Re: [Foundation-l] Moderate this list

[Ray Saintonge]

> Date: Sat, 29 Aug 2009 11:46:36 -0400
> From: Anthony 
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] moderate this list
>   
> There needs to be place for dozens of back-and-forth-over-minor-details
> discussion.  Long detailed emails have their place, but after they are
> posted there needs to be room for a question and answer session.  Limiting
> these Q&A sessions so that each person can merely make a single comment and
> then receive a single response severely limits the ability of people to
> engage in useful discussion, and forcing people to have any back and forth
> discussions off-list severely limits the usefulness of the list for
> brainstorming and for refining ideas.
>
> If you want a separate list for long, well-thought-out emails, I'm fine with
> that.  But we need a place for brainstorming and refining ideas. We need a
> place for back-and-forth discussion.
>
> Am I in the minority in believing that?
>
>   
This issue of moderation comes up with great regularity, though not 
always about the same individuals.  Anthony and Thomas have 
well-established credentials as pains in the ass ... so too has a shot 
of penicillin.  I have frequently disagreed  with them, but even when my 
personal opinion has been that they have reached their most idiotic I 
have never sought to throttle them.  I have a much easier option: the 
delete key on my keyboard.

To those who consider them trolls: Why are you feeding them with 
requests for moderation?  Has that oft repeated simple advice never had 
any effect upon you?  If you view them as part of the problem, must you 
too become a part of the problem by promoting an equally inane series of 
messages about moderation?

The protection of free speech does not begin with laws on the matter, 
but with our own personal responses to what we regard as objectionable.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Do we have a complete set of WMF projects?

[Ray Saintonge]

Thomas Dalton wrote:
> 2009/9/8 Pedro Sanchez :
>   
>> Geographical/atlas/map kind ofproject
>>
>> granted, there's wikimapia and other external equivalents
>> but we (Wikimedia) are lacking it
>> 
>
> Is there any point us doing something that already exists? What would
> be better about a Wikimedia version?
>
>   
It would generate competition to the advantage of both sides.  Similarly 
Wikipedia forks would help us by generating competition.  Such a fork 
may, for example, have a different interpretation of NPOV, as would be 
its right on its own site.  Readers would then be more free to draw 
their own conclusions from comparing the two sites.  Another fork could 
choose to limit its scope to certain topics, and adopt editing policies 
that are more tailored to its topics.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Use of moderation

[Ray Saintonge]

Henning Schlottmann wrote:
> Mailing lists are push media and they are one stop: the new posts come
> to my own mail folders automatically. Their look and feel is always the
> same: that of my mail program (or web mail operator). Browsing through
> "your" web boards in the morning takes much, much more time than with
> appropriately processes mailing lists.
>
> Moderation and s/n ration: If you read mailing lists as (pseudo)
> newsgroups, which is of course the recommended way of access, every
> reader has the most comfortable options for filtering and scoring. Web
> boards have central, mailing lists individual moderation. You, the
> reader, can filter authors, topics, threads or whatever you want or
> don't want to read. That gives you autonomy and responsibility.
>
> The only real advantage of web boards is that they run in a browser and
> everyone thinks they can use them. Processing and reading mailing lists
> is much more comfortable, but obviously not anyone knows how to do that
> anymore.

Seems to me that the mailing list is working just fine, despite a few 
people who complain far too much about the volume of traffic, or about 
the occasional tendency to irrelevant comments.  They need to exercise a 
little more patience and tolerance.  The situation is a classic case of 
"If it ain't broke don't fix it."

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Use of moderation

[Ray Saintonge]

Delirium wrote:
> Maybe I'm unusual in treating large mailing lists as if they were
> FidoNet or Usenet discussion forums, but the idea of people being 
> bothered by long threads they don't care about, individuals whose posts 
> they don't like, etc., is strange to me. Isn't that easily handled on 
> the client side? Killfile individual posters, delete/filter entire 
> threads, etc. Do most people use clients where that's unreasonably 
> difficult?
>
> It does require *some* community standards to enable it. For example, it 
> really helps the client-side filtering if people choose meaningful 
> subject lines, and change subject lines when threads have drifted to new 
> topics. But it's a fairly minimal set of things that have to be 
> centrally enforced. It certainly seems easier than trying to come up 
> with a centrally enforced set of standards that will simultaneously make 
> everyone happy!
>   
Yes, and maybe the solution would be a link to a set of instructions 
about how to more effectively manage one's mailing lists.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Report to the Board of Trustees June 2009

[Ray Saintonge]

Thomas Dalton wrote:
> 2009/9/11 Waldir Pimenta :
>   
>> Hi Thomas, and all who showed concern about Wikimedia Portugal's planned
>> expenses.
>>
>> I am one of the persons who calculated that budget, and thus I feel I should
>> provide you with some information.
>> 
> Thank you very much, I appreciate your willingness to discuss this issue.
>
>   
Indeed!  I don't fault the Portuguese Wikipedians in this at all.  They 
acted in the way they felt was best for their own interests. 

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Moderate this list

[Ray Saintonge]

Pavlo Shevelo wrote:
>> Isn't temporarily blocking such a user a way to calm him/her down? I
>> 
> Yes it might be the way, but far not universal way.
> And it should be the last (ultimate) in moderator toolkit, far not the
> first to be used.
>
>   
Sure.  And in these situations a short-term block (perhaps 24 hours) can 
be more effective and constructive than a long-term banishment.  As 
necessary, repeat the short-term black, and eventually the message will 
get across.  Long-term blocks are more punitive than remedial; they only 
serve to build resentment and inspire future enemies.  Super-nanny does 
not recommend sending children to the naughty chair for extended periods 
of time, but she has no problem with sending them there as often as 
circumstances require.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Creative Commons publishes report on defining "Non-commercial", Is Wikpedia non commercial?

[Ray Saintonge]

jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com wrote:
> Sorry,
> But my question is not if we as a wikimedia group is violating the license,
> but if they as users are.
> I would like a professional opinion on the question :
>
> Is wikipedia non commercial or commercial non profit?
>
>   
It's hard to say as long as it hasn't been before the courts.  A 
professional opinion is just as much a guess as anyone else's.

Even if it turns out to be commercial, it only means something if 
someone tries to enforce that aspect of the licence.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Italia being sued

[Ray Saintonge]

Mike Godwin wrote:
> Nathan writes:
>   
>> Interesting. Although the Italian media also reported that I (and
>> Jimbo and various others) was being sued for 50 million euros, and I
>> haven't seen that lawsuit yet.
>> 
> We've had a lot of experience of spurious reports of lawsuits originating in
> Italy. In the majority of those cases, Wikimedia Foundation itself never
> receives service of process -- in effect, the cases only really "exist" in
> Italian media. I'm not saying that's the case here, but we haven't heard
> anything yet from Italian process servers yet.
>
> I'd like to see any official complaints that have been filed in Italian
> courts (or elsewhere) against Wikimedia Italia. The chapter's defense (the
> chapter doesn't produce Wikipedia content) should be straightforward under
> any European legal regime, but obviously we will take an interest in any
> case that seems to be going the wrong way.
>   

The underlying wisdom appears to be: "Don't defend a lawsuit until 
there's a lawsuit."

Ec


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Re: [Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

[Ray Saintonge]

Samuel Klein wrote:
> Why are we revisiting something from 2007-08 financial planning two
> years after it happened and 15 months after the final report?
>   


Planning with 20/20 hindsight is always s much more accurate? ;-)

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] strategic planning process update

[Ray Saintonge]

Eugene Eric Kim wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 3:49 PM, Pavlo Shevelo wrote:
>   
>> "Who will decide what the strategy will be, and what will be the
>> decision-making process?"
>>
>> this page explains nothing about (or explains in no detail if somebody
>> prefers) how main stakeholder - Foundation will make decision about
>> said strategy. The huge, extremely intensive (and effective, if we
>> will do our best) Earth-wide pipeline for proposal preparation - it's
>> good. But what will be in the very end? How Foundation will decide
>> what idea is good enough to stand behind it (and to put money in it)?
>> 
> The simple answer is: At the end of this process, there will be a
> community-developed plan with a set of recommendations. The Foundation
> board will vote on that plan at its board meeting in November 2010.
>
> Assuming we pull off what we're trying to pull off, I expect that to
> be a rubber stamp. In other words, if this is a good process, if we
> put lots of thought into it, if a large, diverse group of stakeholders
> are engaged, I think the board will go with the plan. That is my
> opinion, not an official statement of fact. :-)
>
> I expect people from the Foundation to actively engage in the process
> with everyone else. I hope that holds true for other stakeholders,
> such as the Chapters, and I would very much love to see all of our
> stakeholders both engage in the process and then go through some
> official approval process. I'm optimistic that this will happen. I
> know that several Chapters are already engaged in their own strategic
> planning processes, and I expect those will align nicely with this
> movement-wide process. I hope that individual projects get more
> actively engaged as well, as I think this is a wonderful opportunity
> to reflect together and to take advantage of common resources for this
> effort.
>   

The question, "Who will decide ...?" touches upon the fundamental 
paradox of empowerment. In democratic institutions the ideal is to bring 
decision making power to those who are ruled by those decisions, yet 
this conflicts with the institutionalized deference implicit in Pavlo's 
question.

An end-game where the legal entity applies a rubber stamp is fine, but a 
prerequisite for that is that a decision has already been made in some 
manner.

I believe that we live in an era when there is an essential mistrust of 
institutions ... beginning with governments.  The current health care 
debate in the United States more than amply gives us examples on both 
sides of that issue.  The internet has provided tools for questioning 
institutions.  Claims and promises that could heretofore be made as 
marketing ploys are no longer believed when they are inconsistent with 
facts that are easily discovered by a broad range of people who 
previously lacked the resouces for such discoveries.

If this rampant cynicism were limited to opinions about governments the 
situation could be tolerable, but it rubs off on all sorts of 
institutional settings.  It may be comforting to know that someone else 
will make the decisions; that relieves one of having to give serious 
thought about often very complex issues.  If, however, those decisions 
are not trusted they will never be completely successful.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Priorities and opportunities

[Ray Saintonge]

Samuel Klein wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 11:20 PM, Philippe Beaudette wrote:
>   
>> On Sep 26, 2009, at 9:32 PM, Samuel Klein wrote:
>> 
>>> Do you think we will be in a position to run a second usability
>>> project of similar scope, two years from now, entirely from within the
>>> community?
>>>   
>> Are you sure that's the best option?
>> 
> We should be capable of such a thing as a community, in terms of
> knowledge, experience, and process.  That does not mean there is no
> place for the outside input or guidance you devilishly advocate.
>   

I think that Philippe's question is important.  Renewal processes from 
within are often stuck in a community's own inertia, and an inability of 
most people to look upon those processes with any kind of detachment.  
Those who are comfortable with existing processes become ill at ease 
with the notion that they might have to change the way they do things.  
Inertia makes it most difficult to abandon the most outrageous aspects 
of requests for adminship. Those of us who recognize those outrages most 
clearly do so with the clarity of infrequent participants, and have 
little stomach or patience for the hand-to-hand combat that would be 
required to effect change.
>   
>> doing anything that's entirely from within the community brings
>> its own unique set of challenges.
>> 
> Yes.
>
> That said, there are degrees of community nature.  Many contractors we
> have worked with were already Wikipedians to a small degree.
>   

That's fine. "Small degree" allows a person some time to become familiar 
with the underlying philosophy and operational parameters, without the 
zealotry that often comes with "large degree".
> Imagine that we succeed in helping every person in the world learn,
> and in engaging most of them to share what they know with others.
> Then we will be a global community with few boundaries.   At which
> point you can ask: How much of a project requires engaging people who
> would not otherwise do it, and how much can we accomplish by
> coordinating those already gladly doing to such work?
>   

I apologize in advance if I characterize this as starry-eyed idealism.  
There's even a very American element of believing "We have the best 
system in the world so why wouldn't everyone else want to adopt it."  
That builds resentment and antagonism among those who are not within the 
system.  From the inside, it is difficult to see that we engage people 
just as much when we provide them with positive encouragement to work on 
a competing project. The problem with co-ordinating those already doing 
the work is that it encourages inertia.  Headquarters evolve into 
creationist Wizards of Oz at the centre of the universe, and not because 
it is decreed by any intelligent design; it just evolves that way.

The wisdom of crowds is a statistical operation.  Its fractal geometry 
succeeds because most people accidentally choose the right answer.  At 
the same time it allows for statistically deviant results which run the 
gamut from great ideas to outright stupidities.  This is in sharp 
contrast to the kind of rigidly syllogistic thinking that has dominated 
western thought since at least the time of Plato.  Syllogistic thought 
fails to accommodate the power of the paradox.

> An example that does not cross the community/outsider boundary:
> translating a given set of documents.   Requesting translations can
> feel like pulling teeth, asking favors of people who would rather do
> something else.  But every day there are ten times as many people
> enthusiastically handling translation requests to create or improve
> Wikipedia articles.  This is a question of finding and directing
> existing interest, and sharing the underlying drive and vision for why
> it matters.
The community of translators is a validly defined sub-community with its 
own insiders and outsiders. Some will respond to established priorities 
for what needs translating; others will translate whatever they damn 
well please. If the pool of translators for a given language is big 
enough there is a high probability that everything that needs doing will 
be done.  It is that last sentence with which I take issue because it 
ignores the influence of Murphy and the trickster.  The people you are 
trying to direct or drive (or herd) are not sheep; they're cats.  The 
vision that you propose to share is yours not theirs. This does not make 
your vision wrong; it's just not theirs.  Sheep cannot build a 
Wikipedia; only cats can.

Ec
 

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Re: [Foundation-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with the Frenc...

[Ray Saintonge]

Marco Chiesa wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 4:55 PM, Teofilo wrote:
>   
>> I should have said it in my previous message : the first and foremost
>> priority for France, is that Government-owned museums allow visitors
>> who paid their entrance ticket to carry a camera and take pictures of
>> paintings and sculptures when the painters and sculptors died more
>> than 70 years ago.
>> 
> I partly agree, but keep in mind that the reason why some museum do
> not let visitors take photos is not necessarily copyright. For
> example, flashes can damage paintings, and I wouldn't like to visit a
> crowded museum slaloming between hundreds of photographers with
> tripods trying to take a picture of every single work of art present.
>   
Of course, photo technology has developed to a point where flash or 
tripods are no longer necessary for getting a decent picture.

As I have understood it tripods are banned because some can damage 
museum floors, or leave ugly black streaks on the floor that are 
difficult to clean.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Improving foundation-l

[Ray Saintonge]

Chad wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 4:46 PM, Anthony wrote:
>   
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Improving_Foundation-l hasn't had any edits
>> in a couple weeks now.  Have we decided this isn't such a big problem after
>> all?  Have we given up?  Just waiting a few months for someone to post a
>> complaint so we can repeat this all over again?  Austin?  Ryan?  Anyone?
>> 
> If I've noticed nothing else in the last 4 years, it's that Wikimedians
> have very short attention spans when it comes to these sorts of
> things. We all talk about our bright and shiny ideal future and throw
> around a few ideas. Someone starts a page (or an entire wiki) to
> discussing the issue. People edit briefly and furiously, then stop
> caring.
>
>   
That sounds about right.  As one who finds that the operation of the 
list is within tolerable limits I would just be adding to the noise if I 
carried on about how it should be changed.

One irony that I've noticed is that it is often suggested that problems 
on wiki should be solved on wiki and not on some mailing list.  Now, we 
have a bit of a reversal. The perceived problem is with a mailing list; 
by the same reasoning the solution to a perceived mailing list problem 
should be on that list rather than on wiki. 

I doubt that those who are only here as lurkers, and who could very well 
be the ones most likely to unsubscribe because of the mail volume will 
be any more willing to go to the meta page to add their opinions.  They 
may not even be aware that the meta page exists unless they receive 
periodic notification about it.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Improving foundation-l

[Ray Saintonge]

wjhon...@aol.com wrote:
> The entire page is founded on unsubstantiated and generic complaints
> which all lists share.  I'm on moderated lists which are completely horrible.
> And I'm on unmoderated lists which are absolutely excellent.
>
> Jimmy Wales himself has stated, and I've quoted him in one of my articles
> that when he ran his own discussion group he allowed people to talk themselves
> out.  There will always be people who unsubscribe, there will always be
> new subscribers.  There is no fix which will address that issue.
>
> There will always be people complaining that something is broken, there
> will always be people saying nothing is broken.
>
> Let's see some actual numbers, actual citations and actual research
> that others can test, prod, and comprehend.  The page right now has
> nothing like a scientific approach to even a description of the problem
> let alone trying to find any "solution".
>
>   
What a novel idea! ;-)

Letting people talk themselves out works best hand-in-hand with "Don't 
feed the trolls." A troll in this context is whoever you subjectively 
fell is talking too much.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Bookshelf project

[Ray Saintonge]

Waerth wrote:
> I am worried about this passage in the Bookshelf project
>   
>> The materials created as part of the Bookshelf Project include basic
>> "first step" documents, compelling invitations to participate, *but
>> most importantly, **in-depth series of resources targeting potential
>> editors, trainers, and evangelists.* The materials also provide models,
>> such as lessen plans, for how teachers, professors, and journalists
>> can use Wikipedia in their professional capacity.
>> 
> I never new the goal of the wikimedia foundation was to evangelize the 
> world. As an agnost I take offence to this.
>
>   
I suppose that a lessen plan is not as ominous as a lesson plan. :-)

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Bookshelf project

[Ray Saintonge]

Jim Redmond wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 09:18, Waerth  wrote
>> I never new the goal of the wikimedia foundation was to evangelize the
>> world. As an agnost I take offence to this
> In this context, the term "evangelist" is not specifically a religious term;
> rather, it refers to a highly enthusiastic recruiter for the wiki cause.
> This usage is somewhat common in English, but I have to admit that it
> doesn't translate well.
>
>   
Would "propagandize" have been a better word?  The OED defines 
"evangelize" word in terms of conversion to Christianity.  Your extended 
interpretation is indeed common in English, but that includes all the 
negative connotations that are commonly associated with Christian 
evangelism.

Those of us who absorbed the wiki notion at an early stage did not need 
a catechism to do this.

Why does it need to be in English to start with? We have some very 
capable people in the German chapter who could write this kind of thing, 
and have it translated *into* English. Other chapters may be just as 
capable.

The people that this initiative seeks to recruit are ones that we would 
like to welcome into the wiki family, but terms like "compelling 
invitations" seem very much like corporatist bafflegab when there are no 
tools to compel any volunteer to do anything.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Charity Navigator rates WMF

[Ray Saintonge]

Anthony wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 5:14 PM, George Herbert  
> wrote:
>   
>> I have had a number of excellent deep discussions with high school,
>> college, grade school teachers about Wikipedia and the ones who pay
>> more attention than "Someone copied the Wikipedia entry as an essay"
>> generally have a more nuanced and productive view of things.  They are
>> aware we aren't a primary source, and the risks of any secondary
>> source... Such as Britannica and World Book, too.
>> 
>
> One would think from these discussions you might have learned that
> Wikipedia, Britannica, and World Book are tertiary sources.
>   

What is accomplished by trying to label encyclopedias as tertiary 
sources?  They probably are, but so what?

> My wife is a high school teacher, but she doesn't really pay more
> attention than "Someone copied the Wikipedia entry for their
> homework".  You'd think as a Calculus teacher she wouldn't run into
> that very often, but actually it happens all the time.

I hope that she makes sure that they give Wikipedia proper credit.  It 
seems like a great teaching moment for her. More interesting for us 
would be why these kids use Wikipedia.  Are the authorized proprietary 
textbooks that bad?

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Charity Navigator rates WMF

[Ray Saintonge]

Anthony wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 7:41 PM, Samuel Klein  wrote:
>   
>> In my experience, high-school teachers were 90/10 anti Wikipedia 3
>> years ago, and are slightly in favor of it today.  This sort of thing
>> would be a fascinating survey to run year after year.
>> 
> I don't know.  My evidence is all anecdotal, but the vast majority of
> what I hear from high school teachers about Wikipedia is playfully
> derogatory.  Not that they're against Wikipedia, any more than they're
> against Twitter or MySpace, but that they don't take it as a serious
> source of information.  "I read it on Wikipedia" is taken as about
> equivalent to "I read it on the Internet".
>
>   
No surprise there.  I think that education systems are thoroughly shook 
up about the internet.  They begin with a role reversal where the kids 
know more than the teachers about how to effectively use this tool.  
They also see some kids using the internet for really nasty purposes, 
and don't know what to do about it.  To take Wikipedia "as a serious 
source of information" will take time, and depend less on what we do 
than on what they do.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Charity Navigator rates WMF

[Ray Saintonge]

George Herbert wrote:
> I know EB and World Book contributors who are very upset about
> Wikipedia's rise, and many who see it as a godsend to information
> propogation around the world, on the order of the rise of the Web and
> of Google.  There are lost jobs at EB and WB - but the Post Office has
> lost jobs due to email and skype and cellphones.  Technology has an
> evolving effect on the world.  My grandfather owned and operated the
> last cooperage in San Francisco in the era between the world wars -
> and sold it off, seeing the rise of the steel barrel as being a
> world-ending event for that industry as they became more commonly
> available.  The new owners thought he was a fool for selling, and were
> out of business a few years later.  The industry my college degree is
> in (Naval Architecture, and the shipbuilding industry) is for the most
> part dead in the United States compared to when I graduated - I saw
> the writing on the wall and learned computers too, and that's what's
> paid the bills.
>   

My great-grandfather was a harness maker in small town Saskatchewan.  It 
seems that he saw the writing on the wall when tractors began to replace 
horses for ploughing the fields.  His harness shop burned down in 1922, 
and local legend has it that he was seen driving away from town as this 
was happening.

What you have hit upon is the well known dark side of real paradigm shift.

> This is part of life.  Either you learn to live with change or it runs
> you over eventually.  Companies that don't die; people that don't end
> up unemployed or working in much less skilled jobs eventually.  This
> isn't Wikipedia's fault - it's the pace of change, over the last 200
> years at least.
>
>   
That 200 years has seen both winners and losers.  The shipbuilding 
industry may be dead in the United States, but I suspect that that one 
has more to do with cheaper offshore wages than technical advances. This 
does not detract from your principal thesis.  I don't think we are at 
all close to seeing all the negative effects of these advances, and the 
resultant labour surplus.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Charity Navigator rates WMF

[Ray Saintonge]

Michael Peel wrote:
> On 10 Oct 2009, at 15:00, geni wrote:
>   
>> The complexity is that in certain groups being anti-wikipedia is a
>> requirement for fitting in. A statement that you take knowledge
>> seriously.
>> 
> I'm sorry; I can understand those sentences separately, but not when  
> they are combined. Wikipedia is a way to take knowledge (and the  
> spread of knowledge) seriously. That's why I'm here.
>
> I would hope that being anti-wikipedia (or anti-knowledge) is not a  
> requirement for high-school teachers.
>
>   

I think I understood him correctly. Since the second "sentence" isn't a 
sentence at all, reading the full stop at the end of the first as a 
colon makes it all clear.  The statement describes a regrettable, though 
understandable, social dynamic.  That dynamic is on a par with those who 
would not vote for Obama because his middle name is Hussein, or those 
who would ostracize an individual for not being Christian enough. We can 
question the intelligence of such people, but we cannot doubt their 
existence.


Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Charity Navigator rates WMF

[Ray Saintonge]

Marc Riddell wrote:
> on 10/10/09 11:32 AM, geni at wrote:
>   
>> Depends on the school. By being anti-wikipedia you make a statement
>> that you insist on a certain quality in your sources. You could view
>> it as a form of snobbery "Wikipedia may seem okey to the peons but we
>> know better".
>> 
> A goal of a good teacher is to introduce their students to scholarship. And
> a one-stop visit to Wikipedia does not accomplish that.
>   

As long as the emphasis is on "introduce" it's probably OK, and a step 
above relying solely on the official textbook.After the introduction you 
can start to demand more.

Ec


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Re: [Foundation-l] Charity Navigator rates WMF

[Ray Saintonge]

Anthony wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 3:23 AM, Ray Saintonge  wrote:
>   
>> Anthony wrote:
>> 
>>> One would think from these discussions you might have learned that
>>> Wikipedia, Britannica, and World Book are tertiary sources
>> What is accomplished by trying to label encyclopedias as tertiary
>> sources?  They probably are, but so what?
>> 
> That's why they generally shouldn't be used, even at a high school
> level.  Encyclopedias are summaries of information.  At a high school
> level, most students should be making their own summaries.
> Furthermore, every step you take on the [[telephone game]] of
> information you lose reliability.
>   
/[snip]/
> But you have
> to decide what to include and what to leave out, and that choice is
> determined by what you believe to be most relevant to the truth
> (assuming you're intellectually honest, anyway).
>   
At the high school level what may be acceptable when the students start 
may not be acceptable when they graduate.  They should be learning how 
to think critically, and looking beyond what the teacher and the 
textbook have to say. For some teachers that is difficult to accept when 
they want students to conform.


>>> My wife is a high school teacher, but she doesn't really pay more
>>> attention than "Someone copied the Wikipedia entry for their
>>> homework".  You'd think as a Calculus teacher she wouldn't run into
>>> that very often, but actually it happens all the time.
>>>   
>> I hope that she makes sure that they give Wikipedia proper credit. It
>> seems like a great teaching moment for her.
>> 
> I don't know about a great teaching moment, but she warns them that
> plagiarism is against school policy and that if they get caught again
> she's going to report them to the administration.
>
> If they gave Wikipedia credit, then instead of a plagiarism warning
> they'd just get a zero :).  These particular assignments are not
> supposed to be copied at all.  I guess I should point out at this
> point that this is an online high school.
>   

Much depends here on the sort of students that are enrolled in that high 
school. A school for high achievers should be fairly intolerant of this 
kind of copying.  Naturally, the operating parameters need to be 
understood from the beginning.  In a program for dysfunctional kids who 
are never likely to become scholars any kind of outside source may be 
the most that you can expect.

>> More interesting for us
>> would be why these kids use Wikipedia.  Are the authorized proprietary
>> textbooks that bad?
>> 
> No, kids just understand that they're going to get caught if they
> plagiarize from their textbooks.  What they don't realize is that the
> "NPOV" language of Wikipedia tends to be glaringly obvious, even when
> you're talking about calculus.
>   

I suppose that another strategy would be to subject them to a quiz based 
on the very material they lifted from Wikipedia ... without a copy of 
the article in front of them. O:-)

> I guess in that sense it is a teaching moment - one about honesty.
> Still don't know about a great one.  I would think by high school kids
> have already learned whether or not they're capable of getting away
> with deceit - but maybe not, not all teachers (or parents) are as
> attentive as my wife.
>   

Getting away with deceit is a learned process, often applied defensively.
> On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 3:50 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>   
>> I think that education systems are thoroughly shook
>> up about the internet.
>> 
>
> Definitely agreed, although I think this has gotten much better over
> the past decade or so.
>   

Optimist!

>> To take Wikipedia "as a serious
>> source of information" will take time, and depend less on what we do
>> than on what they do.
>> 
>
> I honestly can't see it ever happening.  Not unless Wikipedia abandons
> "anyone can edit", anyway.
>   

"Anyone can edit" can work ... if it's accompanied by a viable article 
evaluation system.  That means more than just checking for vandalism.  I 
would very much support some kind of numerical system for this where the 
published rating would average all the ratings made by any individual 
who cared to do so..
> "Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write
> anything they want about any subject. So you know you are getting the
> best possible information." - I think that quote from The Office
> pretty much sums it up.  I've heard Wikipedians make similar
> statements with a perfectly straight face, and I don't think they,
> unlike the writers of The Office, were doing so with tongue-in-cheek.
>   

I've never read The Office, but I'm experienced enough to be wary of the 
superlatives of wild-eyed enthusiasts.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Dumb survey about Commons

[Ray Saintonge]

Guillaume Paumier wrote:
> One thing I realized, though, was that two questions had an ambiguous 
> wording: people wonder why they have to give reasons for not using 
> Commons, or not participating, despite the fact that they said they do. 
> These questions should read « what is the main reason that limits or 
> hinders your use/participation ». Unfortunately, we can't change the 
> survey once it is running.
>
>   
I don't regularly use Commons, but when I went to fill in the answer at 
"Other" for why I don't use it the survey crashed.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Wikipedia christmas calendar?

[Ray Saintonge]

Olli wrote:
> Date: 2009/10/31
> Subject: Wikipedia christmas calendar?
>
> What about a wikipedia christmas calendar? It can maybe preview some
> articles or something similar. Then it can be multilingual.
>
>   
Not necessarily just Christmas, but a published calendar for the whole 
year.  Wikipedia's date articles are already full of weitd and wonderful 
things that happened on this day in history.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Recent firing?

[Ray Saintonge]

Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> Practically every state and municipal government in the US is subject
> to public disclosure laws, sometimes part of 'Government in the
> sunshine' legislation, which require most relevant information about
> the daily operations to be made available.  This usually includes
> information on employee performance, reasons for departure/dismissal,
> etc. about everyone from top management through the junior
> dog-catcher. Though the law usually does exclude highly
> private/personal information (for example, medical information).
>
> [I'm coming from a US centric angle here because that is what I know.
> Feel free to mentally replace US locations with any other place with
> robust records laws]
>
> Accordingly, I find the supposition that being very open about the
> operations of the foundation is somehow incompatible with
> professionalism or ethical behaviour to be simply unsustainable.
>   

I have to agree with the general philosophy of this approach.  The 
problem is not confined to the US, and that Nathan should later raise a 
contrast between California and North Carolina law only tells me that 
the problems at a government level is far from being settled.  When we 
are dealing with competing virtues (openness and privacy) the debate 
always  becomes more intense.

Wikimedians are a naturally suspicious lot, for many of whom "Assuming 
good faith" is little more than sloganeering. Does it come as any 
surprise that the same people who question the integrity of 
pharmaceutical company public relations will also put the same 
suspiciousness to work in regards to their own corporate overlords? Many 
of us are suspicious of corporatism, and WMF is a corporation. The 
excuse that a corporation is still too small also soon wears thin. 

This thread includes the word "firing" in its title. Whether or not the 
word accurately reflects the facts, the cat is out of the bag. It is all 
over the internet where the audience tends to see little difference 
between "He was fired," and "Was he fired?" That audience can easily 
include potential former employers, who will look for easy ways to trim 
a long list of applicants into a short list.  We can no more control 
such low-level rumour mills than we can control large scale conspiracy 
theories about the Kennedy assassination or why the towers fell on 9/11.

> Wikimedia is not a business. It is a publicly supported charity. The
> WMF depends on the public both for the funding used to cut everyone's
> paychecks and for the creation of the material which makes its sites
> worth visiting. In terms of man-hours-input the community of
> contributors dwarfs the foundation's full time staff considerably.
>   

Absolutely.

> The inescapable reality of this is that the employees and officers
> serve at the pleasure of the public. Although the chain is not a
> direct chain of command, it is no less real.  So I don't think it's
> surprising to see people making noises expressing a desire for the
> kind of openness which is technically available from state and local
> governance almost universally thought the US.
>   

In a lot of other places too.  The internet has made hiding high-level 
misdeeds more difficult.  It is far more difficult for lobbyists to come 
and go unnoticed than ever before.  Governments are still far from 
perfect in their handling of these matters.

> I believe Wikimedia Foundation already has a stated goal of being on
> the leading edge of organizational openness and has done well /by
> commercial standards/.Perhaps it's time to take that a step
> further and voluntarily subject the organization to the public record
> laws of some state or some composition or subset thereof.
>
> Not only would this advance openness but it may help avoid arguments
> over the form and level of openness by delegating those decisions to
> others who have thought harder about them than we have. It may also
> make cooperating with other organizations simpler because rather than
> trying to explain Wikimedia's bizarre one-off openness requirements
> and the inevitable debate about the wisdom of every aspect, it could
> be simply pointed out that the WMF operates under some particular
> rule-set used elsewhere.
>
> Pre-existing government openness rulesets also have the advantage of
> the existence of training materials for staff and layman guides for
> the public.


Those who say that the current severance was at too low a level to merit 
such heated controversy are probably right, but it is up to WMF to be 
sufficiently pro-active to avoid this kind of discussion about any 
single individual.  The broader policy question remains an important 
one.  If the result is that a public release needs to be made whenever 
*anyone* quits or is dismissed, so be it.  An open and honest release 
may be less damaging than the alternative.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Recent firing?

[Ray Saintonge]

wjhon...@aol.com wrote:
> Ha.  I'm not ashamed to say I've been fired.  Not once!  I cast a spell on 
> them and they were bankrupt within the year.  So there.
>
> Some of the companies I've worked for think I'm the cat's meow (that's a 
> good thing), and some think I'm the devil incarnate.  I guess that's my 
> character.  I leave an impression that is not forgotten.
>
> Mavericks get fired.  People who've never been fired might be too placid 
> for my taste.  Spice is part of life.
>
>   
Companies don't like employees who upset the apple cart and reveal that 
the apples were made of plastic. ;-)


Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Recent firing?

[Ray Saintonge]

Thomas Dalton wrote:
> 2009/11/1 Anthony:
>   
>> Here in the US, if a company doesn't mind its unemployment tax rate
>> going up, they can do pretty much whatever they want.
>>
>> In the UK, what, if anything, can a company do if they want to
>> redefine a position altogether?
>> 
>
> If you are genuinely redefining the position so the existing job will
> no longer exist then you can make the employee redundant (you have to
> pay at least the statutory redundancy pay, which depends on length of
> service). If you are just using it as an excuse to get rid of someone
> you don't like, you'll get sued. If you want to fire someone they have
> to have done something either really seriously wrong or have received
> lots of warnings and not improved.


Employee protection an union rights are significantly weaker in the U.S. 
than in most developed country. Some states are significantly worse than 
others. Protecting the rights of workers is on the slippery slope to 
socialism, and that would damage the ideological purity of free enterprise.

Employers in other countries need to be more creative in offering 
undesirables solutions that they can't refuse.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Recent firing?

[Ray Saintonge]

Pharos wrote:
> I can think of approximately 500,000 other issues that it would
> perhaps be more productive for us to argue about on this list.
>   

So just because you have a personal dislike for a comment you want to 
call it arguing. You're making far too big a deal of a casual response 
to Thomas.

Ec

> On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 6:34 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>   
>> Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> 
>>> If you are genuinely redefining the position so the existing job will
>>> no longer exist then you can make the employee redundant (you have to
>>> pay at least the statutory redundancy pay, which depends on length of
>>> service). If you are just using it as an excuse to get rid of someone
>>> you don't like, you'll get sued. If you want to fire someone they have
>>> to have done something either really seriously wrong or have received
>>> lots of warnings and not improved.
>>>   
>> Employee protection and union rights are significantly weaker in the U.S.
>> than in most developed countries. Some states are significantly worse than
>> others. Protecting the rights of workers is on the slippery slope to
>> socialism, and that would damage the ideological purity of free enterprise.
>>
>> Employers in other countries need to be more creative in offering
>> undesirables solutions that they can't refuse.
>> 


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Re: [Foundation-l] The state of Foundation-l (again) was: Recent firing?

[Ray Saintonge]

phoebe ayers wrote:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Improving_Foundation-l is still up but
> hasn't gotten any new traffic in the last few weeks. Suggestions
> included:
> * starting a forum
> * starting an announcements list
> * limiting posting
>
>   
Looking at that discussion's history I see the following number of postings:
Sept 9:   17
Sept.10: 13
Sept.11: 12
Sept.12:  0
Sept.13:  1
Sept.14:  1
Sept.15:  0
Sept.16:  2
Sept.17:  1
...and nothing since

So it seems that after three days the discussion had essentially run its 
course, much in the way of many mailing list threads, including 
controversial or even inflammatory threads. An analysis of more threads 
or wiki discussions in a similar way could be interesting.  I also not 
that the 9th was a Wednesday, and that the drop in list traffic on 
weekends may itself have a dampening effect on the life of threads in 
that list.

I would also suggest that any suggestion of moderation or other 
throttling strategy during the life helps to extend the life of an 
otherwise exhausted thread.  Perhaps that should be a mailing list 
corollary to Godwin's law.


Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Minors and sexual explicit stuff

[Ray Saintonge]

Andrew Garrett wrote:
> On 16/11/2009, at 1:04 AM, private musings wrote:
>   
>> On Wikipedia Review, 'tarantino' pointed out that on WMF projects,
>> self-identified minors (in this case User:Juliancolton) are involved  
>> in
>> routine maintenance stuff around sexually explicit images reasonably
>> describable as porn (one example is 'Masturbating Amy.jpg').
>>
>> http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=27358&st=0&p=204846&#entry204846
>>
>> I think this is wrong on a number of levels - and I'd like to see  
>> better
>> governance from the foundation in this area - I really feel that we  
>> need to
>> talk about some child protection measures in some way - they're  
>> overdue.
>> 
>
> I'm not sure where you get the idea that it's somehow inappropriate  
> for minors to be viewing or working on images depicting human nudity  
> and sexuality. Cultural sensibilities on this matter are inconsistent,  
> irrational and entirely lacking in substance.
>
> If it is truly inappropriate or harmful for children to be working on  
> such images, then those children should be supervised in their  
> internet access, or have gained the trust of their parents to use the  
> internet within whatever limits those parents (or, indeed, the minor)  
> believe is appropriate.
>
> It is absolutely not the job of the Wikimedia Foundation, nor the  
> Wikimedia community, to supervise a child's internet access and/or  
> usage, and certainly not to make arbitrary rules regarding said usage  
> on the basis of a single culture's sensibilities on children and  
> sexuality, especially sensibilities as baseless and harmful as this one.
>
>   
I agree that a common sense approach is warranted. In large measure 
applying complex controls on child viewing is totally unrealistic. We 
would begin with the problem of defining what is too young.  In an other 
topic, underage drinking, it is relatively far easier to define the 
offending act but the age at which drinking is permitted still varies 
widely from one jurisdiction to another.  So what age is appropriate for 
viewing such material? 12? 16? 18? 21? And even if we agree on an age, 
except for the few self-identified individuals how are we to know what 
someone's age really is?  Those who are too young very quickly learn 
that lying is a valuable skill founded upon necessity.

Not many years ago in a bible-belt suburb there was a very loud campaign 
to block books that depicted same sex parents from a school library. 
There was no question of those parents engaging in sexual activity in 
the books, only a depiction that they could be loving and committed 
parents just as much as opposite sex parents.  The aim of the books was 
to combat the development of homophobia among children of "normal" 
parents. Yes, that is at the other extreme from the raunchy photos that 
are most often complained about, but that merely illustrates the problem 
of definition.

As is often stated WMF is an ISP, and not a publisher.  The more it 
seeks to control content, the more it acquires characteristics of a 
publisher.  Indeed as an ISP it must respond to specific legal demands 
to remove certain material, but random complaints are not legal 
demands.  Perhaps at the same time those complainers should be asking 
why murder is so much more socially acceptable on TV than consensual sex.

The responsibility of parents remains paramount ... even if some are 
incapable of exercising that responsibility.  It would also be 
irresponsible if parents with the means to provide internet access 
exercised control to the extent of raising internet illiterates 
incapable of functioning in a wired world.  What teachers and other 
public institutions can do has severe limitations.  The sad unavoidable 
fact is that the seamier side of life exists.  A parent does not protect 
his child by pretending to him that such things don't happen.  More is 
accomplished by directing him toward a mature attitude.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Building The Great Monument of Bureaucracy

[Ray Saintonge]

Tomasz Ganicz wrote:
> The
> idea is to create a "Staging Area" - a wiki (or non-wiki) project
> which is not public and can be used for media and meta-data mass
> storage before sending the stuff to public projects. The idea is that
> all permissions and other legal stuff would be carefully solved before
> sending anything to Commons, so the mass contributors coming from
> outside organisation would not need to cope with OTRS system.
>   

It's hard to see how the problems of bureaucracy could be solved by 
establishing a meta-bureaucracy.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Building The Great Monument of Bureaucracy

[Ray Saintonge]

Geoffrey Plourde wrote:
> I see a lot of well meaning people responding here, but maybe its time to go 
> back to the basics. No non free pictures, period. No more bureaucracy plus 
> cost savings on not having to run the permissions systems. 
>   
This is simplistic. No-one seriously here is opposed to the philosophy 
of free content.  Free content is a concept; GFDL and CC are licences.  
In the same way an apple tree can have different varieties of the fruit 
grafted upon it.  The licences are fruit which imply the presence of a 
common trunk, but the presence of the trunk says nothing about the fruit 
that are grown there.

Ec



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Re: [Foundation-l] Building The Great Monument of Bureaucracy

[Ray Saintonge]

Milos Rancic wrote:
> But, during the couple of previous days I've got one more contribution
> to our Monument. This kind of contributions make me to think that
> Wikipedia in English (not just en.wp for sure) is becoming -- slowly
> but surely -- the main problem in spreading free knowledge. 
>   
...
> It is suggested: "Any material that he is
> not authorized to give us permission to use must be clearly noted."
> Even, again, a moron would be able to understand what has been created
> by professor at his site and what is not. For example, if he used some
> photo and he is describing that photo as an art and mentions the
> author of the photo -- logically, this photo is not his. If he quoted
> some author and describes that quote -- logically, this quote is not
> his. And so on. The other problem which such bureaucracy is opening is
> the fact that that suggestion means without any doubt that I would
> need a week or more of work to mark everything on professor's five
> sites.
>
> * So, my only response to such moronic bureaucracy is: Fuck you! Of
> course, it is not about particular Wikimedia volunteers, it is about
> the whole system which transforms good persons into bureaucratic
> morons.
>
> And why it is so? Because we have hundreds or thousands of cases
> before courts because not so pedantically defined sentences? Because
> it is reasonable to suppose that a professor who already gave to us
> permissions to get materials from his site four years ago will sue us
> because not so well worded agreement for giving materials under
> CC-BY-SA? Fuck you, again!
>
> I mentioned just two examples, but there are at least a couple of more
> similar from my experience.
>
> As this kind of bureaucracy is so deeply inside of Wikimedia and
> especially at Wikipedia and especially at Wikipedia in English -- the
> only solution which I am able to see is to create a number of
> auxiliary sites which would take care about permissions instead of
> Wikimedia. However, this is a very clear path of making Wikipedia and
> Wikimedia less relevant. After five years of such tendencies some
> standards will be created. After another five Wikipedia won't be
> necessary anymore.
>
> I would like to say that the option is to work against such
> bureaucracy. However, I am not so optimistic in relation to the large
> projects which are already deeply bureaucratic. Even a number of
> smaller projects suffer from bureaucracy because of strong influence
> of the large projects.
You paint an excellent picture of a gravedigger who has been so 
enthusiastic about his work that he has dug so deep that he is unable to 
climb out of his own work.

I suppose that every project is in a different stage of littering with 
fly-paper.

In the example at least the professor was still alive for you to be able 
to ask permission, but remembering that as the law now stands in many 
jurisdictions this scene is likely to be repeated for 70 years after he 
dies, during which time you will be seeking permissions from heirs who 
have no clue about what you are asking, all for the sake of protecting 
economic rights that they never knew they had and money that they never 
knew they were getting.

It should be enough for the person granting the free licence to 
subscribe to a statement of principle about free content that transcends 
GFDL or CC or whatever the flavour of the day may be next year, next 
decade or next century.

There always will be cases where a reasonable and fair analysis will 
lead us to the conclusion that those contents are probably free, but 
where that final step in establishing a clear licence is nearly 
impossible for a wide variety of reasons.  Due diligence does not 
require absolute certainty about a work's copyright status. It accepts 
that there is some level where one's efforts are good enough. It accepts 
that at some point the individual must accept responsibility to protect 
his own rights without the nanny state doing it for him.  With so many 
significant rights in serious need of protection it makes no sense that 
so much effort to protect the speculative rights of the long dead. And 
the wiki projects should not be surrogates for the nanny state.

At some point we need to be able to say to our users: "We have a high 
degree of confidence that this [specific] material is free, but these 
difficulties exist: ... Use it at your own risk."

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] WSJ on Wikipedia

[Ray Saintonge]

altally wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 5:41 PM, Nathan wrote:
>   
>> On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 12:20 PM, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>> 
>>> Hoi,
>>> Given that the WSJ is making a lot of noise about moving all its content
>>> behind a paywall and is planning to remove its headlines from the "prying
>>> eyes" of Google, I think it is appropriate to honour their wish and no
>>> longer consider the WSJ as a verifiable source. It is appropriate because it
>>>   
>>> is the direct consequence of their actions.
>>>
>>> When this means that the blogs are part and parcel of this wish, then we
>>> should not try to circumvent this even when they write about us.
>>>   
>> We should ignore them because they want to get paid for their work?
>> Why? Frankly, I think the NY Times and other companies should require
>> payment for much of their work as well. I'm willing to pay for their
>> content, its worth it
> Why should they make their website free to all anyway? Bit stupid for a
> business to do that when they could be making money.
>
> And furthermore, I have generally found books make better sources than
> online newspapers.

I would be loath to muddle verifiability with the presence of a 
pay-wall.  They are two different issues.

To whatever extent WSJ is a verifiable source it will remain so 
irrespective of its being freely available.

With so many sources available I would have no reason to to favour them 
with a subscription. Subscribing would be tantamount to saying that 
WSJ's opinion pieces are that much more valuable than other sources.  
The underlying information remains uncopyrightable. It's up to the free 
market to decide whether a paid subscription is worth it.  They have a 
supply, but the demand may not be sufficient.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] WSJ on Wikipedia

[Ray Saintonge]

Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) wrote:
> If we're going to have a thread, let's focus on the substance of the
> article.  This is a digression.
>
>   
This seems to beg the question: "What do we mean by 'on topic'?"

In the present circumstances, is it about the actual content of the WSJ 
article, or is it about the availability and verifiability of WSJ 
material as raised in Gerard's originating post for this thread?

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] WSJ on Wikipedia

[Ray Saintonge]

Michael Snow wrote:
> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>   
>> books are available for years the copy of
>> the day may be available in a library, but how about last years copy of the
>> WSJ ? Do you really think the WSJ can be found in every USA library ??
>> 
> I don't know about "every" library, but libraries are about more than 
> just books, and librarians are not unaware of the wonders of databases 
> in our modern digital age. For those of us that use libraries, I 
> encourage you to familiarize yourselves with the collections your 
> library may be able to provide access to online. I've certainly relied 
> on my library privileges for such sources many times in the course of 
> editing Wikipedia, particularly news archives (including the Wall Street 
> Journal).
>   
Of course you happen to live in the state that has the highest 
proportion of library use in the US! What has the state done right to 
encourage your expressed attitude?

It may at first seem that you and Gerard are speaking at cross 
purposes.  There are some serious epistemological questions that lie at 
the root of this discussion.  It's not just about the WSJ (which is a 
convenient example for this discussion), but about the entire question 
of how we store and retrieve knowledge.  How we pay for its production 
is only one issue among many.

The stack of paper 1-centimeter-thick WSJs accumulated over 120 years at 
five issues per week would be 300 metres high, (tall enough to be marked 
on a map as a hazard to aviation) with no guarantee that the oldest 
copies at the bottom of the stack would not have been so deteriorated by 
internal acids as to be unusable. With the advent on on-line publication 
we have no way of judging the stability of its much larger content, or 
of being assured that it has not been edited to suit updated policy. 
Maintaining an edit log is not a standard operating procedure for most 
sites.

Perhaps we do need to become more familiar with libraries, but perhaps 
too librarians need to be more pro-active in communicating the changing 
nature of their resource to the public.

Ec

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[Foundation-l] Their own medicine

[Ray Saintonge]

This lets you know why the recording industry needs more money from 
consumers. :'(

http://www.thestar.com/business/article/735096--geist-record-industry-faces-liability-over-infringement

Ec


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Re: [Foundation-l] Assume Good Faith and Don't Bite Newbees

[Ray Saintonge]

Geoffrey Plourde wrote:
> The spirit of the one person per account policy was to prevent people from 
> disclaiming responsibility by claiming another person did it. 

That means little when we don't know the real names of the contributor.  
A pseudonym could be anyone with access to the family computer.  If an 
account owner allows others to use his account he is still responsible 
for what happens in the account.  (If you let someone drive your car, 
and there is an accident you can still be held responsible.)  Someone 
else, with your permission, uses your account for vandalism it's your 
problem.  Most of the time secondary users of these accounts do so 
responsibly. We waste too much energy on the irresponsible minority.

Ec



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Re: [Foundation-l] Assume Good Faith and Don't Bite Newbees

[Ray Saintonge]

John M. Sinclair wrote:
> I'm new to this discussion, so I may be inserting at the wrong place and
> time, but I want to suggest that Wikipedia's counsel determine whether
> the Digital Millennium Copyright Act implicitly requires individual
> accounts in order to maintain the Foundation's protections under the
> Act.  I don't know that it does, but I think it may, or may head in that
> direction.
>   

This would be seriously unrealistic.  If you think there is something of 
the sort there by all means give a specific references.  If you need to 
run to counsel to verify the presence every little speculative legal 
provision nothing would ever get done anywhere, and expensively so.

People sign all sorts of complicated contracts every day without so much 
as reading them, let alone understanding them.  They are typically held 
responsible for the consequences.  Do you consult your lawyer every time 
you sign an apartment lease, or buy a car, or take out a credit card.  
The consequences of clauses in these contracts can be more profound than 
what is being discussed here.

> By the way, and by comparison, the federal courts require individual
> attorney accounts for use of the online filing system (called Pacer), so
> that an individual attorney must take responsibility for her or his
> pleadings, and can't hide behind a firm account.  Of course, you can
> always locate an individual attorney, and determine what firm they work
> for.  
>
>   
The court system requires considerably more formality than Wikipedia 
accounts.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Secret Santa!

[Ray Saintonge]

phoebe ayers wrote:
> Austin and I thought it might be fun to have a Secret Santa New Year's
> drawing among Wikimedia friends! We're basing it on the MetaFilter
> community Secret Santa drawing, which has 256 participants and uses a
> website called Elfster.
>
> ...
> * buy, make or find a gift -- price guideline $10ish or less
> (+postage); it's just a guideline but don't go crazy. Small gifts are
> fine.
>
>
>   
Anyone on the list who uses eBay (or similar site) can purchase online 
and have the seller send the item directly to the recipient.

Ray

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia crosses 10Gbit/sec

[Ray Saintonge]

Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> Today Wikimedia's world-wide five-minute-average transmission rate
> crossed 10gbit/sec for the first time ever, as far as I know. This
> peak rate was achieved while serving roughly 91,725 requests per
> second.

The rate can't be that rough if we already know it to 5 significant 
digits. :-)

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] sell wikipedia

[Ray Saintonge]

William Pietri wrote:
> On 01/23/2010 02:59 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
>   
>> William Pietri wrote:
>> 
>>> I note that just last night I was browsing EBay to see what a set of the
>>> 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica goes for. For $10, I could get it on DVD.
>>> Or I could pay hundreds for a physical set. I would never buy the DVD,
>>> but I might buy the physical set. And I already own a reproduction of
>>> the 3-volume 1768 edition.
>>>   
>> Out of curiosity, how does the three volume edition
>> measure up?
>> 
> I'm not quite sure how to answer that. Is there something you wanted me 
> to measure it against?
>   

Perhaps that's what's wrong with the question. If we judge those volumes 
strictly by 21st century standards most of the contents will fail 
miserably. The greatest value that these volumes provide is their 
contribution to the historical framework of knowledge. On-line 
communities are prone to a recentism that ignores how knowledge got to 
where it is and the collective effort and experience that accomplished this.
> Personally, I find it a delight, and am prone to flipping through it 
> when I'm wondering what exactly an encyclopedia is. More for inspiration 
> than knowledge, of course. But it's nice to see the familiar features: 
> articles, large and small; redirects, see-alsos, illustrations, 
> references; even a proto-NPOV, where on topics of dispute, both sides 
> are explained.
>   

I find my copy a delight too, even with all the faux foxing to make it 
look old. I also love my copy of the 1701 second edition of Jeremy 
Collier's "Great Historical, Geographical, and Poetical Dictionary". It 
doesn't use the word "encyclopedia", but still shows enough 
characteristics to be called one. My favorite article:

NEW-ZELAND, a large Country of /South America/, or /Antartickland/,
discovered by the /Hollanders/ in 1642. It lies South of the
Pacifick Sea, and far East of /New-Guiny/ and /Solomon/'s Island. 
It's not yet known whether it be an Island or Continent, there being
no /European/ Colony settled there./ Baudr[and]/.

The first edition of the Britannica did not include an article about New 
Zealand.
> My second-favorite thing about it is that the three volumes, which were 
> published serially, are A-B, C-L, M-Z. I've always suspected they 
> started out with a surplus of ambition and then realized what they were 
> up against. And my favorite thing is the preface, which starts out, 
> "Utility ought to be the principle intention of every publication." 
> Reading through it never fails to remind me what a great enterprise an 
> encyclopedia is, both theirs and ours.
>
>
>   
I have a dozen or more encyclopedic works, among which I include 
biographical compendia. (I'm finding it tough to acquire the secon 
through eighth editions of the EB.) Comparing the way that each treats 
the same subject can be fascinating. The detailed articles about World 
War I in the 12th edition of the EB were no longer there for the 13th; 
the later printings of the 14th edition differed considerably from the 
earliest. The "Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada" includes far more from 
Spanish speaking countries than what you might find in an English work.

Depending on only one encyclopedia presents a risk of monotonic thinking.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] 2008/2009 Wikimedia Foundation Annual Report

[Ray Saintonge]

Casey Brown wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 1:08 AM, William Pietri  wrote:
>   
>> The only common use I can think of where M doesn't represent millions is
>> in the advertising term CPM, or cost per mille:
>> 
> Okay, so how about we just ask them to use "K" for thousands in the
> future, to reduce confusion, and let this thread die? :-)
>
>   

Better still is to avoid abbreviations altogether.  This is a 
multicultural environment, and very few abbreviations, including "K", 
avoid confusion; they mostly create it. The Chicago Manual of Style does 
not appear to mention these abbreviations at all. Spelling things out is 
just good writing style.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Money for the Prishtina Insight

[Ray Saintonge]

jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com wrote:
> Hi,
> I wonder if you know about :
> http://prishtinainsight.com/
>
> They have a great newspaper that is very informative. Problem is: it is
> lacking funding.
>
> My idea is that we would raise funding from wikimedia to buy articles from
> them to put in the wikipedia.
> Or we would raise funding from other sources for purchasing the articles for
> putting them in wikipedia.
>
> They do great journalism. I am thinking about factual articles about kosovo
> that are maybe older, maybe we could have them work on some wikipedia things
> in agreement, like 1-2 articles from every issue for the wikipedia.
>
> This would benefit the wikipedia and allow them to continue to work on their
> newspaper that lacks funding.
>
> What do you think?
>   
I'm sure that there are many newspapers around the world suffering in 
that way.  It likely wouldn't be difficult to find them if we looked. 
The entire news marketplace is in economic turmoil, and even big players 
find it difficult to keep above water.  The entire industry needs to 
adjust to the marketplace without our intervention.

Support this particular venture could be seen as contrary to NPOV. There 
are a lot of unresolved issues between Kosovo and Serbia, and it would 
not be in our interest to be seen as supporting either side.

Ec

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

[Ray Saintonge]

K. Peachey wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 3:54 PM, The Cunctator  wrote:
>   
>> Yes. This is idiotic. The logo contest followed the same rules as all other
>> submissions to Wikipedia -- they were submitted under the GFDL.
>> 
> Yes, but not everyone knows that and any tom, dick or harry that
> randomly finds them doesn't know that, that is why they should be
> clearly labelled with their source(/s), licenses(/s) and any other
> appropriate information on their [the images] description pages.
> Someone could even make a template saying that they are part of a
> series from whatever contest that they are from.
>
>   
You're shifting the burden onto the wrong people. If the images followed 
the general rule that prevailed when they were uploaded the presumption 
is that they followed that rule unless there was an exception specified 
*at the time*. If rules have changed since then it's up to those who 
complain to add the proper notices instead of acting like vandals. 
Admins who don't know that don't deserve to be admins.

Ec

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

[Ray Saintonge]

Tomasz Ganicz wrote:
> Yes...Copyright paranoia in action... You can always copy those files
> as long as they exists and simply create your private website with all
> of them. I wonder who is going to sue you for copyvio in such the
> case. I guess nobody...
>
> Anyway this is indeed big question if we should delete files based on
> the "0 tolerance for potential copyvio, no matter if it does make any
> practical sense or was examine but someone with real copyright
> knowledge" rule or rather based on "is there any probability that
> someone will sue us for copyvio". Wikimedia Commons (and many other
> Wikimedia projects) currently follow the "0 tolerance" approach. The
> exeption is still Wikipedia-en and several other projects which still
> allow fair-use.
>
>   
Any type of zero-tolerance leads to this kind of silliness.  Simple 
errors of judgement end up being treated like major crimes.

For me the real standard for copyright is respect of others' rights, 
even more than the probability of prosecution, Unfortunately, "respect" 
is a very difficult yardstick to apply because for some respect is 
measured by attention to copyrights while for others respect is measured 
by the recognition that their otherwise obscure work still has merit in 
someone else's eyes.

Users' rights were never taken into consideration in the development of 
copyright laws.  They didn't matter as long as users had no technology 
with which to use those rights. Thus, rights owners could develop widely 
applicable laws that covered a lot of territory that was of no 
consequence at that time.

"Probability that someone will sue" is an interesting idea because it 
recognizes the notion that there is a probability, however 
infinitissimal, that almost any event will happen. Probability allows 
for the possibility of any event, like being hit by a meteorite while 
standing in your own back yard, but it also allows for the overwhelming 
contrary possibility. People who take a lot of drinks during a flight to 
calm their fear of flying are not afraid to get into their cars and 
drive away as soon as they land.

Probabilistic arguments are difficult to establish when the majority 
still believes in legal certainty in the same way that it believes in God.

Ec

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

[Ray Saintonge]

K. Peachey wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 7:51 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>   
>> You're shifting the burden onto the wrong people. If the images followed
>> the general rule that prevailed when they were uploaded the presumption
>> is that they followed that rule unless there was an exception specified
>> *at the time*. If rules have changed since then it's up to those who
>> complain to add the proper notices instead of acting like vandals.
>> Admins who don't know that don't deserve to be admins.
>> 
> And where did i say I was ever a Admin? (Personally I don't have the
> sysop bit on any WMF wiki afaik)
>   
It would be ungracious of me to express relief on that account. :-)

My reference to admins was a generic one. A non-admin making such a 
proposal would still need to have his proposal reviewed before any admin 
actions were taken.

Ec

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

[Ray Saintonge]

Tomasz Ganicz wrote:
> 2010/2/20 Ray Saintonge:
>   
>> Probabilistic arguments are difficult to establish when the majority
>> still believes in legal certainty in the same way that it believes in God.
>> 
> I am not quite sure what you wanted to say :-) Anyway - this cited
> sentence is for me a nice expression of "0 tolerance" copyright
> paranoia definition. In fact, most attorneys  say usually to their
> clients that there is nothing like legal certainty as long as the
> court verdict is known and being innocent does not give you 100%
> probability that you won't be sentenced as guilty. Everyone can be a
> suspect of committing a crime and it is just a matter of probability
> that vast majority of people are not taken to jail. This is just
> because the number of beds in jails is limited :-)
>
>   
My apologies if my analogy wasn't clear.  Many people tend to treat the 
Bible as the word of God that must be valid in all circumstances, 
choosing to ignore any ridiculous results that that may produce. 
Similarly, people unfamiliar with law also tend toward a strict 
interpretation of statute without regard to any other influences, or 
without any understanding of the body of judicial interpretation that 
surrounds those statutes.

If I may quote Oliver Wendell Holmes in /The Common Law/: "The life of 
the law has not been logic: it has been experience ... The law embodies 
the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it 
cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries 
of a book of mathematics."

A jail sentence in a case if copyright infringement would be highly 
unusual, and it is unfortunate that copyright paranoiacs have convinced 
themselves that even the most trivial of infringements puts them only 
one step away from the jail door.

The vengeful tough-on-crime lot is not about to be put off by the 
shortage of beds in a jail. It would please them enormously if the 
criminals had to sleep on the hard cold concrete floor.  That, or they 
could double up in the bunks, and the resulting sexual violence could be 
used as evidence of just how depraved these criminals are.

Ec

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

[Ray Saintonge]

Anthony wrote:
> Tomasz Ganicz wrote:
>   
>> Do we agree with the idea, that at that
>> time everything uploaded was under GNU FDL or not
> Definitely not.  You were supposed to release uploads under the GFDL, *if
> you were the copyright owner*, but not everything that was uploaded was
> under GFDL.

Clearly the rule was based on assuming good faith, and that the person 
doing the uploading had the right to do so. It seems that many projects 
have long since abandoned the assumption of good faith.

Ec

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

[Ray Saintonge]

Tomasz Ganicz wrote:
> Legal decision should be taken out from project's communities
> "jurisdiction"  and given into hands of professional lawyers or at
> least people who had copyright law practical training. Otherwise
> things are based on current flows of moods of amorphous communities,
> which is quite often unpredictable and has very little in common with
> real legal problems, or it is even sometimes based on false over
> interpretation of law imposed by copyright paranoia guerillas. 
>
>   
In practical terms when many thousands of images are having their legal 
status questioned a proper and detailed response on each one from the 
lawyer(s) is unrealistic.  Practical training would make sense, but 
would it be at all possible to teach these people common sense? I'm sure 
that many of these paranoiacs still click yes to shrink-wrap contracts 
about which they don't have a clue about.  The fact that a program won't 
work without it is convincing enough for them.

It's important to remember that the role of lawyers is to advise, 
including an assessment of the possible risks related to different 
options. Once that is done it's up to the person receiving the advice to 
decide how much risk is acceptable. What seems to have developed with 
the Wiki projects is a system where no-one is in a position to accept 
personal responsibility for anything he does. No-one is in a position to 
say, "I accept legal responsibility for the images that I upload, and I 
accept the risks and consequence of any legal action that may result 
therefrom."

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Werner Icking Music Archive may be closing

[Ray Saintonge]

David Gerard wrote:
> On 1 March 2010 12:52, Andrew Gray wrote:
>   
>> Judging from (an older version of?) the website, it's a general
>> non-commercial license on all submissions:
>> ::: The archive contains "free" sheet music, free for non-commercial usage. 
>> This
>> ::: means that you may download the files and print paper copies, but neither
>> ::: the files nor the paper copies may be sold. (...)
>> http://www.daimi.au.dk/~reccmo/scores/Introduction.html#copyright
>> I suspect the older (& definitionally public domain) material, could
>> be rehosted, but we'd have to seperate that out from the rest, and
>> then tackle the problem of whether any "editing" people have done to
>> them gives rise to new copyrights...
>> 
> So if we can help them find a new home that isn't us, we can at least
> then pick out and curate the PD stuff.
>
> Anyone got a contact at IA or ibiblio

What organisations like this, or new projects like the almanac proposal, 
need is encouragement to find funding for their own sites. WMF's size 
gives it a big advantage in fundraising, but a diversity of sites is 
healthy for the state of online information.  We are familiar with 
nearly all the intellectual conflicts going around, but the danger in 
our addiction to reliability is in the marginalization of alternative 
views because of technical interpretations of the rules. We need more of 
these independent sites, each with its own policies, its own legal 
risks, and own funding.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Sue Gardner, Erik Möller , Will iam Pietri: Where is FlaggedRevisions?

[Ray Saintonge]

David Gerard wrote:
> Suggestion: weekly updates (to en:wp Village Pump and wikien-l,
> perhaps), with whatever there is to report, including nothing. People
> hear nothing and worry and get upset - you can see the frantic
> activity below the surface, everyone else just sees a duck sitting on
> a pond.
>   

Ducks sitting on a pond are just an invitation for the guy standing on 
shore with a shotgun.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Sue Gardner, Erik M�ller , W illiam Pietri: Where is FlaggedRevisions?

[Ray Saintonge]

Mike.lifeguard wrote:
> On 37-01--10 03:59 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:
>   
>> What about c) people not editing (or not continuing to edit) because
>> they don't like their edits not going live immediately? Any data on
>> that?
>> 
> I think this is one of the two main reasons flagged revs has failed on
> enwikibooks. The other being that we lack sufficient manpower to get
> enough reviewing done to make it worthwhile.
>
> I hope the usability work being done (I assume, I've not seen the
> commits) on the extension will make what manpower we *do* have stretch
> further.
>
> I don't know if there is even a theoretical solution to the first problem.
>
>   
It all depends on what you want the proposal to accomplish.  As long as 
flagged revisions is a narrow technique to catch vandals on BLPs its 
success can only be measured within that narrow window, and there will 
always be near misses.  Those near misses are too easily interpreted as 
someone else's failure, which they are not.

The essence of wikiness is crowd sourcing and the principle that many 
eyes will over time produce a valid product.  The cultish perfectionism 
that demands absolute reliability in every word won't ever work. 
Sometimes we bec ome a little too concerned with our fears that a 
particular passage may be libellous or a copyvio. We become driven by 
the fear that someone is just behind us waiting to severely punish our 
every misstep. If we are to trust everyone to edit we have to trust 
everyone to evaluate.

What we too easily forget is that most of us grew up in a hierarchic 
society, fundamentally based on respect and tradition. That influences 
the tools we bring to the table. What makes wikis work is contrary to 
that; it requires us to suspend judgement when to do so would be 
counterintuitive.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Texas Instruments signing key controversy

[Ray Saintonge]

Dan Rosenthal wrote:
> Doesn't matter how they were posted. If they were, and there is a valid 
> notice, the action is to expeditiously remove them, notify the poster and let 
> the poster decide if they want to counter-notice and contest it.
>
> All the second guessing in the world is irrelevant to a fight between two 
> people (TI and the key-poster), neither of which are the WMF, and presumably 
> neither of which are you. This is not our battle to fight. 
>   

Nothing in the law says that the person issuing the counter-notice must 
be the person who originally posted the material in question. As I read 
it, anyone who feels that the takedown notice was invalid can file a 
counter-notice. That means, of course, that any person willing to file a 
counter-notice is also willing, and perhaps enthusiastic, to have his 
day in court.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Texas Instruments signing key controversy

[Ray Saintonge]

Techman224 wrote:
> Unfortunately, the WMF got involved the moment when they removed the keys, 
> also the DMCA notice (or any other notice)
> is given to the person or organization that runs the website. It is not given 
> to the user who posted the content as they can't
> remove content after it has been published. Since the WMF got the notice, it 
> is their responsibility to file a counternotice or not.
>
>   
No. This is why such notices should be a matter of public record.  An 
ISP who disagrees with a notice can simply leave the material there and 
wait to be sued without waiting for a counter-notice. It has the right 
to do so; this is far different from an obligation to do so as you seem 
to be suggesting.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Texas Instruments signing key controversy

[Ray Saintonge]

Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 4 March 2010 19:41,   wrote:
>   
>> Which means of course that a person could claim copyright to the very
>> technology underlying Wikipedia, and demand the entire project be taken  
>> down.
>> In fact a different mentally ill person could make this claim every  month
>> and force the project offline.
>>
>> That's the world you're advocating?  No responsibility on the part of  the
>> office to even make the slightest attempt to verify the claim?
>> 
> I think we're falling into the trap of constructing strawmen to fight here.
>
> I don't think anyone is seriously claiming that if someone wrote to
> the WMF claiming to hold the rights to the text of, oh, /Bleak House/,
> that we would then be obliged to take a copy of it down - because the
> claim itself is patently nonsensical and can be ignored.
>
> But the fact that we can ignore patently invalid demands - and I am
> quite sure we do, without a qualm - doesn't mean that we ought to feel
> we can or should start adjudicating on the reasonableness of any
> not-entirely-clear-cut case that turns up, such as this one...
>
>   

A lot of this comes down to a question of choosing your battles.  As 
much as I disagree with the validity of these notices this should not be 
WMF's fight. There is plenty of meat for individuals who want to take up 
the cudgels; that's how they accept personal responsibility: by putting 
their money where their mouths are instead of trying to pass the buck to 
the WMF.

A takedown notice needs to show where the material was originally 
published. TI would certainly not have published the keys themselves, so 
quoting them cannot be a copyvio of their rights unless it can be proven 
to be from stolen documents. As I understand it the hackers figured out 
the keys for themselves instead of copying them from elsewhere, so if 
there is any copyright it likely belongs to the hackers.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Internet nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

[Ray Saintonge]

Amir E. Aharoni wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 01:40, Brian J Mingus 
> wrote:
>   
>> On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 4:31 PM, Thomas Dalton > 
>>> We're the biggest non-profit website in the world. That sounds like
>>> argument for us to get the prize money to me.
>>>   
>> The Internet is definitely worthy of the prize as a whole but I'm not
>> following the logic that for-profit websites are more deserving. Google,
>> for
>> example, is a major force for peace. In fact it is the biggest popularizer
>> of Wikimedia content.
>> 
> Yes, but Google doesn't really need the prize money.
>
> Although giving it all to Wikimedia is probably not quite right either
Need has never been a factor in awarding these prizes. They are often 
made many years after the person's work is done; the need was probably 
greatest when they were doing their research.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion about proposal for multilingual Wikibooks

[Ray Saintonge]

Samuel Klein wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 1:21 AM, Milos Rancic wrote:
>   
>> According to the Language proposal policy, Language committee may approve 
>> just a project which intends to be written in one language.
>> 
> True, the language sub committee is asked to attend to details about
> specific languages; we need a similar process for deciding when to
> form a multilingual site.
>
> People are still sharply divided about whether beta wikiversity and
> oldwikisource are good ideas, based on which one they've had good
> experiences with.  We need a better view of how the new-language
> process works for them and for incubator.  My sense is that incubator
> could satisfy a lot of what people want out of Project-specific
> multilingual sites, with a few additional features.
>
>   
I find for the most part that people like to compartmentalize their 
knowledge based on the premise that it will somehow be easier to 
understand.  Naturally, cutting out some knowledge makes it easier to 
understand, and shutting out incomprehensible languages is one of the 
easiest ways of doing that. But at what cost?

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Re: [Foundation-l] Internet nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

[Ray Saintonge]

Brian J Mingus wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 11:20 AM, Michael Snow wrote:
>   
>> It's not that those discussions wouldn't be relevant to have on this
>> list, and periodically people try and encourage others to move them to a
>> more public setting. It's that when this list continues to show a
>> tendency for conversation to degenerate, as it just did, then it's quite
>> hard to persuade people that they should want to have their discussions
>> here.
>> 
>
> You believe that my reply to Tim is degenerate? That is offensive.
>   

There's a big difference between "degenerate" as a verb, and the same 
word as an adjective. The adjective is full of additional connotations.

Past practice has shown that that the most effective way to keep a 
thread alive is to try to get it stopped.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Changes in Language committee practice: ancient and constructed languages

[Ray Saintonge]

Milos Rancic wrote:
> One more change have happened. Wikisource in Sorbian have become eligible.
>
> The problem with eligibility of Wikisource in Sorbian is that there
> are two Sorbian languages: Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian. According
> to the Language proposal policy, one project should be written in just
> one language.
>   

Setting this up as a separate Wikisource does not seem like a good 
idea.  It should be noted that the 180 or so pages in Upper Sorbian at 
Oldwikisource are essentially the efforts of a single individual.

Ec


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Re: [Foundation-l] Changes in Language committee practice: ancient and constructed languages

[Ray Saintonge]

Milos Rancic wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 11:05 AM, Ray Saintonge  wrote:
>   
>> Setting this up as a separate Wikisource does not seem like a good
>> idea.  It should be noted that the 180 or so pages in Upper Sorbian at
>> Oldwikisource are essentially the efforts of a single individual.
>> 
> This is another issue, related to the final approval. Just active
> projects (at Multilingual Wikisource, Beta Wikiversity or Incubator)
> can be approved. Nothing has changed in relation to that [and it would
> be stupid to change it].
>
> There are two steps which one proposal has to pass: eligibility and
> approval. The most of problems about which we were talking last years
> in relation to LangCom are related to eligibility, not to approval.
> Approval is relatively straight-forward issue: translated interface +
> sustainable activity.

And I would have thought that eligibility was the easy one. :-)

For minor languages sustainable activity is often the very good work of 
one extremely dedicated individual with no-one else making any 
significant contribution.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Call for Wikimania Scholarship Applications

[Ray Saintonge]

Cary Bass wrote:
> Ultimately, there are no restrictions on /applying/ for scholarship so
> you should feel free to apply. However, the application was designed
> to allow only for years that start with "19", so people born 2000 or
> later will have to contact us separately to apply.
>   

Wow! The Y2K problem lives on. :-)

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's authority (on "global bans")

[Ray Saintonge]

George Herbert wrote:
> Both the "yes he does" and "no he doesn't" sides are asserting and
> assuming rather than reporting a known quantity.
>
> There has been no organized or widespread attempt to either ask Jimmy
> to give it up or to take it away.  I can name a number of individuals
> who assert that should happen, but there's no poll, no project, no
> policy proposal to do so.
>
> We simply don't know what the community actually feels about it, in
> part because Jimmy uses the power so sparingly that very very few
> people ever encounter it firsthand.
>
>
>   
Whether or not the use of the power is justified, it's use almost 
guarantees that drama will follow.  That alone makes more diplomatic 
channels preferable.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Status report on logo copyright issues at Swedish Wikipedia

[Ray Saintonge]

Mike Godwin wrote:
> ... in my experience the kinds of people who
> agonize over copyright permissions are uniformly capable of parsing longer
> sentences.
>
>   
I wouldn't bet on that.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] How to reply to a mailing list thread

[Ray Saintonge]

Anthony wrote:
> MZMcBride wrote:
>   
>> You're suggesting using a specific, proprietary
>> client (that has all sorts of privacy issues) in order to combat what is,
>> at its core, laziness.
>> 
> Every great software application has, at its core, laziness.


Indeed!  Or perhaps that might be better applied whenever a solution to 
a problem depends mostly on software, or on the use of a convenient 
acronym. It is for the writer's convenience that he uses two letters 
when two words would make things more clear.  The writer's time saved in 
typing fewer characters is trivial in comparison to the combined time 
spent by many readers trying to decipher the acronym.  In a tanglement 
of templates and transclusions lurks a lazy solution. Shortcutting a 
solution deprives the user of the understanding that made that solution 
effective.

Ec

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

[Ray Saintonge]

Kwan Ting Chan wrote:
> jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com wrote:
>> What if we start to write articles about street and include all the
>> buildings and boring parts of the streets in the WP or some
>> subproject, where would it stop? What would protect a database of
>> streets against such a swarm of fact collectors?
>> mike
> If you're outside the EU, then not a lot. The EU has the concept of 
> database right, but that does not exist in other part of the world. 
> Wikipedia is operated under US federal and California (?) state laws, 
> where mere collections of facts are considered unoriginal and 
> unprotected.
>
And taking that a little further: If Google's Terms of Service are in 
fact a contract they would include choosing the jurisdiction of 
California courts and law, and purport to override Conflict of Laws 
legislation.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Fora.tv and Britannica to join hands...

[Ray Saintonge]

Bod Notbod wrote:
> It's plausible to regard Britannica as a competitor to Wikipedia,
> although I doubt whether many of us actually wish them harm. They've
> come to an agreement with Fora.tv. I've viewed quite a lot of material
> on Fora. It's a great site, well worth a search or five.
>
> http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/04/prweb3932324.htm
>
>   
Based on the release it's to be noted that Fora's access is limited to 
the "Britannica *Concise* Encyclopedia", not the whole thing.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's Sexual Image Deletions

[Ray Saintonge]

David Gerard wrote:
> On 9 May 2010 02:20, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
>   
>> Given that several Commons admins had dropped out, and bearing in mind the 
>> clean-up campaign called for by the board and Jimbo, I put in an RFA at 
>> Commons, saying I would help clean up pornographic images *that are not in 
>> use by any project*.
>> The result so far: 14 Opposes, 1 Support.
>> You get the same result if you nominate a pornographic image for deletion.
>> 
> At this point it is because the issue of pornography has been
> completely overshadowed by the issue of the actions taken and Board
> support for them.
>
> The pornography issue *cannot* be resolved until these other issues
> are resoved. Cannot.
>
>   
As I said elsewhere, when yoi find a shark in your swimming pool it's 
easy to ignore the lewd behaviour in the corner of the pool.  The 
scavenging ravens that normally clean up the mess are wary birds, and 
may take a while before they can get back to work.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Sexual Imagery on Commons: where the discussion is happening

[Ray Saintonge]

Sue Gardner wrote:
> 1) There has been a very active strand about Jimmy's actions over the
> past week and his scope of authority, which I think is now resolving.
> That's mostly happened here and on meta.
>
>   
What made that one easier to resolve is that the problem could be easily 
defined, and very specific solutions could be clearly enunciated.

The longer term and more important problems do not adapt very well to 
easy definitions.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Sexual Imagery on Commons: where the discussion is happening

[Ray Saintonge]

Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> What I am missing is that Iran has blocked the whole Wikimedia domain as
> Commons is included in that domain. I understand that the reason is there
> being too much sexual explicit content.  As a consequence this important
> free resource is no longer available to the students of Iran as a resource
> for illustrations for their project work.
>
> What I would like to know is if we have been talking to Iranian politicians
> and / or if we have an understanding of what it takes to ensure that Commons
> becomes available again.

That's ultimately up to the Iranians to find a solution. We should no 
more adapt to their lowest standards of free speech for the sake of 
being accepted than we would stop talking about Tibet to please the 
Chinese government.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Sexual Imagery on Commons: where the discussion is happening

[Ray Saintonge]

Sue Gardner wrote:
> Yeah. I don't remember exactly what Ting said, and even if I did, I wouldn't 
> comment on it.  But FWIW to your point, Ting's not in a chapters-selected 
> seat; Ting was elected by the Wikimedia community.
>
>   
His seat doesn't come up for re-election until next year, but I'm sure 
somebody will remember this discussion during that campaign.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Sexual Imagery on Commons: where the discussion is happening

[Ray Saintonge]

Milos Rancic wrote:
> On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 11:28 PM, Sue Gardner  wrote:
>   
>> Let me know if I'm missing anything important.
>> 
> Actually, yes. In spite of multicultural nature of Wikimedia, this
> process shouldn't be formulated as purely related to sexual content,
> but as related to cultural taboos or to "offensive imagery" if we want
> to use euphemism.
>
> Under the same category are:
> * sexual content;
> * images Muhammad;
> * images of sacral places of many tribes;
> * etc.
>   

I'm sure you mean "sacred" instead of "sacral" :-) .


> Although it is not the same medium, under the same category are all
> texts which some culture may treat as offensive. So, censorship
> categorization below assumes categorization of media *and texts*.
>   

Fair enough.
> Important note is that we have to put some principles before going
> into the process:
> 1) We don't want to censor ourselves (out of illegal material under
> the US and Florida laws).
> 2) We want to allow voluntary auto-censorship on personal basis.
> (Anyone can decide which categories he or she doesn't want to see.)
> 3) We should allow voluntary/default censorship on cultural basis, as
> the most of our readers are not registered. (Based on IP address of
> reader. Thus, pictures of Muhammad should be shown by default for
> someone from Germany, but shouldn't be shown by default to someone
> from Saudi Arabia. In all cases there has to be possibility to
> overrule such censorship by simple click or by preferences.)
> 4) We shouldn't help any kind of organized censorship by any
> organization. For example, if looking at the naked body is prohibited
> in some [Western] school even for educational purposes of teaching
> anatomy, it is not our responsibility to censor it. Contrary, as naked
> body is much deeper taboo in Muslim world, it should be censored on
> "cultural basis".
>   

It's also important to keep it simple.  We need to be aware of the 
various hot button issues without judging them.  We want to facilitate 
private decisions, not make them for people.
> Speaking about "default censorship on cultural basis" and in the
> context of the Western cultural standards, this should be contextual.
> Commons gallery of penises should be censored by default, but that
> exemplary image shouldn't be censored inside of the Wikipedia article
> about penis.
>   

Censoring by default puts us back in the same old conflict of having to 
decide what to censor.  Given a random 100 penis pictures we perhaps 
need to ask questions like what distinguishes penis picture #27 from 
penis picture #82.  The same could be asked about numerous photographs 
of national penises like the Washington Monument or Eiffel Tower.
> We should have a voting system for registered users at site like
> "censor.wikimedia.org" can be. At that site *registered* users would
> be able to vote [anonymously] should they or not have censored images
> of any category in their region (again, this is about Google-like
> cultural based censorship which can be overruled by personal wish).
> Users from Germany will definitely put different categories for
> censorship than users from Texas. And it should be respected. Rights
> of more permissive cultures shouldn't be endangered because of rights
> of less permissive cultures.
>
> That kind of voting system would remove the most of responsibility
> from WMF. If majority of users in one culture expressed their wish, it
> is not about us to argue with anyone why is it so.
Voting is evil, particularly when it entrenches the tyranny of the majority.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Another board member statement

[Ray Saintonge]

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 tend to agree. "Informational or educational value" is at first sight 
a noble goal, but is as subjective in its definition as "notable".This 
is not to say that your proferred terms will always be clear, but the 
grey areas will likely be narrower.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Spectrum of views (was Re: Sexual Imagery on Commons: where the discussion is happening)

[Ray Saintonge]

Tim Starling wrote:
> Solution 1: Exercise editorial control to remove particularly
> offensive images from the site.
>
> Standard answer 1: Some people may wish to see that content, it would
> be wrong for us to stop them.
>
> Solution 2: Tag images with an audience-specific rating system, like
> movie classifications. Then enable client-side filtering.
>
> Standard answer 2: This could potentially enable censorship which is
> wrong as per answer 1. Also, we cannot determine what set of content
> is right for a given audience. By encouraging people to filter, say,
> R-rated content, we risk inadvertently witholding information that
> they would have consented to see, had they been fully informed about
> its nature.
>
> Solution 3: Tag images with objective descriptors, chosen to be useful
> for the purposes of determining offensive character by the reader. The
> reader may then choose a policy for what kinds of images they wish to
> filter.
>
> Standard answer 3: This also enables censorship, which is wrong as per
> answer 1. Also, tagging images with morally-relevant descriptors
> involves a value judgement by us, when we determine which descriptors
> to use. It is wrong for us to impose our moral values on readers in
> this way.
>
> The fundamental principle of libertarianism is that the individual
> should have freedom of thought and action, and that it is wrong for
> some other party to infringe that freedom. I've attempted to structure
> the standard answers above in a way that shows how they are connected
> to this principle.
>
>   
Those who rely on "standard answers" don't really exercise freedom of 
thought, only an absence of thought.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Spectrum of views (was Re: Sexual Imagery on Commons: where the discussion is happening)

[Ray Saintonge]

Aryeh Gregor wrote:
> On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 1:13 AM, Tim Starling  wrote:
>   
>> On foundation-l we are divided between moderates and libertarians. The
>> libertarians are more strident in their views, so the debate can seem
>> one-sided at times, but there is a substantial moderate contingent,
>> and I count myself among them. Conservatives have no direct voice
>> here, but they are conceptually represented by Fox News and its audience.
>> 
> There are some people here who exactly fit your description of
> conservatives, such as me.  But we're forced by the overwhelming
> libertarian majority to play the part of moderates as a compromise.
> Regardless, more people than just religious conservatives would prefer
> not to see naked people without warning.  At the very least, few
> people would be happy in unexpected nudity showing up while they're
> browsing at work, with children watching them, etc. -- it's
> embarrassing.  You're probably correct that this is *historically* due
> to religious conservatism, but the preference remains even for
> completely irreligious people.
>   

This is an important point, and I say this as one who considers himself 
to be somewhere on the irreverently liberal (not libertarian) end of the 
spectrum. Even as one who considers some measure of these illustrations 
as acceptable, but who regards an excess of them to be tiresome, 
especially when they start to appear in unexpected circumstances.  
Perhaps a parallel might be drawn with a deeply religious conservative 
beset by proselytizers intent on converting him to the beliefs he 
already has with arguments far below the quality of his own theological 
experience.
>
> The standard objection here is "But then we have to hide Muhammad
> images too!"  This is, of course, a non sequitur.  A large percentage
> of English speakers prefer not to see nude images without warning, but
> only a tiny percentage prefer not to see pictures of Muhammad, so the
> English Wikipedia should cater to the former group but not the latter.
>  The Arabic Wikipedia might also cater to the latter group -- indeed,
> I see no pictures of Muhammad at .
> But we only need to look at large groups of viewers, not small
> minorities.  If the minority is small enough, their benefit from not
> having to see the images is outweighed by the majority's benefit in
> the aesthetic appeal of the images.
>   

Each such issue will have its own spectrum of supporters and 
detractors.  It should not be our role to decide for them; we can only 
make it easier for them to make decisions consistent with their own beliefs.

> It's really very easy to determine where to draw the line.  There are
> a multitude of English-language informative publications
> (encyclopedias, newspapers, news shows, etc.) published by many
> independent companies, and the major ones all follow quite similar
> standards on what sorts of images they publish.  Since news reporting,
> for instance, is very competitive, we can surmise that they avoid
> showing images only because their viewers don't want to see them.  Or
> if it's because of regulations, those are instituted democratically,
> so a similar conclusion follows.
>   

Not necessarily. Supermarket tabloids still sell well. Sometimes it's 
the advertisers, and not the readers who determine this.

> The solution is very simple.  Keep all the images if you like.
> Determine, by policy, what sorts of images should not be shown by
> default, based on the policies of major publications in the relevant
> language.  If an image is informative but falls afoul of the policy,
> then include it as a link, or a blurred-out version, or something like
> that.  This way people can see the images only if they actually want
> to see them, and not be forced to see them regardless.  

Each project will be left to determine its own standards.  When dealing 
with Commons "relevant language" is a meaning less term.

> It would
> hardly be any great burden when compared to the innumerable byzantine
> policies that already encumber everything on Wikipedia.
>   

That speaks to keeping things simple, avoiding the compulsion to 
overexplain everything.  Excessive explanation tends to make laws and 
policies more obscure.

> The reason that this isn't the status quo has nothing to do with
> libertarianism.  As I argue above, the properly libertarian solution
> would be to give people a choice of which images they view if there's
> doubt whether they'd like to view them.  Rather, quite simply, we have
> sexual images in articles without warning because Wikipedia editors
> tend to be sexually liberal as a matter of demographics, and have a
> lot more tolerance for nudity than the average person.  With no
> effective means of gathering input from non-editors, they decide on an
> image policy that's much more liberal than what their viewers would
> actually like.  This is a gratuitous disservice to Wikipedia's
> viewers, and s

Re: [Foundation-l] Sexual Imagery on Commons: where the discussion is happening

[Ray Saintonge]

Milos Rancic wrote:
> On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 8:35 PM, Ray Saintonge  wrote:
>   
>> Milos Rancic wrote:
>> 
>>> On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 11:28 PM, Sue Gardner  wrote:
>>>   
>>>> Let me know if I'm missing anything important.
>>>> 
>>> Actually, yes. In spite of multicultural nature of Wikimedia, this
>>> process shouldn't be formulated as purely related to sexual content,
>>> but as related to cultural taboos or to "offensive imagery" if we want
>>> to use euphemism.
>>>
>>> Under the same category are:
>>> * sexual content;
>>> * images Muhammad;
>>> * images of sacral places of many tribes;
>>> * etc.
>>>   
>> I'm sure you mean "sacred" instead of "sacral" :-) .
>> 
>
> I've just went to Wikipedia [1] (accidentally, instead of Wiktionary)
> to see the difference between "sacral" and "sacred" and I've seen that
> those words are synonyms. Anyhow, it is good to know that "sacral" is
> at leas ambiguous. ("Sacral" is a borrowed word in Serbian, too; and
> Latin words make life easier to one native speaker of Serbian when he
> speaks English [and some other languages] :) )
>
>   

Borrowed words can also be false friends.  "Sacral" as "sacred" tends to 
be a more recent and specialized usage of the word, applicable to, 
according to the Oxford English Dictionary, anthropology and religion.  
Sometimes for me the danger is to know the language too well, and in the 
present context that started with pornographic images I only too easily 
imagined a series of photos about the "sacral places" of individuals. :-D

>> Censoring by default puts us back in the same old conflict of having to
>> decide what to censor.  Given a random 100 penis pictures we perhaps
>> need to ask questions like what distinguishes penis picture #27 from
>> penis picture #82.  The same could be asked about numerous photographs
>> of national penises like the Washington Monument or Eiffel Tower.
>> 
> ...
>   
>> Voting is evil, particularly when it entrenches the tyranny of the majority.
>> 
> People should be able to choose categories and to vote about them.
>   

That doesn't seem very practical. The choice of categories would itself 
be the source of disputes. If what is seen depends on where one lives 
there would be an endless stream of variations that could not be easily 
tracked. A 51% vote can as easily go in the opposite direction on the 
very next day.
> That part of proposal is not about denying to anyone to see something,
> but to put defaults on what not logged in users could see. There
> should be a [very] visible link, like on Google images search, which
> would easily overwrite the default rules. Personal permission would
> overwrite them, too. (If I was not clear up to now, "cultural
> censorship" won't forbid to anyone to see anything. It would be just
> *default*, which could be easily overwritten.)
>   

I agree that users' choice should be paramount. Making that choice needs 
to be carefully worded.  Simply putting, "Do you want to see dirty 
pictures?" on the Main Page would inspire people to actively look for 
those pictures.
> The point is that "cultural censorship" should reflect dominant
> position of one culture. My position is that we shouldn't define that
> one of our goals is to enlighten anyone. We should build knowledge
> repository and everyone should be free to use it. However, if some
> culture is oppressive and not permissive, it is not up to us to
> *actively* work on making that culture not oppressive and permissive.
> The other issue is that I strongly believe that free and permissive
> cultures are superior in comparison with other ones.
>   

Reflecting the dominance of one culture is dangerous, and in the extreme 
has led to genocidal behaviour, and served to make the great inquisition 
holy.

It is somewhat naïve to believe that we can limit ourselves to strictly 
factual data. There is implicit enlightenment in the choice of which 
facts to present. The encyclopedists of the 18th century likely thought 
of themselves as bringers of enlightenment. The 1389 Battle of Kosovo is 
of great historical importance to Serbs, but another group might not 
attach such importance to a battle from more than six centuries ago and 
omit iit entirely.

I agree that liberating oppressed people is not one of our tasks.  We 
should not be the ones going into China or Iran to make a fuss when 
those governments have blocked access to Wikimedia projects. That's up 
to the residents of those countries. No

Re: [Foundation-l] A Board member's perspective

[Ray Saintonge]

David Goodman wrote:
> I think we will only make progress when we accept the apologies of the
> people involved.  I can understand that they want to at least formally
> defend the original board statement, but I think they--and we all-
> -recognize that the discussion has moved in a somewhat more permissive
> direction now than that first statement implied.   When people admit
> they've acting over-hastily, as by now I think essentially everyone
> has, I don't see the point of continue to berate them about it.
>
> We're returning to normalcy. Perhaps the most useful thing people with
> any view on the issue could do is contribute to specific discussions
> on improvements in how we handle challenges, on possible software
> improvements , and on deletion and undeletion of particular images.
>   

Indeed! Moving forward does not depend on determining who was right 
about historical wrongs..

Ec

> On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 6:32 PM, K. Peachey  wrote:
>   
>> On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 7:48 AM, Stuart West  wrote:
>> 
>>> ...snip...
>>> Jimmy acknowledged this wasn't right and I respect his apology.
>>> ...snip...
>>> - stu
>>>   
>> Yes! because no one would consider
>> starting discussion on wiki first before drawing their guns and start
>> shooting?
>> 


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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimania 2011 announcement

[Ray Saintonge]

Sue Gardner wrote:
> And thanks to the jury and its moderators: Mariano, Austin, Mako,
> Teemu, Delphine, James, Joseph, Stu, Phoebe, James & Cary.  I know we
> all appreciate your hard work.  (James definitely had some late
> nights, and I will be curious to see if he volunteers for the jury
> again next year ;-)
>
>   
He probably just needs reassurance that he won't be laboring under a 
cloud, even if he does some of his best work there.

Ray

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Re: [Foundation-l] Legal requirements for sexual content -- help, please!

[Ray Saintonge]

wjhon...@aol.com wrote:
> Wouldn't it?  Unless you're going to support what appears to be an 
> unsupportable platform that "child porn" (or whatever you want to call it) is 
> somehow different from any other type of content such as snuff films or 
> instructions on how to build a fertilizer bomb or detailed plans for the 
> assassination a leading figure.
>
>   
How to build such a bomb would be perfectly legal information. Advice 
about how it might be deployed for illegal purposes would not. A 
perfectly legitimate use of such a device might be to blow up stumps on 
one's own farm.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Legal requirements for sexual content -- help, please!

[Ray Saintonge]

Stillwater Rising wrote:
> Actually, it's not only the uploaders that have 18 USC 2257(A) record
> keeping requirements, *anybody* who "inserts on a computer site or service a
> digital image of, or otherwise manages the sexually explicit content of a
> computer site or service that contains a visual depiction of, an actual
> human being engaged in actual or simulated sexually explicit conduct"
> *or *"produces,
> assembles, manufactures, publishes, duplicates, reproduces, or reissues a
> book,
> magazine, periodical, film, videotape, or digitally- or computer-manipulated
> image, picture, or other matter intended for commercial
> distribution" becomes a "secondary producer

One important point in this lies in "intended for commercial 
distribution."  The mere fact that others are allowed to use material 
for commercial distribution is quite short of *intent* for commercial 
distribution.

Ec



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Re: [Foundation-l] Legal requirements for sexual content -- help, please!

[Ray Saintonge]

wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:
> Mike Godwin wrote:
>   
>> wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk writes:
>>
>> Across the world the "Nobody is home" argument is quickly running out of
>> 
>>> steam. Google execs sentenced to 6 months in Italy, LimeWire guilty for
>>> its user's piracy, and blog owner found liable for user submitted libel.
>>>   
>> It helps to actually read the stories and understand the cases. The Google
>> execs were found guilty even though they quickly responded to a complaints
>> and removed the offending video. In other words, they didn't make the
>> "nobody is home" argument.
>> 
> The point being made is that courts are taking a narrow reading of the 
> exemptions. At issue is going to be whether Congress having passed 2257 
> did they intend for the safe-harbor exemptions to allow an organization 
> to evade those regulations simply by allowing anonymous users to upload 
> pornographic content.
>   

You can't effectively use eccentric results as a straw man to build a 
general trend in law. The interpretations of a local court only have a 
limited value as precedent. Whether it's the exemptions or the main 
provision that will be read narrowly in the long term remains to be 
seen.  There are too many individual words in there that are open to 
interpretation, even before you get into free speech arguments.

>> And the blog owner actually hasn't been found liable for user-submitted
>> libel in the Register story published. As the story is reported, the blog
>> owner has merely been told that moderation of content runs the risk of
>> *creating* liability by removing the exemptions for mere hosts. The decision
>> is regarding a pre-trial motion. In other words, the case has precisely the
>> opposite meaning of what wiki-list writes here, since it focuses on the
>> risks of moderation, not the risks of non-moderation.
>> 
> The foundation or the site admins do moderate. The foundation or they DO 
> have the power, to delete submissions that are considered  non 
> encyclopedic, trolling, libelous and etc. There is constant moderation 
> on by or on behalf of the foundation. If not teh Foundation then the 
> admins have responsibility. The foundation is not acting simply as a 
> hosting site that merely stores user submitted data.
>   

This does not exempt anyone from being realistic. The Foundation, as a 
corporate person, has no knowledge of its own. Being "pornographic" is 
meaningless to a corporation, because corporations are incapable of 
having sex. For a corporation to have knowledge of something there must 
be evidence that it received that knowledge, and that includes 
transmission of the fact that such knowledge was in fact illegal.  
Someone saying that a particular image is pornographic is not enough.  
Similarly, some nutter with an axe to grind could go to the FBI with 
claims about pornography on some specified site, but if they took the 
time to thoroughly investigate every such complaint they would have no 
time left to do anything useful. Whether a particular image is 
pornographic is a matter of opinion, and it should not jump to comply 
with every random complaint.

Yes, there are admins who do moderate.  I'm sure that many of them 
purport to be doing so in bealf of the Foundation. Their rights, 
however, do not derive from any action by the Foundation but from the 
action of other admins or volunteer whose own authority does not extend 
beyond being purported.

>> With regard to the Google case, at least, it looks like taking
>> responsibility doesn't protect you, and with regard to the libel case,
>> moderation increases your risk of liability by undermining your statutory
>> exemption.
>> 
> So your advice is that in the area of pornographic content the 
> Foundation is best advised to open the flood gates. Will sticking your 
> head in the sand that work for pornographic content alone, or will you 
> have to do the same with all content. No selection for encyclopedic 
> value or notability, because if any of that goes on one might ask why 
> you are deliberately NOT going so for porn?

The subtlety of the situation clearly escapes you. A track record of 
moderating only proves that you are capable of doing it.  My own feeling 
is that the Foundation itself should not engage in such acts in the 
absence of a formal legal notification about offending material.  This 
doesn't stop admins from acting to delete such material, but they do so 
on their own authority. As representatives of the community they are a 
part of the structure that defines community norms about pornography as 
well as other matters.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Participation of intellectual professions

[Ray Saintonge]

David Goodman wrote:
> The traditional academic system is based upon status differences
> between pupils and teachers. One of the problems is the reception they
> get--a great many experts do not take it kindly when they are
> challenged by the ignorant, and get no respect for their
> qualifications, or even negative comments about them.  But there is no
> way of keeping WP open and preventing them from being subjected to
> this.  It affects not just academic experts, but experts in all sorts
> of fields and knowledgeable amateurs also.
>   

You describe an attitude that has taken centuries to build up.  Those 
who learned through deference teach deference. At best it will take 
several generations to overcome.

> Some experts can deal with it well, and a few have been known to go
> for years on WP without mentioning their academic status. Some have
> the art of explaining things to make them clear to anyone who is not
> willfully misunderstanding, and the patience to do it. These are the
> kind of people we need. Alas, the one's who cannot tolerate the fools
> are probably never going to be able to work effectively in a WP
> environment.
>
>   
The intolerant ones can easily be there because of their own inability 
to communicate their ideas. They may be brilliant researchers, but 
hopeless at explaining their results.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Participation of intellectual professions

[Ray Saintonge]

Noein wrote:
> 1. I just had a short chat with [[Erik Orsenna]], a member of the
> [[Académie française]] who "loves to learn and pass along knowledge".
> He's also interested in the adventure of knowledge and in the democratic
> processes and appreciate being able to tap into the knowledge of the
> five french Académies he has access to.
> I asked him if he was aware of Wikipedia and of its participative
> nature. He did.
> I asked him why the Academicians didn't participate more and share their
> knowledge on it.
> He said that they have no time, that they're busy writing their books.
>   

This is completely understandable.  They're working where they feel most 
comfortable.  It's not a criticism of Wikipedia.  We should not take our 
inability to draw in more of these people as a failure.
> 2. In parallel, I had several conversations with university Professors
> showing their reticence, distrust or hostility about the free
> encyclopedia. They discredit the articles when speaking to their students.
>   

Mostly through ignorance, and an inability to view Wikipedia articles in 
a clear perspective.  It will still take years to overcome this, and for 
them to recognize the place of Wikipedia in the learning chain.
> 3. High level physicists also stay away from it. (for example most of
> the theoretical information about [[quasars]] comes from the 1960's.
> Current information on the net is frequently only available through
> pay-to-read sites.)
>   

The pay-to-read sites are contrary to the notion that copyright is there 
"to promote the useful arts."  Universities can subscribe because they 
can spread the cost over an entire student body; this is generally 
impossible at the level of the individual. If he subscribes to the most 
important journals in his field it will not be practical for him to 
subscribe to publications of secondary interest to which he will only 
occasionally need to refer. The amateur working from his home computer 
is, by virtue of intellectual property laws, relegated to using obsolete 
material for his writing.
> The interpretation:
> It seems that the traditional way of handling knowledge is treating it
> as a good, that is, a resource with a monetary value and ownership.
> One invests money, time and efforts to obtain it. People who made a
> career out of it want to recover their costs and make benefits out of
> it. Some like the prestige of their exclusive knowledge or the authority
> it confers.
>   

Prestige aside, the commodification of knowledge hinders its growth.  
There are expenses connected with generating knowledge. Amateurs support 
their research by having an outside real job.  The economic model that 
will sustain the free market of ideas has yet to be developed.
> The consequences:
> A. Some feel threatened by the wikipedia model. They don't want it to
> succeed. They perceive it would question their role, their power and
> their way of earning money.
>   

Just like mediæval guilds!


Ec

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

[Ray Saintonge]

Mike Godwin wrote:
> Gerard writes:
>
> Hoi,
>   
>> When I read:  "Wikisource content in the French language targets the French
>> public, and therefore, under French conflict of laws principles, the
>> copyright law of France applies to this content." I do read the French
>> public. Wikisource does not target the French public per se.
>> 
> I agree with you about this. Unfortunately, that turns out to be an
> inadequate argument when it comes to justifying noncompliance with a
> takedown notice.
>
> We consulted with French counsel on the question of compliance, and neither
> they nor we believed there was a strong probability that French court would
> invalidate the takedown notice on the grounds that Wikisource does not
> target the French public in particular.
>
>   

It seems then that there is a question of jurisdiction involved.  It has 
been my long held understanding that the Wikimedia projects have 
operated under the laws of the United States, and that WMF has been 
consistent in its view that chapters are not responsible for the 
contents of the projects. Why then do we now compromise this by relying 
on what the French courts might say if the takedown notices are issued 
under US law?

Counter-notices would also be produced under US law.  There is no 
requirement that the person who files a counter-notice be the same 
person who posted the original material.  The original takedown notice 
needs to be a public document in order to enable any person considering 
a counter-notice
 to form the required good faith belief that the material was taken down 
because of a mistake or misidentification, or to challenge whether the 
takedown notice was compliant with all the requirements of such a 
notice.  Thus I would suggest that the notices are not privileged in the 
way that other correspondence or discussions would be.

I also needs to be pointed out that several of the authors in question 
died before 1923, and, unless we are dealing with posthumous works, only 
France's unique adjustment for the time of the wars would keep them 
protected there.

In the absence of a reconsideration by the WMF of some of these 
takedowns I agree that counter-notices.would be a useful approach.  To 
spread the work this could be spread among several people, each electing 
jurisdiction in a different judicial district. O:-)

Wikilivres is an option that has already been mentioned, and is probably 
the quickest to implement.

Wikisource.ca could also be used.  Eventually it would be transferred to 
Wikimedia Canada. For now, with that domain being in my possession, it 
would take only choosing a suitable webhost and some technical 
assistance before it is up and running.

Ray

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Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Announcing new Chief Global Development Officer and new Chief Community Officer

[Ray Saintonge]

Itzik Edri wrote:
> More Canadians to the staff?! I tought we already talk about that!!!
>
> Good luck :)
>
>   
More Canadians on staff can't be all that bad. Noting that he was not 
born in Canada gives his appointment a more global flavour. :-)

Ray

>
> On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 5:23 AM, Sue Gardner wrote:
>   
>> Barry was born in Cape Town, South Africa, and raised in Toronto,
>> Canada.  He has an undergraduate degree from the University of Western
>> Ontario, and a master's degree in public policy from the John F.
>> Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
>>
>> 


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Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Announcing new Chief Global DevelopmentOfficer and new Chief Community Officer

[Ray Saintonge]

susanpgard...@gmail.com wrote:
> Canadians are good for Wikimedia because we have a, uh, healthy sensitivity 
> to American cultural dominance. When Barry and I were kids, our prime 
> minister famously characterized Canada as a mouse in bed with an elephant -- 
> no matter how friendly the elephant is, you're affected by every twitch and 
> grunt ;-)
>
>   
I've tended to characterize it as living under the eagle's tail. You 
need to learn how to avoid the manna.

Ray

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Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Announcing new Chief Global DevelopmentOfficer and new Chief Community Officer

[Ray Saintonge]

susanpgard...@gmail.com wrote:
> It's Tranna. You got me. *sigh*
>   

The pronunciation varies, and becomes much clearer if you live farther 
from the centre of the universe.  The risk with the "Tranna" punctuation 
is that one might be taken for an Albanian spy.

Ray
> --Original Message--
> From: George Herbert
> To: Sue Gardner GMail
> To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Announcing new Chief Global 
> DevelopmentOfficer and new Chief Community Officer
> Sent: 3 Jun 2010 12:46 PM
>
> On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 11:37 AM,   wrote:
>   
>> Terrified. For that reason, I actually did not unveil my country-of-origin 
>> to the Board until a few weeks ago. That is one of Canadians' special 
>> skills: we can walk amongst Americans, and they are completely unaware :-)
>> 
>
> That's not true, many Americans know the correct code words to
> determine if you're from up north, eh.  How do you pronounce Toronto?
> 8-)
>
>
>   


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Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Announcing new Chief Global DevelopmentOfficer and new Chief Community Officer

[Ray Saintonge]

Lodewijk wrote:
> so if I understand correctly, the US is afraid of Canada? hmmm interesting
> ;)
>   

Self-deprecating humour is another great weapon. It is very difficult to 
understand when you believe that you are in the most powerful nation in 
the world.

Ray
> 2010/6/3 > Canadians are good for Wikimedia because we have a, uh, healthy sensitivity
>> to American cultural dominance. When Barry and I were kids, our prime
>> minister famously characterized Canada as a mouse in bed with an elephant --
>> no matter how friendly the elephant is, you're affected by every twitch and
>> grunt ;-)
>>
>> 


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

[Ray Saintonge]

Ryan Kaldari wrote:
> If you want to challenge a takedown notice, the proper (and only) course 
> of action is to file a counter-notice. I had work that I did on Commons 
> taken down by a bogus DMCA takedown notice several years ago. Instead of 
> complaining to the Foundation, which would have been pointless (as they 
> are bound by the DMCA to comply with even the most bogus takedown 
> notices), I mailed them a counter-notice and the work was restored in 
> short order.
>   

Mostly yes, but sometimes no.  The Foundation should still exercise due 
diligence before deleting. It should still review the notice to make 
sure that the notice includes *all* the required elements. Refusing to 
take down the most bogus claims could endanger its safe harbor status, 
but it should avoid copyright paranoia.
> There are several handy online guides for how to file DMCA 
> counter-notices. It is very easy and doesn't require hiring a lawyer. 
> The only catch is that by filing the counter-notice you are putting your 
> money where your mouth is and legally asserting that you have the right 
> to post the work (so make sure that this is correct or you may end up in 
> a lawsuit).
>   

Absolutely.  If more people were to accept responsibility for these 
materials it would spread the risk most wonderfully.  One of our 
disadvantages is that we have a lot of people totally lacking in daily 
experience with the law, or whose understanding is based on watching too 
many cops-and-robbers TV shows. People with some legal experience know 
that they can push the envelope to some degree; those without that 
experience are easily intimidated by that. 

Ideally, the Foundation is an ISP with no knowledge of the material its 
site contains until it is brought to its attention. It's perfectly 
legitimate for it to do absolutely nothing until it receives a takedown 
notice.  To some that may even seem to be an obtuse position. When it 
receives a takedown notice it must act, and if it chooses not to act 
that must be an informed decision, not a default. In practical terms it 
can't help but be shown the most egregious copyright violation.  Taking 
those down is done more as an act of good faith than out of any legal 
obligation.

Putting your money where your mouth is means to stop treating the 
Foundation as a nanny. We do far more for the sake of free culture by 
being willing to challenge bogus or borderline copyright claims than 
adopting tortured and self-defeating interpretations of copyright law. 
Failing to stand up to bogus claims encourages them.  As individuals we 
need to have the courage not to pass the buck to the Foundation.


> The current situation is completely different than the NPG situation, 
> which involved only bogus threats, not a legally binding takedown notice.
>   

I agree. Dragging in the NPG situation only confuses the present one.

Ec

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

[Ray Saintonge]

David Gerard wrote:
> Yep! You want to write a first draft of a guide? I'm sure the EFF or
> someone like that will have something suitable to start with.
>
> We can't have a lawyer employed by the WMF look over it, but we have
> lots of lawyers amongst the volunteers.
>   

An important point; we musn't force the WMF lawyer into a conflict of 
interest
>> The current situation is completely different than the NPG situation,
>> which involved only bogus threats, not a legally binding takedown notice.
>> 
> Indeed. If they had issued a takedown notice, someone could have
> responded with "it's not bogus. I am this person at this address. Make
> my day."
>
>   
It really feels good to be able to say "Make my day."  More of us should 
try it.

Ec

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

[Ray Saintonge]

Peter Gervai wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 11:37, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>   
>>> The only catch is that by filing the counter-notice you are putting your
>>> money where your mouth is and legally asserting that you have the right
>>> to post the work (so make sure that this is correct or you may end up in
>>> a lawsuit).
>>>   
>> Absolutely.  If more people were to accept responsibility for these
>> materials it would spread the risk most wonderfully.
>> 
> The main problem is  that people edit WP on their free time as a
> hobby, and they do not possess large sum of money of their family
> budget to offer to nondeterministic amount of risk. People are not
> familiar with the legal process and risk, as you people said, which
> means they cannot measure the risk either. They most often doesn't
> even plan to privately pay a lawyer to tell them about it, since it's
> not a wee amount.
>   

The procedure for putting up a counter-notice is very simple, and costs 
nothing ... unless you send it by snail-mail and have the cost of a 
stamp. There have already been excellent suggestions to describe the 
process in an article on Meta.

A person who is seriously considering a counter-notice will probably 
have given some consideration to his chances of success, more so than 
with an original posting of the material to the site. Personally, it 
would not bother me to post questionable material just to flush out the 
rights owner of a possibly orphan work. If the owner issues a takedown 
order you know he exists, and publishing the order insures that that 
information becomes public whether or not you take the matter any further.

The level of risk will vary with each individual work being considered. 
Compared to speaking on your cell phone while driving there isn't much 
risk at all, and even the highest degree of risk is not likely to be fatal.

The permutations of what can happen are endless. If you are in country A 
issuing a counter-notice regarding a rights claimant in country B 
granting jurisdiction to a United States court over a site in the US 
when neither of you are there what's the likelihood that it will ever 
really get to court? It's going to cost the rights claimant too to go to 
court.  How much is he going to want to invest in time, money and travel 
to prosecute his case when winning is highly uncertain? He has to pay 
his money before you do just to get a case filed.  I believe that it's 
much easier to be a defendant than a plaintiff in such cases.

If it gets this far, then what? You could play to win, and maybe get 
your costs covered if the judge deems the case bogus. You might even get 
pro bono legal help, or be able to get people to help your defence 
because they believe in your cause. (If you get more than it cost you, 
the ethical thing might be to give the excess to the cause. :-) )  
Another possibility is that you might concede the case and the plaintiff 
would get a default judgement. That could result in an order of the 
court to take down the material, which only puts us back to where we 
were before you filed the counter-claim.  The court could award damages 
but there are limitations here too.  Then, what do they do to collect 
that money when you aren't even in the United States? In other words 
most of the difficulties that can be encountered tend to favour the 
defendant.

You can't depend on the lawyer to evaluate your risk.  If he evaluates 
wrongly you are still the one to pay.  Unless you do something 
abominably stupid the risks will be low, and there are plenty of 
Wikimedians available that will always be more than willing to tell you 
when you are being stupid. If you still don't believe that the risk is 
low, you might as well keep talking on the phone while driving.

> So either we wait until people want to spend their private money to
> lawyers to define the risk and only accept mostly low risk
> counternotices, or to enroll to be crash test dummies. Both highly
> unlikely.
>   

That you will accept to file low-risk counternotices shows a glimmer of 
hope.
> 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.
>   

My willingness to accept the WMF as my nanny is on a par with my 
willingness to accept Jesus as my Lord and Saviour.
> I do not say we have to do that, only that I believe people won't do
> it any other way.
Yes, that fairly represents a very sad state of affairs.

Ray

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

[Ray Saintonge]

Here's my attempt at trying to answer these.

Yann Forget wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Could someone please explain the following from this page:
> http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca/counter512.pdf
>
> 1. What does it mean that "I consent to accept service of process from
> the party who submitted the take-down notice"?
>   

Since a counterclaim involves the possibility that the rights claimant 
may go to court, this simply means that you agree to receive any legal 
paperwork in connection with such a case.  The claimant could then send 
it directly to you without going through WMF.
> 2. In the phrase "Each of those works were removed in error and I
> believe my posting them does not infringe anyone else's rights." Does
> it mean "does not infringe anyone else's rights _in USA_"? or
> everywhere in the world?
>   
This would be as determined by US law since you are giving jurisdiction 
to US courts.  The claimant can make that claim from anywhere in the 
world. Foreign rights could be protected to whatever extent they are 
recognized by US law.

Ray

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

[Ray Saintonge]

Nathan wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 5:43 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>   
>> It seems then that there is a question of jurisdiction involved.  It has
>> been my long held understanding that the Wikimedia projects have
>> operated under the laws of the United States, and that WMF has been
>> consistent in its view that chapters are not responsible for the
>> contents of the projects. Why then do we now compromise this by relying
>> on what the French courts might say if the takedown notices are issued
>> under US law?
>>
>> Counter-notices would also be produced under US law.  There is no
>> requirement that the person who files a counter-notice be the same
>> person who posted the original material.  The original takedown notice
>> needs to be a public document in order to enable any person considering
>> a counter-notice
>>  to form the required good faith belief that the material was taken down
>> because of a mistake or misidentification, or to challenge whether the
>> takedown notice was compliant with all the requirements of such a
>> notice.  Thus I would suggest that the notices are not privileged in the
>> way that other correspondence or discussions would be.
>> 
>
> How does this involve Wikimedia chapters? I'm not seeing that. 

Chapters become a factor because the unschooled mind does not 
distinguish between chapters and the Foundation. For the Foundation to 
rely solely on US law helps to dispel any ambiguities around that
> It
> seems plausible that the assertion of valid copyright in France, at
> least where the content was originally published in France, should be
> sufficient to have a takedown demand enforced. 

Not at all since it is the US courts that would be given jurisdiction
> The uniqueness of
> French law doesn't seem to be terribly relevant - we can't ignore the
> copyrights on French content because the law in France is unusual. 

The peculiarity at hand is the extension of copyright terms beyond the 
usual life + 70 to make up for revenues lost by the publishers during 
the two world wars.  The recognition of foreign copyright laws is the 
subject of treaties, and if the treaty does not extend this special 
protection to the United States it's not legally enforceable there.
> At
> any rate, with treaties and foreign laws and whatnot, this is
> legitimately an area where non-lawyers (like me) should hesitate to
> criticize actual experts (like Mike).
I have never allowed myself the luxury of showing awe and reverence to 
lawyers, or, for that matter experts of any kind. They are not above 
criticism..

Mike has said himself that he cannot represent both the Foundation and 
its individual volunteers. That's fair enough

Ray

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

[Ray Saintonge]

Andreas Kolbe wrote:
> I used the interwiki links all the time in this manner at work, and still do. 
> It was one of the things that turned me on to Wikipedia and caused me to 
> start contributing, and eventually to register an account. 
>
> As others have said, if the interwiki links had not been visible by default, 
> I likely would not have discovered the feature, or discovered it only much 
> later. 
>
> An interesting thing is that even if the interwiki articles were poor, or 
> incomplete, there was usually enough context provided to pick out the key 
> terms in the field in the relevant languages, providing a starting point for 
> further research and confirmation in and outside of Wikipedia. Extremely 
> useful.
>
>   
There is another way in which the interwiki links are useful.  We need 
to remember that an article in one language is often developed without 
reference to the corresponding article in a different language.  They 
are written quite independently from each other, and thus can give 
different perspectives on the same subject, or highlight different 
aspects of the same subject.  In a controversial topic the differences 
could be startling.

Given the availability of translations that are just a click away, not 
even a native English speaker has to fear that clicking on an interwiki 
link will produce an unintelligible page. There could even be value to a 
double list which gives the option of viewing the other language article 
in its original form or in its machine translation.

Ec

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

[Ray Saintonge]

geni wrote:
> On 7 June 2010 19:21, Ryan Kaldari  wrote:
>   
>> I've added a new section on DMCA compliance to both the en.wiki and meta
>> Office actions pages:
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Office_actions
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Office_actions
>>
>> Please feel free to augment with additional info.
>>
>> Ryan Kaldari
>> 
>
> The claim "The Foundation is required by law to comply with such
> notices even if they are spurious" isn't correct. I assume you meant
> to say "The Foundation is required by law to comply with such notices
> even if they are spurious if it doesn't want to lose it's safe
> harbour" and even there I'm not sure the loss of safe harbour status
> would be universal.
>
>
>   
I have just changed the word "such" in the above to "validly 
formulated".  Unless the notice complies with all the elements required 
by the law it is not a valid notice.  A notice would include "A 
statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and 
under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to 
act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly 
infringed."

There is an interesting question that comes out of this discussion: Is a 
take-down notice a necessary pre-condition to issuing a counter-notice?

I see nothing in the law making this a requirement.  The only thing that 
seems to support it is a kind of popular logic.

Many things are removed by admins in what they believe to be a 
good-faith compliance with the strict wording of the law.  There is 
often no mechanism for appealing legal interpretations within the community.

As an example consider an orphan work last published in the United 
States more than seventy years ago.  It would at first glance appear to 
qualify for the shorter libraries and archives rule for republication.  
When it appears at wikisource there is a discussion that results in the 
material being removed as a copyright violation. The actual rights owner 
or his legal agents have never been a part of the conversation.

In my analysis it would be perfectly correct to issue a counter-notice.  
The claim that there was a mistake would be simply based on the fact 
that there was no valid takedown notice.  If we are talking about an 
orphan work there would be nobody to begin the kind of legal action 
envisioned. If there was no formal takedown notice the Foundation 
clearly cannot notify that person, and would be obliged to restore the 
material within the usual time frame.

The case of a seventy-plus year old orphan work is just one example 
where this could be a useful procedure.

Ray

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

[Ray Saintonge]

wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>   
>> As an example consider an orphan work last published in the United 
>> States more than seventy years ago.  It would at first glance appear to 
>> qualify for the shorter libraries and archives rule for republication.  
>> When it appears at wikisource there is a discussion that results in the 
>> material being removed as a copyright violation. The actual rights owner 
>> or his legal agents have never been a part of the conversation.
>> 
> And how are you determining that a work is orphaned? What JuJU do you 
> have to declare that a work is free to use commercially?
>
>   
Whether a work is orphaned will vary from one work to another.  Do you 
have a specific work in mind? I was just providing a plausible 
circumstance where this might apply.

I said nothing about commercial use.

I have no idea what you mean by "JuJU".
.
Ray

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Re: [Foundation-l] Cultural awareness and sensitivity

[Ray Saintonge]

Michael Snow wrote:
> To avoid further disrupting discussion of interlanguage links and 
> usability, I'll address the cultural problems separately now. I must 
> admit, though, that in a discussion where we seemed to have agreed 
> (rightfully so) that a 1% click rate was significant enough to warrant 
> serious consideration, I was disappointed that someone could then be so 
> callous about the need for cultural sensitivity because it most directly 
> impacts "only 0.55% of the world population" in this case. There is no 
> meaningful difference in order of magnitude there.
>   

I at least agree that it warrants a new thread.
> We have significant distortions in the makeup of our community that 
> affect our culture. There are quite a few groups that are seriously 
> underrepresented, in part because our culture comes across as unfriendly 
> to them at best. I talked about African-Americans because it's what was 
> applicable in that particular situation and I happen to have some 
> familiarity with the issues. It could just as well have been Australian 
> Aborigines or another cultural group that has issues with our community. 
> I'm not as prepared to explain those concerns, but I would welcome 
> people who can educate us about such problems. It's legitimate to be 
> wary of things that promote American cultural hegemony, which is another 
> distortion, but that's not really warranted when the concern relates to 
> a minority culture in the US.
>   

I would agree that the use of the word "lynch" was unfortunate because 
of the suggestion that anyone should be hanged.  Cultural sensitivity 
allowed for me to grasp that the use was metaphorical, and not literal. 
Using that choice of words by a person who is not from the United States 
as an excuse to play the American race card can only exacerbate the 
problem.  I would expect that the language is strong enough to withstand 
attacks by the connotational flavour of the month.  Have you forgotten 
that in its origin Lynch's Law was applied more to those Virginia 
residents whose loyalty to the Revolution left something to be desired. 
Slavery and race relations had nothing to do with it.

Caution in avoiding offence with one's words must be coupled with a 
willingness to avoid seeing offence in the words of others. One needs to 
begin from the assumption that a word is being used in its most ordinary 
sense.  Just like "gay" is not restricted by modern homosexual 
connotations, so too "lynch" must not be narrowly interpreted in the 
context of the African-American experience.  There is no need to impose 
modern American connotations on one's words.

> Some people seem to have gotten hung up on the issue of intent. I didn't 
> say there was any intent, by the community or individuals, to exclude 
> certain groups or to create a hostile environment for them. I actually 
> tried to be as careful as possible not to say that. The point is that 
> even in the absence of intent, it's possible for our culture to appear 
> hostile to such groups. We didn't have any intent to be hostile toward 
> living people, either, yet we've had a long struggle to cope with the 
> consequences of that impression created by our culture.
>   

I am willing to accept the premise that African-Americans are 
underrepresented among Wikipedia, but I am not willing to jump to the 
speculative conclusion that this is almost entirely attributed to our 
choice of words. The pusillanimity of political correctness will not 
resolve disproportionate representation.
> Consider the principle of not "biting" newcomers, which relates to a 
> similar problem. It's not about the intent of the person doing the 
> "biting", it's about the impact on those who encounter it. We need to be 
> more welcoming to people, and striving for more cultural awareness is 
> part of that.
>
>   
It will take more than platitudes to solve that problem.  Sometimes we 
need to apply a little dinkum oil to a problem, at other times we need 
to value a person's single contribution.

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Re: [Foundation-l] The High Priests of Wikipedia

[Ray Saintonge]

Milos Rancic wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 4:43 PM, Bod Notbod wrote:
>   
>>> "For internecine intrigue and power struggles, the Wikipedia makes the
>>> Vatican look like a coffee clatch.
>>>   
>> I don't think you become one of the top ten websites in the world,
>> raise millions of dollars each year, by drinking caffeine and
>> chatting.
>> 
> Eh, but it was about Vatican, not about Wikipedia.

And the Vatican is not about caffeine, but about good red communion 
wine.  We are more humble than that, and, as Aphaia has rightly pointed 
out, more beer flows at Wikimania.

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] The High Priests of Wikipedia

[Ray Saintonge]

Steven Walling wrote:
> "Wikipedia makes the Vatican look like a coffee clatch"
>
> They're saying we're so cliquish that we make the Vatican look like a casual
> coffee work party, not that we are one. Still a mixed metaphor though,
> considering the Catholic Church hardly meets the definition of a cult.
>   

That depends on what definition of "cult" you are using. It can apply 
broadly (per OED) to "a system of religious veneration or devotion 
directed towards a particular figure or object."

Ec

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

[Ray Saintonge]

wiki-l...@phizz.demon.co.uk wrote:
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>   
>>>>> And how are you determining that a work is orphaned? What JuJU do you 
>>>>> have to declare that a work is free to use commercially?
>>>>>   
>> Whether a work is orphaned will vary from one work to another.  Do you 
>> have a specific work in mind? I was just providing a plausible 
>> circumstance where this might apply.
>> 
> That's why I asked how you are going to go about reliably ascertaining 
> that a work is orphaned. Just because a work hasn't be republished over 
> a period of time is no guarantee that not a reliable guide to it being 
> orphaned. The creator may not want it to be republished during his or 
> her lifetime. The creators estate may similarly not want it republished, 
> or they may not even want it republished in digital form.
>   

There is no single technique that will allow this to be determined 
...That is why I asked you about what specific work you had in mind.

The purpose of copyright is to protect the economic interests of the 
creator.  Using copyright to completely prevent the republication of a 
work is an abuse of copyright.  No one has suggested that time alone 
will render a work orphaned; you are confusing my premises with their 
consequences, and fighting ghosts.
>> I said nothing about commercial use
> By adding the work to wikisources you are unilaterally adding a license 
> declaring that it is free to use commercially. Which is regardless of 
> the actually wishes of the actual copyright owner as you simply do not 
> know what the copyright owner wants.
>   
There is no question adding a licence when the usage is one already 
permitted by law, as would be the case with the library and archives 
exemptions. It is only in the minds of the chronically doctrinaire that 
your proposed licence makes any sense.
>> I have no idea what you mean by "JuJU".
>> 
> I mean what supernatural power are you in possession of that enables you 
> to strip copyright from work and declare it free to use?
>
>   
Just because you support the use of primitive fetishes or Yoruba dances 
to determine copyright status does not warrant your tendentious and 
libelous accusation that I have engaged in the same witchcraft.

Ec

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