume that not just hardened
wikimedians but also most though not all newbies are well-intending. The
wiki way is to say 'yes' quickly, but with the revert button easily
reachable.

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Re: [Foundation-l] PG rating

[Andre Engels]

On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 6:59 AM, Stephen Bain  wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 1:24 PM, John Vandenberg  wrote:
> >
> > Are there any encyclopedia which have been
> > classified/banned/bowlderised by any country in the last 50 years?
> >
> > If Wikipedia is a quality encyclopedia, most rating agencies would
> > decide that the content is appropriate for all ages.
>
> Britannica never had authors putting pictures of their own genitals
> throughout each volume "because NOTCENSORED".
>

Neither has Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not censored, but it does still select
the pictures it puts on pages based on relevance and quality. There are few
pages where pictures of 'my genitals' are applicable, and unless they are
very good photographers, there are better alternatives also on those pages.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Hypothetical project rebranding Wikimedia

[Andre Engels]

On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 4:47 PM, Tobias Oelgarte <
tobias.oelga...@googlemail.com> wrote:

> Does rebranding change anything then the "name" or "appearance"?
>
> Or better asked: Does it help to solve any of our real problems?
>

It might be useful in reducing confusion - when saying that one is on the
board of Wikimedia, undoubtedly many people will think they heard/you meant
Wikipedia. And saying 'Wikimedia' when meaning 'Mediawiki' is something I
have even seen insiders guilty of. I don't think it's enough to counteract
the intrinsic costs of rebranding, but there definitely is some use in it.

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Re: [Foundation-l] On curiosity, cats and scapegoats

[Andre Engels]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 6:37 PM, Marcin Cieslak  wrote:


> Can you help me in understanding in why such a user control feature may
> possibly bring more people to Wikipedia?


By giving people who do not want to run the risk of seeing certain images
that they disagree with one less reason to _not_ go to Wikipedia.


> I am especially interested in
> countries where access to information is restricted by the environment,
> for example by governments, whether the same reasoning applies to them
> as to less restrictive regions.
>

Probably, although there might be additional cases where they want to block
images, not because they themselves disagree with them, but because
possession on their computer might be illegal for them.


> I am asking this because I happened to grow up and have first 8 years
> of my education in such an environment and I still remember those times
> and how we approached the limited access to information.
>

What was that approach and why does it have to do with the issue at hand? I
don't suppose that you approached it by shying away from any source of
information that offered you the option of either getting everything you
were still allowed or voluntarily constricting yourself even further.

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Re: [Foundation-l] On Wikinews

[Andre Engels]

On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 8:17 AM, Ray Saintonge  wrote:

> This is an interesting point.  In some ways Wikipedia has so fetishised
> reliability that there isn't much room for oral histories and memoirs.
> We can contact and communicate with each other by electronic means far
> more efficiently than ever.  The victim has been that long informative
> letters and diaries have become a thing of the past.  When that happens
> who becomes custodian of those memories? When we begin to rely entirely
> on published sources we become so much more dependent on some kind of
> official record. When we reject the memories of those who were there as
> insufficiently substantiated where do those memories go? The old foot
> soldier who attended the big battle was never much about book learnin'.
> The experience may have been too painful to remember and talk about
> before, and finally in his 90s after much prompting from his
> great-grandson he gives his only narrative, which his grandson duly
> records on inferior equipment. I'm sure we should be able to find a
> better response than, "Sorry, this is not a reliable source."
>
> The narrative may be flawed and biased.  Similar narratives by others
> who were there may be flawed and biased too, but each in its own way.
> There are no news reporters there when the men of a community decide to
> get together to build a playground or other needed community facility.
> Is their experience so unreliable? How do we describe the episteme of
> today's world without falling into gnosis?
>

Even if we would allow such as a resource, doing so would hardly do justice
to these reports. It would be possible to get one or two facts from such a
report, and I think it should be possible to do so, but publishing the
report either as a whole or in a complete summary would be problematic both
from a "No Original Research" perspective and from a relevancy perspective.
In the end, it is Wikipedia's task to make existing knowledge more widely
available, not to create new knowledge.

There should definitely be places where this material belongs, and in many
cases there are (I think of local historical societies, for example). The
question is, whether or not the WMF should aim to have such a place itself.
I have my doubts about it, because it does not look like an area where our
strongpoint (massive volunteer cooperation) has much additionial value, but
if the answer is yes, I think it should be as a new project - including it
in any of the existing projects would widen its scope so far that it would
water it down.

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Re: [Foundation-l] 86% of german users disagree with the introduction of the personal image filter

[Andre Engels]

On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 7:56 PM, Tobias Oelgarte <
tobias.oelga...@googlemail.com> wrote:


> You would have to proof that your facts are indeed true. But if you
> accept it as a huge difference between cultures, how can you impose a
> filter for a culture that doesn't need it or wants it?
>

Just like a normal addition to Mediawiki: Those who don't want to use it,
don't have to.


> How would you expect to find a good compromise in decisions on what to
> filter and what not? Do you intend to put an extremist conservative Arab
> and and the most liberal German inside the same room, close the door, go
> away, come back after two weeks and look if they could find a compromise
> about Yes or No? How should this work?
>

Quite simple: add one filter for each, and describe for each what they
filter, then let every user for themself decide whether to filter the one,
the other, neither or both.


> The referendum showed that cultural neutrality is important for the
> voters. But how do you think to find a compromise between hell and
> heaven, without having hell and heaven inside the discussions at commons
> at earth?
>

See above - if your filters are not almost the same, don't use the same
filter, but create two different ones.

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Re: [Foundation-l] 86% of german users disagree with the introduction of the personal image filter

[Andre Engels]

On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 9:13 PM, Tobias Oelgarte <
tobias.oelga...@googlemail.com> wrote:

> I would not have any problems if we would not play in the hands of
> censors (local ISPs, a simple proxy, regimes, institutions, ...) by
> actually labeling content as objectionable. Which gives away the control
> over the content by the user itself, while no one would invest the money
> if he would need to label the content itself.
>

So how do you expect those censors to use this?


> >> How would you expect to find a good compromise in decisions on what to
> >> filter and what not? Do you intend to put an extremist conservative Arab
> >> and and the most liberal German inside the same room, close the door, go
> >> away, come back after two weeks and look if they could find a compromise
> >> about Yes or No? How should this work?
> >>
> > Quite simple: add one filter for each, and describe for each what they
> > filter, then let every user for themself decide whether to filter the
> one,
> > the other, neither or both.
> You should know that there are hundreds of phobias, cultural conflicts
> and other categories of possibly objectionable content. Do you expect us
> to manage all this categories of filtering, or would you say that it
> will be narrowed down to be user friendly and manageable, while leaving
> out some categories and ignore the complies of some minorities?
> >
> >> The referendum showed that cultural neutrality is important for the
> >> voters. But how do you think to find a compromise between hell and
> >> heaven, without having hell and heaven inside the discussions at commons
> >> at earth?
> >>
> > See above - if your filters are not almost the same, don't use the same
> > filter, but create two different ones.
> >
>
> See above at my comment. Maybe we should put this questioning together
> as one fact.
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] 86% of german users disagree with the introduction of the personal image filter

[Andre Engels]

Sorry, I dropped some hot food on me as I wrote this, and then apparently
accidentily hit sent.

On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 9:57 PM, Andre Engels  wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 9:13 PM, Tobias Oelgarte <
> tobias.oelga...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> I would not have any problems if we would not play in the hands of
>> censors (local ISPs, a simple proxy, regimes, institutions, ...) by
>> actually labeling content as objectionable. Which gives away the control
>> over the content by the user itself, while no one would invest the money
>> if he would need to label the content itself.
>>
>
> So how do you expect those censors to use this?
>
>
 You should know that there are hundreds of phobias, cultural conflicts
>> and other categories of possibly objectionable content. Do you expect us
>> to manage all this categories of filtering, or would you say that it
>> will be narrowed down to be user friendly and manageable, while leaving
>> out some categories and ignore the complies of some minorities?
>>
>
I'd say, drop the idea that the filter is supposed to be perfect. A filter
that is little-used can get a rough content first time around, preferably
specified by the person asking for the filter, then people using the filter
can suggest adding or removing images. Volunteers can go and work on the
filters if they want, but if they don't, the filter will just be changed by
such suggestions.

Then again, there is the alternative of only including filters with at least
a certain amount of expected usage. I see no problem with not having a
filter for everyone who asks for it. I don't think that doing things
perfectly and not doing them at all are the only options.

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Re: [Foundation-l] 86% of german users disagree with the introduction of the personal image filter

[Andre Engels]

On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 10:09 PM, Tobias Oelgarte <
tobias.oelga...@googlemail.com> wrote:

> This would imply that the referendum indeed asked the wrong questions.
> If all would have equal values, then i must wonder about the strong
> difference in result. We have a referendum which points out that many
> are in favor of this feature (important) and we have a Meinungsbild at
> the German Wikipedia closed with 86% against the filter. This is a huge
> difference. If it is not based on the fact that cultures are so
> different, what would be the reason? The questions and the interpretation?
>

There might be a difference because of the differences in voting
requirements - those were very low for the 'referendum', so there would be a
possibly large percentage of people who aren't hardcore Wikimedians, but
people who are mostly readers and at most occasionally edit. On the other
hand, this would also increase the chance of having sockpuppeting. Another
reason could indeed be the questioning: Opponents of the plan could have not
voted on the referendum because the whole issue seemed like it had been
decided anyway. Then again, proponents might be less likely to vote in the
German poll because it is non-anonymous in an environment which seemed
opposed to their point of view.

It was just an example (a literal allegation). The current proposal (as
> represented in side the referendum) did not assume any cultural
> difference. My thoughts on this is, how we want to create filter
> categories which are cultural neutral. One common (easy to describe)
> example is nudity. What will be considered nude by an catholic priest
> and an common atheist, both from Germany. Will they come to the same
> conclusion if they look an swimsuits? I guess we can assume that they
> would have different opinions and a need for discussion.
>

As said before, just get different categories, and let people choose among
them. The priest could then choose to block "full nudity", "female
toplessness", "people in underwear" and "people in swimwear", but not
"images containing naked bellies" or "unveiled women", whereas the atheist
could for example choose to only block "photographs of sexual organs" and
watch the rest.


> Would we need this discussion until now and for all images?  No we did
> not. We discussed about the articles and would be a good illustration
> for the subject. But now we don't talk about if something is good
> illustration. We talk about if it is objectionable by someone else. We
> judge for others what they would see as objectionable. That is
> inherently against the rule of NPOV. That isn't our job as an
> encyclopedia. We present the facts in neutral attitude toward the topic.
> We state the arguments of both or multiple sides. A filter only knows a
> yes or no to this question. We make a "final" decision what people don't
> want to see. That is not our job!
>

I find it strange that you consider this an objection to a filter. Surely,
giving someone an imperfect choice of what they consider objectionable is
_less_ making a decision for them than judging in advance that nothing is
objectionable?


> I don't know where you got this information. But I would not wonder if
> it is as it is presented by you. At least in case of Ting and Jimbo you
> should have right. I learned with the time about Jimbo, his attitude
> towards topics and it's understanding. So i have no doubt that he would
> trade intellectual freedom against some more donations.
>

How are we giving away intellectual freedom with this?


> That is my personal main issue with the whole filter thing based on
> arbitrary non-neutral labeling of content and POV as the measure for
> judgment.
>

What is POV about labelling something as being an image containing a nude
human or an illustration supposed to represent a religious figure?

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Re: [Foundation-l] 86% of german users disagree with the introduction of the personal image filter

[Andre Engels]

On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 8:16 PM, David Levy  wrote:

>  > I find it strange that you consider this an objection to a filter.
> Surely,
> > giving someone an imperfect choice of what they consider objectionable is
> > _less_ making a decision for them than judging in advance that nothing is
> > objectionable?
>
> You're mischaracterizing the status quo.  We haven't determined that
> "nothing is objectionable" to anyone;  we rightly assume that
> _everything_ is potentially objectionable to someone (and refrain from
> favoring certain objections over others).
>

Thereby giving those who have objections nothing just because there are
others who we can't give what they want. If we had the same attitude towards
article creation, we would not have published Wikipedia until we had
articles on all subjects we could think of.


> > What is POV about labelling something as being an image containing a nude
> > human or an illustration supposed to represent a religious figure?
>
> Tobias Oelgarte described one key problem.  Another lies in the
> labeling of some things and not others.  Unless we were to create and
> apply a label for literally everything that someone finds
> objectionable, we'd be taking the non-neutral position that only
> certain objections (the ones for which filters exist) are reasonable.
>

We don't say they're unreasonable, we say that we don't cater to it, or at
least not yet. That may be non-neutral, but no more non-neutral than that
one subject has an article and the other not, or one picture is used to
describe an article and the other not, or one category is deemed important
enough to be used to categorize our articles, books, words and images and
another not.

Or even clearer: that one language has a Wikipedia and another not. Wid we
make a non-neutral choice that only certain languages (the ones for which
Wikipedias exist) are valid languages to use for spreading knowledge?


> You mentioned a hypothetical "unveiled women" category.  Do you
> honestly believe that the idea of tagging images in this manner is
> remotely realistic?
>

I'd say it is, provided there are people wanting to use the filter, and not
minding the fact that in the beginning it will be far from perfect.


> What about images depicting miscegenation (another concept to which
> many people strongly object)?  Are we to have such a category?
>

I'd say if there are people actually wanting to use such a filter, then yes,
I would think we might well get one.

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Re: [Foundation-l] 86% of german users disagree with the introduction of the personal image filter

[Andre Engels]

On Sun, Sep 18, 2011 at 3:49 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen  wrote:


> Wikimedia *used* to hold the position that we wouldn't aid China to block
> images of the Tianamen Massacre, and went to great lengths to assure
> that chinese users of Wikipedia could evade blocks to viewing. I am not
> sure you are on a right track with regards to our traditions and values
> here.
>

There's a big difference between the two in that the Chinese case was about
people wanting to decide what _others_ could see, the filter is about people
wanting to decide what _they themselves_ would see.

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Re: [Foundation-l] 86% of german users disagree with the introduction of the personal image filter

[Andre Engels]

On Sun, Sep 18, 2011 at 11:45 AM, Tobias Oelgarte <
tobias.oelga...@googlemail.com> wrote:

> Am 18.09.2011 09:46, schrieb Andre Engels:
> > On Sun, Sep 18, 2011 at 3:49 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen<
> cimonav...@gmail.com
> >> wrote:
> >
> >> Wikimedia *used* to hold the position that we wouldn't aid China to
> block
> >> images of the Tianamen Massacre, and went to great lengths to assure
> >> that chinese users of Wikipedia could evade blocks to viewing. I am not
> >> sure you are on a right track with regards to our traditions and values
> >> here.
> >>
> > There's a big difference between the two in that the Chinese case was
> about
> > people wanting to decide what _others_ could see, the filter is about
> people
> > wanting to decide what _they themselves_ would see.
> >
> And who decides which image belongs to which category. The one that will
> use the filter or the one that tags the image?
>

On itself the one who tags the image, but we happen to have a system for
that in Wikimedia. It is called discussion and trying to reach consent. Who
decides whether a page is in a category? Who decides whether a page has an
image? Who decides whether something is decribed on a page? All the same.


> Additionally: Is the reader able to choose if China would use the tags
> to exclude content before it can the reader? Wouldn't we be responsible
> it, if the feature is misused this way, since we know how easy it can be
> misused?
>

I don't think it's that easy, and if it were, the best thing would be to
make it harder to misuse rather than to throw away the child with the
bathwater.

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Re: [Foundation-l] 86% of german users disagree with the introduction of the personal image filter

[Andre Engels]

On Sun, Sep 18, 2011 at 11:44 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <
cimonav...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Okay. Is there a commitment on the part of the foundation that they will
> help
> people using our filtering scheme and the usual browser add-ons to Wmake it
> impossible to view material on wikipedia from schools with a religious
> orientation,
> but students of way past any reasonable age of consent get past the
> filters?
>

Not as far as I know.


> Once you tag something, you lose control over what that tag is used for. We
> might be talking about primary schools, but we could just as easily be
> blocked
> by colleges and high schools, where limiting hormonal damage would be a
> joke.
>

So? The plans as they are include giving the user the option to remove the
filter, or see blocked images, whenever they like.

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Re: [Foundation-l] 86% of german users disagree with the introduction of the personal image filter

[Andre Engels]

On Sun, Sep 18, 2011 at 3:02 PM, Oliver Koslowski  wrote:

> Am 18.09.2011 13:56, schrieb Andre Engels:
> > On itself the one who tags the image, but we happen to have a system for
> > that in Wikimedia. It is called discussion and trying to reach consent.
> Who
> > decides whether a page is in a category? Who decides whether a page has
> an
> > image? Who decides whether something is decribed on a page? All the same.
>
> Our typical system of categories is designed to make it easier to /find/
> (related) articles or media. Good luck trying that with a system that is
> designed to /hide/ things.


I don't see a difference. I want to show images showing so-and-so, or I do
not want to see them. It's all about saying whether images show so-and-so.


> And this doesn't seem like an awful waste of
> precious time to you? For a feature that is not all that likely to be
> popular on a global scale?
>

It depends. If people want to do it, it is their choice how to use their
volunteering time. If they don't, then bad luck to those using the feature.

I do agree that there are dozens of things in Wikipedia/Wikimedia/Mediawiki
that I'd rather see; I chose the secon-lowest rating in the referendum, and
might well have chosen the lowest had I not expected that to be understood
as "I am against this". I do think there are many better things to do with
our time and other means.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Possible solution for image filter

[Andre Engels]

On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 7:20 PM, Tobias Oelgarte <
tobias.oelga...@googlemail.com> wrote:


> I still can't the a rational difference between images included in
> articles by the will of the community and text passages included by the
> will of the community.


It's much easier to note offensive text fragments before reading them than
to note offensive images before seeing them. But I guess the more
fundamental issue is: there are, I assume, people who have requested this
feature for images. There are either no or only very few who have requested
it for text.

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Re: [Foundation-l] A possible solution for the image filter

[Andre Engels]

On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 1:19 PM, WereSpielChequers <
werespielchequ...@gmail.com> wrote:


> One of my objections that I hope some others share is that an IP based
> system inevitably means one person deciding what others may see - which to
> my mind is the point where an image filter becomes a censor.
>

The system is still supposed to be such that anyone can switch a filter off
at any time, so I don't see how anyone 'decides what others may see'. Still,
an IP-based system does not sound like a good idea, because some IPs may be
shared by several people accessing Wikimedia at the same time, causing
strange cases of filters being switched on or off without the person
themselves realizing why. However, this does not mean a priori that we have
to restrict it to logged-in users. We could use cookies instead.


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Re: [Foundation-l] 10th wiki-birthdays?

[Andre Engels]

On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 7:07 AM, aude  wrote:

> Rather than 10th birthday for the projects, I think he's talking about as
> an
> editor.  Anyone here who has been editing for 10 years? ;)
>

Plus a few months, my first edits were from March 2001.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Blog from Sue about censorship, editorial judgement, and image filters

[Andre Engels]

On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 8:41 PM, Theo10011  wrote:

>  > That is just completely untrue. The image filter will allow people to
> > choose what to see and what not to see. We won't be making the
> > decisions...
> >
>
>
> Actually, "we" will be. Depending upon how such a system is implemented, it
> will use the editors or categories to find out which images go where and
> what is offensive. If you look at the mock-ups used in the referendum
> page[1][2], you will see switchable content filters based on categories or
> something similar. What picture goes under which content tab, would
> probably
> be decided by the categories.
>

No, we won't be. We will be putting certain categories/tags/classifications
on images, but it will still be the readers themselves who decide whether or
not they see the tagged images.


> People won't get to pick what goes under 'sexual content' or 'other
> controversial content' - for all we know, those 2 filters can occupy 90% of
> commons. I never got the impression that viewers would get a choice to pick
> and choose every single image they deem offensive, which brings the
> inevitable conundrum what is offensive to you, might not be for me.
>

There might well be an option to show a certain image even though it's under
the filter. Apart from that, if we were of the opinion that we should do
something perfectly or not at all, we would not have any of our projects.

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Re: [Foundation-l] An image filter proposal from German Wikipedia

[Andre Engels]

On Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 1:40 AM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:


> What I like about this proposal is its simplicity and elegance. It has the
> great benefit of leaving the communities and content writers in charge of
> where and to what extent they use the filter, and it also includes
> non-logged-in users.
>

The simplicity is definitely a plus, but I also see a number of import
minuses:
* There is no possibility of using different subjects to filter, or
different strictness of filtering. An image is either filtered or
non-filtered. Anyone who wants to have any image filtered, will have to
click a 'show me' any time they come across a filtered image
* The default mode for people who are not logged in will be filtered. The
principle of least astonishment would then say that the same holds for
people who are logged in, but in that case it means we would be forcing
action onto the (presumable) majority who does not want their Wikipedia
filtered, rather than the (presumable) minority who does
* No chance of using just factual criteria to decide which images are to be
filtered

I also don't see how this resolves the objections brought forward in the
discussion - if people consider "giving people a way to not look at certain
images" too close to censorship, then  why would they accept "not show
certain images but give people a way to see them"? If people are of the
opinion that "sexual images can be objectionable but we do not cater to
those who find images about X objectionable" is insufficiently neutral, then
why would they consider "this-and-that image are objectionable, but these
and those are not" okay?

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Re: [Foundation-l] Is random article truly random

[Andre Engels]

On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 7:26 AM, Castelo wrote:

> On 21-10-2011 03:06, Andreas K. wrote:
> > the
> > median is always smaller than the average.
> There's no such relation between median and average:
>
> {20, 21, 24, 26, 28}: Median (24) > Average (23.8)
> {20, 22, 24, 26, 28}: Median (24) = Average (24)
> {20, 23, 24, 26, 28}: Median (24) < Average (24.2)
>

Andreas wrote in full:

> For the relative position of mode, median and average in a right-skewed
> distribution see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Comparison_mean_median_mode.svg--
>  the
> median is always smaller than the average.

The four distributions that you give definitely are not all right-skewed.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia ideology

[Andre Engels]

On Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 10:16 AM, Peter Damian
wrote:

> A general question: is there a Wikipedian ideology?  What is it?  In
> particular, how does the current ideology, if there is one, compare with the
> ideology which inspired its founding fathers. And mothers - many of the
> founding editors of Wikipedia were women, I don't know how many people know
> that.
>

I think I'll quote Jimmy on that:

*Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free
access to the sum of all human knowledge.* That's what we're doing.

All knowledge should be available freely to everyone. That's the Wikipedian
ideology, I say.

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Re: [Foundation-l] just wondering, are we going to take down en.wikipedia.org?

[Andre Engels]

On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 3:43 PM, Domas Mituzas wrote:


> we recently did some practice on italian wikipedia, are we going to protest
> IP legislation in US by taking down English Wikipedia?
>
>
> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/10/disastrous-ip-legislation-back-%E2%80%93-and-it%E2%80%99s-worse-ever
>

I think that's taking too many steps at once. We should first check what
exactly is being proposed and how this would influence the projects, the
Foundation and maybe other related groups. Only when we find that indeed
there is a large negative impact either on the projects themselves or on the
Foundation's possibilities of hosting and supporting them, are drastic
methods of protest a good idea. And only at that point it could be decided
that turning some site on black would be the best definition of 'drastic
method' for the case.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Finnish MP FAIL!!!

[Andre Engels]

On Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 9:39 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen  wrote:

> Not sure if this is appropriate for this list, but just for lulz. A
> finnish member of
> parliament just got caught for his speech being a word for word piece of
> snippets from a Finnish Wikipedia article. No intervening binding lines,
> just
> the Wikipedia text. Way to go!!!
>

Puts the neutrality of the Wikipedia into severe doubt, though. Parliament
speeches aren't particularly known for choosing a neutral point of view.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal filter lists

[Andre Engels]

On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 3:12 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
 wrote:

> I think the fundamental error in this reasoning is that you seem to under the
> impression that this is something new here that is considered, and that there
> have only been a few people commenting on these different schemes. The
> brutal fact is that during the seven or eight years this issue has reared its
> ugly head, thousands of people have opined on this issue, and a vast
> majority have a big opposition to any scheme, because it is at base
> against our core mission.

Our core mission is making information and knowledge available to
people who want it, not pushing it down their throats against their
will.


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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal filter lists

[Andre Engels]

On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 10:43 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 28 November 2011 09:34, Andre Engels  wrote:
>
>> Our core mission is making information and knowledge available to
>> people who want it, not pushing it down their throats against their
>> will.
>
>
> Show that there is a demand. Build a filtered Wikipedia and get rich.

You're saying that anything that is not wanted by more than a few
people goes against our core mission?

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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal filter lists

[Andre Engels]

On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 11:14 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 28 November 2011 10:07, Andre Engels  wrote:
>
>> You're saying that anything that is not wanted by more than a few
>> people goes against our core mission?
>
>
> No, and nor did I say anything that could reasonably be construed as that.

I said that an image filter was not against our core mission. You
reacted to that by saying that I should show that there is a demand.
Then you added something about "all the points refuted a thousand
times like this". Surely it is quite reasonable that you considered
"there is no demand" as a refutation of "it is not against our core
mission". And for that to be a valid line of reasoning, you need to
have the rule "if there is no demand for something, it goes against
our core mission".

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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal filter lists

[Andre Engels]

On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 11:58 AM, David Gerard  wrote:

> At this point you appear to be stretching to keep a flame war going.

Stretching? It seemed like a valid chain of reasoning to me. But if
you don't agree, please give your line of reasoning as to how your
statement was a refutation of, or even just a sensible reaction to, my
statement.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal filter lists

[Andre Engels]

On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 11:37 AM, Tobias Oelgarte
 wrote:

> If the filter is predefined then it might meet the personal preference
> and can be easy to use. But it will be an violation of NPOV, since
> someone else (a group of reader/users) would have to define it. That
> isn't user initiated censorship anymore.

It is still the user who chooses whether or not to remove images, and
if so, which list, although of course their choice is restricted. I
guess that's not user initiated, but it is still user chosen.

> The comparison with AdBlock sucks, because you didn't looked at the goal
> of both tools. AdBlock and it's predefined lists are trying to hide
> _any_ advertisement, while the filter is meant to _only_ hide
> controversial content. This comes down to the two extrema noted above,
> that are the only two neutral options.

I don't agree. We are not deciding which content is controversial and
which not, we are giving users the option to decide not to see
such-and-such content if they don't want to. That's not necessarily
labeling them as controversial; it is even less labeling other content
as non-controversial.

Even more importantly, your options are not neutral at all, in my
opinion. "Either everything is controversial or nothing is". That's
not a neutral statement. "It's controversial to you if you consider it
controversial to you" - that's much closer to being NPOV, and that's
what the proposal is trying to do. NPOV is not about treating every
_subject_ as equal, but about treating every _opinion_ as equal. If I
have a set of images I consider controversial, and you have a
different, perhaps non-intersecting set that you consider
controversial, the NPOV method is to consider both distinctions as
valid, not to say that it means that everything is controversial, or
nothing is. And -surprise- that seems to be exactly what this proposal
is trying to achieve. It is probably not ideal, there might even be
reasons to drop it completely, but NPOV is much better served by this
proposal than it is by yours.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal filter lists

[Andre Engels]

On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 1:03 PM, Tobias Oelgarte
 wrote:

> The problem starts at the point where the user does not choose the
> image(s) for himself and uses a predefined set on what should no be
> shown. Someone will have to create this sets and this will be
> unavoidably a violation of NPOV in the first place.

No, why would it? What does it say if someone created such a set?
"These are pictures of such-and-so, and there might be people who do
not want to see pictures of such-and-so." I don't see the NPOV here.
Nobody is saying "These pictures should not be seen". They are saying,
"some people would not like to see these pictures". That's not POV.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal filter lists

[Andre Engels]

On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 1:42 PM, Tobias Oelgarte
 wrote:

> I neither agree. We decide what belongs to which preset (or who will do
> it?), and it is meant to filter out controversial content. Therefore we
> define what controversial content is, - or at least we tell the people,
> what we think, that might be controversial, while we also tell them
> (exclusion method) that other things aren't controversial.

No, we don't tell that other things aren't controversial. I consider
that a ridiculous conclusion to draw. It's just that we have not yet
found that it is under one of the categories we specified as
blockable. There are other categories that might be specified, but
alas, we don't have them yet.

>> Even more importantly, your options are not neutral at all, in my
>> opinion. "Either everything is controversial or nothing is". That's
>> not a neutral statement. "It's controversial to you if you consider it
>> controversial to you" - that's much closer to being NPOV, and that's
>> what the proposal is trying to do.
> No. This options are meant to say that "you have to define for yourself
> what is controversial". They take the extreme stances of equal judgment.
> Either anything is guilty or nothing is guilty and both stances provide
> no information at all. Both give no definition. It is not the answer to
> the question: "What is controversial?" under the assumption that not
> anything or not everything is controversial. If you agree that not
> anything or not everything is controversial than this simple rule has to
> apply, since both extremes are untrue. That is very simple logic and
> forces you to define it for yourself.

Yet you are against any means that make this choice easier. If I say
"I don't want to see pictures of XXX", why not give me the possibility
to download a list of pictures of XXX and use that? Why do I have to
specify in person each and every picture I do or do not want to see?

> Back to the statement: "It's controversial to you if you consider it
> controversial to you". Thats right. But it's not related to the initial
> problem. In this case you will only find a "you" and a "you". There is
> no "we", "them" or anything like that. You could have written: "If my
> leg hurts, then my leg hurts". Always true, but useless to be applied to
> something that involves anything not done not by you in the first part
> of the sentence.

No, not useless. If I say that I don't want to see pictures of XXX,
why not let someone else make a list of pictures of XXX? Say, I
believe that every time a chainsaw touches my leg, it is going to
hurt. Wouldn't it be good to have a rule then that anyone will have my
permission before they touch my leg with a chainsaw? What you are
saying is "only you can decide when your leg is hurting, so you have
to choose: either we let everything touch your leg unless you forbid
it, or we let nothing touch your leg unless you allow it."

>>   NPOV is not about treating every
>> _subject_ as equal, but about treating every _opinion_ as equal.
> This is a nice sentence. I hope that you will it. I also hope that you
> remember that images are subjects and not opinions.
>
>>   If I
>> have a set of images I consider controversial, and you have a
>> different, perhaps non-intersecting set that you consider
>> controversial, the NPOV method is to consider both distinctions as
>> valid, not to say that it means that everything is controversial, or
>> nothing is.
> A filter with presets considers only one opinion as valid. It shows an
> image or it does hide it. Stating different opinions inside an article
> is a very different thing. You represent both opinions but you don't
> apply them. On top of that it are the opinions of people that don't
> write the article.

But one can choose the filter oneself, or no filter at all.

>>   And -surprise- that seems to be exactly what this proposal
>> is trying to achieve. It is probably not ideal, there might even be
>> reasons to drop it completely, but NPOV is much better served by this
>> proposal than it is by yours.
>>
> Actually you misused or misunderstood the core of NPOV in combination
> with this two stances. Thats why i can't agree or follow your conclusion.
>
> NPOV is meant in the way that we don't say what is right or is wrong. We
> represent the opinions and we let the user decide what to do with them.
> Additionally NPOV implies that we don't write down our own opinions.
> Instead we cite them.

And what does this have to do with image filters at all?


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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal filter lists

[Andre Engels]

On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 2:28 PM, Alasdair  wrote:

> So a big objection is that any "sets" of filters is not so much to the "weak" 
> filtering on wikipedia but that such "sets"  would enable other censors to 
> more easily make a form of "strong" censorship of wikipedia where some images 
> were not available (at all) to readers - regardless of whether or not they 
> want to see them?
>
> I am not sure I agree with this concern as a practical matter but I can 
> understand it as a theoretical concern. Has the board or WMF talked about / 
> addressed this issue anywhere in regards to "set" based filter systems?

I don't know if they have, but it should be solvable in this system -
something with creating a hash of the image name, and using the
original name at some places and the hash at others. The list of
images in a filter will have one, the html created when a page is
looked at the other. I don't have the details all fleshed out, but it
doesn't look too hard to do once one has decided that it's necessary.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal filter lists

[Andre Engels]

On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 2:52 PM, Tobias Oelgarte
 wrote:
> Am 29.11.2011 14:40, schrieb Andre Engels:
>> On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 1:03 PM, Tobias Oelgarte
>>   wrote:
>>
>>> The problem starts at the point where the user does not choose the
>>> image(s) for himself and uses a predefined set on what should no be
>>> shown. Someone will have to create this sets and this will be
>>> unavoidably a violation of NPOV in the first place.
>> No, why would it? What does it say if someone created such a set?
>> "These are pictures of such-and-so, and there might be people who do
>> not want to see pictures of such-and-so." I don't see the NPOV here.
>> Nobody is saying "These pictures should not be seen". They are saying,
>> "some people would not like to see these pictures". That's not POV.
>>
> You missed the previous question: "Why would some people not like to see
> these pictures?" The answer to this question is the motivation to create
> such a list and to spread it. But this answer is any case non NPOV.

Sure, it's not NPOV, it's not POV either, it has nothing to do with POV or NPOV.

Let's go to another parallel: There are lists of 'good articles',
'featured articles', 'featured images' andsoforth on various projects.
POV too? And if I make a list of "interesting articles", am I allowed
to put that on Wikipedia? What about a tool that lets you make such a
list and share it with others? Would that also get you as mightily
angry?


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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal filter lists

[Andre Engels]

On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 3:01 PM, Tobias Oelgarte
 wrote:

> Do you remember your last mail in which you said that my viewpoints are
> extreme? I was writing that considering anything controversial or not
> are the only neutral positions to take. You opposed it strongly. Now you
> start your claim with the preposition that we will eventually find
> categories in a way that anything could be seen as controversial? Thats
> a 180° turn from one mail to the other. Just to find new arguments?

I don't say we _will_, I say we _might_. But if you like to have the
180 degree turn, then I will happily agree that any image might be
controversial. That still does not convince me that the only 'neutral'
ways of blocking are blocking nothing or blocking everything. Perhaps
any image is objected to by someone. That does not mean that anyone
who objects to some image should have every image taken away from
them.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal filter lists

[Andre Engels]

On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 7:03 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
 wrote:

> Am I being dense, or are you being silly? Blocking advocacy from a site with
> a NPOV policy is a bajillion miles from being censorship.

It may be a bajillion miles, I still think it's closer to it than
giving the possibility to people to decide what they themselves see or
not see is.  Apart from that, pedophiles are being blocked even if
they are not advocating, if I remember correctly.

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Re: [Foundation-l] "Terms of use" : Anglo-saxon copyright law and Anglo-saxon lawyers : a disgrace for Continental Europeans

[Andre Engels]

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 8:25 PM, Ryan Kaldari  wrote:
> Would you care to explain anything you're talking about?
>
> I don't see anything in the Licensing section that mentions anything
> about U.S. copyright law. It says the content is licensed under the GFDL
> and CC-BY-SA, and the Attribution section just reflects the standard
> practices for those licenses. I don't see anything about how we're
> supposed to belittle and disgrace Europeans, but maybe I missed that part :)

I think what he means is that under most European copyright regimes,
an author has far-reaching personality rights, which include the right
to have the work accredited to them whenever it is republished. The
terms of use, in his feeling, hollow out this right by redefining the
obligatory credit part of the GFL and CC-BY-SA in such a way that one
can mention all authors by doing something that does not include
mentioning any of them.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Commons and The Year of the Picture

[Andre Engels]

On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 8:05 AM, Michael Snow  wrote:

> I deal with this regularly in a professional capacity, this is what
> stock photography firms are built on, and I can assure you that there is
> no adequate freely licensed stock photography resource in the world.
> Commons is the best there is, and it is barely usable, and then only
> sporadically. Maybe some people imagine we have too many pictures of
> people's cats and dogs, since those are popular subjects, but I'll say
> we don't have nearly enough even of that - and in particular we don't
> have enough variety. Suppose I wanted a picture of a dog and a cat
> together, a fairly mundane subject, for which I did at least find a
> category with 27 files at
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Cats_and_dogs. I suppose
> that's a start, but at a glance there's no way that provides enough
> options for what I might want, especially if I was particular about how
> they're posed or what breed they are.

I think this comes back to something I already talked about when
Commons only just started - we don't need the umptieth picture of a
dog, but we do want more pictures of specific dog breeds (although as
things are now, we're pretty much over-stuffed with the more popular
dog breeds too), of dogs doing specific things, of dogs in specific
situations etcetera. However, this takes more than just getting more
pictures. It's also important that they are described well (George W.
Bush talking is "just another Bush picture", but if you know where he
is speaking at what occasion it becomes much more), and that they are
findable.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters)

[Andre Engels]

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 10:32 AM, Dan Rosenthal  wrote:

> As to your arguments that having a NY chapter obviates the need for other
> subnational US chapters, I disagree. There are plenty of reasons why a
> person outside of NY would want to become a member of a US subnational
> chapter other than NY; location not the least of them.

He's not saying that it makes other subnational US chapters
unnecessary, but that it makes a national US chapter (or, for that
sake, a New York State chapter or a northeastern US chapter)
impossible.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters)

[Andre Engels]

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 10:38 AM, Ting Chen  wrote:

> As far as I know, there are already two organizations in the
> Netherlands, why would you want to create an Amsterdam chapter and what
> is the beneficial of it? Or is the question just theoretical?

Well, there are two organizations, but one of them is a chapter,
having mostly wikimedians as its members, organizing a meeting every
now and again, the other is not a chapter, is completely inactive, has
no possibility of having members and is opposed by a large part,
possibly the majority of the community.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters)

[Andre Engels]

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 2:47 PM, Andrew Whitworth  wrote:

> Two answers to this question:
> 1) WMNYC does prevent the creation of a separate WMUSA chapter. At the
> moment the rule-of-thumb is that chapters cannot overlap. However, it
> may be possible in the future if both groups agree to share space, but
> we haven't had an issue like that and I can't imagine the benefit of
> doing it that way.

Well, one benefit would be that it avoids strange definitions of
chapter boundaries. Suppose that we have a Los Angeles chapter and a
Monterey County chapter, and then people from San Jose, Sacramento and
a few smaller cities come together to make a chapter, would this then
be "Wikimedia California except Los Angeles City and Monterey County"?
Or should it perhaps also be restricted to not include San Francisco,
since perhaps there will be a city chapter there, and created the
"California-except" chapter would make such impossible?


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André Engels, andreeng...@gmail.com
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Re: [Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters)

[Andre Engels]

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Andrew Whitworth  wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 9:30 AM, Andre Engels  wrote:
>> Well, one benefit would be that it avoids strange definitions of
>> chapter boundaries. Suppose that we have a Los Angeles chapter and a
>> Monterey County chapter, and then people from San Jose, Sacramento and
>> a few smaller cities come together to make a chapter, would this then
>> be "Wikimedia California except Los Angeles City and Monterey County"?
>> Or should it perhaps also be restricted to not include San Francisco,
>> since perhaps there will be a city chapter there, and created the
>> "California-except" chapter would make such impossible?
>
> 5 Friends and their dog cannot make a chapter. To become a chapter,
> you need to have critical mass: You need enough people to form a
> board, you need possible members. You need to be able to raise money,
> and you need to be able to perform activities. If we have a situation
> where there are enough Wikimedians in Scramento, Los Angeles, and San
> Jose to each form chapters, we should consider ourselves to be very
> lucky. More likely, to build the critical mass necessary to start a
> new chapter, Wikimedians from all these places may need to work
> together instead of working apart. The smaller the geographical area
> is, the fewer potential members you have, the less money you are
> likely to be able to raise, and the fewer outreach activities you will
> have available to you.

That doesn't change my point, it's just a matter of scale... Suppose
there's a chapter in Georgia, and one for Kentucky and Tennessee. Then
some people come around and start on a chapter for the southeast.
That's going to be a quite strange assortment of states they're going
to represent.


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André Engels, andreeng...@gmail.com
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Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal

[Andre Engels]

On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 12:22 PM, Andrew Gray  wrote:
> 2009/1/23 Nikola Smolenski :
>> Article length was 82028 bytes, and length of contributors' names is 650 
>> bytes
>> (or 0.8% of the article's length). If that would be printed in an
>> encyclopedic format, the article would take some more than ten pages, and the
>> list of authors would take 10 rows, if printed in a slightly smaller font. To
>> me, this looks reasonable.
>
> It's a lot less unreasonable than many suggestions! :-)
>
> I wonder - would it be possible to get some kind of script set up to
> take, say, a thousand of our most popular articles and tell us what
> the "cite all named authors who make nontrivial contributions" result
> would be like? This might be a useful bit of data...

If you define "nontrivial" for me, that should not be too hard...


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Re: [Foundation-l] RfC: License update proposal

[Andre Engels]

One thing that has not been brought forward yet in this discussion,
and which I think is important, is that 'author' does not equate
'editor'. It seems many here do go from that assumption in trying to
get the authors of an article. Suppose, an article has the following
edit history:

A starts the page with some text
B adds some text to it
C notes that A's text was a copyright violation, and adds a template
to that effect
D removes all the text of the page (because A's text is a copyright
violations, and B's edits make no sense without it), and replaces it
by a translation from another Wikipedia
Some vandal vandalizes the page
E reverses the vandalism
F adds some interwikis
G corrects 2 spelling mistakes
H adds a paragraph
I adds a picture from Commons.

The _editors_ of the page are A to I and the vandal. But are they also
the authors? I think not. In my opinion the _authors_ are D, H, the
authors of the translated article and the author of the picture.

Having said that, my opinion on this is that I do want to be credited,
but only where my contributions are really major. Not where I made a
'non-authorship' edit, and also not where I made a substantial but
still relatively small edit, for example adding one line to an already
extensive article. The first I don't consider authorship, and the
second I'd be more than happy to be credited as part of "wikipedia
editors". But where a page is essentially written by me with only
insubstantial (though useful) edits by others before and after, I do
want to see my name as the maker or one of the makers. Thus, I'd like
to see some credits similar to the "main credits place" in GFDL, where
a few of the major authors are mentioned, plus "other Wikipedia
editors" or something similar.

-- 
André Engels, andreeng...@gmail.com

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Re: [Foundation-l] The reality of printing a poster

[Andre Engels]

On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 10:58 AM, Gerard Meijssen
 wrote:
> Hoi,
> The Zwijntje picture is actually one that is rather special. I use it as an
> avatar on many of my profiles. When people abuse this picture, it may hurt
> me. There is another aspect as well, I am not arguing about attribution to
> the nth degree of foolishness. It is also very unlikely that I will go to
> court over my IP. This is where I am utterly different from the RIAA because
> it is part of their business model.
>
> So in essence, it is normal to attribute material using the best practices.
> The GFDL was long considered to be a best practice by me. This is no longer
> the case for the type of material that we deal with in Wikipedia and
> Commons. Certainly not following the arguments that I have heard so far from
> the proponents of staying with the GFDL for WMF projects. The irony is that
> it iseven the FSF that agrees that we are better off with the CC-by-sa.

You do know what the "by" in CC-by-sa means, I hope?


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