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

[THURNER rupert]

On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 00:15, Ting Chen  wrote:
> What I can say to your questions is that Jimmy informed the board about
> his intention and asked the board for support. Don't speaking for other
> board members, just speak for myself. I answered his mail with that I
> fully support his engagement.
>
> Personally, I think that the board is responsible for defining the scope
> and basic rules of the projects. While for projects like Wikipedia,
> Wikisource, Wiktionary the scope is more or less easier to define. On
> Wikipedia we have the five pillars as our basic rules. But we have also
> some projects that have a scope that is not quite so clear and no such
> basic rules. Commons is one of these projects, and the most important one.
>
> Fact is, there is no consensus in the community as what is educational
> or potentially educational for Commons. And as far as I see there would
> probably never be a concensus. And I think this is where the board
> should weigh in. To define scopes and basic rules. This is why the board
> made this statement.
>
> For me, this statement is at the first line a support for Jimmy's
> effort. It is a soft push from the board to the community to move in a
> direction. Both Jimmy as well as me believe that the best way for the
> board to do things is to give guidance to the communities. But, this
> topic is already pending for years. Looking back into the archives of
> foundation-l or village pump of Commons there were enough discussions.
> If the problem cannot be solved inside of the community, it is my
> believe it is the duty of the board and every board member to solve the
> problem.
>
i might be wrong, but wasn't it _very_ important to have a clear
separation of concerns?

say, if the foundation or a chapter or one of its officers would be able to
change the contents of wikipedia by bypassing the established
community processes, even more so if it is done with an official board
voting:

would this not put _all_ the organisations and its officers in the
wiki*sphere at risk beeing sued by anybody not happy about the
contents of wikipedia - because jimbo proved that one can change the
contents via board resolution or "just like that"?

on the other hand, i consider jimbo trying it and proving that it
finally fails  a brilliant idea and a very good case to prevent future
legal actions against the wmf and the chapters :)

rupert.

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Stopping the presses: Britannica to stop printing books

[THURNER rupert]

I did use a very old "konversationslexikon" as a child, mainly for the
pictures. With our children this got replaced now by online resources. And
no, not by wikipedia, but by YouTube. And every time I spend 15 minutes to
find a video to illustrate something it makes me a little sad that we as a
group are not able to do it better and create something which would save my
time to search for it.

I edit wikipedia so it will save my time when I will search for something
(even the same thing) in future.

Rupert.

Am 14.03.2012 01:22 schrieb "phoebe ayers" :
>
> On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 3:49 PM, Samuel Klein  wrote:
> > 2010's 32-volume set will be its last.  (Now I want to get one, to
> > replace my old set!)  Future versions will be digital only.
> >
> >
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/after-244-years-encyclopaedia-britannica-stops-the-presses/?smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto
> >
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/mar/13/encyclopedia-britannica-halts-print-publication
> >
>
> I don't use it in print, haven't for years, and have been expecting
> something like this for a while, but am still surprisingly saddened by
> it too; there's something about the shelf of volumes that encapsulates
> the world's knowledge that sort of symbolizes the whole idea of a
> library to me.
>
> I've been asked to write a short editorial about this development from
> a Wikipedian's perspective and am curious about (and would love to
> include) other Wikimedian experiences -- did you use print
> encyclopedias as a kid? Was a love of print encyclopedias part of your
> motivation or interest in becoming a Wikipedian? Is there any value in
> them still? Will you miss it?
>
> cheers,
> -- phoebe
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

[Foundation-l] video background in sign language? do we have a partnership?

[THURNER rupert]

hi,

does anybody have / know about a partnership for sign language, either
for promotianal videos, or "standard" videos for wikimedia commons?
one of the few companies doing this i know is
http://www.dgs-filme.de/GWHomepage/, they sometimes also work for
free, especially for children's sites.

rupert.

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Genisis of WMF Identification policy?

[THURNER rupert]

On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 23:58, Birgitte SB  wrote:
> 
> From: Lodewijk 
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List 
> Cc: Birgitte SB 
> Sent: Fri, February 25, 2011 3:51:50 PM
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Genisis of WMF Identification policy?
>
> It should be clear and transparant why the WMF is collecting this
> information, and what they intend to do with it. If they want to be able to
> sue people - fine, but then just say that. Then people know what they are up
> against, and what the reasoning is. That way alone volunteers can make their
> rational decision. But also chapters, because it might have quite some legal
> complications if the WMF wants to force a chapter to submit private data
> about one of their members because they want to sue this person.
>
>
> The problem with is that none of us can imagine all the future possibilities
> that could occur.  The WMF can't know what they could be up against.   So how
> can they possibly tell you what they can't know?
>
> You seem to suggest the WMF suing someone is an extreme thing.  But what is
> really extreme is asking WMF to vow *not* to sue anyone. Lets say they do this
> and imagine if a checkuser User:Foobar publishes private information on their
> blog obtained as a checkuser. Someone whose privacy was violated identifies 
> who
> User:Foobar was through their blog; sues them and wins.  User:Foobar sues WMF
> claiming something frivolous about not protecting them from the situation and
> loses. Because of the vow WMF cannot counter-sue User:Foobar for lawyer fees 
> and
> court costs even though WMF does not even need to the recorded identification
> provided through the policy in this case because User:Foobar identified 
> themself
> in the lawsuit they filed against WMF.
>
> Also the privacy policy is a joke without the identification policy.  Say
> checkuser User:Foo breaches the privacy policy and rightly loses checkuser
> rights.  There is no record available to WMF identifying  RealName as 
> User:Foo.
> So RealName retires User:Foo and registers User:Bar who is then able to 
> become a
> checkuser. Is this truly a responsible privacy policy when there is no way of
> preventing those who have abused their access to private data from once again
> obtaining access to private data?
>
> As I said in my first email.  There are valid concerns about the 
> identification
> policy that must be resolved.  However, deciding to indefinitely give
> unidentifiable people access to private data can not be an option.  It just 
> too
> irresponsible.  This is *my* private data you are all playing with.  I won't 
> get
> to have *your* private data in return, but you can at least give it the WMF to
> act as a responsible party protecting *my* interests. I understand that you 
> need
> some safeguards about security at WMF Office or WMF Chapters. However if you
> won't be comfortable with any possible procedure where they could keep *your*
> private data, then stay away from *my* private data.
>

how many people do have access to private data?

rupert.

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Access to academic journals (was Re: Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser)

[THURNER rupert]

On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 21:50, Juergen Fenn  wrote:
>
>
> Am 08.03.11 21:36, schrieb Andrea Zanni:
>
>>> AFAIK, these publishers make the pricing upon the number of
>> scholars/researchers/students of a certain university/corporation: I bet
>> they would make us unbearable fees (in fact the potential users are hundred
>> thousands, if not millions).
>
> That's right if you would negotiate with the publishers to have all
> wikipedians take part in the the such a scheme, but access to academic
> literature can only be offered to those authors who contribute regularly
> and who are long-time part of a WikiProject or a Portal. Otherwise you
> would have the effects you've described.
>

there might be another effect, which is imo more critical:
one might argue that paying somebody to do the opposite of openining
up the knowledge under a free license is completely against the basic
mission of wmf, and the whole free knowledge movement. my personal
guess is that quite a high number of people / donators do not like
this.

rupert.

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

[Foundation-l] Fwd: Message to community about community decline

[THURNER rupert]

while i really enjoy the amount and quality of the contributions in
the strategy wiki, one could even imagine different dimensions
influencing the number of contributions:

1. what?
additional content types requires additional contribution. while
wikipedia might be considered "quasi-complete", other projects pretty
sure are not, just to name commons, wikinews, wikiversity (which is
information targetted to people of different age / education in other
words). and if you take wikinews, this one will never be complete :)


2. who?
additional people having access to wikimedia projects will trigger
some of them to contribute. this i find particularly well covered in
the strategy. one aspect would be additionally interesting, related to
the interenet accessibility timeline. in the western world internet
and computer penetration started in the 90ies, and wikipedia started
into a "penetrated world". other social / community sites like
facebook grew bit a little bit afterwards, also blogging. what is the
influence of this, i.e. does somebody who starts to edit wikipedia
_before_ facebook or a personal blog stay longer with wikipedia or
not? what does this mean in, e.g. global south, countries where
internet penetration meets an already existing facebook and
wikipediea?


3. how?
if it is easy / quick to contribute it consumes less time, and one
does it more often. this is basically a technical issue. templates,
syntax, procedures, software. questions like "is mediawiki still the
right software", "can the type of contents we want be nicely edited",
like an interactive course in wikiversity, just to name something
where we have nothing good. i would love if this would get better
coverage in the strategy - maybe even shorter coverage.


4. where?
if we extend the possibility to contribute everywhere, people might
find it easier to take a short time slot to contribute. partially i
feel this is very well covered, especially with the mobile strategy.
providing content creation examples might help in this respect. to
give an example: while travelling one can take geodata, photos, films,
audio recordings, and can store it for later upload.


kr, rupert


On Sun, Mar 27, 2011 at 22:18, Ting Chen  wrote:
> Dear all:
>
> The Wikimedia Board of Trustees just completed its two-day meeting [1]
> this weekend in Berlin. We devoted the longest time to discussing
> declining trends in editing activity and our collective response to it.
> I encourage everyone to review Sue’s March update [2], and the editor
> trends study itself [3]. It is a deeply important topic, and each report
> is only a few pages long.
>
> The Board thinks this is the most significant challenge currently facing
> our movement. We would encourage the whole movement - the communities,
> wikiprojects, Chapters, Board, Foundation staff - to think about ways to
> meet this challenge. We know many contributors care about this and have
> worked on outreach and hospitality in past years. We are considering how
> we can help make such work more effective, and ask for suggestions from
> the community to this problem now and to invite discussion and
> suggestions [4].
>
> Greetings,
> Ting
>
> [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Board_meetings/March_25-26
> [2] http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/March_2011_Update
> [3] http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Editor_Trends_Study
> [4] http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:March_2011_Update
>
> --
> Ting Chen
> Member of the Board of Trustees
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
> E-Mail: tc...@wikimedia.org
>
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Vector, a year after

[THURNER rupert]

On Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 22:14, Erik Moeller  wrote:
> 2011/4/4 Rodan Bury :
>> As Erik Möller said the qualitative analysis is the user testing with a few
>> dozens of users. This user testing was conducted several times during the
>> development cycle, and it was thorough. The best user testing consist of no
>> more than 30 users, and I can tell the user testing conducted by the
>> Usability Team is high quality and standard.
>
> See also:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability_testing#How_many_users_to_test.3F
> which has links to relevant research.
>
> Note that we did both in-person and remote testing. Remote tests were
> still focused on US subjects for a variety of reasons (need for
> reliable connectivity, increasing recruiting and scheduling
> complexity, etc.). Ultimately I hope chapters can get more involved in
> on-the-ground user testing in additional locations to surface more
> culture/language-specific issues.
>
>> As for the quantitative analysis, the one made during the beta testing of
>> Vector was detailed. It clearly showed that most users - and especially
>> newbies - preferred Vector over Monobook (retention rates of 70 - 80 % and
>> more).
>
> That's correct. See
> http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Beta_Feedback_Survey for details
> which included quite a bit of language-specific analysis and follow-up
> bugfixes. It was the largest feedback collection regarding a software
> feature we've ever done and surfaced key issues with specific
> languages, many of which were resolved.
>
>> Now, the Usability Initiative endend in April 2010, soon after the
>> deployment  of Vector to all Wikimedia Wikis. The Wikimedia Foundation did
>> not place usability as one of their main priorities
>
> That's not correct. Firstly, we continued deployments and bug fixes
> after the grant period. As a reminder, full deployment to all projects
> in all languages was only completed September 1 as the "Phase V" of
> the roll-out. A lot of this time was spent gathering data and feedback
> from these remaining projects/languages regarding project or
> language-specific issues, promoting localization work, etc. Wikimedia
> is a big and complex beast (or bestiary).
>
> There's also the separate usability initiative concerning multimedia
> upload, which is ongoing (see
> http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2011/03/uploadwizard-nearing-1-0/ for
> the most recent update).
>
> Post-Vector, there were three primary projects that kept the folks who
> had worked on the original grant-funded project busy:
>
> 1) After the deployments, the engineering team working on the
> initiative asked to be able to spend time on re-architecting the
> JavaScript/CSS delivery system for MediaWiki, as a necessary
> precondition for more complex software feature. The result was the
> ResourceLoader project:
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ResourceLoader which is now deployed to
> all WMF projects.
>
> 2) The Article Feedback tool. With the Public Policy Initiative we had
> taken on the largest project ever to improve content quality in
> Wikipedia, and Sue asked us to implement a reader-driven article
> quality assessment tool in order to provide additional measures of
> success for the project. We also needed article feedback data in order
> to measure quality change over time on an ongoing basis for other
> quality-related initiatives. The tool is in production use on a few
> thousand articles and we're still analyzing the data we're getting
> before making a final decision on wider deployment. See
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_feedback/Public_Policy_Pilot/Early_Data
> for our findings to-date.
>
> 3) MediaWiki 1.17. One of the side-effects of focusing on usability
> for so long had been that MediaWiki core code review was neglected and
> backlogged, much to the dissatisfaction of the volunteer developer
> community. A lot of joint effort was put into clearing the code review
> backlog to ensure that we could push out a new MediaWiki release,
> which happened in February. Balancing strategic projects with code
> review and integration for volunteer-developed code (which in some
> cases can be quite complex and labor-intensive) is still very much a
> work-in-progress.
>
> Nimish specifically also spent a lot of his time helping to support
> the development and piloting of OpenWebAnalytics as a potential
> analytics framework to gather better real-time data about what's
> happening in Wikimedia projects, precisely so we can better measure
> the effects of the interventions we're making.
>
> The going-forward product development priorities of WMF (not including
> analytics work) are explained in more detail in the product
> whitepaper. 
>
> Mind you, I'm not at all satisfied with the rate of our progress, but
> that's generally not because "we're not making X or Y high enough of a
> priority" or "we suck and we don't know what we're doing", but because
> we simply don't have eno

[Foundation-l] university of innsbruck, institute of zoology, combines teaching, science and wikipedia

[THURNER rupert]

hi,

thorsten schwerte and stefan stolz from the institute for zoology,
university of innsbruck, austria, launchsted an interesting program to
combine teaching, e-learning, science and wikipedia during the biology
course by preparing articles in an internal wiki and then transferring it to
wikipedia [1][2].

kr, rupert

[1] - http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:UIBK-Bio
[2] -
http://www.uibk.ac.at/public-relations/presse/archiv/2011/041101/index.html.de
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

[Foundation-l] 2007 mozilla results: income 75 mio usd, cost 33 mio usd, net assets 80 mio usd

[THURNER rupert]

fyi, the 2007 mozilla results:
 * income 75 mio usd
 * cost 33 mio usd
 * net assets ~80 mio usd
 * http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/11/19/sustainability-in-uncertain-times/
 * audited financial statement:
http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/documents/mf-2007-audited-financial-statement.pdf
 * current staff: http://www.mozilla.org/about/staff

interesting is that the irs (the US national tax agency) decided to
review the tax status  of the funds generated from their deal with
google.

rupert
-
http://wikimedia.ch/donate - tax deductible support for the wikimedia
movement for swiss tax payers

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

[Foundation-l] "stumble upon" in wikimedia? citation collection, where researchers want to be included in future?

[THURNER rupert]

hi,

a video showing how immune cells eat parasites [1] attracted quite
some sites to cite an article about medical visualization [2]. when
looking at it i noticed:
 * that it is published in a cc-2.5 licensed journal
 * that there is a possibility to enter links from facebook, stumble upon, ...
 * that there is no link to do make a reference in wiki*

would it make sense that a wikimedia page allows referencing such an
article? the functions of such a page could be:
 * enter it in a (not yet existing) references library (bibtex or whatever)
 * add it to a portal talk page selected by the user (like medicine)
 * add it to project selected by the user (like wpedia, wversity, ...)

imo the advantages would be that on one hand quality may rise through
better citations, on the other hand having a citation library where
researchers in future want to be and need to be.

kr, rupert.

refs:
[1] 
(http://www.plospathogens.org/article/fetchFirstRepresentation.action?uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.ppat.1000222.s013)
[2] 
http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.ppat.1000222#ppat.1000222-Leon1

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

[Foundation-l] "wiki (usability) summer" - like google summer of code?

[THURNER rupert]

hi,

on http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2008 there was a
statement that such efforts are restricted by "mentoring-manpower".

now that there are real people and a budget dedicated to improve
usability, could it make sense to leverage that effort by bounties
given in a way comparable to google sumer of code?

imo this might also used to attract additional donations from
individuals, as it is simple paraphrasable. and usability is a real
pain to a lot of people.

kr, rupert.
-
http://wikimedia.ch/donate - exempt your donation to wikipedia from swiss tax!

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Regarding the one million dollar usability grant and already extant but unused extensions

[THURNER rupert]

particularly i like the table editor. i'd be even tempted to edit on
wikia and later copy the table to wikipedia :)

rupert.


On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 10:07, Angela <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 11:20 AM, Thomas Dalton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> 2008/12/7 Gerard Meijssen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>>> Hoi,
>>> When so many people are turned off by syntax of any kind, it makes sense to
>>> prevent them to see such syntax. It should be there however for those who do
>>> not consider it a turn off.
>>
>> Yeah, that's where WYSIWYG gets tricky - the complicated bits can only
>> really be done in code, so what do you do when someone using the
>> WYSISYG interface tries to edit a page which includes complicated
>> bits? I'm sure it can be done, but not easily.
>
> Templates and complicated parts can easily be hidden. See
>  for
> example to see what happens to the {{sandbox}} template. Wikia has
> been working on WYSIWYG for a long time now, and I hope the code that
> is available at
> http://trac.wikia-code.com/browser/wikia/branches/wysiwyg will be
> useful to Wikimedia in improving usability.
>
> Angela
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Regarding the one million dollar usability grant and already extant but unused extensions

[THURNER rupert]

the proper list would be mediawiki-l?

On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 00:21, Angela  wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 2:58 AM, Milos Rancic  wrote:
>> On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 4:36 PM, Angela  wrote:
>>> On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 2:15 AM, Milos Rancic  wrote:
 > http://trac.wikia-code.com/browser/wikia/branches/wysiwyg will be
 Is it a MediaWiki fork or just an extension? If it is a fork, up to
 which extent it is compatible with the main MediaWiki? If it is an
 extension, where is the root of the extension?
>>>
>>> It's an extension plus some changes to the parser.
>>
>> Do you (and Brion! and other MW developers) have the idea is it hard
>> to implement it into WMF projects?
>
> We're hoping to get parser changes into the core to make that easy.
> (Sorry for being off-topic on this list - please contact me offlist
> for any more questions on this).
>
> Angela
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l