Re: [Foundation-l] Moderate this list

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 9:06 PM, Samuel Klein  wrote:
> This is effectively the only cross-project list at the moment.  And it
> is the canonical place to raise certain important issues and
> announcements.
>
> It has become popular to disparage this list as a poor place to have
> serious discussions about the foundation -- and to do the disparaging
> in private, where it can't possible lead to consensus to change this.
> Let's please stop doing that, and instead fix the list and its norms,
> or devise replacements and alternatives, so that we can all agree on
> where to have open, welcoming discussions -- that are comfortable for
> almost everyone, including non-native English speakers; that draw
> input from the core audience (people who care about Foundation
> issues).
>
> Please don't view this as a problem that someone else must identify
> and cope with.  If you are reading this list, you can help fix it.

A reminder that there's ongoing discussion on meta about what to do.
Please add to it!
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Improving_Foundation-l

-- phoebe

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[Foundation-l] new list summary (and RSS question)

[phoebe ayers]

Dear list,
List summary service for August is done. Whew! Busy month. Sorry I
didn't manage to do a biweekly edition last month.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives/2009_August_1-31
Now to start on September :)

And a questions: I've gotten a couple requests for an RSS version of
the LSS updates. What would the most useful way to do this be?

I haven't added gmane links to this month yet, but will do so, and
will try for more regular updates as well. What would the most useful
updating frequency be?

let me know what you think of the LSS,
-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] new list summary (and RSS question)

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 11:14 AM, Samuel Klein  wrote:
> Nice!
>
> On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 3:02 PM, phoebe ayers  wrote:
>>
>> And a questions: I've gotten a couple requests for an RSS version of
>> the LSS updates. What would the most useful way to do this be?
>
> An LSS blog (LSS2RSS!) once a fortnight would suit me just fine.
>
> SJ

LSS2RSS is srs bsns!

A blog could work; in the meantime, I started an identi.ca account:
http://identi.ca/listsummaryservice/
Feel free to follow it or its feed
(http://identi.ca/listsummaryservice/all/rss) for all your rss needs.

-- phoebe

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[Foundation-l] advisory board composition

[phoebe ayers]

Dear Foundation-istas,

It looks like sometime this summer the composition of the Advisory
Board changed, with several of the original members becoming former
members:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Advisory_Board&diff=39660&oldid=39327

I don't remember an announcement about this. Did I miss it? Is this an
annual sort of advisory board restructuring, or something else? Was it
discussed somewhere? It's helpful to know who the advisory board
members are, and I didn't think they had any specific 'terms of
office' -- do they?

thanks!
-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] advisory board composition

[phoebe ayers]

On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 2:27 PM, Michael Snow  wrote:
> phoebe ayers wrote:
>> Dear Foundation-istas,
>>
>> It looks like sometime this summer the composition of the Advisory
>> Board changed, with several of the original members becoming former
>> members:
>> http://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Advisory_Board&diff=39660&oldid=39327
>>
>> I don't remember an announcement about this. Did I miss it? Is this an
>> annual sort of advisory board restructuring, or something else? Was it
>> discussed somewhere? It's helpful to know who the advisory board
>> members are, and I didn't think they had any specific 'terms of
>> office' -- do they?
>>
> Actually, the resolution creating the advisory board (back in 2006) had
> them being appointed for one year.
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Advisory_board
> By the time we reviewed the situation, the initial term of service had
> long passed. In the meantime, a few more members had been added, and we
> recently invited many of the original advisory board to renew their
> membership, so that's what the change reflects. It's possible that we
> didn't get a public announcement out; our first priority was contacting
> the advisory board individually, and we also still have some points to
> wrap up at the board level as we try to establish a better overall
> procedure for appointing them and making use of their advice.

Michael & Angela -- thanks for the information & quick replies. I'd
forgotten that terms were only supposed to be a year... it would be
great to have more public information about the
composition/role/appointments of the advisory board (e.g., what are we
looking for in advisors?), when those Board discussions do get wrapped
up. Since strategic planning is also now actively looking for expert
advisors, it seems like this may overlap with and complement the role
of the advisory board, at least in the short term.

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Charity Navigator rates WMF

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 10:55 AM, Andrew Gray  wrote:

> WMF could no doubt spend a lot more in program expenses, though
> defining exactly what those are is a pretty fun game. But it's
> certainly not spending as inefficiently as the histogram might seem to
> suggest.

Right. What's a program expense? What *should* be a program expense?
* keeping servers online?
* Wikimania?
* producing how-to guides?
* improving mediawiki?

Most of what we've had the Foundation do, historically, don't count as
'programs' in the traditional charity sense; the WMF started simply to
make administrative tasks easier (e.g. running the site, running the
office). By that measure, many of us have historically felt that
having the WMF mostly spend money on administrative tasks, and very
little on 'programs', is *ideal*. But that seems quite difficult to
measure by traditional charity-assessment standards. Even the Red
Cross puts a great deal of money into running their emergency
missions, even if the personnel on the ground are volunteers. Our
infrastructure that makes it possible for volunteers to participate is
relatively steady-state, by contrast, and low-cost.

Since all the documentation is readily available, like Mike Snow said
it seems like a more valuable discussion to talk about what we are
actually spending money on and what we should be spending money on (cf
strategic planning) than to talk about what a 3rd party's rough
assessment of what we're spending money on. What should WMF money go
towards?

-- phoebe

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

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 6:56 PM, Birgitte SB  wrote:
>
>
> --- On Mon, 11/2/09, wjhon...@aol.com  wrote:
>
>> From: wjhon...@aol.com 
>> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Recent firing?
>> To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Date: Monday, November 2, 2009, 4:55 PM
>> Personally, I process about two or
>> three hundred emails per day (yes per day), so the small
>> amount of noise the Foundation list creates is negligible to
>> me.
>>
>> If someone is so annoyed by a thread, that they can't even
>> bother to DWR (delete without reading) based merely on the
>> subject title, I would think we need to question whether
>> that person has the right temperament for the internet
>> whatsoever.  I delete at least two or three dozen
>> emails every day without reading them, if I already know the
>> subject is not going to be of "interest" to me.
>>
>> I would submit the real issue here, is not that people are
>> doing that or could, but rather that they have a compulsion
>> to *keep reading* the thread.  Sort of a, "I don't want
>> to be left out, or I want to keep watching the train wreck"
>> or something.  I'm not a psychologist.  I do know
>> however, that the entire issue of "let's close this thread",
>> "let's moderated these people", " this is too noisy" and so
>> on, is endemic to the entire email world.  Not merely
>> this list.
>>
>> I can't think of any list I'm on (and I'm on a few dozen),
>> where the issue does not come up with regularity.  It
>> is merely part of the way internetlife is, in my opinion.
>>
>
>
> "The right temperment for the interner?"
>
> Maybe you would have a point if this was and email list targeted at people 
> who spend every waking hour plugged into the internet.  I realize some of 
> come close to that.  But that is not the target audience of this email list.  
> Nor the Wikimedia movement.  And if those of you who have the temperment and 
> lifestyle for such participation do not control yourselves enough so that 
> this forum might succeed in included more than just those participants 
> similar to yourselves, Wikimedia will be sorrier for it.
>
> On a personal note, last week I have gone to having the responsibilities of 
> three people jobs, instead of only those two I have been handling for most of 
> the past year.  Maybe I will resubscribe when I can hire people again.  Good 
> luck with making sure this list is worth re-subscribing too.  I truly hope 
> you all succeed with that.
>
> Birgitte SB

Hear hear. And even people who do spend a heck of a lot of their time
on Wikimedia might not want to spend it all reading F-l. And no, they
don't have to -- but if you want to keep up with general discussion
about the Foundation, you actually *do*. This is the main forum.
Dominating it is as rude as being that guy in a classroom who won't
shut up, to the detriment of all the other students who can't get a
word in edgewise; only in this case, there's no professor to maintain
order. If you're that guy, it's not like you're more brilliant than
everyone else; you're just more talkative and don't have any social
skills, and you are adversely affecting everyone else that has to
share the space with you.

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

others?
-- phoebe

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[Foundation-l] new list summary

[phoebe ayers]

Oct. 16-31: 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives/2009_October_16-31

and a reminder that these are also posted (for lss2rss) at identi.ca:
http://identi.ca/listsummaryservice

regards,
phoebe

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

[phoebe ayers]

On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 10:27 PM,   wrote:
> In a message dated 11/7/2009 9:13:01 PM Pacific Standard Time,
> thomas.dal...@gmail.com writes:

Dudes. This thread. Case in point. (As I suppose it was fated to be, sigh).

Yes, I am reading it, because I care about this issue. I posted a few
months ago when it came up, I edited the meta page on the subject, and
I posted (I admit, with some frustration), in response to Birgitte's
initial post in this thread.

In the three days since then, there's been 33 messages; 16 of them are
from Thomas Dalton and Will Johnson. Many of these emails have a bit
of a hostile tone (my original post included, mea culpa), and include
sentences like "Anyone that says otherwise is wrong", "That statement
is false" and "Get over it."

Despite the fact that such language is upsetting -- each time I read
such a message I get a little defensive, and feel a little hostile
myself, and then a little upset at having such a reaction -- I have
read (or at least skimmed past) all these messages, because I care
about this thread, and this issue, and I can't easily ignore
individual emails with Gmail's threading feature. And I'm quite happy
that people are participating in discussion on a topic I care about;
that's great.

But I have to wonder -- what point did you have to make about the
future of the mailing list that needed eight emails to make instead
of, say, one or two?

As far as I can tell everyone still has the same opinion they came to
the discussion with, which is the same opinion that everyone who
participated had a few weeks ago, and so this back and forth isn't
really getting us anywhere. Which means that some of you posting out
there must enjoy arguing for the sake of arguing.

So I think the main issue here is that some people enjoy back and
forth chatter more than others; some participants find it perfectly
tolerable and others find it migraine-inducing. So maybe we need one
foundation list with posting limits and another for free-form
discussion? The former could be like the announcements list previously
suggested but with a bit more (but not much more) leeway for
discussion. Or perhaps as has been suggested in the past (because this
issue has been coming up at least since 2004, according to the
archives) a Wikimedia-social list that could absorb people's desire
for conversation and argument?

And yes, in the meantime, I will keep reading -- even though at least
one of you is no doubt poised and ready to tell me to grow a thicker
skin, or to shut up myself, or how it's your given right to respond as
much as you want to every one-line half-hearted argument that gets
made on Foundation-l and I must hate personal freedom to even think
about any alternative mode of dialog, or to give me advice on how to
read email (I've been using it for 15 years), or to tell me to set up
email filters already (I don't, because of LSS) -- despite this, I
will keep reading, because as I said originally this is the main place
to discuss the Foundation and the projects, and that's something I
care about.

regards,
-- phoebe

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[Foundation-l] new list summary

[phoebe ayers]

New LSS, special moderated f-l edition. Let's see if the next edition
of LSS is easier still :)
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives/2009_November_1-15

also at http://identi.ca/listsummaryservice for your rss pleasure.
-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Follow up: Fan History joining the WMF family

[phoebe ayers]

On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 10:06 AM, Laura Hale  wrote:
> This is a follow up to my proposal that Fan History Wiki join the wMF
> family, based on my experiences via e-mail, on the list and on strategy
> wiki.



> As some one who has proposed a new project for the WMF (which would really
> probably be an acquisition if it happened), some changes need to be made:
>
> 1) Clear procedure for what happens step by step in making such a proposal.
> Post proposal.  Contact people who support your position to vote in favor of
> it using talk pages on Strategy wiki.  After one hundred votes vast in favor
> with no more than half that total in opposition, project moves to
> development stages where WMF staff will be in contact with the person making
> the proposal.  Something like that.
> 2) Clear timeline of what happens and when so that people can plan
> accordingly
> 3) Expectations regarding exclusivity of proposal to the WMF during the
> proposal process.  Can people propose it elsewhere or seek acquisition by
> others while there is an open proposal on Strategy Wiki?



Regardless of the merits of FanHistory itself -- and I agree with the
criticisms others have brought forth for whether the project should
join the WMF -- Laura's criticisms of process are legitimate. For all
intents and purposes, there is no process for proposing new projects,
whether home-grown or brought in from outside.

Yes, Wikiversity was created in 2006; it was also pushed through by
some extraordinarily dedicated editors (especially user:Cormaggio) who
were willing to take part in meta-discussions for *years*. It was also
created under the aegis of the Special Projects Committee
([[meta:SPC]] for those who don't remember), which worked with the
Wikiversity editors and brought forth a proposal to the Board after
much back-and-forth.

The SPC doesn't exist anymore, and there's not really anything to take
its place (such as it was) that I'm aware of. Even with an expanded
Foundation staff, it's unclear what area such proposals would fall
under: new projects aren't business development, and they're not
really outreach either. High-level strategic development? But clearly
not all proposals are created equal, and not all are of potential
interest, and not all are fully developed. And it's not at all clear
to me that this kind of discussion/decision should even go through the
office or board, at least initially; it's really undefined what "the
community" (whatever that means) wants in terms of WMF projects.

To my knowledge, there hasn't been a good discussion on the topic of
new projects in the community in a long while; I don't know if there
has been in board or staff discussions. Questions that I'd like to see
discussed on a large scale are:

* Do we want any new projects? Right now? In the future? Ever?
* If so, do we only want projects that follow traditional reference
book models of organizing information? (e.g. Wikiquote, which follows
the model of books of quotations)
* or perhaps only educational projects?
* do all projects have to follow NPOV? What about the other guidelines: NOR, V?
* do we only want projects we start ourselves, or would we consider
projects started by other organizations?

And yes, this could go on the strategy wiki -- but I don't know of a
good, unstructured place to have a discussion about such things there
(that isn't a specific proposal or strategic objective or whatever).
To that end, I'd like to try and revive this meta page:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects/process

which was started last summer then faded out.

And yes, Laura, to your specific question: if you want to see anything
happen with your project anytime soon, I wouldn't pick the WMF.
Whether this is a failing of a disorganized, bureaucratic system, or a
benefit of a deliberative, community-based system, I leave as an
exercise to the reader.

best,
-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Follow up: Fan History joining the WMF family

[phoebe ayers]

On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 12:07 PM, Mike.lifeguard
 wrote:
> I mean to say that since 2006, and perhaps even further back, there have
> been no proposals which should have been approved. Why do we need a
> process to handle something which, in essence, *doesn't happen*?

Does it not happen because there's no process, or is there no process
because it doesn't need to happen? I don't actually think there's any
consensus one way or the other, though the end result -- inertia, and
some confusion on the part of well-meaning people who would like to
start more projects -- is the same.

Also, not all proposed projects are similar -- some are closer to what
we're already doing than others. For instance, a group of researchers
& Wikimedians at WikiSym this year had an idea I've been meaning to
write up, for a reference commons that would support the existing WMF
projects (similar projects have been proposed before); this would be a
separate, tool-server-like project. Another example: lots of people
have worked on producing versions of Wikipedia for children, and
there's been talk of making a larger effort.

Assuming a project like that had merit, would this kind of project
also fall under the "doesn't need to happen" list for you? Or are you
mostly talking about proposals for "new wikis for x topic", which have
dominated the new projects page historically?

> I'd be far more interested in discussing ways we can critically evaluate
> which of our current projects should remain in the Wikimedia movement,
> and which should be asked to move outside that movement to continue
> their development.

I totally agree, though I think the questions I posed are also
applicable to this discussion, perhaps with a more general focus: what
sort of content do we want to host under WMF auspices? What sort of
projects?

I don't like the term "wikimedia movement" (at all), but it could be
useful for talking about the miscellany of projects related to us out
in the world that aren't necessarily hosted on wikimedia.org. But
that's different from asking what projects *should* be directly hosted
by Wikimedia. (Clearly, the answer is to get rid of the
ever-problematic wikipedia and concentrate on the rest of them :P)

-- phoebe


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[Foundation-l] reports of our demise are greatly exaggerated

[phoebe ayers]

Erik Zachte ran another analysis on the numbers and concluded that the
number of new editors on the English Wikipedia is *growing*, and that
the number of editors who edit regularly is basically holding steady.
It still looks like we hit a peak of new editor growth in late '06,
but the ongoing loss of editors is not as pronounced as previously
reported.

http://infodisiac.com/blog/2009/12/new-editors-are-joining-english-wikipedia-in-droves/

-- phoebe

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[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Secret Santa!

[phoebe ayers]

Hello Wikimedians,

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.

Totally optional of course, but totally fun to get random things in
the mail from other community members.

Here's the link to sign up and join the group, if you want to participate:
http://www.elfster.com/apps/exchange/Join.aspx?euid=D78EF055-CF27-4E8F-8E29-205AE28927F6

How it works:

* Sign up at Elfster by Saturday, December 19 if you want to
participate. This part is important -- we'll do the automagical
drawing that day. Don't forget to add your address! (address settings
are under "you" on the site; only the person who draws your name will
be able to see your mailing address. But do remember that if you want
to participate, you'll have to make your postal address available to
at least one other person. The name you register with is visible to
other group members, but not email.)

* Elfster sends you the name of your secret santa recipient (from
"sa...@elfster.com")

* 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.

* the deadline to get your present to your recipient is Saturday,
January 16th (since we're starting so late -- and yes, the
international mail will have delays).

Happy New Years!
-- Phoebe and Austin

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Secret Santa … and En vironment

[phoebe ayers]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 5:20 PM, Gregory Maxwell  wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 6:51 PM, phoebe ayers  wrote:
>> Hello Wikimedians,
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> Totally optional of course, but totally fun to get random things in
>> the mail from other community members.
>
> http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/freakonomics/pdf/WaldfogelDeadweightLossXmas.pdf

LOL. Is this the dreaded "sweater return problem" in economics? :)

Anyway, such economic analysis make the assumption that the gift is
worth a fixed, intrinsic value to start with. A piece of paper,
envelope and (domestic) stamp costs about 50 cents, but a letter from
a friend is, as the commercials say, priceless. I like to sign up for
gift exchanges, send postcards when on vacation, and keep penpals
because all of these activities help build community and friendship,
and it's a lot of fun to receive something that you know someone
thought about and wanted to surprise you with, and to do the same for
someone else.

I blogged my thoughts on gift-giving, from a U.S.
non-religious-but-still-celebrates-Christmas perspective, last year at
this time: http://www.phoebeayers.info/phlog/?p=566

But the reason I said this exchange was optional is because,
obviously, it's optional :) only people who find such things fun and
valuable should sign up.

I also forgot to mention that I can set up do-not-draw lists for
people if you're concerned about not getting paired with someone.

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] advertising craigslist

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 10:58 AM, Michael Snow  wrote:
> geni wrote:
>> 2009/12/15 Michael Snow :
>>
>>> That's a strangely limited notion of who has the capability to help -
>>> only people who are quantitatively more famous than us? For a project
>>> that's built around lots and lots of individual contributions (whether
>>> we're talking content, finances, or publicity), none of them especially
>>> huge in the overall scheme of things, it seems completely backwards to
>>> suggest that such things are useless if they don't dwarf what has
>>> already been achieved.
>>>
>> The argument was that it was his fame that was helpful and that it
>> rose to the level that we should overlook the obvious problem. If you
>> wish to take my comments out of that context I can't stop you but you
>> are attacking a strawman.
>>
> I don't see why it would be out of context, or attacking a straw man, to
> challenge this understanding of what fame entails, or how much is needed
> for it to be helpful. As it's been said about this interconnected age,
> most of us end up being famous for perhaps 15 people, and sometimes to a
> wider audience for 15 minutes. Clearly less than the overall fame of
> Wikipedia, yet when it comes to endorsements or testimonials, that has
> been a big part of achieving it, something marketers would call
> word-of-mouth or buzz. Fame is highly context-dependent, so both the
> magnitude and the usefulness vary with the circumstances. (That's part
> of the reason to test different fundraising approaches against each other.)

Indeed; and arguably Craig Newmark is much, much more famous in San
Francisco (where he's a local celeb) than he would be pretty much
anywhere else. That might be part of the issue here. If you know who
he is in the SF-tech-community-philanthropy context, it might strike
you as more of a clear use of his good name to generously support a
cool project. If you don't, it might look like more of a clear
advertisement for Craigslist.

Regardless this is basically the same debate we had over Virgin Unite
-- the name of any commercial organization (and probably any other
nonprofit organization, too, if we're honest with ourselves) being
displayed on the site provokes intense dislike and debate among a
large section of the community -- for various reasons, but mostly
summarized as we don't want to use the resources of Wikipedia to
advocate or advertise for another organization.

-- phoebe


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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Secret Santa!

[phoebe ayers]

A reminder to sign up by Sat. if you want to participate. -- phoebe

---

On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 3:51 PM, phoebe ayers  wrote:
> Hello Wikimedians,
>
> 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.
>
> Totally optional of course, but totally fun to get random things in
> the mail from other community members.
>
> Here's the link to sign up and join the group, if you want to participate:
> http://www.elfster.com/apps/exchange/Join.aspx?euid=D78EF055-CF27-4E8F-8E29-205AE28927F6
>
> How it works:
>
> * Sign up at Elfster by Saturday, December 19 if you want to
> participate. This part is important -- we'll do the automagical
> drawing that day. Don't forget to add your address! (address settings
> are under "you" on the site; only the person who draws your name will
> be able to see your mailing address. But do remember that if you want
> to participate, you'll have to make your postal address available to
> at least one other person. The name you register with is visible to
> other group members, but not email.)
>
> * Elfster sends you the name of your secret santa recipient (from
> "sa...@elfster.com")
>
> * 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.
>
> * the deadline to get your present to your recipient is Saturday,
> January 16th (since we're starting so late -- and yes, the
> international mail will have delays).
>
> Happy New Years!
> -- Phoebe and Austin
>



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[Foundation-l] OSTP Request for Comment on Open Access to Federally Funded Research

[phoebe ayers]

Possibly of interest to Wikimedians: the U.S. Office of Science and
Technology Policy is requesting public comment on making federally
funded scientific research open access. The deadline is Jan. 7.

- Forwarded Message -
From: "Charles W. Bailey, Jr." 
To: st...@ala.org
Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 10:50:30 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: [STS-L] OSTP Request for Comment on Open Access to Federally
Funded Research

The Office of Science and Technology Policy is requesting
input regarding enhanced access to federally funded science
and technology research results, including the possibility
of open access to them. Comments can be e-mailed to
publicacc...@ostp.gov. The deadline for comments is January
7, 2010.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement
(http://bit.ly/5J1ZAp):

Input is welcome on any aspect of expanding public access to
peer reviewed publications arising from federal research.
Questions that individuals may wish to address include, but
are not limited to, the following (please respond to
questions individually):

1. How do authors, primary and secondary publishers,
libraries, universities, and the federal government
contribute to the development and dissemination of peer
reviewed papers arising from federal funds now, and how
might this change under a public access policy?

2. What characteristics of a public access policy would best
accommodate the needs and interests of authors, primary and
secondary publishers, libraries, universities, the federal
government, users of scientific literature, and the public?

3. Who are the users of peer-reviewed publications arising
from federal research? How do they access and use these
papers now, and how might they if these papers were more
accessible? Would others use these papers if they were more
accessible, and for what purpose?

4. How best could federal agencies enhance public access to
the peer-reviewed papers that arise from their research
funds? What measures could agencies use to gauge whether
there is increased return on federal investment gained by
expanded access?

5. What features does a public access policy need to have to
ensure compliance?

6. What version of the paper should be made public under a
public access policy (e.g., the author's peer reviewed
manuscript or the final published version)? What are the
relative advantages and disadvantages to different versions
of a scientific paper?

7. At what point in time should peer-reviewed papers be made
public via a public access policy relative to the date a
publisher releases the final version? Are there empirical
data to support an optimal length of time? Should the delay
period be the same or vary for levels of access (e.g., final
peer reviewed manuscript or final published article, access
under fair use versus alternative license), for federal
agencies and scientific disciplines?

8. How should peer-reviewed papers arising from federal
investment be made publicly available? In what format should
the data be submitted in order to make it easy to search,
find, and retrieve and to make it easy for others to link to
it? Are there existing digital standards for archiving and
interoperability to maximize public benefit? How are these
anticipated to change?

9. Access demands not only availability, but also meaningful
usability. How can the federal government make its
collections of peer- reviewed papers more useful to the
American public? By what metrics (e.g., number of articles
or visitors) should the Federal government measure success
of its public access collections? What are the best examples
of usability in the private sector (both domestic and
international)? And, what makes them exceptional? Should
those who access papers be given the opportunity to comment
or provide feedback?

In "The Obama Administration Wants OA for Federally-Funded
Research" (http://bit.ly/8fZ6Yh), Peter Suber says:

"This is big. We already have important momentum in Congress
for FRPAA. The question here is about separate action from
the White House. What OA policies should President Obama
direct funding agencies to adopt? This is the first major
opening to supplement legislative action with executive
action to advance public access to publicly-funded research.
It's also the first explicit sign that President Obama
supports the OA policy at the NIH and wants something
similar at other federal agencies."

In "Please Comment on Mandate Proposal by President Obama's
Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)"
(http://bit.ly/8OQUEF), Stevan Harnad provides his answers
to the OSTP's questions.
--

Best Regards,
Charles

Charles W. Bailey, Jr.
Publisher, Digital Scholarship
http://bit.ly/Z6HFx

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[Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wiki-research-l] Wikipedia Research policy

[phoebe ayers]

Of broader interest than just the research list. This came out of the
discussions at WikiSym this October between researchers and
Wikimedians about the need to have some structure about how
researchers interact with Wikipedia and Wikipedians (to try to
alleviate frustration on both sides).
-- phoebe

-- Forwarded message --
From: Bryan T Song 
Date: Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 12:21 PM
Subject: [Wiki-research-l] Wikipedia Research policy
To: wiki-researc...@lists.wikimedia.org



Pursuant to prior discussions about the need for a research
policy on Wikipedia, WikiProject Research is drafting a
policy regarding the recruitment of Wikipedia users to
participate in studies.

At this time, we have a proposed policy, and an accompanying
group that would facilitate recruitment of subjects in much
the same way that the Bot Approvals Group approves bots.

The policy proposal can be found at:
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Research

The Subject Recruitment Approvals Group mentioned in the proposal
is being described at:
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Subject_Recruitment_Approvals_Group

Before we move forward with seeking approval from the Wikipedia
community, we would like additional input about the proposal,
and would welcome additional help improving it.

Also, please consider participating in WikiProject Research at:
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Research

--
Bryan Song
GroupLens Research
University of Minnesota

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[Foundation-l] Wikimania 2011 bidding is open

[phoebe ayers]

The bidding process for Wikimania 2011 is now open for business!

==DEADLINES==
Timeline: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2011/Bids

Important dates:
 * February 8, 2010 (0:01 UTC): Bidding creation ends. List of running
cities announced.
WHAT THIS MEANS: if you want to bid, create a page on Meta (see below)
and add your city to the list. Your bid does not have to say anything
beyond "we're bidding!" at this point. New bids will not be accepted
after this date, however.

 * March 29, 2010 (0:00 UTC): Bidding ends. All major information on
bidding pages must be finalized.
WHAT THIS MEANS: your bid must be complete! all information about your
proposed venue, accommodation, key team, etc. should be posted. Minor
changes (updated information, background information) will be accepted
after this date, but the critical parts of the bid should be finished.

* March 31 - April 12: Refining of bids and answering questions.
WHAT THIS MEANS: you can clarify unclear parts and add updated
information. Suddenly divulging a new venue is not ok, though.

* April 12: Question & Answer from jury ends
* April 13 - April 26: Jury deliberation.
* April 27, 2010: Announcement of host city to public.

The early timeline means that (if followed) hopefully representatives
of the winning bid will be able to attend this year's Wikimania in
Gdansk, which is very helpful for organizers.

==HELPFUL INFORMATION==

To file a bid, follow these directions:
* 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2011/Official_requirements_for_bidding_cities

The criteria for bids, with a few minor changes from last year, are here:
* http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2011/Judging_criteria

==UNOFFICIAL ADVICE==

Previous winning bids can be found linked on Meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania

All winning bids have shared certain characteristics: a strong
community-based team with defined roles and leadership, a thoughtful
budget, careful consideration of the spaces Wikimania will be in, an
attention to detail and to all of the criteria, and a willingness to
improve on the last conference.

That page also has links to the suggestions for improvement that
people have made after each conference. These follow patterns too and
can be helpful to review.

As a bid team, it can be helpful to articulate -- both for yourselves
and the jury -- what you want Wikimania to be and what you envision it
being for the community.

All members of the community should feel free to discuss and analyze
bids as they are developed; this is not a sealed process. Members of
the jury have to carefully review each bid, and having any unclear
areas pointed out and discussed (and fixed) ahead of time can be very
helpful.

Finally, if you have any questions or suggestions or comments on the
bidding process, as always, post them to the talk page:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimania_2011

If you have any questions for the Wikimania jury specifically, please
email them to me or to James Forrester and we will pass them along to
the private jury mailing list. All private communications with the
jury are confidential.

best regards, and good luck --
Phoebe Ayers
Wikimania 2011 jury moderator (non-voting)
on behalf of the 2011 jury:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2011/Jury



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Re: [Foundation-l] Boing Boing applauds stats.grok.se!

[phoebe ayers]

On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 10:01 AM, Bod Notbod  wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 5:57 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
>
>> But then, who isn't a contributor since 2004 these days?
>
> Is there something special about 2004? That's when I became a volunteer.
>
> Is that recognised as the year things reached critical mass?

No. But there is something special about 2003, when I started :D

In seriousness, I usually think of mid-late 2003 as our [[Eternal
September]] date. What do others think?

And props to stats.grok.se! That's great news, Domas.

-- Phoebe

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[Foundation-l] Reminder: Wikimania bid deadline Feb. 8

[phoebe ayers]

Hi all,

This is a gentle reminder that the deadline for posting an initial
Wikimania 2011 bid is *Monday, February 8*, just three short weeks
away. Remember, you don't have to specify any details at this point;
you just have to list the city your team plans to bid with (you can
always withdraw later if it seems unpromising). Bid today if you plan
to! Details:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2011/Bids

regards,
-- Phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] OSTP Request for Comment on Open Access to Federally Funded Research

[phoebe ayers]

On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 10:11 AM, phoebe ayers  wrote:
> Possibly of interest to Wikimedians: the U.S. Office of Science and
> Technology Policy is requesting public comment on making federally
> funded scientific research open access. The deadline is Jan. 7.
>
> - Forwarded Message -
> From: "Charles W. Bailey, Jr." 
> To: st...@ala.org
> Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 10:50:30 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
> Subject: [STS-L] OSTP Request for Comment on Open Access to Federally
> Funded Research
>
> The Office of Science and Technology Policy is requesting
> input regarding enhanced access to federally funded science
> and technology research results, including the possibility
> of open access to them. Comments can be e-mailed to
> publicacc...@ostp.gov. The deadline for comments is January
> 7, 2010.
>
> Here's an excerpt from the announcement
> (http://bit.ly/5J1ZAp):
>
> Input is welcome on any aspect of expanding public access to
> peer reviewed publications arising from federal research.
> Questions that individuals may wish to address include, but
> are not limited to, the following (please respond to
> questions individually):
>
> 1. How do authors, primary and secondary publishers,
> libraries, universities, and the federal government
> contribute to the development and dissemination of peer
> reviewed papers arising from federal funds now, and how
> might this change under a public access policy?
>

Note: Comments on the OSTP open access policy close today -- the
comment period was extended to January 21st. People in the US may wish
to sneak in a last-minute comment today. Sorry for the late notice --
I meant to send a reminder sooner! Here's the text of the email I sent
to OSTP. Thanks to Esther Hoorn of WM-NL & Melissa Hagemann of the
advisory board for helping with ideas.

-
I support expanding open access policies for federally funded research
across all funding agencies, following the NIH model. As an academic
science and engineering librarian, I see first-hand the benefits of
having broad access to current research for students and researchers
alike. As a public university, our budget has been deeply impacted by
the current recession, which means that our library has to reduce our
purchases of expensive scientific journals. This unfortunately impacts
student education -- students who are attending a university funded
with public tax dollars, who need access to research that is also
funded by public monies in order to stay up-to-date in their field,
cannot get access to that same research because of the high prices
charged by commercial scientific publishers. Open access means that
more information would be available regardless of economic situation
through the medium that people use the most to do research -- the Web.

I am also a contributor to Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation
projects. Wikipedia is currently the fifth largest website and the
largest single reference work in the world, accessed by millions of
people every day to get information about all topics, including
current scientific and technical issues. Wikipedia's mission is to
provide technically accurate, up-to-date information that is
well-referenced so all readers can also find out more about the topics
they are interested in. However, many Wikipedia contributors and
readers do not have access to the expensive and exclusive university
libraries that are currently required to access most technical and
scientific information. Instead, they rely on the resources currently
available on the Web. Requiring that the results of federally funded
research be made available online means that a vast world of
up-to-date, reliable and important information would become available
for use by Wikipedia and other projects that seek to make technical
knowledge accessible to the public. As John Willinsky writes in the
journal "First Monday" (itself open access), increasing the
availability of open access research citations would increase the
quality and educational value of Wikipedia (First Monday, v. 12(3), 5
March 2007).

All federal open access policies should require the following to make
them of most use to scientists, students, researchers and internet
users:
* Public access should be a requirement across all funding agencies,
and agency policies should be coordinated to make them compatible with
one another.
* All articles that result from federal funding should be made freely
accessible within no more than six months of publication (ideally
less), and housed in widely publicized archives that ensure permanent
public search and retrieval. These archives should be coordinated with
currently available databases of federally-funded information as well,
such as DOE's Information Bridge.
* Articles should be posted in a standard, non-proprietary digital
format, such as XML

[Foundation-l] Fwd: [Air-L] Critical Point of View: Wikipedia Research Conference (Amsterdam, March 26/27)

[phoebe ayers]

Hmmm


-- Forwarded message --
From: geert lovink 
Date: Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 5:30 AM
Subject: [Air-L] Critical Point of View: Wikipedia Research Conference
(Amsterdam, March 26/27)
To: air 


Critical Point of View: Second international conference of the CPOV
Wikipedia Research Initiative

Date: 26-27 March 2010

Location: OBA (Public Library Amsterdam, next to Amsterdam central
station), Oosterdokskade 143, Amsterdam

Organized by the Institute of Network Cultures Amsterdam, in
cooperation with the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore,
India.

Website: www.networkcultures.org/cpov

Discussion List:
http://p10.alfaservers.com/mailman/listinfo/cpov_listcultures.org

Wikipedia is at the brink of becoming the de facto global reference of
dynamic knowledge. The heated debates over its accuracy, anonymity,
trust, vandalism and expertise only seem to fuel further growth of
Wikipedia and its user base. Apart from leaving its modern
counterparts Britannica and Encarta in the dust, such scale and
breadth places Wikipedia on par with such historical milestones as
Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia, the Ming Dynasty's Wen-hsien
ta-ch' eng, and the key work of French Enlightenment, the
Encyclopédie. The multilingual Wikipedia as digital collaborative and
fluid knowledge production platform might be said to be the most
visible and successful example of the migration of FLOSS
(Free/Libre/Open Source Software) principles into mainstream culture.
However, such celebration should contain critical insights, informed
by the changing realities of the Internet at large and the Wikipedia
project in particular.

The CPOV Research Initiative was founded from the urge to stimulate
critical Wikipedia research: quantitative and qualitative research
that could benefit both the wide user-base and the active Wikipedia
community itself. On top of this, Wikipedia offers critical insights
into the contemporary status of knowledge, its organizing principles,
function, and impact; its production styles, mechanisms for conflict
resolution and power (re-)constitution. The overarching research
agenda is at once a philosophical, epistemological and theoretical
investigation of knowledge artifacts, cultural production and social
relations, and an empirical investigation of the specific phenomenon
of the Wikipedia.

Conference Themes: Wiki Theory, Encyclopedia Histories, Wiki Art,
Wikipedia Analytics, Designing Debate and Global Issues and Outlooks.

Confirmed speakers: Florian Cramer (DE/NL), Andrew Famiglietti (UK),
Stuart Geiger (USA), Hendrik-Jan Grievink (NL), Charles van den Heuvel
(NL), Jeanette Hofmann (DE), Athina Karatzogianni (UK), Scott Kildall
(USA), Patrick Lichty (USA), Hans Varghese Mathews (IN), Teemu
Mikkonen (FI), Mayo Fuster Morell (IT), Mathieu O'Neil (AU), Felipe
Ortega (ES), Dan O'Sullivan (UK), Joseph Reagle (USA), Ramón Reichert
(AU), Richard Rogers (USA/NL), Alan Shapiro (USA/DE), Maja van der
Velden (NL/NO), Gérard Wormser (FR).

Editorial team: Sabine Niederer and Geert Lovink (Amsterdam),  Nishant
Shah and Sunil Abraham (Bangalore), Johanna Niesyto (Siegen),
Nathaniel Tkacz (Melbourne). Project manager CPOV Amsterdam: Margreet
Riphagen. Research intern: Juliana Brunello. Production intern: Serena
Westra.

The CPOV conference in Amsterdam will be the second conference of the
CPOV Wikipedia Research Initiative. The launch of the initiative took
place in Bangalore India, with the conference WikiWars in January
2010. After the first two events, the CPOV organization will work on
producing a reader, to be launched early 2011. For more information or
submitting a reader contribution:
http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/reader/.

Buy your ticket online at:
http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/practical-info/tickets/ (with
iDeal), or register by sending an email to: info (at)
networkcultures.org. One day ticket: €25, students and OBA members:
€12,50. Full conference pass (2 days): €40, students and OBA members:
€25.

More info: www.networkcultures.org/cpov. Contact: info (at)
networkcultures.org, phone: +3120 5951866


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

[phoebe ayers]

On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 5:09 PM, Jay Walsh  wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> In the next day or so Rand and the fundraising team will be sending out an 
> email to all of our donors (about 230,000 - thanks to a tremendous 
> fundraiser) recapping the campaign sharing our 2nd annual report, which you 
> can also read here:
>
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Annual_Report

Late to the party -- but just to reiterate what others have said --
this is a really lovely document, nice work. I especially like the
article anatomy spread -- it's very well done and could make a nice
separate handout on its own (with the timeline cut out).  I also
really like the choice of quotes on the back... we should get
Nicholson Baker to speak sometime at an event :)

A couple notes for next time:
* I don't think the photo of Jimmy is identified anywhere? The photo
credit is given but it doesn't say who he is :) perhaps this is
intentional... stealth founder... like a stealth bomber but so much
cooler.

* the timeline is quirky and fun and I like it. But I wonder if some
of these events could be tied back to wikip/media better. E.g. there's
a note about swine flu; but it could also be noted that our articles
on swine flu got over 200,000 hits/hour in the same time period,
making wikipedia the 2nd most popular website in the U.S. on the
subject.[1] There's a ton of interesting Wikimedia events, meetup
dates, project milestones, etc. that could populate such a timeline
instead of/in addition to general world events -- such a timeline
might help give context to the diversity and scope of the projects
better than prose can.

Having just written up an (incomplete!) summary of 2009[2], I am quite
aware of how hard it is to keep track of everything going on in
Wikimedia-land -- especially after the fact! I think we should create
some kind of in-progress history page on Meta -- a place to chronicle
milestones and significant events as they happen, and work on filling
in a timeline of past events.[3] There was also a suggestion for last
Wikimania from user:Henna that we put up big pieces of paper on the
wall to create a timeline of wikimedia history in-person. Sadly that
didn't happen at Wikimania, but it's still be a cool idea for a future
conference -- or maybe an ongoing project at the office, if there's
wallspace? Visitors could help edit the timeline -- byom (bring your
own marker) :)

-- phoebe


1. According to Erik Zachte,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-05-11/News_and_notes
2. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-01-11/2009_in_review
3. there's http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Goings-on but it could be
usefully expanded to include more stuff, in a different format --
easytimeline to the rescue?

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[Foundation-l] List summary service

[phoebe ayers]

So after a rather lengthier than planned delay, I posted two new
foundation-l list summaries for posterity:

December: 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives/2009_December_1-31
January: 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives/2010_January_1-31

I'll try to keep up with it in future; if anyone wants to help out
just dive in :)

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] 10th birthday edit drive?

[phoebe ayers]

On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 12:05 AM, Stuart West  wrote:
> At a meetup in San Francisco today I was thinking about next January's 10th
> Birthday for Wikipedia and recent strategic planning discussions around
> participation.  What about celebrating Wikipedia Day with an edit drive?  We
> could aim for some stretch target (e.g. 1 million edits across all projects
> over 24 hours on 15 Jan 2011, or 25 million edits during the month of
> January) and use the project and geo-targeted sitenotice technology from the
> fundraisers.
>
> Seems like it could be a great way to celebrate and also get the word out
> about the "anyone can edit" spirit of our projects.

yes, what a fantastic event to do some concentrated outreach around! I
really like the edit drive, welcoming back editors, and usability
launch ideas. Some more ideas:

* Worldwide meetups -- next year, January 15 is a Saturday :) which
makes planning convenient. We should encourage every chapter and
meetup group, large and small, to have some sort of meetup or event on
Wikipedia Day. How many wikipedians can we have partying at once
around the world?! Or larger groups might put on bigger "wikipedia
day" events where the public is invited, talks are given, etc. Some
sharing of best practices from groups who have already done this to
groups who haven't would probably be helpful.

* make it a "month of Wikipedia" and provide materials, kits and ideas
to outside groups and newbie editors who want to participate. Other
groups do this, e.g. with the International Year of Astronomy. Ideas:
** outreach to teachers for classroom projects -- not just classroom
editing but also learning about wikipedia, using wikimedia materials
in lessons, etc.
** article referencing drive :) something I've wanted to do for a long
time -- outreach to librarians (and others) to help add references to
articles
** editing drives -- especially editing drives on smaller projects?
Maybe Google and others would considering partnering again, as they
just did for the Swahili contest.
** photography drives ("the world <3 wikipedia")

* Along with outreach to the world, this should also be a chance to
remember and celebrate the community internally, as Ziko mentions.
Maybe creating a Wikipedia timeline... bringing back old-timers to
speak... exchanging greetings from group to group... finally tracking
down willy on wheels
(Every time I do the "this week in history" section for the Signpost I
get nostalgic -- this week, in 2005, we protected the main page of the
english wikipedia!) We should try and collectively celebrate our
amazing past as a community, too.

Does this need a planning page on meta? :)
-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] the Foundation

[phoebe ayers]

Hi Tyler!

The history of wikis is pretty well documented here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wikis

And the history of Wikipedia and how it came to be is analyzed in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia, and also at length
in the book "The Wikipedia Revolution", by Andrew Lih.

If you're curious about the Wikimedia Foundation, which this is the
mailing list for, it's described briefly in the book "How Wikipedia
Works": http://howwikipediaworks.com/ch17.html

cheers,
Phoebe

On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 11:01 PM, Tyler  wrote:
> Is Jimmy Wales on this list? Jimmy, what inspired you to do a WIKI pedia? 
> Were you inspired by the earlier wiki encyclopedia known as WikiWikiWeb 
> (c2.com)? Were there any other wikis before you besides that c2 wiki?
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] the Foundation

[phoebe ayers]

:) Thanks Philippe. And yes, the WMF is getting a cut of the royalties
from "How Wikipedia Works", though at this point it's a pretty small
check. Apparently books about Wikipedia are something of a niche
market ;)

John: your confusion is understandable, as foundation-l is often noisy
(though less so than in the past!) and many messages go into depth on
topics that don't necessarily make sense out of context, and/or assume
that people understand the historical context of topics/past
discussions/who everyone is/etc. But of course you're welcome to hang
out. :)

All: I still think we need an announcements list, so people who are
curious about Wikimedia goings-on don't have to put up with f-l !

-- phoebe


On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 11:40 AM, Philippe Beaudette
 wrote:
> The delightful authors of "How Wikipedia Works" are some of our very
> brightest and best.  It's a fantastic book, to which I refer people
> regularly.
>
> They include, by the way, the lovely and talented Phoebe.
>
> pb
>
>
> 
> Philippe Beaudette
> Facilitator, Strategy Project
> Wikimedia Foundation
>
> phili...@wikimedia.org
>
>
> Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in
> the sum of all knowledge.  Help us make it a reality!
>
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
>
>
>
> On Feb 12, 2010, at 11:29 AM, John M. Sinclair wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Phoebe, thank you! I want to help but have been watching the emails in
>> this forum in stupid silence for weeks now, not knowing how the whole
>> thing was put together, or what anyone's role was.
>>
>> I just ordered How Wikipedia Works.  I hope the foundation is
>> getting a
>> cut.
>>
>>
>> -Original Message-
>> From: foundation-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org
>> [mailto:foundation-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of phoebe
>> ayers
>> Sent: Friday, February 12, 2010 10:40 AM
>> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
>> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] the Foundation
>>
>> Hi Tyler!
>>
>> The history of wikis is pretty well documented here:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wikis
>>
>> And the history of Wikipedia and how it came to be is analyzed in
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia, and also at length
>> in the book "The Wikipedia Revolution", by Andrew Lih.
>>
>> If you're curious about the Wikimedia Foundation, which this is the
>> mailing list for, it's described briefly in the book "How Wikipedia
>> Works": http://howwikipediaworks.com/ch17.html
>>
>> cheers,
>> Phoebe
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 11:01 PM, Tyler 
>> wrote:
>>> Is Jimmy Wales on this list? Jimmy, what inspired you to do a WIKI
>> pedia? Were you inspired by the earlier wiki encyclopedia known as
>> WikiWikiWeb (c2.com)? Were there any other wikis before you besides
>> that
>> c2 wiki?
>>>

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[Foundation-l] WikiSym 2010 CFP: One Week Left!

[phoebe ayers]

air.org/conferences/?conf=wikisym2010).

For all other papers and proposals, please email the respective
chair (see below).

All accepted submissions will be published in the proceedings and
archived in the ACM Digital Library.

Submitted work in all categories should use the ACM SIG Proceedings
Format, see: http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html

Questions regarding submissions may be directed at the respective chair
using the following email addresses:

   * Workshops: worksh...@wikisym.org
   * Demonstrations/Tutorials: de...@wikisym.org
   * Posters: post...@wikisym.org
   * Doctoral Symposium: doc...@wikisym.org

General questions should be directed at ch...@wikisym.org.

SYMPOSIUM COMMITTEE

   * Phoebe Ayers, University of California at Davis, USA; Symposium Chair
   * Felipe Ortega, GSyC/Libresoft, University Rey Juan Carlos,
Spain; Programme Chair
   * Dirk Riehle, Friedrich Alexander University of
Erlangen-Nuremberg; Treasurer
   * Felipe Ortega, GSyC/Libresoft, University Rey Juan Carlos,
Spain; Wiki Track Chair
   * Martin Cleaver, Blended Perspectives, Canada; Industry Track Chair
   * Giota Alevizou, Institute of Educational Technology, Open
University, UK; Open Collaboration Track Chair
   * Pattarawan Prasarnphanich, Sasin Graduate Institute of Business
Administration, Thailand; Posters Chair
   * Andreea Gorbatai, Harvard University, USA; Workshops Chair
   * Stuart Geiger, Georgetown University; Wikimedia Liason
   * Stuart Geiger, Georgetown University; Publicity Co-Chair (Academia-US)
   * Yoshifumi Masunaga, Aoyama Gakuin University; Publicity Co-Chair
(Asia-Pacific)
   * Philipp Schmidt, University of the Western Cape, South Africa;
Publicity Co-Chair (Africa)
   * Mayo Fuster Morell, European University Institute, Italy;
Publicity Co-Chair (Open Collaboration)
   * Ward Cunningham, AboutUs.org and Cunningham & Cunningham, USA;
Honorary Member
   * James Noble, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand;
Honorary Member
   * Ted Ernst, AboutUs.org, USA; Open Space Facilitator
   * Marc Laporte, TikiWiki CMS/Groupware, Canada; Webmaster

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Please visit http://wikisym.org/ws2010 to obtain the most up-to-date
list of reviewers and collaborators included in our Programme
Committee.

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Re: [Foundation-l] I'm here to request a new Wikimedia project

[phoebe ayers]

On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 9:40 AM, David Goodman  wrote:
> WP contains many of  the essential elements  of an almanac already, and
> could very easily cover all the rest-- it doesn't take a new project, just a
>

For Pharos, there is also the Atlas project on Commons already -- one
of my favorite projects that not many people seem to know about.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Atlas

For an almanac, I wonder if we could carve out space within Wikipedia
in the same way -- the almanac portal? A lot of the relevant data is
already present.

For new projects in general... heh, we should start a pool for which
is more likely, policy changes or new projects. Inertia Sweepstakes!

-- phoebe, who is not snowed in but also overslept :)

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[Foundation-l] list o' image donations?

[phoebe ayers]

Hello Foundation-l,

Is there an list somewhere of major image donations/collections that
have been uploaded to Commons in the last few years? E.g., the
Bundesarchiv donation, Antweb, etc.

We've been trying to note these in the Signpost as they come up, but
it would be nice to also have a comprehensive list to be able to refer
to... maybe even a table with their current status noted?

-- phoebe


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Re: [Foundation-l] list o' image donations?

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 1:13 PM, Casey Brown  wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 4:04 PM, phoebe ayers  wrote:
>> Is there an list somewhere of major image donations/collections that
>> have been uploaded to Commons in the last few years? E.g., the
>> Bundesarchiv donation, Antweb, etc.
>
> It looks there's a list, but it's not updated.
> <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Commons_partnerships>
> (That's the category, also see the first page in it.)

Thanks Casey. I wonder if "partnerships" is really the right
all-encompassing term for that kind of large donation to Commons?
Anyway, that's the kind of page I was looking for -- it just needs to
be updated! Thanks.

-- Phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 5:42 AM, Anthony  wrote:
> What's going on over at Wikiversity?  Jimmy Wales has now been threatened
> with a block by someone who seems to be an admin in good standing, and he
> responds that he has "the full support of the Wikimedia Foundation".  Is
> this true?  What does it mean?

I wrote up a quick story about this for this week's Signpost (not yet
published), which summarizes what I found out about this as of Sunday:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-03-15/News_and_notes

It doesn't cover whatever has happened in the last few days, though.
-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 12:41 PM, geni  wrote:
> On 18 March 2010 17:16, Cormac Lawler  wrote:
>> On 18 March 2010 16:33, Erik Moeller  wrote:
>>
>>> 2010/3/18 Anthony :
>>> > For what it's worth, I think it's probably a good idea to shut down
>>> > Wikiversity.  Wikiversity hasn't to my knowledge achieved anything of
>>> note.
>>>
>>> To be fair, I don't think that's equally true for all language
>>> editions. The German Wikiversity, from what I can see, seems to be
>>> slowly but productively doing what the project was designed to do:
>>> producing learning materials.
>>
>>
>>
>> Wikiversity was set up to do *two* things: produce learning materials, and
>> support learning/research activities and communities. The second question
>> was always more vaguely defined, but was always the more interesting
>> question for me. English Wikiversity's problems stem from an uncertainty
>> about what a legitimate learning/research activity would be, and a
>> consequent uncertainty in Wikiversity's scope as a project. Dealing with the
>> question of what someone is free to learn in Wikiversity is the useful
>> course of action to take here; rather than talk of closing the project.
>> Unfortunately, due to imminent submission of my thesis, I have no time to
>> give this for the next two weeks, but will get back to the discussion
>> thereafter.
>>
>> Cormac
>
>
> Well we could put in place a mechanism for creating open access
> journals then tell those in the open source community involved in the
> dwm mess to use it. Heh or start the journal of [citation needed] aka
> stuff wikipedians know but haven't been able to find a source for.
>
> --
> geni

Heh... "The Journal of Citation Needed" sounds more like a potential
blog than a journal, but I like it nonetheless :) Reference librarians
tend to use email lists for this sort of thing -- there are several
specialized and general lists for posting and answering hard
questions. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stumpers-L is the most
famous). Maybe we need something similar :)

Re: Wikiversity -- it's worth nothing that PrivateMusings was told to
please quit it as early as mid-January by at least a couple of people
[see his enwp talk page], so the deletion of the Wikiversity page
didn't totally come out of the blue. Also PM posted a clarification to
the Signpost story that I wrote on my en.wp talk page, in which he
writes that no experiment was planned but only a few were written up
"in a very small way".

I suspect few of us have access to the deleted page to see for
ourselves, though personally it's hard for me to imagine someone --
anyone -- coming from the English Wikipedia and choosing such a topic
to write about in the first place without at least having the intent
to be provocative. How much intent does it take to become a troll?
More broadly, I think the global principle of "don't take your fight
to other projects" (x-project or x-language) is a good one, and we
should adopt and enforce it, but I don't know if that includes global
blocking.

-- phoebe

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

[phoebe ayers]

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 5:28 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:
> Mike Godwin wrote:
>> Darn it! A waste, I say! And I worked so hard to give you
>> .
>
> Huh, neat. I'm not sure there was an announcement about that, but it's nice
> to know it's there!

I don't know if was announced on the lists, but it was in the Signpost
news a few weeks ago :D

-- phoebe, who was just looking at the old logo contest submissions
yesterday: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Logo_suggestions

and who would love love love to find a copy of the main page with the
American flag as logo, circa Jan 15 2001 :)

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Re: [Foundation-l] Ideas from Limburg

[phoebe ayers]

Ziko,

On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 3:24 PM, Ziko van Dijk  wrote:
> When he told me about, I looked up again what I had written about
> (small) Wikipedia language editions in my handbook (in German):
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Ziko/Handbuch-Titel . I then, in
> 2008, found li.WP relatively good, but there were also some
> difficulties, for example the lack of a technical vocabulary.

Thanks for reminding us of your book on multilingual Wikipedias! It's
amazing. It would be lovely to expand this to all languages, to have a
comprehensive Wikipedia handbook!


> When I examined the background I found out that most of the
> li.Wikipedians indicate their real names and many are women. With
> permission, here what Gebroeker:JennySteen wrote to me:

wow! This is really unusual and interesting. Do you think it is just
because of the effect of having a small community centered around this
group of editors?

btw I am not seeing the color changes for user pages.. and maybe
http://li.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebroeker:JennySteen edits under a
different account?

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Ideas from Limburg

[phoebe ayers]

ha! UTC-time ftw. Your message shows up as arriving on Wed 31 for me,
thus I gave you a serious answer! :)

And your handbook really is great :)

- Phoebe

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 at 1:45 PM, Ziko van Dijk  wrote:
> Dear Phoebe,
>
> You make my day! Actually, it should have been yesterday, but I am
> afraid most people did not notice my Aprils fool item.
>
> Once I thought translating my Handbook into English, but other things
> gained priority. Especially my textbook I am due to have finished on
> July 1st, and about which I was still going to ask you questions - you
> are more experienced still.
>
> Kind regards
> Ziko
>
>
> 2010/4/2 phoebe ayers :
>> Ziko,
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 3:24 PM, Ziko van Dijk  
>> wrote:
>>> When he told me about, I looked up again what I had written about
>>> (small) Wikipedia language editions in my handbook (in German):
>>> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Ziko/Handbuch-Titel . I then, in
>>> 2008, found li.WP relatively good, but there were also some
>>> difficulties, for example the lack of a technical vocabulary.
>>
>> Thanks for reminding us of your book on multilingual Wikipedias! It's
>> amazing. It would be lovely to expand this to all languages, to have a
>> comprehensive Wikipedia handbook!
>>
>>
>>> When I examined the background I found out that most of the
>>> li.Wikipedians indicate their real names and many are women. With
>>> permission, here what Gebroeker:JennySteen wrote to me:
>>
>> wow! This is really unusual and interesting. Do you think it is just
>> because of the effect of having a small community centered around this
>> group of editors?
>>
>> btw I am not seeing the color changes for user pages.. and maybe
>> http://li.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebroeker:JennySteen edits under a
>> different account?
>>
>> -- phoebe
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Ziko van Dijk
> NL-Silvolde
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Welcome to a new board member

[phoebe ayers]

I'm with Sydney :) Welcome Bishakha to our crazy projects and
community. Wiki(mp)edia is diverse, huge, decentralized, a little
overwhelming and full of some of the geekiest, most awesome people I
know -- I hope you can make it to Wikimania to meet some of them!

And as with all new board members, staff & others taking up a role in
the Foundation: if you have questions (whether about how to edit, or
the history of a project, or how something works, or anything at all)
don't hesitate to ask (via mail, irc, wiki talk page, etc). The
community may be argumentative & noisy but we try to be helpful too :)

-- Phoebe

On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 9:08 AM, Sydney Poore  wrote:
> Welcome Bishakha :-)
>
> From my perspective having more focus on women's related topics and
> issues in the WMF projects would be a good thing! So I welcome your
> involvement; including your perspective as someone who has encouraged
> and empowered women to contribute in the public domain on women's
> issues.
>
> Sydney Poore
>
> On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 9:35 AM, Bishakha Datta  
> wrote:
>> Thanks, all. Thought I would just introduce myself a bit more.
>>
>> Building on Michael (Snow's) email, for the last 12 years I have run Point
>> of View (www.pointofview,org), a Mumbai-based non-profit that puts the
>> voices and points of view of women in the public domain through media, art
>> and culture. We work on issues ranging from domestic violence, sex workers'
>> rights, gender and HIV - to enabling women in low-income communities to
>> access and use digital technologies (video, photo, net) to tell their own
>> stories and talk about their own realities.
>>
>> Info-activism, specially via online platforms, is one of the issues that we
>> started working on a couple of years back. Our first foray into
>> info-activism was as one of the seeders of the Public Access Digital Media
>> Archive (http://pad.ma), which is built on open source software and
>> principles.
>>
>> Apart from managing POV, I also make documentary videos on issues of gender
>> and sexuality, and am currently writing a non-fiction book on the lives of
>> sex workers in India. I also serve on the boards of many other non-profits
>> that work in the Global South, including CREA (www.creaworld.org) and
>> Breakthrough (www.breakthrough.tv) - and consult for foundations and
>> non-profits in India, the US, and parts of Africa.
>>
>> Coming to Michael (Peel's) question about my prior involvement with
>> Wikipedia, I'm one of its millions of daily readers/users around the world.
>> I have yet to contribute enough by way of edits to call myself an editor.
>>
>> Cheers - and really do look forward to contributing in more ways than one,
>> Bishakha
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Announcement list is active

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 5:14 PM, Jay Walsh  wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> A few weeks ago there was much discussion about establishing an 
> announcement-only email list that would be used as a 'push-only' list where 
> important announcements from the Foundation, chapters, or other 
> representatives could be directed.  Anyone could subscribe to this list and 
> keep up to date on important events and information.
>
> We now have this list up and running (I spent a little more time than I had 
> planned testing stuff) and it's ready for subscribers:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l

Sweet! I'm glad to see this finally happen. Thanks, Jay. The meta
guidelines look good to me ... and now we have a mailing list we can
direct the interested public to, huzzah!

phoebe

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[Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wikimania-l] 2011 delay

[phoebe ayers]

someone asked me about wikimania 2011 and I realized I only sent this
to wikimania-l -- sorry.

-- phoebe

-- Forwarded message --
From: phoebe ayers 
Date: Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 2:34 PM
Subject: [Wikimania-l] 2011 delay
To: "Wikimania general list (open subscription)"



Hi all,

The ashcloud disrupted many things, including the chapters meeting...
and among other things it distracted a bunch of people who are on the
wikimania jury :)  We're not going to reach a decision by the original
announcement date (next Tuesday)... I'm guessing discussions can be
wrapped up in two weeks from now. Stay tuned. Sorry guys (especially
since I know all the bids have worked really really hard).

As always, questions to the jury can go through me or to individual
jury members.

best,
Phoebe
2011 Wikimania Jury moderator (non-voting, cat-herder)

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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Wikimedia Form 990 Now Filed and Posted

[phoebe ayers]

Great! Thank you for posting this.

(Both expressing my sincere appreciation, and testing the replies to
wikimediaannounce-l :) )

phoebe

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 6:03 PM, Veronique Kessler
 wrote:
> Please note that the 2008 Form 990 which covers fiscal year July 1, 2008
> through June 30, 2009 has been posted to the Wikimedia Foundation
> website at:
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:WMF_2008_2009_Form_990.pdf
>
> Also posted are questions and answers which can be found at:
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Form_2008_Questions_and_Answers
>
> Of course I am available to answer questions as well.
>
> Veronique
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Flagged Protection update for April 29

[phoebe ayers]

On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 5:01 PM, Anthony  wrote:
>> My understanding is that William is being paid.
>
> Seriously? Well, okay then. If that's what our grants are being spent on…

Jeez, does it matter? If William's style is to deal with cranky
comments by being as polite as possible and acknowledging people
engaging in discussion, even if they're being jerks about it, well --
more power to him. That shouldn't have a darn thing to do with getting
paid or not. Especially for someone who was calling someone else out
for being rude, your message here is out of line.

C'mon, people. I have met most of the people commenting in this thread
in real life and therefore know y'all are over the age of majority --
so act like adults already.

-- phoebe

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

[phoebe ayers]

On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 2:18 PM, David Goodman  wrote:
> Is there anyone who disagrees that we need to hold to the policies:
>
> 1. that the WMF projects as a whole contains only material --of any
> sort , on any topic-- with informative or educational value,

Maybe we need a new motto for Commons: "just 'cause it's free, doesn't
mean it's good."

Given that:
a) commons is not a host for people's personal photo collections
b) some of the pr0nz is obviously part of a personal collection

I don't actually see what the problem is necessarily in deleting it.
It's called editorial judgment, and as I have been telling people for
years and years on Wikipedia, editorial judgment =/= censorship. You
may write the most awesome novel to ever have been written, but that
doesn't mean it's fit for Wikipedia. Similarly, you may have the most
righteous CC-BY pictures of naked people or your birthday party or
your neighbor's cat or whatever, but that doesn't mean any of it needs
to go -- or should go -- in Commons.

I know, I know, my whitebread American puritan morals (ha!) shouldn't
affect the sacred contents of the Commons, but seriously, no one
objects when I edit articles to uphold the long-held editorial
standards of Wikipedia, and I try hard to be NPOV when I edit there.
Similarly, I think it is entirely possible to consider issues such as
duplicative content, educational value, purpose of the image, use in
the projects, technical quality, etc. and come to a very reasonable
conclusion that not everything belongs in Commons and it needs a good
weeding. We are not, after all, the interweb's fileserver for
whatever.

This is an entirely separate issue from whether Jimmy went about being
bold in the correct manner, and it would probably be helpful to
remember that. As a strict *user* of commons, rather than a
contributor, I would personally like to have less junk to wade through
when trying to find pictures of something!

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Board members positions toward Jimmy's last action

[phoebe ayers]

On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 3:14 AM, Milos Rancic  wrote:
> By now, just two Board members explicitly stated what do they think
> about Jimmy's action: Jan-Bart de Vreede and Ting Chen (who explained
> his position in details).
>
> According to not precise Board's statement I may guess who supports
> Jimmy's action and who doesn't. However, I don't want to guess. As a
> member of community who directly or through the chapters elects five
> Board members and other four through the delegation given to the
> previous five members, I want to know positions of other Board
> members.

Well, we as a community don't require such individual statements about
any other issue; I realize this may be a personal dealbreaker for you
but it doesn't seem like the single most important issue of our day.
I'd much rather hear what individual board members think about
strategy or the budget, which is of much more lasting import for how
the foundation gets run.

I do wish that there were a better way for board members to
participate as community members in discussions and explore issues
without their every move getting scrutinized as a potential board
statement; that goes for Jimmy, too. Our board members are all smart,
well-respected people and I'd like to hear their opinions more often
about everything, but I think that the fact of having to draft and
present consensus positions to an often-critical community hampers
them. I'm not sure if there's a good answer to this problem.

-- Phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Board members positions toward Jimmy's last action

[phoebe ayers]

On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 9:31 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 8 May 2010 17:29, phoebe ayers  wrote:
>
>> Well, we as a community don't require such individual statements about
>> any other issue; I realize this may be a personal dealbreaker for you
>> but it doesn't seem like the single most important issue of our day.
>> I'd much rather hear what individual board members think about
>> strategy or the budget, which is of much more lasting import for how
>> the foundation gets run.
>
>
> It's board members directly asserting control over content. Of course
> it's a major issue.

I don't disagree, but I meant what I said about *single* most important issue!

And I'm not sure that's how I'd frame it. The board statement seemed
pretty clear; reaffirming existing policy. I guess it depends a bit on
what capacity you think Jimmy was acting in; this is not the first
time in the last decade that he's used bold action to get us to
rethink content policies.
-- phoebe

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[Foundation-l] Wikimania 2011 announcement

[phoebe ayers]

Dear all,

(I am really happy to send a message on a completely new topic :) )

The Wikimania jury has selected Haifa, Israel as the location for
Wikimania 2011. The Haifa team presented a compelling, detailed bid[1]
 that the Wikimania jurors were very impressed by. As usual, all of
the Wikimania bids had good points, and it was a very difficult
decision. Detailed feedback will be sent to all bids. Public
discussion of the bids and the Wikimania process is also welcome, and
we know the winning team will appreciate the community's support and
help in making a great Wikimania.

We also apologize for the lateness of this announcement. We invested a
lot of time in careful consideration of all points. I am happy to
answer questions about the process.

Congratulations to the Haifa team and many thanks to all of the
bidders for working so hard. I personally encourage all bidders to use
the energy that has been put into these bids by hosting smaller
regional events, and considering another bid for Wikimania in the
future.

Phoebe Ayers
James Forrester
Cary Bass
Jury moderators (non-voting)

On behalf of the Wikimania jury:
Mariano Cecowski
Austin Hair
Benjamin Mako Hill
Teemu Leinonen
Delphine Menard
James Owen
Joseph Seddon
Stu West

[1] Bid: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2011/Bids/Haifa
[2] jury, process & timeline: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2011

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Re: [Foundation-l] On Wikimania locations

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 5:32 PM, Gregory Maxwell  wrote:
> Wikimania 2011 has come, yet again another location in the middle-east.
>
> It seems to me that every major populated geographic region has a
> multitude of sites which could create viable wikimania candidacies—
> and this has certainly been supported by the past applications.
>
> A leading application takes an enormous amount of work, expenditure of
> political energy, etc. on the part of the proposing team— work that
> could perhaps be applied to advancing the Wikimedia mission in other
> ways for candidacies which are ultimately fruitless.
>
> I believe that if you were to take the best candidate from each region
> and compare among them you'd find them all to be excellent options and
> ultimately end up choosing based little details and preferences, often
> ones mostly outside of the control of the applicants.
>
> Accordingly I believe it would be better if we pre-announced a
> preferred geography for the candidacies each year.
>
> Effort could then be conserved for producing really excellent
> proposals in those years when a candidacy is most likely to be
> successful. This could also be expected to result in better
> applications.

Ah, rotation, the bane of Wikimania planning... or perhaps the
challenge, the opportunity?

This seems like a good opportunity to propose an idea I have had for a
long time, and have discussed with many people, but have never
formally proposed.

I'm interested in seeing a community-based group being formed to work
on the on-going issues surrounding Wikimania. Such a group could (for
instance):

* work on documentation of past conferences and best practices, so
each new team does not have to work hard to get this information (as
is currently the case)
* set the timetables for choosing future locations and perhaps provide
optimal planning schedules (much as the election committee does, in
years when it exists)
* provide a centralized resource of knowledgeable people that all
interested parties (Foundation staff, conference planners, community
members, etc) could turn to with questions and ideas
* and last but not least actively hold and host [and perhaps come
to consensus on] discussions such as this (the rotation issue) which
has come up every single year in the public and private bid
discussions, to no resolve.

I imagine such a group would be separate from the year's actual
conference planners and the bid jury. This would rather be a group of
those interested and those with past wikimania experience -- perhaps
less formal than the current standing committees but more formal than
the current situation of "whoever happens to work on wikimania and
answer their mail." Imagine a really engaged wikiproject.

I have had this exchange more than once:
"Hey Phoebe, how do I contact the Wikimania group [with my idea for
the future/question/proposal]?"
"You do realize there's no such thing, right?"

And I would like to change that situation.

What do you all think? Anyone interested? Starting on meta seems like
a good idea: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania/community

-- Phoebe


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Re: [Foundation-l] Along with Vector, a new look for changes to the Wikipedia identity

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 8:14 AM, Austin Hair  wrote:
> On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 2:37 PM, Lodewijk  wrote:
>> However, I am missing why it was decided to decrease the size of the
>> logo. It definitely looks more professional, but also somewhat less
>> friendly to me. Maybe it is just me, maybe not - I just would like to
>> understand the rationale first.
>>
>> And is there any chance that the middle horizontal line is made
>> slightly less intense? Right now, the attention is drawn there (at
>> least for me) instead of the open part at the top. It gives me a
>> slight impression as if the bowl is about to burst. Which is of course
>> a valid representation of the truth with all community uproar lately,
>> but I don't think it should be our message :)
>
> It was jarring at first, and I'll grant that the initial shock
> (seriously, somehow this slipped under my radar entirely) accounts for
> most of my aversion, but I have to agree with Lodewijk.

I think you missed it because it wasn't really discussed before as
part of the vector update... right? I admit I didn't read all the
announcements, but was this discussed/announced earlier?

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Along with Vector, a new look for changes to the Wikipedia identity

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 10:29 AM, Austin Hair  wrote:
> On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 7:11 PM, Gregory Maxwell  wrote:

>> Oh well— at least we've got something to complain about and improve.
>
> We could always go back to talking about porn on Commons.
>
> Austin

n. what about Wikimania rotation? Come on, let's talk
about something easy.

ever hopeful,
Phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] FYI: Wikipedia, Open Access and Cognitive Virology

[phoebe ayers]

On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 6:22 AM, Klaus Graf  wrote:
> Stevan Harnad in the American Scientist Open Access Forum:
>
> On Sat, 15 May 2010, Barbara Kirsop [Electronic Publishing Trust for
> Development] wrote:
>
> What is very confusing about [the SAGE survey's] call for feedback is
> the title ["Open Access Publishing"].
> http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/soap_survey_a
>
> I do not understand the phrase 'Open Access Publishing'. Open access is
> about 'access'. It is not a publishing process. The title should refer to
> 'open access journals'. The use of the phrase 'OA publishing' reinforces the
> idea that OA is about publishing and this is one reason why 'OA repositories'
> are often left out of the equation. With the title provided it is unlikely
> that anyone will think it is about OA repositories.
>
> Those I respect in the OA world tell me I am being pedantic, but it is
> little things like this that cause confusion to newcomers to the debate. I
> make a plea that we stop using the phrase 'open access publishing' and use
> 'open access journals' or 'the publishing of open access journals' instead!
>
> Dear Barbara, you are in no way being pedantic!
>
> You are quite right that the relentless (and mindless) tendency to
> refer to (and think of) OA itself as "OA Publishing" instead of just OA
> (thereby completely conflating and confusing Green OA self-archiving
> with Gold OA publishing) has been an endless source of misunderstanding,
> misdirection and, worst of all, delay in the progress of OA.
>
> A high-profile accomplice in the perpetuation of this constant canard is
> the entry for "Open Access" in Wikipedia, Google's ubiquitous "top hit"
> (hence always the top hit for "Open Access" queries).

I certainly have respect for Steven Harnad's work in this area. But I
have also had the open access articles watchlisted for some years now,
and they are one of those surprisingly controversial mini-areas in
Wikipedia. Since it's also an area that isn't very well defined *in
the field itself* (I say, as someone writing up some materials about
open access for my library as we speak), I'm not surprised that
[[user:harnad]] is frustrated.

It looks to me like a straightforward disambiguation on [[open
access]], and the argument is over what to put in the parenthesis for
the article about the type of open access that is associated with both
research and publishing.

I am reminded (perhaps inexplicably) of RMS's discursions on the
GNU/Linux articles last wikimania

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Renaming "Flagged Protections"

[phoebe ayers]

On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 2:38 PM, Rob Lanphier  wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> As William alluded to, a bunch of us have been studying the user interface
> for Flagged Protections and figuring out how to make it more intuitive.

Thanks for asking about the name -- though I suspect there's nothing
that will make everyone happy it's better to ask and hopefully get a
better name out of it.

>   - "Pending Revisions" - this name is very consistent with what everyone
>   will see in many parts of the user interface, and what it will be used for
>   (i.e. providing a queue of pending revisions)
>   - "Double Check" - this was a late entrant, but has the distinct
>   advantage of clearly communicating what we envision this feature will be
>   used for (i.e. enforcing a double check from a very broad community).

I like Pending Revisions, which is basically what's going on, and
seems to convey the whole process (pending for what? someone may ask).
I also like Revision Review or Edit Review, though those could be
interpreted as a review of something else, like all of the edits. Of
those choices the former is alliterative, the second slightly less
jargony.

Double Check is cute but I would think also prone to
misinterpretation, since I dunno how much checking will go along with
flagging a revision. And double check what? Facts? Misspellings? I
like the names that emphasize that it is revisions/edits that are
getting checked. Maybe the explanation of "what is this" could say
something like "Pending Revisions is a a process to double check
edits..." as a compromise.

-- phoebe

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[Foundation-l] Fwd: [Air-L] Open Video Conference proposals deadline: June 7th

[phoebe ayers]

This is relevant to Wikivideoistas ... wasn't last year's conf the
origin of the "video on Wikipedia" campaign? Watch out, who knows what
they'll come up with this year.

-- Forwarded message --
From: Ben Moskowitz 
Date: Mon, May 31, 2010 at 10:58 AM
Subject: [Air-L] Open Video Conference proposals deadline: June 7th
To: ai...@listserv.aoir.org


Hello all,

I'm writing on behalf of the Open Video Alliance, in preparation for
our Open Video Conference in New York City, October 1-2. OVC is a
high-profile gathering of thought leaders in business, academia,
technology, and non-profits to explore the future of the online video
medium.

This year's OVC is particularly important, given new technology developments.

If you are interested in the critical debates around online video,
participatory culture, and the mass media generally, you may be
interested in participating. Details from last year's event are
available at http://openvideoalliance.org/open-video-conference/speakers09/.

If you have an idea for a panel, workshop, or any other programming,
please take the time to suggest it at:

http://openvideoconference.org/proposals

We will offer travel funding to a number of participants. The deadline
to propose a session is June 7th.

Please feel free to pass the message along to friends are colleagues
who are interested in online video and the open web.

Best wishes,

Ben Moskowitz
General coordinator, Open Video Alliance
http://openvideoalliance.org
Contact: (714) 420-6471


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

[phoebe ayers]

> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Sue Gardner 
> Date: 2 June 2010 19:08
> Subject: Announcing new Chief Global Development Officer and new Chief
> Community Officer
> To: wikimediaannounc...@lists.wikimedia.org
>
>
> Hi folks,
>
> I am really happy to announce two important new Wikimedia Foundation
> hires.  Zack Exley will be Wikimedia's new Chief Community Officer,
> and Barry Newstead will be our Chief Global Development Officer.  Both
> will start just before Wikimania, and will join us in Gdansk.

Congratulations to both Zack and Barry! Exciting indeed. I realize
these roles will be formed as they are taken on, but it seems that
there is quite a bit of (intentional?) overlap. I am curious how you
see that working... both roles seem to involve supporting & growing
the communit(ies), perhaps in new ways. There are lots of questions
that I have regarding these job descriptions too --  what does
supporting the chapters mean? What does supporting the reader
community mean? And so on :)

Also as I'm sure you're aware it's definitely time to update
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:Org_Chart_Without_Names.png !
(from [[wmf:staff]]

-- Phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Communication

[phoebe ayers]

Hi Noein,

With no comment on the issue you were interested in, you raise good
questions about internal communication, which has indeed been chaotic
for as long as I've been around, but is -- if you can imagine --
better than it used to be!

On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 4:23 PM, Noein  wrote:
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
>
> I've been watching the dialogues between the WMF and this mailing list
> for a while now and most of the conflicts are the same: bad
> communication. This is apparently not due to individuals but institutional.
>
>  I'm still ignorant of many aspects of the internal mechanisms and
> interactions of the WMF, its projects, chapters, communities, sites,
> tools, pages, agendas and mailing lists and to be honest I think it's a
> maze.
> One has to invest months, maybe years of investigation to really know
> where he should be communicating, searching or waiting for certain kind
> of information. Maybe these very considerations should be put instead on
> the meta, on the strategic, on the village pump, on another mailing
> list, or on several lists, or directed to the WMF, globally or to
> certain dedicated persons only?

There should be a how-to-communicate-internally guide, no doubt. The
problems are a) there are no easy answers (a lot of where to ask
questions is contextual, it depends on the question); b) often there
is no single point of contact -- to raise a discussion or ask a
question of the community means putting it out there for whoever has
time and inclination to answer. This is the way that many, many
aspects of the projects work, which can be frustrating.

> So let me ask some genuinely ignorant questions:
> - - are there somewhere an organizational map and schematics of the
> overall components of the Wikimedia institutions, projects, foundations,
> chapters and communities, their governance, roles, duties and
> interactions, synthesized in one main page instead of dozens, each one
> in a different part?

Not that I'm aware of, though there has been recent talk of trying to
define this and there are probably attempts somewhere. The Meta-wiki
is where such things would be found if they existed. Again, there is
an issue in that these relations are not static, fixed, or typically
well defined. In general:

* everything having to do with project (e.g. wikipedia, wikiversity,
etc) content & policies is defined by the editor communities on those
projects, that is, the people who show up and do stuff on the wiki
over the long-term. Very, very little is done by the Foundation etc.
in this regard, nor has the Foundation ever historically had this
role.

* The Wikimedia Foundation, specifically meaning the 30-odd people
employed in San Francisco, have historically run the servers that host
the projects, issued press releases, done fundraising, managed legal
threats (against the WMF itself), and a few other administrative
tasks. This is slowly changing as the WMF gets more in the business of
supporting outreach and editor activity, but in general it is still
true that the projects are autonomous and editors have little to do
with the WMF itself as far as day-to-day interaction.

* The Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation provide guidance
to the WMF, generally concerning themselves with big-picture issues.

* The Chapters are organizations in their respective geographic
locations that do outreach, events, etc as independent charitable
organizations. They are hooked to the WMF through name and mission,
and a few shared activities, but stand apart in their day-to-day
activities.

It's important to realize that there are large volunteer communities
surrounding *all* of these institutions, including technical
development, and community members do a lot of work in all areas. This
work is not necessarily (in fact usually is not) directly managed by
the WMF or another formal group.

So you can see that defining precise relationships is hard.


> - - is there one main page instead of dozens for announcements and news,
> with a RSS feed system, with selectable categories to choose what kind
> of information one wants to follow ?

Nope. That's a fantastic idea though. It's related to the idea that
was recently re-raised on the English Wikipedia Signpost talkpage
about having a centralized community newsletter for everyone on Meta.

> - - why, simply, the activity of the WMF is not published each day or
> week? For example why the Gallimard letter and negociations were not
> made public? why the confidentiality instead of a transparency policy?
> why the causes, debates and decisions of Jimmy and the board in the
> recent censorship controversy were not published in time? I sincerely
> don't understand.

To answer the general question: you would not believe how much news
there is on a daily basis from 11 projects in 250 languages with an
additional 29 chapters, active Foundation, and enthusiastic volunteer
community! You'd be doing nothing but reading news all day. Maybe it

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

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 10:26 PM, Daniel Phelps  wrote:
> On Jun 2, 2010, at 9:40 PM, phoebe ayers wrote:
>
>> Also as I'm sure you're aware it's definitely time to update
>> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:Org_Chart_Without_Names.png !
>> (from [[wmf:staff]]
>>
>> -- Phoebe
>
>
> Hi Phoebe,
>
> I was waiting for the new C level hires to be announced before finishing my 
> work on revamping the Org chart and the WMF Staff page in general.  I'm 
> planning to get an updated version up in the coming week. ;)
>
> -Daniel

That is, as Erin McKean would say, awesomepants. :)

phoebe

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

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 11:19 AM, Michael Snow  wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>> 2010/6/3 Fajro :
>>
>>> Maybe we should support the "Language Icon" idea:
>>>
>>> http://languageicon.org/index-icon.php
>>>
>> That icon seems about as intuitive as the name "Hyperion
>> Frobnosticating Endoswitch" for FlaggedRevs. The only relevant mental
>> association that comes to mind is "robot tongue".
>>
> As a sports fan, to me it looks like the backboard of a basketball hoop.
> I actually rather liked "Hyperion Frobnosticating Endoswitch", but such
> a wonderful name deserves to find a more worthy home than the MediaWiki
> pending changes feature.

I'm with Michael on this point: such a great name should be the name
of the entire new skin, or perhaps a new version of MediaWiki itself:
this 'pedia runs on HYPERION FROBNOSTICATING ENDOSWITCH technology.
Alternatively, it could make the best magic word ever. Who knows what
such a variable would do?

Re: list of languages, I like having the big list of languages present
in the sidebar for the reasons David, Austin & Greg mentioned. (It's
not exactly like our site is uncluttered even without it: every
article is a *giant list of words*, surrounded by *even more words*,
and people seem basically fine with this). In every presentation I
make about Wikipedia I emphasize its multilingual nature -- being as
multilingual as we are is both unique and special on the internet, and
is one of the things that makes us great, and we should show this
feature off as well as we can.

That said, having the # of languages and/or a global selector as
others have mentioned are both good ideas too and could be a good
compromise.

-- phoebe

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

[phoebe ayers]

On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 12:10 AM, Gregory Maxwell  wrote:
>
> Sort of tangentially, ... am I really the only one that frequently
> uses the Wikipedia inter-language links as a big translating
> dictionary?  I've found it to be much more useful than automatic
> translation engines for mathematical terms (both more comprehensive
> but also in that it makes it easy to find the translations for many
> related terms).  The hiding doesn't make this any harder for me, but
> it would make me a lot less likely to discover this useful feature.

Of course not,  I do this all the time (I even wrote about it), but I
don't have any idea how many non-wikipedians use the interwiki links
in this manner. On the list of research projects I wish someone would
get around to: I would love to know more about unexpected/atypical
uses of the projects like this... I guess the reference desk is a
similar feature, an unexpected service cropping up in the middle of
the encyclopedia. I wonder what others there are.

-- phoebe

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

[phoebe ayers]

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 11:47 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 5 June 2010 19:40, Aphaia  wrote:
>
>> What is the good reason usability team thought data from English
>> Wikipedia visitors' behaviors and alone were enough to design for all
>> other 200+ languages' readership? It looks me an obvious mistake in
>> opposition of your statement.
>
>
> Indeed. There appears to be *no* community or reader groundswell in
> favour of hiding the interwiki links by default.
>
> Where are the fans? So far I see Aryeh in favour. Is there anyone
> else? On foundation-l or the blog?
>
> If this is such a good idea, where are the voices in favour, outside
> the Foundation staff?

To be fair, it's not like there's a real good mechanism for giving
such opinions on discrete aspects of the skin (or anything else). I'd
imagine about all there is besides listening to us whinge is
clickthrough data (like reading tea leaves), the small usability
studies, and the feedback from the Vector Beta.

Let me repeat: On all of these questions that have been hotly debated
this month: the logo, the search box, the other languages links,
flaggedrevs we don't have a good way of figuring out what the
users think. Hell, we don't even have a good way of figuring out what
*we* think. Sue's right, Foundation-l is a tiny vocal minority and
those of us commenting may or may not represent anyone other than
ourselves. Same goes for the blog readers/commenters, who one expects
may care more about Wikipedia than most of the casual readers out
there. And I sure wouldn't presume to be able to magically synthesize
the internet, read all of the comments about wikipedia out there, and
give you an answer to such a (rhetorical?) question as "where are the
voices in favour"?
(and I do know enough about formal usability to know that usability
studies can be more useful than they seem at first glance, but this
problem of synthesizing widely held opinions & figuring out their
relative weight is something all large communities & sites have).

But even given all that, we all have valid opinions and points to make
too. We have a tradition in this community of making decisions based
on the quality of arguments made, not the sheer numbers of people
involved in voting for one option or another, and I think to lose
sight of that -- whether in usability or anything else -- would be
bad. At the end of the day, I deeply respect the usability team for
*trying new things*, even if we change it back later, and for trying
to make good decisions with the arguments and data at hand. I see no
bad faith here. Just a lively debate about what to do to make the best
possible Wikipedia experience for everyone concerned, even when
everyone concerned may use the site in wildly varying ways.

-- phoebe

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

[phoebe ayers]

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 1:00 PM, Gregory Maxwell  wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 2:03 PM,   wrote:
>> Sorry for top-posting.
>>
>> Austin, think about who "everyone" is.  The folks here on foundation-l are 
>> not representative of readers.  The job of the user experience team is to 
>> try to balance all readers' needs, which is not easy, and will sometimes 
>> involve making decisions that not everyone agrees with. People here have 
>> given some useful input, but I think it's far from obvious that the user 
>> experience team has made a "mistake.". (I'm not really intending to weigh in 
>> on this particular issue -- I'm speaking generally.)
>
> Sue, you appear to be making the assumption that the folks here are
> writing from a position of their personal preferences while the
> usability team is working on the behalf of the best interests of the
> project.
>
> I don't believe this comparison to be accurate.
>
> The interlanguage links can be easily unhidden by anyone who knows
> about them. The site remembers that you clicked to expand them.  That
> memory is short, but it wouldn't take any real effort to override with
> personal settings... or people can disable Vector (which is what I've
> done, because Vector is slow, even though I like it a lot overall).
> In short, there is little reason for a sophisticated user to complain
> about this for their own benefit.
>
> I think the people here are speaking up for the sake of the readers,
> and for the sake of preserving the best of the existing design
> principles used on the site.  I know I am.
>
> Non-agreement on personal preferences is an entirely different matter
> than non-agreement about how to best help our readers and how to best
> express the values and principles behind the operation of our sites.
>
> I was alarmed when I heard the click rates: 1%.  That's an enormous
> number of clicks, considerably higher than I expected with the large
> number of things available for folks to click on.  To hear that it
> went down considerably with Vector—well, if nothing else, it is a
> possible objective indication that the change has reduced the
> usability of the site. It is absolutely clear evidence that this
> change has made a material impact on how we express ourselves to the
> world.  I think it's clear from my earlier messages, before I knew the
> actual number, that I would have regarded figures like this as
> evidence of a clear mistake.
>
>
>
> There is a clear attitude from the foundation staff that I, and
> others, are perceiving in these discussions.  The notion that the
> community of contributors is a particularly whiny batch of customers
> who must be 'managed', that they express demands unconnected from the
> needs of the readers... and that it is more meaningful when a couple
> of office staff retreat to some meeting room and say "we reached a
> decision".  Sadly, this attitude appears to be the worst from the
> former volunteers on the staff—they are not afraid to speak up in
> community discussion, and feel a need to distinguish themselves from
> all the volunteers.
>
> This needs to stop and a point needs to be made clear:
>
> This community is who made the sites. I don't just mean the articles.
> I mean the user interfaces, the PR statements, the fundraiser
> material, _everything_. The success rates for companies trying to
> build large and popular websites is miserable. Every successful one is
> a fluke, and all the successful ones have a staff and budget orders of
> magnitude larger than yours.
>
> We have an existence proof that the community is able to manage the
> operation of the sites at a world class level. Certainly there are
> many things which could have been done better, more uniformly, more
> completely, or with better planning... but the community has a proven
> competence in virtually every area that the foundation is now
> attempting to be directly involved in.  Not every member of the
> community, of course, but the aggregate.
>
> Wikimedia's ability to do these things is an unknown, but the (lack
> of) successes of other closed companies running websites—even ones
> staffed by brilliant people—suggests that it is most likely that you
> will also be unsuccessful. I don't mean this as a comment on the
> competence of anyone involved (as I know many of them to be rather
> fantastic people), it's just the most likely outcome.
>
> Imagine a resume for the community as a unit:
> * Expertise in every imaginable subject.
> * Simultaneous background in almost every human culture.
> * Speaks hundreds of languages.
> * Wrote the world's largest encyclopedia.
> * Built one of the world's most popular websites, from the ground up.
> * Managed to make an encyclopedia somehow interesting enough to be a
> popular website.
> * Managed the fundraising campaigns to support the entire operating
> cost of the above mentioned Top-N website on charitable contributions
> for many years.
> * On and on, etc.
>
> (Like all resumes, this doe

Re: [Foundation-l] Communication

[phoebe ayers]

On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 12:51 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
 wrote:
> Keegan Peterzell wrote:
>> Okay, so from my perspective, here's where we are:
>>
>> The WMF staff cares about the projects and we respect the work that they do 
>> [snip] but this is what a thread
>> like the ones we've had recently fosters: Damned if you do, damned if you
>> don't.

I think this is totally true and needs to be remembered. Working with
the community shouldn't be a frustrating experience. [Or maybe it's
just that long-term community members have gotten inured to a certain
level of frustration and therefore don't even notice anymore? I can't
tell].

[snip]

> Ceterum censeo, I think a minimal group of wise folks from
> the community should be brought in to identify all the changes
> that are totally uncontroversial.

Is it perhaps fair to suggest that changes that more people see are
likely to be more controversial? Usability and fundraising both are
particularly difficult in this regard, since huge numbers of people
(everyone who uses the site) are affected by those changes. On the
other hand, I rarely see controversy over, say, a new feature that
some people want but most will never use.

Along with this, there are certain hot button issues, such as:
* deletion of content, for any reason (but particularly anything that
could be connected to censorship or legal repression)

those actions will always be controversial, and for pretty good reason
-- such actions come potentially close to violating our core values,
and therefore should be examined closely.

I'm trying to think of what other always-controversial topics are, on
the WMF scale (as opposed to on the projects). Maybe we should make up
a list. (And then distribute "wrong version" stickers).

-- phoebe

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

[phoebe ayers]

On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 9:03 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
 wrote:
> Michael Snow wrote:
>>
>> Similarly, we know that the community population skews young and male.
>> That has important consequences, and some of those unfortunately
>> reinforce our lack of diversity. It's been pointed out what a
>> male-centric approach we sometimes have, in the enthusiasm and manner
>> with which certain subjects are covered, and the oblivious attitude
>> toward potential offensiveness of various images. This comes across to
>> all too many women as a hostile culture. Most large online communities
>> do not have the kind of gender imbalance we have. This is a serious
>> issue we need to address. The foundation could do targeted outreach
>> forever to recruit underrepresented groups (whether it's ethnicity, age,
>> gender, or other factors), and it would accomplish very little without
>> significant improvements in our culture.
>>


> person on the Board of Trustees who came strongest in
> defense of a unfettered retention of sensual images of
> educational value was its (single?) female member. It

Uh... much as I like Kat (and she's not the only female member,
there's also Bishakha), singling out her view as representative of all
women on the projects is, arguably, part of the problem. Are there so
few women speaking up as part of the community discussion that this is
really necessary?

(One interesting exercise is to count the number of posts by women on
this very list. Even controlling for pseudonyms and unknown
variability, it's still around 1/10 or lower, a good number of which
are from me. Many of the rest are from WMF staffers. Did you notice? I
do, every time I post, and not just because I try to not excessively
spam the list.)

-- Phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Community, collaboration, and cognitive biases

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 3:31 PM, Erik Moeller  wrote:



> 7) Further experimentation with tools like IdeaTorrent for large-scale
> brainstorming and ranking purposes (we have a prototype running at
> http://prototype.wikimedia.org/en-idea/ideatorrent/ ).

I was super excited to see this go up the other day. Can we move it
to, say, strategywiki to try out? Any thoughts on scope? Not having
used this much I don't know if you'd want separate torrents by broad
topic (ideas for the wikimedia foundation, ideas for mediawiki, ideas
for the projects, ideas for outreach) or one big one that could be
sorted by topic.

-- phoebe

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

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 3:01 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
 wrote:
> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>> Hoi,
>> The WMF has as its strategy to invest in what has the highest impact. Given
>> limited resources that makes sense. It also means that while philosophically
>> as volunteers we do not have to make such choices, the WMF will and does.
>>
>> It is obvious that depending on your point of view, the choices made by the
>> WMF can be fortunate or less so. You are right that it is not in our mission
>> to make choices, but reality is different. The question is what choices to
>> make and what their likely impact is. This brings you to two competing
>> fundamentals; what has the most effect and what is the period to measure
>> those effects.
>> Thanks,
>>        GerardM
>>
>>
>
> You are as always, as pellucid as a brick of coal, and totally
> off topic to boot. Please feel welcome to not post comments
> like that again.
>

I adore the word "pellucid." But Gerard is right: simply put we can't
and don't do everything. We don't make every piece of information
available to every single person in the world -- yet. So what do we
include in our collection, and why, and how do we make it possible for
people to access the stuff we do have?

These are the seemingly simple questions that we've spent 5000943945
F-l messages on discussing this month. And we will doubtless spend
67834920 more in discussing whether future policy on these points
should necessarily derive from past practice, and who gets to decide.

-- phoebe, who is repressing her opaque sarcasm

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Re: [Foundation-l] Community, collaboration, and cognitive biases

[phoebe ayers]

On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 8:22 AM, Michael Snow  wrote:
> Chad wrote:
>> On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 2:49 AM, Michael Snow  wrote:
>>
>>> ...if for example I was qualified to review a
>>> staff member's patch (which I'm not), I might want to think twice about
>>> what audience gets that feedback.
>>>
>>> --Michael Snow
>>>
>> Why? If they're contributing a patch to MediaWiki, they should go
>> through the same public patch/feedback -> commit/feedback cycle
>> as everyone else. The only acceptable time to develop in private is
>> when we're looking at active security vulnerabilities, and even then
>> once a patch has been written the code is committed and the issue
>> becomes public knowledge.
>>
>> Can we be a bit harsh sometimes? Sure. But we're equal
>> opportunity offenders here. Anyone who submits code--staff or
>> volunteer--is subject to the same treatment on Bugzilla and Code
>> Review. If your patch sucks, we're going to tell you about it, and
>> there's absolutely no reason to sugarcoat it.
>>
>> If someone can't take public criticism, then quite frankly they
>> probably shouldn't be working on open source software.
>>
> The replies to my comment are missing the point. Sure, the developers
> themselves need to be able to handle public criticism of their work,
> just like wiki editors. But I was responding to Austin's comment in
> particular about board members being cautious with their opinions. In
> cases like that, there are additional concerns, like the propriety in
> publicly critiquing someone's work when you also can presumably
> influence their continued employment. That requires that certain
> feedback go through other channels, even when the same feedback could be
> given openly if it were coming from the general public.
>
> --Michael Snow

If I understand Michael's point it doesn't have anything to do with
code. Insert "criticizing how the Foundation is managed" here instead,
and I think it makes more sense. Nobody wants their boss to publicly
provide an evaluation of them to the world (even if it's not all
negative, and even if it's only about one part of a greater whole.)

The Board is in a particularly touchy position here, because they are
providing guidance and oversight for the whole Foundation, including
the performance of the E.D., who in turn can hire and fire people. But
it was recently pointed out to me that they are not the only ones;
given how our community *does* work with bottom-up leadership, if a
respected community member speaks out criticizing something they are
likely to be listened to, and the sting of criticism felt, regardless
of the outcome. It is easy to give such criticism -- just about as
easy as typing a Foundation-l message -- but not many of us subject
our own personal work to ongoing potential for public criticism like
this (not even on-wiki, except for administrators and those routinely
doing controversial things).

This is where Sue's note on having mutual respect is applicable, I
think. And yes, I imagine how criticism affects you depends on your
personality, and what the job at hand is. I don't mind criticism at
all... unless you criticize my writing, and then I get instantly more
touchy. Am I a perfect writer? Obviously not, and I have no
expectation of being so, but my reaction is instinctual because it's
something I care about. We all have our issues like this, I think;
often you don't know what they are for someone else. Keeping a tone of
respect helps.

I believe there is a particular additional issue with the
staff/community divide in that there are differing expectations when
you are assigned a job and when you take that job on yourself with no
managerial control. I have done both as a Wikimedia volunteer -- I
have been assigned jobs in the context of Wikimania, and it feels
quite different from being bold and choosing to do something yourself,
regardless of whether you're getting paid or not. This is not a
good/bad difference, simply a difference -- and one that I think we
need to collectively consider in the context of how community
governance and the process of "bold, revert, discuss" should work for
a staff-community project like usability.

-- phoebe

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[Foundation-l] encouraging women's participation

[phoebe ayers]

There's been discussion of the gender gap among Wikimedia editors on
and off for many years now, and it's a focus of the strategic planning
process. This is a part of a larger issue of how to get members of
underrepresented groups to edit more, to combat system bias on all
fronts. (Or, simply how to get more people to edit regardless).

I just read this article:
"International Collaboration for Women in IT: How to Avoid Reinventing
the Wheel"
http://iisit.org/Vol7/IISITv7p329-338Craig734.pdf

which is about how the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery, an
international academic computing membership organization) has a
women's interest group -- ACM-W -- which is tasked with increasing
women's participation in IT -- an equally daunting task. What's mostly
interesting about this article is it describes how ACM-W has an
ambassador program, with individuals tasked with increasing
participation in various countries. In turn these ambassadors report
that one size doesn't fit all -- increasing women's participation in
IT depends on a variety of factors, including the general status of
women's education in a country, and that the techniques one uses to
encourage female participation might vary quite a bit depending on
other cultural factors.

Of course this is not an earth-shattering conclusion, but it's also
clearly applicable to Wikimedia. I haven't seen many papers that take
an explicitly international view to the issue of women in IT, so I
thought it was interesting.

-- phoebe

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

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

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 6:16 PM, George Herbert
 wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 5:26 PM, phoebe ayers  wrote:
>> There's been discussion of the gender gap among Wikimedia editors on
>> and off for many years now, and it's a focus of the strategic planning
>> process. This is a part of a larger issue of how to get members of
>> underrepresented groups to edit more, to combat system bias on all
>> fronts. (Or, simply how to get more people to edit regardless).
>>
>> I just read this article:
>> "International Collaboration for Women in IT: How to Avoid Reinventing
>> the Wheel"
>> http://iisit.org/Vol7/IISITv7p329-338Craig734.pdf
>>
>> which is about how the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery, an
>> international academic computing membership organization) has a
>> women's interest group -- ACM-W -- which is tasked with increasing
>> women's participation in IT -- an equally daunting task. What's mostly
>> interesting about this article is it describes how ACM-W has an
>> ambassador program, with individuals tasked with increasing
>> participation in various countries. In turn these ambassadors report
>> that one size doesn't fit all -- increasing women's participation in
>> IT depends on a variety of factors, including the general status of
>> women's education in a country, and that the techniques one uses to
>> encourage female participation might vary quite a bit depending on
>> other cultural factors.
>>
>> Of course this is not an earth-shattering conclusion, but it's also
>> clearly applicable to Wikimedia. I haven't seen many papers that take
>> an explicitly international view to the issue of women in IT, so I
>> thought it was interesting.
>>
>> -- phoebe
>
> In my admittedly sociologically-slightly-impaired IT oriented mind, I
> am not sure that the rationales for people to enter the IT field writ
> large (information technology, computer science, computer engineering,
> etc) match those for people to contribute to Wikipedia.
>
> However, the generality of opportunity identified there seems useful.

I guess I was thinking more about the commonalities of process: of
encouraging people to do something that requires some education but a
lot more self-motivation, and involves interacting with a somewhat
non-mainstream and sometimes exclusionary culture that may be (to a
greater or lesser degree) hostile to their participation. And what I
found interesting about this paper, even though it's not a great paper
at all, is it gets towards tossing out the idea that how you do that
is similar across the board no matter what, that in fact what it means
to interact with computer culture varies a lot depending on entirely
outside circumstances. I think that we often make this mistake in
Wikimedia too, conflating English Wikipedia culture with the culture
of all of the projects, or forgetting that what it's like to edit on a
small project is very different from what it's like to edit on a big
project, and that how we recruit -- if we are recruiting anyone at all
-- might vary a lot depending on the combination of circumstances the
potential editor is in and what it is they're trying to do.

Like I said, not an earth-shattering conclusion at all, but I've
really never seen it expressed much in the context of the women-in-IT
problem (which could just be a result of my limited reading). And I
don't think we make the case much in Wikimedia either, maybe because
there's such a recognizable set of personality traits that truly
committed wikipedians tend to possess across the board that it often
seems like those traits are the essence of editor-ness.

Greg: I think you're totally right about making things more accessible
to the average person -- by which I think we mean not an
off-the-scale-encyclopedist-geek --  rather than any special group,
and of course you can define average in ways unconnected to gender,
cultural background, age, income level, computer skills, etc. I think
when making broad changes (e.g. usability) we have to trend towards
whatever this average is -- virtually all of our readers get the same
interface experience, after all, no matter what their background might
be. And any improvements that make it easier to edit for this mythical
average population will clearly tend towards benefiting many more
people in all categories. When doing outreach, though, I think we have
to account for the differences. I'd give a different class on
Wikipedia to a bunch of fifth graders than I would to twenty-year-olds
than I would to people my dad's age; but really maybe more than age it
might be their technical proficiency that I have to account for the
most, or their level of academic training, or t

Re: [Foundation-l] Floating a notion: permanent Wikimania committee?

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 12:06 PM, Sue Gardner  wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> For several years now, people have occasionally floated the notion
> that there should be a permanent Wikimania oversight committee –
> basically, a group of people responsible for giving some coaching and
> guidance and oversight to the local planning team each year.  Over the
> years, support has been offered each year by people like Phoebe, James
> Forrester, Delphine (Delphine both in her staff role and as a
> volunteer) and SJ … but there has never (AFAIK) been a formal
> oversight committee.  I think there probably should be.

Hello Sue and all,

Good timing -- we just had a long conversation about this in the
#wikimedia open meeting this afternoon. There were quite a few
participants, including several past wikimania organizers.

Quick summary of that discussion:
* there is definite interest in an ongoing Wikimania (oversight,
governance, guidance) (body, committee, group) (we talked for quite a
while about those various names and their different connotations)

* there are a few potential roles that people see for such a group:
** 1) collecting and writing better documentation about the
conference, including best practices for organization and what has
happened in the past
** 2) answering questions from Wikimania organizers about past
practices, helping coordinate who to ask about various aspects
** 3) providing oversight to the overall wikimania process -- for
instance making sure that a bid jury is called and the bids are
submitted in time (like elections)
** 4) providing oversight/governance as the conference progresses --
for instance, getting regular reports about the conference. Along with
this, the org team would have someone to report to if, say, a venue
burns down or some other catastrophe happens.

These ideas are roughly in order of how much controversy they
generated among discussion participants. I think we all pretty much
agreed that we need better conference documentation, and a loose
community group of past organizers and interested participants can
provide such documentation. Here's a start:

Conference handbook: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania/Handbook
-- let's write the big book of Wikimania
Conference checklist:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania/checklist -- make sure you
have everything you need
Conference community:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania/community -- a start at a
community group, w/ interested participants.

We discussed however that for any oversight/governance functions we
might need a more formalized structure and perhaps a formal mandate.
This seemed like a Board-level issue to several people (including me).
We also discussed that there's not a good process for proposing and
forming community committees that would interact with the Foundation
on various issues.

What do you all think?

best,
Phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] "The problem with Wikipedia..."

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 1:19 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> Here's the phrase in a 1988 sociology paper:
>
> http://jpart.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/1/1/19
>
> I'd call it a pretty obvious play on words, though, so I really doubt
> we got it from that.
>
> Anyone got a complete wikien-l archive to grovel through?
>
>
> - d.

going back that far it might be on wikipedia-l, I think, and Joseph
Reagle has done quite a bit of work analyzing that -- maybe he can
help. We're looking for the orgins of the quote: "The problem with
Wikipedia is that it only works in theory. It could
never work in practice."

:)
-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] "The problem with Wikipedia..."

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 1:37 PM, phoebe ayers  wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 1:19 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
>> Here's the phrase in a 1988 sociology paper:
>>
>> http://jpart.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/1/1/19
>>
>> I'd call it a pretty obvious play on words, though, so I really doubt
>> we got it from that.
>>
>> Anyone got a complete wikien-l archive to grovel through?
>>
>>
>> - d.
>
> going back that far it might be on wikipedia-l, I think, and Joseph
> Reagle has done quite a bit of work analyzing that -- maybe he can
> help. We're looking for the orgins of the quote: "The problem with
> Wikipedia is that it only works in theory. It could
> never work in practice."
>
> :)
> -- phoebe

Actually, the other way around, as others have stated.

Now that you mention it, I've seen that quote attributed to Gareth
Owen before, so that may actually be the origin of it. I think it's
quite a bit older than 2006 though.

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Floating a notion: permanent Wikimania committee?

[phoebe ayers]

OK, so I guess my question is (and we talked about this on IRC too) --
who has the power or the ability -- or who *should*, in a perfect
world -- create such a committee? We don't have much precedent for
this. There were concerns over who or what body can create
governance/oversight structures, particularly if this isn't really
just a Foundation issue.

I totally agree that part of such a body's role could be to help
coordinate between the permanent staff whose work might touch on
Wikimania, and the rotating local organization team.

-- phoebe


On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 3:48 PM,   wrote:
> A couple of fast thoughts:
>
> * I think it's debatable whether it's board-level or not.  It's board-level 
> in the sense that it's "not staff-level" -- meaning it's mainly a community 
> responsibility rather than a staff responsibility.  But to the extent that 
> part of the role of the committee would be to ask the staff for help if 
> Wikimania is floundering, that is probably not a board-level issue. For 
> example, I can't imagine the board making a resolution asking me to intervene 
> to offer more support if one year Wikimania were floundering.   That just 
> doesn't feel like a governance issue.
>
> * Which leads me to point two, which is that from my perspective, I actually 
> do want someone to flag to me if Wikimania is floundering, and to ask me 
> officially to have the staff get involved.  Wikimania in Gdansk this year has 
> had some problems, and I have felt awkward about how to best resolve them, 
> given that (again) it's a community-led event, not a staff-led event.  But I 
> don't think the board should need to involve itself in that, because again, I 
> think it's not a governance issue.
>
> * Those aren't super-significant issues from my perspective though. Upshot 
> from my perspective: I think that there's lots of good energy and thinking 
> happening on this, and it feels like people are pretty aligned in feeling we 
> want some form of oversight/guidance/something, in place supporting excellent 
> Wikimanias every year.  Which is great.  Does someone want to organize a 
> meeting about this for Gdansk?  I'm hoping Phoebe will attend, and Casey and 
> SJ, and whoever else is interested.  I will be happy to put it in my 
> schedule, and I think James would probably be interested too. (James Owen, 
> not Forrester. I actually don't know if James Forrester is coming this year, 
> although now that I think of it, maybe he is one of the train-travelling 
> people?)
>
> Thanks,
> Sue
> -Original Message-
> From: phoebe ayers 
> Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2010 13:28:37
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> Cc: Wikimania general list \(open 
> subscription\)
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Floating a notion: permanent Wikimania committee?
>
> On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 12:06 PM, Sue Gardner  wrote:
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> For several years now, people have occasionally floated the notion
>> that there should be a permanent Wikimania oversight committee –
>> basically, a group of people responsible for giving some coaching and
>> guidance and oversight to the local planning team each year.  Over the
>> years, support has been offered each year by people like Phoebe, James
>> Forrester, Delphine (Delphine both in her staff role and as a
>> volunteer) and SJ … but there has never (AFAIK) been a formal
>> oversight committee.  I think there probably should be.
>
> Hello Sue and all,
>
> Good timing -- we just had a long conversation about this in the
> #wikimedia open meeting this afternoon. There were quite a few
> participants, including several past wikimania organizers.
>
> Quick summary of that discussion:
> * there is definite interest in an ongoing Wikimania (oversight,
> governance, guidance) (body, committee, group) (we talked for quite a
> while about those various names and their different connotations)
>
> * there are a few potential roles that people see for such a group:
> ** 1) collecting and writing better documentation about the
> conference, including best practices for organization and what has
> happened in the past
> ** 2) answering questions from Wikimania organizers about past
> practices, helping coordinate who to ask about various aspects
> ** 3) providing oversight to the overall wikimania process -- for
> instance making sure that a bid jury is called and the bids are
> submitted in time (like elections)
> ** 4) providing oversight/governance as the conference progresses --
> for instance, getting regular reports about the conference. Along with
> this, the org team would have someone to report to if, say, a venue
> burns 

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

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 10:00 PM, Gregory Maxwell  wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 11:08 PM, Ryan Kaldari  wrote:
>> I don't think scapegoating Wikipedia's gender imbalances to biological
>> differences is especially helpful. And the suggestion that it may not be
>> possible to dumb-down Wikipedia enough to attract women is ridiculous
>> (and offensive). Regardless of our genetic predispositions, there are
>> very real cultural issues that frequently drive female contributors away
>> from Wikimedia projects.
> [snip]
>
> Ryan,
>
> I believe your post was unnecessarily confrontational.  I would expect
> you to call me out on that kind of thing, so I'm going to call you out
> on it.

If it makes any difference, I think you're both right in part -- Ryan
is of course correct that there are there are cultural issues on the
projects and these may result in real, immediate barriers for specific
people who try to edit[1]. I have no idea if Greg is right about this
genetic differences theory -- I don't have the math or the biology
cred to evaluate such a claim, but do know this is a deeply
controversial area[2] -- but your (hopefully larger) point seems
un-controversial enough, that making things easier for people who
haven't self-selected as editors already, with whatever concentration
of traits skewed from the general population such self-selection may
produce, will result in a more diverse editorial body in general. And
I think we all hope that a more diverse editorial body will lead to a
better site culture and less systemic bias in articles (this is of
course open to argument, though).

These two things are not mutually exclusive, however. My point was
that stereotyping too much about women (via genetic differences, or
assuming that all countries are just like the U.S.) is bad for
outreach; but not stereotyping at all -- not recognizing that there
are techniques we could use to outreach to underrepresented groups,
perhaps learning from other outreach done by other organizations with
similar goals -- would be unfortunate too.

There's another good conversation about this topic going on here:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategic_Plan/Movement_Priorities#diversity_4675

-- phoebe


[1] or even talk about it; as Greg says there are plenty of people I
know and respect who have strong views on this topic who won't write
about them, because they'll get shot down. I had to think about it for
a while myself.
[2]. controversial enough that it's gotten a lot of people in trouble
scientifically and socially, including the president of Harvard, whom
you cite in your other piece; honestly, you should also probably
expect serious debate if you go there. Two nice summaries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers#Differences_between_the_sexes,
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/01/17/summers_remarks_on_women_draw_fire/

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Re: [Foundation-l] Floating a notion: permanent Wikimania committee?

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 10:58 PM, Michael Snow  wrote:
> On 6/17/2010 5:35 PM, phoebe ayers wrote:
>> OK, so I guess my question is (and we talked about this on IRC too) --
>> who has the power or the ability -- or who *should*, in a perfect
>> world -- create such a committee? We don't have much precedent for
>> this. There were concerns over who or what body can create
>> governance/oversight structures, particularly if this isn't really
>> just a Foundation issue.
>>
> I suppose the board could create the committee, if it's not clear who
> else might have the authority. Or perhaps better, the board could
> authorize its creation. I think the board is a bit reluctant to jump in,
> partly for the reason Sue mentioned that overseeing Wikimania is not
> really a board-level issue (it's primarily operational rather than
> strategic), but also because the board is not well placed to fill and
> maintain committees like this. When it becomes a situation of appointing
> people none of us really knows, or feeling that there are probably
> people we're not aware who ought to be recruited to a committee like
> this, it's pretty uncomfortable to have that responsibility. But if we
> authorized the committee and then let the staff and experienced
> Wikimania volunteers review applications or expressions of interest to
> join the committee, that might work out. That's kind of the direction
> things have moved in any case. Some of the early committees that still
> function have evolved to a place outside the board's immediate activity,
> and the current work of the governance committee is focused more on
> structures needed to organize the board's own functions.
>
> --Michael Snow

Yes, authorization seems right. I wouldn't really expect that the
Board actually fill such a committee or even necessarily ask for
direct reports. The question that came up in IRC though was where
would such a committee derive its authority from (assuming it had any
particular authority). Perhaps the answer for this is "it doesn't" and
simply fills a communication and reporting role that is currently
lacking. Or perhaps (my ideal scenario) we come up with a way where
the interested community grants it authority by building the
structure, filling the seats, etc., and that is generally recognized.

I'm interested in this case specifically of course, but I also am
wondering more generally what the current state of affairs is for
forming any sort of operational, community-driven committee. Of course
we're good at forming wikiprojects to do things that need doing, but
for areas that also require overlap with things that the office works
on, it seems tricky.

Re: scheduling a time at wikimania for discussing this potential
glorious wikimania committee: yes, let's. I wanted to have a reprise
of the Future of Wikimania discussion from last year, anyway. How
about Sunday? I'll volunteer to check with the 2011 team and other
interested parties and schedule a time. This overlaps with Manuel's
panel, too, but I think we need a dedicated time maybe. Stay tuned!

-- phoebe

p.s. if we get both James Owen AND James Forrester involved it will be
unstoppable. Powered by James^2.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Floating a notion: permanent Wikimania committee?

[phoebe ayers]

On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 12:28 AM, Yaroslav M. Blanter  wrote:
>
> On Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:00:27 -0700, phoebe ayers 
> wrote:
>> On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 10:58 PM, Michael Snow 
>> wrote:
>>> --Michael Snow
>>
>> I'm interested in this case specifically of course, but I also am
>> wondering more generally what the current state of affairs is for
>> forming any sort of operational, community-driven committee. Of course
>> we're good at forming wikiprojects to do things that need doing, but
>> for areas that also require overlap with things that the office works
>> on, it seems tricky.
>
> Well, I would start with approaching the past organizers asking how they
> got their teams and who actually in the end did their job properly (and who
> did not).
>
> You would like to have people actually doing smth, not just talking,
> right?
>
> Cheers
> Yaroslav

Something... even if that something is mostly just being a
reporting/communication facilitator, I think. I don't imagine a
committee or group that would actually organize the conference; that
should be the job of the local team.

For those following along at home, this conversation seems to have
migrated to wikimania-l, where it probably belongs:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimania-l/2010-June/001922.html

-- phoebe

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

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

[phoebe ayers]

On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 4:10 PM, Tim Landscheidt  
wrote:
>  While I appreciate the efforts to encourage wider partici-
> pation, IMHO we should make sure that we keep the quality of
> our "products" and our "human resources" in mind. No edits
> at all may be better than one edit in ten days for probably
> 99% of the population. And I don't think that we will at-
> tract the right 1% who will wander the libraries and the web
> in search of the missing pieces of information, tackle thick
> books and pause before clicking on the "Save" button to es-
> timate whether their edit will find the approval of their
> peers, by emphasizing that editing is easy or fun - because
> it isn't. And it probably shouldn't be.
>
> Tim

spoken like a true wikipedian :)

(are you sure that editing isn't fun, though? I'm pretty sure that if
most of us didn't derive at least some joy from it (at some point in
our editing careers) we wouldn't be here having this conversation.)

I find it helpful to translate the question of whether editing is an
inherently elitist activity -- as it may well be -- by thinking of
analogies in the sphere of my day job, which is being a librarian in a
big university library.

To be a librarian -- or even to be a successful grad student or
professor -- you have to really, really like to do research. A lot.
You have to find true pleasure and satisfaction in chasing down the
world's most obscure references or figuring out how to make sense of
the literature on some topic. You have to be a total research nerd, in
other words.

But we cannot do research *for* every single student who wanders
through our doors (I serve a school of 30,000 people). We have to help
them figure it out how to do it themselves. And there's been a real
push in the last 20 years or so to move academic librarianship from
the model of the cranky old scholar who might let you touch the books,
to the model of teaching "information literacy" -- how to research and
evaluate information for yourself. I do a whole lot of teaching, and
it can be frustrating to watch student after student work on their
papers and do a bad job of their research and their bibliographies,
and complain about how it's not easy to do research, when you know
that it's possible to do it better. But my job is not to do it all for
them: it's also to aid them along the paths of becoming scholars
themselves. There's a real temptation to say "research isn't supposed
to be easy! It's supposed to be a rite of passage into the academy!
Get a backbone, kids!" But I think collectively in the profession we
have basically come to the understanding that taking that attitude
doesn't make it any easier for non-librarians and non-academics to
navigate our crazy, unusable systems -- doesn't make people of any age
any more likely to actually do research -- and that maybe, just maybe,
if we do enough outreach, and work enough on making our systems easier
and better, we'll reach more people overall as well as only the people
that are predisposed to become information nerds themselves.

I think of Wikipedia the same way. Sure, not everyone wants to or has
the ability to edit. And hey, there's a lot to be said for being
motivated enough to do it that you learn the systems without any help,
becoming a part of the community the way most of us did. But just
relying on those mechanisms does restrict our editor base a lot, and
saying that only those people willing to jump through many interface
and social hoops can join the club is just as unhelpful for our
worldwide community of researchers and writers -- and the world of
scholarship in general -- as keeping the books chained up in the
library was.

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy "one language - one Wikipedia"

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 9:33 AM, Aaron Adrignola
 wrote:
> It may be relevant to note that http://wikijunior.org currently redirects
> to http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior .
>
> From what I've heard, Wikijunior was supposed to become its own separate
> project at some point.  Now, that is Wikibooks-related and not
> Wikipedia-related, but if one were looking for a combined edition of all the
> projects in each language, for children, you've got the domain name there,
> owned by Wikimedia.
>
> -- Aaron Adrignola

:) excellent. I'd forgotten that we owned the wikijunior domain to go
along with the books I'd support a children's encyclopedia, and
argue that it's not quite the same thing as a simplified version:
presentation and content could be different for a project geared
towards kids, who are trying to learn about the world from the ground
up (versus someone who simply doesn't know the written language very
well). There is overlap of course in that any simple version would be
much better for kids than the current technical articles on a lot of
projects.

One argument in favor of a new children's encyclopedia -- maybe in
fact integrated set of projects for children, books and all -- is that
it would set some scope on the new project and give it a purpose that
Simple English has always struggled a bit with finding. No, you don't
need new admins, but a new project might attract new contributors
(teachers, etc) who have never edited Wikipedia before.

If starting a whole new project is too hard, starting a prominent
portal on each language site with links to these simplified articles
-- maybe with the articles as subpages -- could be a nice solution.

-- phoebe

-- 
* I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers
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Re: [Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy "one language - one Wikipedia"

[phoebe ayers]

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 3:37 AM, Milos Rancic  wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 1:51 AM, Samuel Klein  wrote:
>> Yes.  We should definitely lay the groundwork well, as Ziko says.  But
>> there are good projects underway today and doing this, in spanish,
>> french, and dutch.  Some of the organizers of those projects have
>> contributed to the Wikikids proposal on meta.  We can start by
>> directing energies there, finding out what Vikidia has learned running
>> projects in French and Spanish, what their standards for
>> project-creation are, and how we can help them.
>
> If we want to go this way, our task will be complex. I don't think
> that we should be afraid of it, but I think that the most of
> participants are underestimating its complexity.
>
> There are a number of important questions to be answered before start
> of such project:
> * Do we have a consistent pedagogical platform for creating such project?
> * How can we be sure that we will have enough relevant pedagogues per
> project? Would we pay them? Or would we create projects with other
> organizations to have them payed?
> * Who will be the main editors of the project? Children of any age? Or
> parents? If parents, I am deeply concerned which social and
> ideological groups we would attract.
> * Is it possible to have such Wikipedia-like project, where
> communities are doing self-regulation? My assumption, based on 6.5
> years of Wikimedian work, is that it is not possible. (To be more
> precise: Project per se could be successful in gathering editors, but
> it will end as Simple English Wikipedia or as Conservapedia.)
> * Would it be better to find volunteers or hire someone to create a
> project similar to the printed edition of German Wikipedia? First to
> create "illustrated Wikipedia for children", then to create Wikipedias
> for every age of cognitive development.
> * Do we have any clue how crowd sourcing will work with ages between 8
> and 15? Even though it would be regulated by pedagogues.
> * How group dynamics would look like inside of the project with 8
> years old and 15 years old?
> * How many pedagogues are able to drive this kind of project? In our
> civilization, pedagogues are product of Industrial Age education and
> they are doing Industrial Age teaching, which is in collision with
> open culture. I think that the right time for relatively open, mass
> collaboration project will be when those born in 1995, generation
> grown up on Wikipedia and open culture, become pedagogues. Around
> 2020. (I am not saying that there are no pedagogues able to do this.
> However, we don't need a couple of pedagogues, we need strong
> pedagogical basis to have possibility to create such kind of project.)
> * etc.
>
> We are all amateurs in cognitive development. My two exams in this
> field makes me an expert on this list. And we don't need just
> professionals, but extraordinary professionals. And those
> professionals have to be introduced well in Wikimedia culture.
>
>> But the teachers there also asked for a simpler-language project in
>> Spanish, and a simple project in English to help students with
>> language learning.
>
> In Serbian we say "you are mixing grandmothers and frogs" :)
>
> I would add one more important implementation of simple-like project:
> Controlled language [1] project. It would allow much easier
> translation between languages.
>
> But, those are three different implementations. We would need
> "Wikimedia for children", "Wikimedia for learning languages" and
> "Wikimedia for machine translation".

Milos, I think these are all good and valuable questions to ask; any
new project should be put through such rigorous analysis, especially
if it is to succeed. As Birgette says, it's hard to build a wiki and
harder still to build a successful one.

But, to be fair, do we ask such questions of our other projects? I do
not recall being asked if I was a trained encyclopedia writer or a
trained journalist when I joined Wikimedia :) Perhaps we should ask
these kinds of hard questions of a new project, but also realize that
we may not be able to predict all of the answers ahead of time.

All of our projects have taken as their primary model some standard
type of work: the encyclopedia, the book of quotations, the dictionary
-- and then we have gone above and beyond any previous example of the
genre with each of our projects, through our technological and social
abilities. There is, similarly, lots of precedent in the world for
children's encyclopedias and reference works for children -- the need
and the model are both clearly present in the world -- and I think we
can fairly consider taking that type of work as a model for a new type
of wikimedia project, while expecting that we would similarly be able
to go above and beyond previous examples.

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Reconsidering the policy "one language - one Wikipedia"

[phoebe ayers]

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 2:40 PM, Mark Williamson  wrote:
> Phoebe, in my humble opinion, this project is a bit different. I think
> when we are talking about child development and creating a project for
> children, there's no room to screw around or create some amateurish
> product. This is something that, if done wrong, could potentially have
> a bigger negative impact than if, say, we'd screwed up on Wikinews.
>
> -m.

Wait, weren't you the one arguing just upthread that wikipedia was
just fine and dandy for you as an adolescent? Not just wikipedia, but
wikipedia of 7 years ago, which was far less complete and stable --
far more amateurish -- than it is today.

I see your argument, but I don't buy it -- lots of kids are
autodidacts just the same as many adults, and lots of stuff designed
for kids is crap (including "professional teaching materials"). I
don't necessarily know that we could do better, but I don't see why
it's not worth a shot. Are you concerned about controversial material?
Does your concern go away if the project isn't framed for kids, but
rather as a simple language version (simple english, german, etc)?

-- phoebe

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[Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wikimania-l] Program Schedule

[phoebe ayers]

Fwd'ing to Foundation-l for those not on the Wikimania list. Jacek has
managed to wrangle a great Wikimania schedule out of chaos :)

-- phoebe


-- Forwarded message --
From: Jankowski, Jacek 
Date: Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 4:21 PM
Subject: [Wikimania-l] Program Schedule
To: "Wikimania general list (open subscription)"



Dear All,



I have just made the “final schedule”* for Wikimania 2010 available
online here: http://wikimania2010.wikimedia.org/wiki/Schedule.

Dear authors, I was doing my best to plan the sessions according to
your requests regarding time needed for presentations/workshops/etc.
and your availability. However, I still need you to review it and tell
me if you can be present on given time.



Best regards,

 Jacek Jankowski

 Wikimania 2010 PC Chair



*Subject to change…;)

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Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to Foundation Website

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 4:16 PM, Veronique Kessler
 wrote:
> Hi,
>
> The 2010-11 Annual Plan and Questions and Answers have just been posted
> to the Foundation website
> (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Financial_reports#2010-2011_fiscal_year).
> The plan was approved by the Board last week.
>
> The 2010-11 plan differs from previous years in that this plan is rooted
> in the five-year (2010-2015) Wikimedia Strategy which has been developed
> collaboratively over the past year.  In 2010-11, we have planned
> continued growth over previous years reflecting continued and increased
> investments to serve our mission and increase our impact.
>
> The 2009-10 year is projected to exceed revenue targets and to be
> underspent in expenses primarily due to underspending in the first
> quarter of the 2009-10 fiscal year.
>
> Veronique

Thank you Veronique for posting this! I appreciate your continued
diligence in making material available to us.

I would like to encourage everyone to be sure and actually read this
plan closely; "continued growth" turns out to mean nearly doubling the
staff next year, and doubling the budget -- rather surprisingly
dramatic growth. There is a lot of change that is planned for here,
and many of these changes relate to areas that community members do
work in.

Personally, I would love to see some serious community discussion of
this plan both here and at Wikimania next week.

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to Foundation Website

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 12:48 AM, Gerard Meijssen
 wrote:
> Hoi,
> When you consider the source of much of the donations, you will find that
> they have been coming mainly from the United States. Chapters are becoming
> more and more active in fundraising. The Dutch chapter for instance plans on
> professionalising its operations and fundraising staff has the highest
> priority. It performed much better, one of the reasons is that IDEAL, a
> payment method for the Internet in the Netherlands, was implemented. I am
> sure that with increased support from the WMF not only but also the Dutch
> will raise substantially more money this time around.
>
> When you ask for an endowment, you indicate an opinion that the current
> levels of support for our projects suffice. I do not share that opinion and,
> I am happy to find indications in the planning that this opinion is
> supported in the plans for 2010/11. Milos and myself will talk in Gdansk
> about the need to improve technical support for our smallest projects (think
> Hindi, Malayalam... hundreds of million people will benefit..). Some of it
> is hard core language support and some are changes to operating projects in
> order to raise traffic and usability for readers.

Hi Gerard,
A small point -- I don't know who the "you" refers to here -- me? --
but when *I* ask for an endowment, it is not because I think the
current levels of support suffice; that's a different question. It's
because I don't want the long-term support for Wikimedia to be
dependent on our ability to fundraise increasingly large amounts from
year to year. Fundraising above and beyond such an endowment is fine
and good and necessary as well. I have heard that raising an endowment
was rejected by the strategy process because it was hard; I don't know
what that means, exactly, but raising an extra $20M in a recession is
hard, too.

Someone was talking to me the other day about the differences between
Wikimedia and large universities, such as the one where I work. "You
don't mind criticizing the university governance", he said; "in part
because you can't imagine it ever going away, no matter what."

It's true, and I want Wikimedia to be that stable. In fact, I want it
to be *more* stable than most American universities are at the moment
-- certainly more than mine!

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to FoundationWebsite

[phoebe ayers]

Thanks Veronique & Eugene for your comprehensive & thoughtful replies
re: this issue. It seems clear that an endowment (if there is ever one
developed) and good fundraising is not an either/or proposition.

There is also additional discussion going on about related topics on
this talk page:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategic_Plan/Role_of_the_WMF

best,
Phoebe

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 1:53 PM, Veronique Kessler
 wrote:
> Thanks everyone for your comments thus far (and for the thank yous too :)).
>
> As we progress through accomplishing the goals of the strategic plan, we
> will have a better idea of what level our operating budget will need to
> be to make everything happen and be sustainable.  We will have done some
> experimentation with initiatives like geographic investments and the
> addition of more roles to support chapters.  We don't know what our
> optimal operating level will be and what fundraising level we can
> sustain.  We have made some predictions based on a lot of factors and we
> will be able to respond appropriately to new information, changes in
> circumstances, etc. as we progress through this fiscal year and future
> years.
>
> For the endowment, Eugene really summed up the endowment issue well.  I
> want to point out that typically endowments do not fund the ongoing
> annual expenses of an organization.  A portion of the annual earnings on
> the endowment may be allocated to help support operations but it is
> usually a small percentage.  In the past, one could estimate 8-10%
> earnings each year and then allocate some to operations and roll the
> rest back to the endowment to continue to grow it.  Alas, these days,
> 8-10% returns are hard to come by.  Just to put it into perspective, if
> we were to support a $20 million budget with 5% earnings from an
> endowment, we would need $400 million dollars.  Endowments can be very
> useful and we will continue to analyze this option for the future but it
> is unlikely that an endowment would ever provide our entire operating
> budget each year.
>
> Veronique
>
> susanpgard...@gmail.com wrote:
>> Thanks Eugene! This is essentially what I would've written, had I gotten 
>> there first. So thank you.
>>
>> I will just add: everyone wants an endowment campaign -- the issue is not 
>> whether to do it; the issue is when to do it. We're still developing our 
>> pool of donors (especially the chapters, who are with the exception of the 
>> German chapter very new to fundraising), and we are still finding our voice 
>> when it comes to fundraising. Given that --and given that we have lots of 
>> work to do improving our service to readers, and donors are typically more 
>> motivated to fund necessary work, before they'll fund permanence -- that's 
>> why we're currently focusing on growing the number of donors.  Walking 
>> before running.
>>
>> And yes, Ziko, thanks for calling out the new revenue strategy: it's 
>> significant.  I am really grateful that hundreds of thousands of ordinary 
>> people are willing to fund the work we do: it's by far the best model for us 
>> from an ideological standpoint.  Most non-profits are in two completely 
>> unrelated businesses: the business of mission activity, and the business of 
>> revenue generation - we are lucky that for us, mission activity and 
>> revenue generation can be 100 per cent aligned.
>>
>> I am proud and happy about our new revenue strategy.  We're in an enviable 
>> position, in that we don't need to make unhappy compromises -- instead, we 
>> have the luxury of being able to focus on the actual mission work we're 
>> trying to get done :-)
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Sue
>>
>>
>> -Original Message-
>> From: Eugene Eric Kim 
>> Sender: foundation-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2010 09:45:49
>> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
>> Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List 
>> 
>> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] 2010-11 Annual Plan Now Posted to Foundation
>>       Website
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 8:38 AM, phoebe ayers  wrote:
>>
>>> A small point -- I don't know who the "you" refers to here -- me? --
>>> but when *I* ask for an endowment, it is not because I think the
>>> current levels of support suffice; that's a different question. It's
>>> because I don't want the long-term support for Wikimedia to be
>>> dependent on our ability to fundraise increasingly large amounts from
>>> year to year. Fundraising above and beyond such an endowment is fine
>>>

Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Note from the Board Chair

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 1:41 PM, Ting Chen  wrote:
> Dear friends,
>
> Today, here in Gdansk,  at the meeting of the Board of Trustees during the 
> sixth annual Wikimania Conference, the Board made some important changes. I'm 
> pleased to share this news with you.  The Foundation will be issuing a public 
> announcement shortly as well.
>
> Every year at Wikimania, the Wikimedia Board appoints its officers for the 
> coming year.  This year we have changes to each of the Officer roles. As of 
> today's meeting, I was fortunate to be appointed Chair of the Board - and I'm 
> grateful to have the support of the Board in this new role.. Stuart West was 
> appointed Vice-chair (and continues as Board Treasurer), and Samuel Klein 
> becomes Board Secretary.
>
> Also, the Wikimedia chapters have made their selections for the two 
> chapters-selected Board seats. Arne Klempert has been reappointed to his 
> seat, and Phoebe Ayers has also been appointed to join the Board.
>
> This means that Michael Snow will be leaving the Board: he has been invited 
> to join the Advisory Board, and the Board warmly thanks him for his service.
>
> Michael Snow has been a tireless and dedicated leader of this Board, and the 
> whole Wikimedia movement, over the past two years. I want to express my 
> sincere thanks to him on behalf of the Board and all of the Wikimedia 
> community.  I am also excited to congratulate and welcome Phoebe Ayers to the 
> Board, and also to congratulate Arne Klempert for his re-appoitment to the 
> Board in a Chapter-appointed seat.
>
> There are 10 seats on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees and 
> according to the Foundation's bylaws, three members are elected by the 
> Wikimedia community, two members are selected by the Wikimedia chapters, a 
> Community Founder seat held by Jimmy Wales, and four members appointed by the 
> Board itself to provide additional, specific expertise. Currently all seats 
> on the Board of Trustees are filled.
>
> This is the first time that the official Chapters selection process has been 
> carried out. Members of Wikimedia's global chapters, made a call for 
> nominations for new members and voted to elect their two members. In this 
> year's election nine candidates from the Wikimedia community originally 
> stepped forward. Two of those candidates stepped out of the process, leaving 
> seven candidates for selection by the Chapters.
>
> All of the officer appointments are effective immediately, and we are pleased 
> to welcome Phoebe to the Board right away.
>
> I'd like to thank the Chapters for their thoughtful work in convening a 
> process and carrying out their voting process.  I would also like to thank 
> all of the candidates who stepped forward for with their nominations.
>
> I'm looking forward to an incredible year ahead. We have an ambitious plan 
> for the Foundation and the projects over the next year, and we have a 
> tremendous group to tackle a busy year ahead.
>
> Sincerely,
> Ting

Thanks Ting.

I am now back home after Wikimania, and can finally sit down to write
this note. I am honored and humbled to be selected as a Trustee; it's
a big responsibility, and I am looking forward to the challenge.

Thank you to the chapters for selecting me, and to Michael for his
great leadership over the past couple of years. This change has
happened rather quickly, in that we were all informed of the chapters'
decision the day before Wikimania began, while the Board was in the
middle of their annual meeting (meanwhile, I was busy running WikiSym
across town, which led to quite a hectic day for me!) But everyone has
been absolutely professional and welcoming during this transition, and
as a community member and now new board member I am very glad to see a
functional process in action for choosing new board members and
officers; congratulations to Ting on becoming chair.

One unfortunate side effect however of standing for a
chapters-selected seat, rather than running in the community
elections, is that community members don't generally have a chance to
ask questions of the candidate or engage in discussion with them. To
try and remedy this I did make my candidate statement and answers
public [1]; and I welcome further questions, thoughts, criticism and
discussion. I'm glad to chat any time, and I'm always especially glad
to meet Wikimedians I don't already know, so please feel free to
introduce yourself to me and share your thoughts about Wikimedia.

I do not promise, of course, to have ready swift or simple answers to
hard questions. This is a tremendously complex and exciting time for
Wikimedia, with a great deal of experimentation and new projects going
on, and there's a lot that I need to learn very quickly. 

[Foundation-l] UPEI's proposal for a "universal citation index"

[phoebe ayers]

There have been a number of proposals floated in the Wikimedia
community over the years to build a wiki-based project for collecting
journal citation information. For those interested in that topic, you
might want to check out the University of Prince Edward Island's
"knowledge for all" project proposal -- it proposes to build an open
universal citation index (to serve as an alternative to the many
hundreds of proprietary citation index products that libraries
currently buy). This of course is not the first attempt at this
problem, but it's an interesting proposal that's getting a bit of buzz
in the library community.
http://library.upei.ca/k4all

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wiki-research-l] WikiCite - new WMF project? Was: UPEI's proposal for a "universal citation index"

[phoebe ayers]

Hi guys! I'm glad my little post helped re-start such a productive
conversation.

Since some people are replying only to the research-l list and some to
both research-l and foundation-l (my fault for cc'ing both) maybe we
should centralize this discussion (at least of the nitty gritty
metadata issues) on the research list for now? thread here:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wiki-research-l/2010-July/thread.html

Of course the perennial issue of how to propose a new WMF project is
very much a foundation-l topic.

regards,
phoebe

On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 12:26 PM, Brian J Mingus
 wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 11:56 AM, Jodi Schneider 
> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Brian,
>> On 20 Jul 2010, at 18:02, Brian J Mingus wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Finn Aarup Nielsen  wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Hi Brian and others,
>>>
>>> I also think that it would be interesting with some bibliographic
>>> support, for two-way citation tracking and commenting on articles (for
>>> example), but I furthermore find that particular in science article we often
>>> find data that is worth structuring and put in a database or a structured
>>> wiki, so that we can extract the data for meta-analysis and specialized
>>> information retrieval. That is what I also do in the Brede Wiki. I use the
>>> templates to store such data. So if such a system as yours is implemented we
>>> should not just think of it as a bibliographic database but in more broader
>>> terms: A data wiki.
>>

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[Foundation-l] Noam Cohen discusses Wikimania..

[phoebe ayers]

... on this weeks NY Times "tech talk" podcast. Subjects include:
flagging enthusiasm for Wikipedia, the differences between the
Foundation & the contributor base, WMF efforts to increase diversity,
Google Translation Toolkit, British Museum collaborations, and a very
brief mention of flaggedrefs.

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/technology/techtalk.html

Starts at 16:02 and runs for 7 minutes.

-- Phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] How many books are there in the world?

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Aug 5, 2010 at 4:23 PM, Bod Notbod  wrote:
> Google has attempted to answer the question of how many books exist in
> a very interesting blog post.
>
> http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2010/08/books-of-world-stand-up-and-be-counted.html

Interesting! This, in a nutshell, is why projects to collect all the
world's bibliographic data face a hard challenge.

> Why am I posting this to Foundation-l?
>
> Well, one of the things it reveals is the difficulty of answering this
> question and I hope that it has some relation to Wikimedia projects;
> in particular, I didn't know that multiple books (entirely unrelated
> books) have shared ISBNs. So, if nothing else, it might impact...
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ISBN

AFAIK, this is a fairly uncommon problem; I've never run across it in
6+ years of working with lots of books & library catalogs every day.
What is a much, much, much bigger problem is the issue of serials
holdings: "serials" are normally taken to be things like magazines and
journals, but in library land also might refer to, say, book series,
or government reports that are published with serial numbers. All
sorts of stuff, in other words, and it's cataloged and referred to in
all sorts of ways, which makes it tough for people looking for good
unique identifiers (or trying to figure out what counts as "a book").

> And I also thought that Google's attempt to catologue all books was
> parallel to our goal of... well, I'm not sure that we ever say we're
> attempting to catalogue ALL knowledge... but we seem to be making a
> decent fist of it so far.

It's certainly related to recent thoughts about a bibliographic wiki;
obviously relevant to wikibooks; and it's interesting to think about
scale, which is something that's been on my mind lately. I don't know
how much effort Google made to get records from national libraries in
remote reaches of the world, but I'd imagine that there is still a big
chunk of stuff missing from this count that's not in OCLC etc.
Nonetheless I think posts like this help delineate the general scale
of the information universe that we are trying to usefully capture. I
don't have any idea how those 130M books might map onto topics, for
instance, but I'm guessing our 15M articles don't quite cover it yet.

phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Call for nominations: chapter-appointed seats on the WMF Board of Trustees

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 9:49 PM, Risker  wrote:
> Thanks for your prompt responses, Beria.  I have a few follow-ups.
>
> On 31 January 2012 22:43, Béria Lima  wrote:

>> >
>> > * Will the names of the candidates be published for the entire Wikimedia
>> > community to see?  *
>>
>>
>> The real names, obviously not. The usernames may be published - IF the
>> candidate has no problem with that.
>>
>
>
> I'm sorry, I have a problem with that.  All other candidates for Board
> seats must publicly disclose their real name in their candidate
> presentation (because the identities of Board members are a matter of
> public record, it is not possible to hold a position on the Board of
> Trustees anonymously or under a pseudonym).

Heh, indeed. Whether the candidates are public outside the chapters or
not, if you are not ok with your real name being plastered all over
the place (fame! infamy! occasional random emails!) then being on the
board is probably not for you.

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Vice President?

[phoebe ayers]

Someday, I can only aspire to be a Vice President of Pencil Sharpeners :)

Sidenote: indeed, on our board we use the terminology Chair &
Vice-Chair, not president.

cheers,
phoebe

On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 10:15 AM, Ryan Kaldari  wrote:
> Many organizations have dozens or hundreds of vice presidents, like Vice
> President of Vending Machines and Vice President of Pencil Sharpeners. It's
> not really analogous to President and Vice President of the U.S. for
> example, which are exclusive positions. Of course I agree that job titles
> are kind of silly, but whatever.
>
> Ryan Kaldari
>
>
> On 1/31/12 8:17 PM, MZMcBride wrote:
>>
>> Hi.
>>
>> Erik took on the temporary title "VP of Engineering and Product
>> Development"
>> after Danese left.[1] Just recently it was codified on wmfwiki.[2]
>>
>> I don't really think much of job titles anywhere, but it seems strange to
>> have a Vice President without having a President.[3] Mostly just noting
>> for
>> posterity.
>>
>> MZMcBride
>>
>> [1] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2011-June/054040.html
>> [2] https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?diff=78986&oldid=78985
>> [3] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff_and_contractors
>>
>>
>>
>> ___
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>> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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>
>

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Re: [Foundation-l] Journal Boycott

[phoebe ayers]

On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 9:07 AM, Chess Pie  wrote:
> Looks like a braindead law.
> Does the foundation have a specific position on OpenAccess?

The WMF as an entity doesn't have a specific position/policy, though
in general we are squarely in the camp of OA supporters; but as Daniel
noted the Research Committee is working on an OA policy for funded
research studies, which I'm quite pleased about:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Committee/Areas_of_interest/Open-access_policy

Maybe Daniel knows if there are any general position papers about how
OA in general benefits Wikimedia projects?

Re: the Elsevier journal boycott, I've been following this fairly
closely out of professional and personal interest -- it's not strictly
a protest in favor of OA, but rather a protest around several issues
related to how Elsevier handles and charges for journal content,
including supporting restrictions, like the research works act. It is
true that Elsevier is not especially worse than several other big
publishers, but they have a big name and a long history of unfriendly
moves to the library & academic community which make them perhaps an
easier target. What's interesting about the boycott is that a) it's
grown very quickly, with several thousand people signing in the past
couple weeks; and b) it's a lot of prominent researchers from a wide
variety of institutions. What gives this boycott power is not
institutional support but rather individual researchers and scholars,
who provide both the content and the labor in scientific publishing,
saying that they were not interested in working with Elsevier. If
enough people say that and follow through, Elsevier's entire business
model falls apart.

-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Journal Boycott

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 11:17 AM, Kat Walsh  wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 9:19 PM, phoebe ayers  wrote:
>> On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 9:07 AM, Chess Pie  wrote:
>>> Looks like a braindead law.
>>> Does the foundation have a specific position on OpenAccess?
>>
>> The WMF as an entity doesn't have a specific position/policy, though
>> in general we are squarely in the camp of OA supporters; but as Daniel
>> noted the Research Committee is working on an OA policy for funded
>> research studies, which I'm quite pleased about:
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Committee/Areas_of_interest/Open-access_policy
>>
>
> Actually we do have an official position--we are signatories to the
> Berlin Declaration on Open Access:
>
> http://oa.mpg.de/berlin-prozess/berliner-erklarung/
>
> which states that its supporters believe in the importance of open
> access and work to promote it (the full document is actually pretty
> nice).
>
> -Kat

Right! I forgot about that. Thanks, Kat.
-- phoebe

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[Foundation-l] Congratulations to Wikimedia Kenya!

[phoebe ayers]

The Wikimedia Foundation Board is very pleased to welcome and approve
our 39th chapter, Wikimedia Kenya:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Recognition_of_Wikimedia_Kenya

Congratulations to all for your hard work!
-- Phoebe Ayers
WMF Board of Trustees Secretary

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Re: [Foundation-l] Fundraising Letter Feb 2012

[phoebe ayers]

Hi Lodewijk,

In this board meeting we were trying to see if we had a general
consensus on the direction we wanted to go (rather than take a final
vote). There are still lots of aspects to be resolved, though -- what
the FDC looks like, what criteria are used for payment processing, and
many more things. Our calendar is unchanged: we do intend to discuss
fundraising in Paris with everyone, we will receive Sue's final
recommendations in early-mid March; and we will plan to take a final
vote at (or perhaps just after) the Berlin meeting.

So yes, we all agree that a real life discussion is important. So is
lots of information -- legal analysis, etc. -- which we may not have
seen all of yet (I'm not sure what you mean by an inventory). We also
thought, though, that it would be bad to talk about this for two days
in the Board meeting and not report back to the community about where
we were at :) Hence, this letter. It's not a final decision, but it is
an indication of board consensus and direction.

best,
Phoebe


On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 1:07 AM, Lodewijk  wrote:
> Hi Ting,
>
> thank you for the letter. Could you clarify to what extent this is the end
> decision, and how much discussion/process should be expected ahead of us?
> Going up to this board meeting I have heard both the opinions that the
> final decision would be made quickly, and also that definitely no decision
> would be made, but rather an inventory, which would allow for a real life
> discussion in Paris/Berlin with other stakeholders.
>
> Lodewijk
>
> No dia 9 de Fevereiro de 2012 09:11, Ting Chen escreveu:
>
>> The Board approves the following letter to be sent to the community:
>>
>> Dear members of the Wikimedia Movement,
>>
>> As you are probably aware we have been discussing the the future of
>> fundraising and fund dissemination for the Wikimedia Movement for almost 6
>> months now. After discussing fundraising and funds dissemination at this
>> past meeting, the board has drafted the following statement. It our
>> intention to discuss these matters in the coming weeks to come to a final
>> decision mid March.
>>
>> But first we would like to thank everyone who took part in the discussion
>> so far and spent their valuable time providing us with their viewpoints
>> which we have of course taken into account in our decision making process.
>> We hope that you will continue to participate by giving feedback on this
>> letter.
>>
>> ==Funds dissemination==
>> The board wants to create a volunteer-driven body to make recommendations
>> for funding for movement-wide initiatives (Working title: Funds
>> Dissemination Committee, FDC). The Wikimedia Foundation has decision-making
>> authority, because it has fiduciary responsibilities to donors which it
>> legally cannot delegate. The new body will make recommendations for funds
>> dissemination to the Wikimedia Foundation. We anticipate a process in which
>> the Wikimedia Foundation will review and approve all but a small minority
>> of recommendations from the FDC. In the event that the Wikimedia Foundation
>> does not approve a recommendation from the FDC, and the FDC and the
>> Wikimedia Foundation aren't subsequently able to reach agreement, then the
>> FDC can ask the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees to request the
>> recommendation be reconsidered.
>>
>> #the FDC will be a diverse body of people from across our movement (which
>> may include paid staff) with appropriate expertise for this purpose, whose
>> primary purpose is to disseminate funds to advance the Wikimedia mission;
>> #the WMF staff will support and facilitate the work of the FDC
>> #Proposals can range from one time smaller contributions for small
>> projects from individuals to larger financing for operational costs of
>> chapters or associations
>>
>> The board intends to evaluate this process together with the FDC and see
>> if it is working.
>>
>> ==Fundraising==
>> Our thoughts on fundraising are less specific. We have come to the
>> following two statements which are important
>>
>> * If and when payment processing is done by chapters, it should be done
>> primarily for reasons of tax, operational efficiency (including
>> incentivizing donor cultivation and relations), should not be in conflict
>> with funds dissemination principles and goals, and should avoid a
>> perception of entitlement.
>>
>> * The board is sharpening the criteria for payment processing. Payment
>> processing is not a natural path to growth for a chapter; and payment
>> processing will likely be an exception -- most chapters will not do so.
>>
>>
>> The Wikimedia Board of Trustees
>>
>> NB: Please note that rather than spend a LOT of time on wording at this
>> time, the board preferred to amend the above text if necessary when moving
>> towards a resolution. This letter indicates our intent, and we may
>> "wordsmith as needed" in our final resolutions.
>>
>> --
>> Ting Chen
>> Member of the Board of Trustees
>> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
>> E

Re: [Foundation-l] Controversial content software status

[phoebe ayers]

On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 8:49 PM, MZMcBride  wrote:
> Hi.
>
> What happened with implementing software related to controversial content?
> There was quite a bit of hubbub at some point, then Wikimedia pulled back a
> little (and Sue visited Germany to give some assurances)... what's the
> current status of the project? Is it still a project? (If there's a project
> status page somewhere with updated info, feel free to just link that.)

Hi MZ and all --

Project development was put on hold over the winter in favor of more
pressing priorities, with the agreement of the Board. There is
currently an open proposal on the table for the Board to vote on
whether to continue with our original request for an image hiding
feature; and the ED will take direction from the Board on the matter.
We have put that vote off however due to the more time-sensitive and
generally all-consuming financial discussions of the past couple of
months. I haven't reported on it one way or the other because the
timeline for a revote hasn't yet been set.

So, yeah, things are on hold essentially because there are more urgent
things to do, and because given the rather extraordinary scale of the
debate and all of the controversy, serious reconsideration of our
original proposal has been requested.

It seems clear however that regardless, there is both much technical
and social work that needs to be done around controversial content
that has nothing to do with image hiding, e.g. to improve Commons
search, rigorously get model releases, etc. etc.; and also that for
any particular technical proposal around image hiding there would be
many, many (perhaps insuperable) issues and details to work out.

I'd like to point out here that the other points addressed in both of
the controversial content resolutions
(http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Images_of_identifiable_people
and http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Controversial_content),
though much less controversial, are also quite important!

-- phoebe, as WMF secretary

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Re: [Foundation-l] Controversial content software status

[phoebe ayers]

On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 11:32 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 5 March 2012 05:03, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
>
>> I am sorry to say that unless you are prepared to put your foot down, and
>> represent the tens of thousands of people who expressed their views in the
>> (admittedly suboptimal) referendum, you risk becoming an irrelevancy – in
>> exactly the same way that doctors are irrelevant in an asylum where it's
>> the inmates who call the shots, and the doctors are only kept on for show,
>> to keep the public money coming in.
>
>
> Yeah, 'cos that worked so well applied to de:wp.
>
> You do realise this has become a toxic electoral issue for the board,
> with people who voted twice for the resolution now backpedalling?
>
>
> - d.

Just for the record, not sure where you got "voted twice"... There's
been one vote on each resolution.

And it was not raised as an electoral issue. I think that's a little
unfair to people (including myself) who are trying to do their best in
a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation.

all best,
-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Controversial content software status

[phoebe ayers]

Hi David,

On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 11:50 AM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 5 March 2012 17:07, phoebe ayers  wrote:
>> On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 11:32 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
>
>>> You do realise this has become a toxic electoral issue for the board,
>>> with people who voted twice for the resolution now backpedalling?
>
>> Just for the record, not sure where you got "voted twice"... There's
>> been one vote on each resolution.
>
>
> The first was the vote on the resolution:
>
> https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Controversial_content
>
> The second was to send a letter affirming the board still considered
> the resolution a good idea:
>
> http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/253393#253393
>
> "We are not going to revisit the resolution from May, for the moment:
> we let that resolution stand unchanged."

That's actually explicitly not a vote -- as in, we agreed not to
re-vote at the October meeting. We did agree to postponing
development, however, as I noted above; and a re-vote is likely on the
table for the spring.

> You were also the chair of the Controversial Content Working Group
> that *wrote* the resolution.

That is true. And I supported the resolution we wrote, felt that we
did good work to try to come to a consensus between pretty widely
divergent points of view, and proposed the resolution to the other
trustees.

There were plenty of reservations at the time, from me and others;
hence all the language about principles. However, we thought what we
proposed could work.

After publishing that resolution, we had the referendum and (even
more) thousands of pages of discussion, and after all that I am
convinced by the arguments that the image hiding feature specifically
is not an especially appropriate or useful thing to do. Surely that is
not a terrible or outlandish conclusion to reach; one might argue for
the benefit in keeping an open mind. And if I am not mistaken, we are
now closer to being in agreement on the issue, which does make one
wonder why you're hassling me over it.

I'll note that still, there are plenty of good arguments on both
sides, and I don't think all the trustees are in agreement about how
to proceed; as this thread shows, there is still plenty of interest on
both sides as well.

I took on chairing the controversial content group because I wanted to
help the board find consensus on a tough issue, not because I wanted
CC to become the defining issue of my term. If I thought at the
beginning that is what would happen, frankly I wouldn't have
volunteered to do it.


>> And it was not raised as an electoral issue. I think that's a little
>> unfair to people (including myself) who are trying to do their best in
>> a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation.
>
>
> I raised it as one, here.
>
> If you do not support the image filter, you have given *no* sign that
> I have seen of not supporting it before your statement for this
> selection of a board member by the chapters.

Well, in my opinion I haven't given much indication of what I
personally think on the issue at all, as I often explicitly ignored
speculation about my own personal views or motivations whether it was
right or wrong. I *have* spent a great deal of time explaining and (to
some extent) defending board consensus. I didn't think it was
especially worthwhile or relevant to talk about anything else, as the
board acts as a corporate body.

I have all along personally thought that both sides of the issues had
merit but that there were strong principles we needed to adhere to,
which is a thread that shows up in the resolution.

> You appeared (from your actions) to support it before, you claim not
> to support it now. I believe it is relevant to note this.

Sure. If there's a place to note what one thinks about something, why
not a candidacy statement? And I will note, in turn, that the
questions to the candidates so far seem to indicate what the chapters
representatives care most about this election, and it's mostly
finances and related -- if I were, as you imply, only hypocritically
trying to win over hearts and minds for the election I think I would
be focusing on that!

regards,
-- phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Controversial content software status

[phoebe ayers]

On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 5:06 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 6 March 2012 00:57, phoebe ayers  wrote:
>
>> Well, in my opinion I haven't given much indication of what I
>> personally think on the issue at all, as I often explicitly ignored
>> speculation about my own personal views or motivations whether it was
>> right or wrong. I *have* spent a great deal of time explaining and (to
>> some extent) defending board consensus. I didn't think it was
>> especially worthwhile or relevant to talk about anything else, as the
>> board acts as a corporate body.
>
>
> If you act only in support of a view, and do not voice your concerns,
> I hardly think it's unfair to draw a conclusion to your opinions from
> your actions. It then comes across as odd and insincere to later say
> "actually, I disagreed with what I was doing." You can't claim your
> views are being misrepresented when it's your actions doing the
> representing.

That's not actually what I was trying to say. I said that I changed my
mind -- probably around early autumn, if you want to put a date on it.
I haven't done much speaking or writing on the issue in the last few
months. I wouldn't have voted for the resolution if I had thought at
the time it was a truly bad idea; at least give me credit for that.

> What stopped you from voicing your qualms?

Partly, as I said, wanting to represent the board consensus. Partly
because things were so very uncivil in the heat of it. I got called
(among other things) an ugly American, a prude, freedom-hating, and a
poor representative of my profession. I just didn't feel like
dignifying any of that with engagement.

And I think, though I don't have the energy to pull up all the emails
I've sent, that I tried very hard in all my communications to be
moderate, open-minded, and to err on the side of explanation of what
we were doing. Which is pretty much my approach to everything!

So I'm not sure it's a case of voicing qualms or not, as just trying
not to talk about my own personal opinions (up to and including "can't
we please find something more important to argue about?!"). Oh well.

Anyway, there are surely more interesting things to talk about -- like
search! Let's talk about search. I am 100% in favor of better commons
search :)

best,
Phoebe

p.s. John, I misunderstood what David was referring to about it being
an election issue -- When I said that I meant that board
reconsideration of the resolution was raised independently of the
election; it's not meant to be timed for political reasons, as I
thought he was implying. Yes, of course, I did bring this topic up in
my statement.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Controversial content software status

[phoebe ayers]

On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 6:30 PM, Kat Walsh  wrote:
...

> Sorry to drag this out--there are definitely more interesting things
> to talk about. But as someone who basically holds Phoebe's position on
> the issue I'd like to say what I am thinking also.
>
> I think, in fact, that I am almost exactly in agreement with Phoebe. I
> voted for the resolution because I thought we had reached a consensus
> that was compatible with everyone's principles and wasn't going to
> compromise anything else that was critically important. And I think we
> were wrong. Maybe it was foolish to think it could have been true, but
> it seemed like a victory to get even that far--the controversial
> content discussion has been the most divisive and difficult in my time
> on the board (since 2006, if you're counting).
>
> We are still divided, as a board, on where to go from here; it is a
> true conflict. The actual words in the statement are fine--they should
> be, after all the effort poured into them. It is the implications that
> we didn't properly foresee and that I think we're still not in
> agreement on.
>
> Traditionally, the way we as a board have dealt with true conflicts is
> not to release a series of resolutions that squeak by with a bare
> majority, but to find some path forward that can get broad or even
> unanimous support. If we cannot even get the board--a very small
> group, with more time to argue issues together and less diversity of
> opinion than the wider community--what hope is there to get the
> broader community to come to agreement that the action we decide on is
> the best decision?
>
> I think it's my responsibility to be open to argument, to have some
> things that cannot be compromised, but to be willing to accept a
> solution that doesn't violate them even if I think it's not the best
> one. And to be willing to delegate the carrying-out of those decisions
> to others. Sometimes I have to take a deep breath and realize
> something is going completely unlike how I would have chosen to do it,
> and that it might still be okay; I have to step back, let everyone do
> their own jobs, and be as fair as possible in evaluating how it is
> turning out even if it is not what I wanted. And sometimes that means
> the most responsible thing for me to do is to shut up so I don't ruin
> the chance of a positive outcome by undermining others' efforts in
> progress.

Yes, this. All of this. Thanks, Kat; you are always more eloquent than I am :)

As a board we've talked a lot about the most responsible way to
comment as a community member vs as part of this consensus-driven,
corporate body we call the board. We've talked about it because it's a
real concern for many of us -- the dilemma hits you pretty much from
day one, especially in our culture of community members talking about
everything. Ideally, of course, you do agree with board decisions and
how they're being carried out, but even in that case it's hard -- is
someone speaking as themselves or for the board if they express
support?

And truth be told you never get taken "as an individual" once you join
-- your opinions are always taken as "those of a board member",
whether you want them to be or not, and are tossed around politically
in consequence; and you are responsible for what the WMF does whether
you agree particularly with any individual action (or even know about
them). If you say something critical, are those opinions going to get
held against the WMF, or make someone's work more difficult, or make
the work of the board more difficult, or somehow shut down community
discussion? Is it safe to express an opinion if you're really not sure
what the right thing to do is, or will exploring a misguided approach
be held against you forever? All of those are questions that we
struggle with in every conversation (but especially in really
contentious discussions), which goes some way towards answering
David's original question.


> So in an ideal universe, I still think it is possible for a solution
> to be developed in line with the resolution that doesn't violate the
> principles of free access to information that we value.
>
> But in the practical universe, I think it is a poor use of resources
> to keep trying along the same path; we have things that will have much
> more impact that aren't already poisoned by a bad start. It was a
> viable starting position at one point and now I believe that we can't
> get anywhere good from it; better to scrap it entirely, perhaps later
> to try something completely different. I would still love to see some
> way to meet the needs of the people who don't want to be surprised by
> what they will find in a search. But I don't think it's going to come
> out of the current approach.

Agreed.

-- Phoebe

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Re: [Foundation-l] Controversial content software status

[phoebe ayers]

2012/3/7 Juliana da Costa José :
> Andreas, you seem really maniac fixed to this theme. I am since 7 years in
> Wikipedia and never saw this pictures.
> For me are pictures from tortured persons, from war and weapons torn bodies
> and shot heads a much more terrifying that sex-pics (I spare posting
> "spectacular" links, just for attending the voyeurism), but for some
> mysterious reasons, this is no "controversial content".

Hey Juliana,

As far as I am concerned pictures of violence certainly fall under
"controversial content"; it's been defined that way in everything the
board has written too. Images that could be shocking or unexpectedly
frightening are definitely part of thinking about this whole issue.

best,
-- phoebe

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

[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

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