Re: [Foundation-l] It's not article count, it's editors

[teun spaans]

There are a lot of metrics which could be defined, and each has its own
merits:
* number of articles: an indication of the amount of subjects covered, and
for "completeness" of the topics covered. More articles will probably draw
more visitors.
* number of participants: probably an indication of potential growth
* number of new articles / month : current growth
* Number of articles * length: a better indication of the amount of
information available.
* Number of corrections / article: probably an indication of quality, but
might also be an indication of vandalism.
* Turnover rate in the number of active editors might be an excellent
indication of a communities health. If the group is stable, but new editors
quickly disappear that is a strong indication that the group is nt very open
to newbies.
That is just a short list Erik suggested valuable metrics.
It would be nice of every community for its homepage could choose from a
list of these metrics, instead of just the article count.

On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 12:13 AM, Thomas Dalton wrote:

> 2009/9/22 Mike Godwin :
> > My own personal view is that, in an ideal world, we'd post two or more
> > metrics for every project (article numbers, number of editors, and
> perhaps
> > other metrics like, perhaps, external links).  That would create a design
> > problem given our current home page, but probably not an unsolvable one.
> >
> > The idea here is that, with multiple metrics, we can hypothesize more
> > clearly about trends -- e.g., when the article number rate of increase
> > declines, but numbers of editors and external links increases, we may be
> > able to make some more reasonable guesses about what's happening on that
> > project.
> >
> > Obviously, Erik Zachte's work in this are is extremely (I'm inclined to
> say
> > uniquely) valuable -- I'm wondering how we can better integrate his
> research
> > into how the projects initially represent themselves to users upon entry.
>
> I don't know if we necessarily need multiple metrics on the home page,
> but we certainly should be considering multiple metrics. To move from
> just considering article counts to just considering participants to
> population ratios would be a very bad idea. Do we have an expert
> statistician around that can do some regression testing, or similar,
> and work out what the real relationships are between these various
> metrics? For examples, what kind of correlation is there actually
> between number of participants and article creation rates? Does that
> correlation vary for different sized Wikipedias (and for other
> projects)? Etc. etc.
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Announce: Brion moving to StatusNet

[teun spaans]

Brion,

congratulations on your new job, and you sound excited and happy with it, so
that is good :-)

But I must admit that I am sorry to see you go - your commitment to
wikimedia has always been over 100%, if such a thing is possible, and your
personality has always been a pleasure to work with.

teun

On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 8:32 PM, Brion Vibber  wrote:

> I'd like to share some exciting news with you all... After four awesome
> years working for the Wikimedia Foundation full-time, next month I'm
> going to be starting a new position at StatusNet, leading development on
> the open-source microblogging system which powers identi.ca and other
> sites.
>
> I've been contributing to StatusNet (formerly Laconica) as a user, bug
> reporter, and patch submitter since 2008, and I'm really excited at the
> opportunity to get more involved in the project at this key time as we
> gear up for a 1.0 release, hosted services, and support offerings.
>
> StatusNet was born in the same free-culture and free-software community
> that brought me to Wikipedia; many of you probably already know founder
> Evan Prodromou from his longtime work in the wiki community, launching
> the awesome Wikitravel and helping out with MediaWiki development on
> various fronts. The "big idea" driving StatusNet is rebalancing power in
> the modern social web -- pushing data portability and open protocols to
> protect your autonomy from siloed proprietary services... People need
> the ability to control their own presence on the web instead of hoping
> Facebook or Twitter always treat you the way you want.
>
> This does unfortunately mean that I'll have less time for MediaWiki as
> I'll be leaving my position as Wikimedia CTO sooner than originally
> anticipated, but that doesn't mean I'm leaving the Wikimedia community
> or MediaWiki development!
>
> Just as I was in the MediaWiki development community before Wikimedia
> hired me, you'll all see me in the same IRC channels and on the same
> mailing lists... I know this is also a busy time with our fundraiser
> coming up and lots of cool ongoing developments, so to help ease the
> transition I've worked out a commitment to come into the WMF office one
> day a week through the end of December to make sure all our tech staff
> has a chance to pick my brain as we smooth out the code review processes
> and make sure things are as well documented as I like to think they are. ;)
>
> We've got a great tech team here at Wikimedia, and we've done so much
> with so little over the last few years. A lot of really good work is
> going on now, modernizing both our infrastructure and our user
> interface... I have every confidence that Wikipedia and friends will
> continue to thrive!
>
> I'll start full-time at StatusNet on October 12. My key priorities until
> then are getting some of our key software rollouts going, supporting the
> Usability Initiative's next scheduled update and getting a useful but
> minimally-disruptive Flagged Revisions configuration going on English
> Wikipedia. I'm also hoping to make further improvements to our code
> review process, based on my experience with our recent big updates as
> well as the git-based workflow we're using at StatusNet -- I've got a
> lot of great ideas for improving the CodeReview extension...
>
> Erik Moeller will be the primary point of contact for WMF tech
> management issues starting October 12, until the new CTO is hired. I'll
> support the hiring process as much as I can, and we're hoping to have a
> candidate in the door by the end of the year.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)
> CTO, Wikimedia Foundation
> San Francisco
>
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Dumb survey about Commons

[teun spaans]

I regard Erik highly for his skills in analyzing data which is already
present. I am completely confident he can do some thought provoking
analysis.

Unfortunately, the skills required for putting a good questionare together
are different from those on analyzing the data.

The remarks I have seen so far are about the technical features of the
questionaire, lack of testing, and the contents of the questions.
Bad questions generate bad responss, and bad responses mean bad data. No
doubt Erik will be able to make some use of these data, but would his
talents not have been much more usefull if the proper amount of thinking and
testing had gone into this questionaire?

The results of the usability project have disappointed many, see earlier
discussions on this list. Will there be more to come from the useability
project?
What actions can be taken to correct the currrent questionaire? Can it be
stopped and replaced by a better set of questions later?
What has suggested the need for a commons questionaire in the first place?
What analysis has already been done on this topic? What gave rise to the
current set of questions?

teun

On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 6:36 PM, Gerard Meijssen
wrote:

> Hoi,
> Assume - ass u me ... When you look at the presentation of the statistics,
> when you consider the "score card" that were recently announced. I am happy
> to agree with you that it does not say on Erik's user page on en.wp that he
> had any formal statistics training.. Erik for your information is Dutch and
> I think you assume that the en.wp is Erik's main project.
>
> That is fine and hardly relevant. The WMF staff has someone who I
> appreciate
> for his statistics work and I expect that Erik will continue to be involved
> in any statistics work on any project. I assume this to be the case because
> new statistical data has to become integrated in one way or another in
> order
> to ensure that we continue to record, report and anaylse  data even after
> the end of a time boxed project.
> Thanks,
>   GerardM
>
> 2009/10/26 Thomas Dalton 
>
> > 2009/10/26 Gerard Meijssen :
> > > Hoi,
> > > Ehm, the statistics that we have are compiled by Erik Zachte..
> qualifying
> > > our staff and implicitly Erik as lacking the experience is  a bit
> > off.
> > > It is not only the Commons project but also the Usability Initiative
> and
> > the
> > > Strategy project that will rely largely on these numbers..
> >
> > I'm not talking about the article numbers, user numbers, etc.
> > statistics. I'm talking about this usability survey. Erik isn't on the
> > usability team and even if he was helping with this his user page on
> > enwiki doesn't mention any statistics training - his skills lie in
> > gathering the statistics, not analysing them.
> >
> > ___
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Dumb survey about Commons

[teun spaans]

As an example, let's have a look at the first two questions:
1) Do you use Wikimedia Commons at all?
Choose one of the following answers

* Yes, regularly
* Yes, sometimes
* No

Criticism: not exact. What is "regularly"? Once a day? Once a week? Once a
month? 5% of all wiki edits? 25% of all wikiedits?

2) What is your main goal when you look for free media files on Commons?
Choose one of the following answers

* I look for media files to illustrate Wikipedia or another Wikimedia
project.
* I look for media files to use online on another website.
* I look for media files to use offline (reports, presentations,
homework).
* Other:

Criticism:
Many wikipedians may choose 1), look for media files, as there is no option
"upload media files".

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

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

[teun spaans]

"It is absolutely not the job of the Wikimedia Foundation, nor the
Wikimedia community, to supervise a child's internet access and/or
usage"
Frankly, I dont think that is what I read in PMs post which started this
discussion.

In many countries it is the responsibility of parents for their childs
behaviour, inlcuding their behavious on internet.
However, also in many countries it is the responsibility of volunteer
organizations to that under age volunteers do while they are active as a
volunteer for that organization. In that respect Wikimedia foundation may be
held responsible for what minors during  their vi\olunteer acticvities for
wikimedia do and see.

Viewn as such, it might indeed be a responsibility for the foundation, and
not for an individual wiki.

i wish you health and happiness,
teun spaans

On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 11:37 AM, Andrew Garrett wrote:

>
> On 16/11/2009, at 1:04 AM, private musings wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > On Wikipedia Review, 'tarantino' pointed out that on WMF projects,
> > self-identified minors (in this case User:Juliancolton) are involved
> > in
> > routine maintenance stuff around sexually explicit images reasonably
> > describable as porn (one example is 'Masturbating Amy.jpg').
> >
> >
> http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=27358&st=0&p=204846&#entry204846
> >
> > I think this is wrong on a number of levels - and I'd like to see
> > better
> > governance from the foundation in this area - I really feel that we
> > need to
> > talk about some child protection measures in some way - they're
> > overdue.
> >
> > I'd really like to see the advisory board take a look at this issue
> > - is
> > there a formal way of suggesting or requesting their thoughts, or
> > could I
> > just ask here for a board member or community member with the advisory
> > board's ear to raise this with them.
>
> You just won't give up this topic, will you?
>
> I'm not sure where you get the idea that it's somehow inappropriate
> for minors to be viewing or working on images depicting human nudity
> and sexuality. Cultural sensibilities on this matter are inconsistent,
> irrational and entirely lacking in substance.
>
> I'm also unsure how you propose to define "sexually explicit". The
> definitions under law are elaborate, attempting to make distinctions
> that would be irrelevant to any negative impact on children, if one
> existed. Are images of the statue of David, the Mannekin Pis or the
> Ecstacy of Theresa deserving of such restrictions? What about the
> detailed frescoes of sexual acts displayed in brothels and living
> rooms in ancient Pompeii and Herculaneum? How are those distinct from
> the image you've used as an example, and how is that distinction
> relevant to whatever supposed harm you are claiming to children?
>
> If it is truly inappropriate or harmful for children to be working on
> such images, then those children should be supervised in their
> internet access, or have gained the trust of their parents to use the
> internet within whatever limits those parents (or, indeed, the minor)
> believe is appropriate.
>
> It is absolutely not the job of the Wikimedia Foundation, nor the
> Wikimedia community, to supervise a child's internet access and/or
> usage, and certainly not to make arbitrary rules regarding said usage
> on the basis of a single culture's sensibilities on children and
> sexuality, especially sensibilities as baseless and harmful as this one.
>
> --
> Andrew Garrett
> agarr...@wikimedia.org
> http://werdn.us/
>
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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

[teun spaans]

Hi Erik,

thank you. Very nice.
One suggestion: for trends, i would expect a bar indicating upward or
downward trend, not a percentage bar.

live long and prosper
teun

On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 5:27 AM, Erik Zachte wrote:

> Today I released 4 new reports, which all focus on:
>
> Where do our readers come from?
>
>
>
>   http://tinyurl.com/yhdej3j
>
>
>
> Cheers, Erik Zachte
>
>
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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

[teun spaans]

If these potential logos are not on a free license, as you suggest (and i
have no reason to assume you are wrong), then they should certainly not be
moved to commons. Meta seems like a correct place.
If the rules of meta can be changed so that these copyrighted images can
stay hosted there?
Perhaps a template with the contest info might be useful. One way or the
other, it would be a good thing if the copyright status could be determined:
does the foundation have all rights? Do the creators still have all rights
reserved?

teun spaans

On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 8:19 PM, geni  wrote:

> On 20 February 2010 19:14, Tomasz Ganicz  wrote:
> > 2010/2/20 geni :
> >> On 20 February 2010 05:54, The Cunctator  wrote:
> >>> Yes. This is idiotic. The logo contest followed the same rules as all
> other
> >>> submissions to Wikipedia -- they were submitted under the GFDL.
> >>
> >> Evidence?
> >> --
> >
> > Evidence of what? At the beginning on all Wikipedias as well as meta
> > there were no license templates at all. It was just assumed that all
> > original content is under GNU FDL - both text and pictures. The idea
> > of license templates for media files was created to provide
> > possibility to use pictures on other free licenses and those which are
> > public domain. Following the copyright paranoia in such the manner you
> > could ask if there is any evidence that articles in Wikipedia are
> > legally under GNU FDL / CC-BY-SA. Do we have any evidence that users
> > agreed for the license conditions?  How many of them read the
> > http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use ? And how many of
> > those who read Terms of Use followed the links to the licenses legal
> > code or at least general explanation of their practical consequences ?
> > In case of text content it is simply assumed with no evidence at all
> > that editors agreed. Moreover even if the uploader to Commons chooses
> > the license in upload form do we check if he/she knows and understand
> > its conditions? So, it is all assumed with no evidence at all.
> > Strange?
>
> The logo contest was specificaly non standard with copyrights not
> being released so that the logo copyright could be held exclusively by
> the foundation. The various wikimedia logos (except the mediawiki one)
> are not under a free license.
>
>
>
> --
> geni
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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

[teun spaans]

On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 12:41 AM, MZMcBride  wrote:

> >>Hello --
>
> >>Some of the people posting to this mailing list don't seem to understand
> how
> to write a decent, readable reply to a mailing list thread.

 Yes, but the opinion on what makes a readable reply may differ from person
to person.

>>This makes for far more noise than signal,

True


> >>as people wade through six copies of the
> foundation-l footer

 Footers should of course be kept brief and to the point, else they become
irritating.. Our current footer can probably be reduced to 1 or 2 lines.

>>or eight old and irrelevant replies trying to find the
> content of the reply to the previous message.
>
> Good practice imho is to leave only the previous text, but delete all text
before the previous message.
This is easiest when people use top-line posting. But I must confess that I
have not always done that in the past.


> >>The Toolserver wiki has a fantastic page that explains how to reply to a
>
>>mailing list thread the Right Way.[1] If you suspect you've been Doing It
>
>>Wrong, please have a read.
>
See my reply further down.

>
> >>Thanks!
>
> >>MZMcBride
>
> >>[1] https://wiki.toolserver.org/view/Mailing_list_etiquette
> Thank you for providing the link. I think this policy must be discussed, as
> many people will prefer top-line posting, as shown by its popularity on this
> mailing list.. Inline posting, as demonstrated by this reply, may well
> obscure the orginal message.
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] clicking on links

[teun spaans]

Glad someone brings this up.

There are some longstanding questions that I have about wiki(p/m)edia usage
by NON-wiki(p/m)edians (called wikipedians from here on).
I regard a wikipedian as someone who is registered and logged in, and a
non-wikipedian as someone who is not logged in.
That is a choice, something can be said to regard people who are registered
and logged in but never edited anything as non wikipedians, but the
definition above is a bit simpler.

Some questions:
- Where do they non-wikipedians from? Google, favourites/bookmarks?
- How do search? Do they use the search box, or do they arrive from google
and use google for their search?
- Do non-wikipedians use the search box or do they use out internal
hyperlinks?
- How many pages do they visit on average before they find what they are
looking for? And what is the spread?
- Do they use categories for navigation? Or are categories just a hobby or
tool of wikipedians? If they use the categories for navigation, to what
extend?
- Do non wikipedians use the interlanguage links, and to what extend?
- and no doubt others will be able to contribute even more questions.

Non-wikipedians in a sense are our "customers", and to make wikipedia as
useful as possible, i believe we should learn about their behaviour on
wikipedia.

live long and prosper
teun spaans



On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 9:20 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:

> http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOrigins.htm
>
> Well, if I'm interpreting this correctly, then nearly 90% of our hits
> come from people following internal links, so somebody must be
> clicking on them! However, you do make a good point: we have done
> studies watching how people edit, we haven't done any (to the best of
> my knowledge) watching how they read. Perhaps we should.
>
> On 20 April 2010 20:11, Amir E. Aharoni 
> wrote:
> > There was lately a lot of research about making Wikipedia's usability
> better
> > for editing.
> >
> > Is there any research about the way in which Wikipedia's Actual Readers
> use
> > hyperlinks in Wikipedia, both internal and external?
> >
> > I am wondering about it, because you know, we have Manual of Style for
> > internal and external links, essays about the pros and cons of red links,
> > bots that remove over-linking etc. - yet time after time i meet Actual
> > Readers that tell me that they didn't understand a word in an article,
> even
> > though this word was linked to a good article that explained its meaning.
> > But they didn't click it and because of that they gave up on
> understanding
> > the whole article.
> >
> > If One Stupid Reader would tell me such a thing, i wouldn't mind, but
> Many
> > Clever Readers told me that. Did anyone try to think about it deeply?
> >
> > --
> > אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> > Amir Elisha Aharoni
> >
> > http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> >
> > "We're living in pieces,
> > I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
> > ___
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] MMORPG and Wikimedia

[teun spaans]

Gerard,

this statement surprises me.
Why was the foundation involved in the localization of Freecol, a game with
little or no historic information (compared with other historic games such
as europa universalis)?

kind regards,
Teun

On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 11:05 PM, Gerard Meijssen
wrote:

> Hoi,
> When you consider the Wikimedia movement to include translatewiki.net, we
> have already connections with games. We localise Freecol. While not
> everybody likes virtual realities, many do. As there is always a good
> reason
> to say no, there is typically also a good reason to say yes. I would
> welcome
> the suggestion that we branch out to alternative ways of involving people.
> We are about bringing knowledge to everyone, virtual reality is as valid an
> approach as for instance facebook.
> Thanks,
>   GerardM
>
> On 6 May 2010 20:00, Milos Rancic  wrote:
>
> > On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 7:40 PM, geni  wrote:
> > > Doubtful. Why a few turn based and real time strategy have
> > > historically spread information MMORPGs have not. Freeciv might be a
> > > better target if you want to try that.
> >
> > The point is that this is an engine for virtual reality, while it is
> > MMORPG, too. And unlike Second Life, the platform is free software
> > which anyone would be able to install. Integrating Wikimedia projects
> > into this framework should be priority as in five to ten years, this
> > will be the most dominant form of using Internet.
> >
> > ___
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] The Fox Article

[teun spaans]

Would it stand any chance to file against Foxnews for slaunder?
It seems they are also actively approaching organizations who donated
support to wikimedia.

teun

On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 5:54 AM, Techman224 wrote:

> It seems like Fox News can't get enough. Fox News has a history of being
> the opposite of its so-called "fair and balance" reporting. I think that
> they went too far with saying that“Wikipedia’s continued interest in
> child sexual exploitation is troubling not only because the site hosts some
> questionable images, but because it can easily serve as a gateway to other
> sites containing child pornography,"
>
> I'm pretty sure 100% that Wikimedia doesn't support child porn in any way,
> plus these images are art that were created so long also they are in public
> domain, and if they were child porn, they would be removed already.
> I also know that Erik Möller does not support child porn. If he did, he
> wouldn't be at the foundation right now.
>
> Fox News went too far with this, and they should actually investigate the
> story before making accusations. Fox News is biased.
>
> Techman224
>
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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

[teun spaans]

Adam,

could you please continue existing discussions instead of creating new ones
again and again?

kind regards
teun spaans

On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 11:19 PM, Adam Cuerden  wrote:

> (Sorry, ignore the last two sentences - they're left over from a previous
> draft)
>
> On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 10:18 PM, Adam Cuerden  wrote:
> > Mr. Godwin, are you aware that, before Jimbo acted unilaterally, that
> > a discussion of policy had been opened by him, and was proceeding
> > towards something that had reasonable support, based on the legal
> > issues that he implied were the source  of his hurry to do something.
> >
> > That was derailed by his actions, which also completely ignored the
> > evolving community decision, and has been completely derailed as it
> > turns out completely different motives (Public relations) were, in
> > fact, the real ones.
> >
> > If you want policy discussions, first regain the trust of the
> > community Jimbo lied to in what turned out to be a sham effort to
> > develop a consensus policy about the reporting issues for photographic
> > and filmed pornography.
> >
> > After actively deceiving us as to the reasons for a policy discussion,
> > Jimbo needs dealt with, and someone we can trust to play fair and give
> > us the actual reasons - and who won't pretend to be cooperating on
> > building policy, then ignore every single bit of community consensus -
> > because community consensus came down hard on the side of keeping
> > artworks - before we can go back to trying to restart a policy
> > discussion which began with active deceit of the community, first off
> > as to the reasons, and secondly, that it was a discussion.
> >
> >
> > We now are told this is a free speech issue.
> >
> > So what policy
> >
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Potential ICRA labels for Wikipedia

[teun spaans]

Dear Derk-jan,

As for 1), I think youtube can be compared in populairity and size with
wikipedia, and in videos surpasses commons.
Youtube enables its visitors to tag videos as adult.
see for example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA22WSVlCZ4

kind regards,
Teun Spaans



On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 3:24 PM, Derk-Jan Hartman wrote:

> This message is CC'ed to other people who might wish to comment on this
> potential approach
> ---
>
> Dear reader at FOSI,
>
> As a member of the Wikipedia community and the community that develops the
> software on which Wikipedia runs, I come to you with a few questions.
> Over the past years Wikipedia has become more and more popular and
> omnipresent. This has led to enormous problems, because for the first time,
> a largely uncensored system has to work in the boundaries of a world that is
> largely censored. For libraries and schools this means that they want to
> provide Wikipedia and its related projects to their readers, but are
> presented with the problem of what some people might consider, information
> that is not "child-safe". They have several options in that case, either
> blocking completely or using context aware filtering software that may make
> mistakes, that can cost some of these institutions their funding.
>
> Similar problems are starting to present themselves in countries around the
> world, differing views about sexuality between northern and southern europe
> for instance. Add to that the censoring of images of Muhammad, Tiananman
> square, the Nazi Swastika, and a host of other problems. Recently there has
> been concern that all this all-out-censoring of content by parties around
> the world is damaging the education mission of the Wikipedia related
> projects because so many people are not able to access large portions of our
> content due to a small (think 0.01% ) part of our other content.
>
> This has led some people to infer that perhaps it is time to rate the
> content of Wikipedia ourselves, in order to facilitate external censoring of
> material, hopefully making the rest of our content more accessible.
> According to statements around the web ICRA ratings are probably the most
> widely supported rating by filtering systems. Thus we were thinking of
> adding autogenerated ICRA RDF tags to each individual page describing the
> rating of the page and the images contained within them. I have a few
> questions however, both general and technical.
>
> 1: If I am correctly informed, Wikipedia would be the first website of this
> size to label their content with ratings, is this correct?
> 2: How many content filters understand the RDF tags
> 3: How many of those understand multiple labels and path specific labeling.
> This means: if we rate the path of images included on the page different
> from the page itself, do filters block the entire content, or just the
> images ? (Consider the Virgin Killer album cover on the Virgin Killer
> article, if you are aware of that controversial image
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Killer)
> 4: Do filters understand per page labeling ? Or do they cache the first RDF
> file they encounter on a website and use that for all other pages of the
> website ?
> 5: Is there any chance the vocabulary of ICRA can be expanded with new
> ratings for non-Western world sensitive issues ?
> 6: Is there a possibility of creating a separate "namespace" that we could
> potentially use for our own labels ?
>
> I hope that you can help me answer these questions, so that we may continue
> our community debate with more informed viewpoints about the possibilities
> of content rating. If you have additional suggestions for systems or
> problems that this web-property should account for, I would more than
> welcome those suggestions as well.
>
> Derk-Jan Hartman
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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

[teun spaans]

A minimalist design is a good goal to strive for. As many people do mot use
them, it may be a good cleanup of the interface. Howver, for its
afficionados the developers might create an option in the user preferences
to show all interwiki links directly instead of hiding them. Personally I
find them very useful when i got to translate things, much better then
wiktionary, both by the size of the wikis and by the accompanying text which
helps sorting out any homonym problems.

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 2:55 AM, David Gerard  wrote:

> On 5 June 2010 01:03, Howie Fung  wrote:
>
> > First, some background on the problem we're addressing and the design
> > principle that we used.  Every situation is unique, but in the case of
> > the interwikilinks, we believe the sheer number of language links,
> > especially within the context of an information-heavy page, makes users
> > "numb" to the list.  When people see large collections of things, they
> > tend to group them all together as one object and not identify the
> > individual parts that make the whole.
>
>
> "We believe" = no data, then?
>
> In a list of language links, people will immediately notice the one
> that they can read: their own language, i.e. the one they're looking
> for.
>
>
> >  While we did not explicitly test for this
> > during our usability studies (e.g., it wasn't included as a major design
> > question), we did exercise judgement in identifying this as a problem,
> > based partly on the applying the above design principle to the site,
> > partly on the data.
>
>
> You've just said it was on "judgement" and *not at all* on any data.
>
>
> > Thank you for your input.
>
>
> This is implemented in each wiki's [[MediaWiki:vector.css]]. As such,
> if a wiki votes to reverse this interface change, and your proposed
> "compromise" solution - will they be able to do so, or will the
> Foundation impose the change upon them regardless? i.e., is this
> content control by the WMF? I ask based on the preremptory tone used
> by Trevor Parscal in reverting the original change.
>
>
> - d.
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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

[teun spaans]

The Catholic church is not identical to the Roman Catholic church, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_%28disambiguation%29

live long and prosper,
Teun Spaans

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 10:28 PM, Gerard Meijssen
wrote:

> Hoi,
> The Catholic church is not the same as the Vatican. It is not even the
> hierarchy of the Vatican. It is only the head office. Given the large
> amount
> of elderly men, guarded by beautifully dressed highly dedicated Swiss young
> men, given that they are a law onto themselves, they easily qualify.
> Thanks,
>GerardM
>
> On 8 June 2010 19:19, Steven Walling  wrote:
>
> > "Wikipedia makes the Vatican look like a coffee clatch"
> >
> > They're saying we're so cliquish that we make the Vatican look like a
> > casual
> > coffee work party, not that we are one. Still a mixed metaphor though,
> > considering the Catholic Church hardly meets the definition of a cult.
> >
> > Steven Walling
> >
> > On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 8:05 AM, Aphaia  wrote:
> >
> > > Of course we don't. As far as I learn from my Wikimania participation,
> > > Wikipedian's preferences go rather to beer, not dull caffeine.
> > >
> > > /me ducks
> > >
> > > On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 11:43 PM, Bod Notbod 
> wrote:
> > > >> "For internecine intrigue and power struggles, the Wikipedia makes
> the
> > > >> Vatican look like a coffee clatch.
> > > >
> > > > I had zero idea what a "coffee clatch" was or is. Google tells me it
> > > > should probably be "klatch".
> > > >
> > > > And it is "A casual social gathering for coffee and conversation".
> > > >
> > > > Well, I could only agree with that if you say any workplace is a
> > > > coffee klatch. People converse. People drink coffee. But they do work
> > > > at the same time.
> > > >
> > > > I don't think you become one of the top ten websites in the world,
> > > > raise millions of dollars each year, by drinking caffeine and
> > > > chatting.
> > > >
> > > > User:Bodnotbod.
> > > >
> > > > ___
> > > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > Unsubscribe:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > KIZU Naoko
> > > http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese)
> > > Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD
> > >
> > > ___
> > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >
> > ___
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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

[teun spaans]

IBMs decision to get rid of all internal communication sounds to me as a
very good practice for us.
It also fits in well with the wikipedia culture of consensus in decision
making.

Following this comm. strategy involves the large volunteer community, and
taps on the vast knowledge of our community.

thank you, Aryeh, for bringing this up.
teun


> It's not specific to Wikimedia, it's practically universal in
> open-source development.  To get it to happen, you need pushing from
> the top: formally stating it as part of people's job duties (so they
> don't feel they have to do "real work" instead), and forcing them to
> engage by only giving them public media to discuss things in with
> their co-workers.  I recall reading that IBM improved its
> participation in the Linux kernel community by getting rid of all
> internal communications among its kernel developers, meaning they had
> to use the public project lists to bounce ideas off anyone.
>
> It's also worth pointing out that a good way *not* to engage with the
> community is to not touch preexisting code that volunteers are
> familiar with.  All the Usability Initiative stuff was created
> separately: a new skin, and all other functionality in extensions.
> There's mostly no technical reason for this; at least some could have
> been integrated with the existing code.  Putting most of your code in
> a directory called "UsabilityInitiative" is a good way of signaling
> "this is ours, not yours", whether that was the intent or not.  If it
> had touched code that volunteers were familiar with, they would have
> been more engaged from the start, because they'd have stronger
> opinions on the changes and no presumption that they shouldn't touch
> it.
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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

[teun spaans]

The community of each wiki can decide which illustrations are best for
a certain article, true.

Using foundation resources (banner, cpu, bandwidth) to campaign
against other foundation projects should be avoided.
Protest against decisions of WMF is one thing, lobbying against a
whole WMF project is something else.

On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 8:19 PM, Prodego  wrote:
> Talking about the inclusion of different images is beside the point. Each
> project can, and does, decide what content is appropriate for it. You could
> call this selection "censorship", although it is very much an editorial
> decision that anyone writing anything must make. If a particular wiki
> decides not to show some particular image then so be it. There is no problem
> with what consensus on different wikis decides, be that about article
> wording, image inclusion, style guidelines... The only problem I see is that
> the main page of a WMF site being used to make a statement about another
> site (which happens to also be a WMF site). This I do not consider to be
> acceptable. It is outside the scope of  "the growth, development and
> distribution of free, multilingual content" that the WMF claims to be about.
> Regardless of if acewiki has a problem with another site, they should not be
> using the main page of Wikipedia to air their grievances.
>
> Prodego
>
>

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

Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content

[teun spaans]

You have my sympathy to - no matter what the outcome is, some if not
many people will label it censorship, directly or indirectly. "We dont
censor" has been an standard argument so far in any attempt to
regulate upload of images or discussion of features that some people
obviously want.

kind regards
Teun Spaans

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

Re: [Foundation-l] Discussion Questions for Potentially-Objectionable Content

[teun spaans]

Hi Excirial,

I think I am completely factual. After I wrote this, I went to the
questionlist and found the cry "we dont censor" in one of the
reactions. Which proves my point, I think. You yourself use that term
in your email.
Personally i find labeling your opponents view as "censorship " a way
of calling names, as one associates your opponents view as something
no one wants to be associated with.

Btw, you might want to read my reaction on the questions, I dont think
are proposed ideas very far apart. Or did you read my remarks there
already and made them part of your ideas?

kind regards,
Teun Spaans


On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 9:10 PM, Excirial  wrote:
> *You have my sympathy to - no matter what the outcome is, some if not many
> people will label it censorship, directly or indirectly. "We dont censor"
> has been an standard argument so far in any attempt to
> regulate upload of images or discussion of features that some people
> obviously want.*
>
> Come come, be fair here, this is a two-side issue. What you say is
> absolutely correct - but the other side of the coin are the editors who have
> screamed ""Intentionally offensive!", "Biased!" and "Morality and
> responsibility" as a response to any image kept, with equal attempts to hide
> the fact that they simply dislike a single image (but cannot say that). Both
> sides are to blame for the current situation we have, and the problem is
> that it is nearly impossible to compromise on this issue since there is no
> middle ground where each side gives in a bit (Its either everything or
> nothing).
>
> I'm strongly supporting the "No censorship" camp, and as of such i am
> against any wiki-wide measures that would make content unavailable, with the
> argument that people can choose whether or not to look at offensive content,
> but people cannot choose to look at content that others deem offensive if it
> isn't included. I would, however, strongly support a system that gives users
> a choice to censor if they wish. It should be possible to categorize commons
> in such a way that certain images can be blocked. For example, a user might
> choose to block "images of Muhammad", while allowing surgery related images
> (Others might swap there if they wish).
>
> The advantage would be that each user can decide for himself if he doesn't
> want to see something, rather then being forced to change this wiki-wide. It
> may be difficult to implement such a system for IP users, but it should be
> possible to accomplish. It should solve the issue where people don't want to
> see something. Of course we still have the issue where people don't want
> others to see certain content, but well - save for removing everything that
> group can never be appeased anyway (And same for people who would argue that
> even offering the option to filter is inherently bad).
>
> ~Excirial
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 8:31 PM, teun spaans  wrote:
>
>> You have my sympathy to - no matter what the outcome is, some if not
>> many people will label it censorship, directly or indirectly. "We dont
>> censor" has been an standard argument so far in any attempt to
>> regulate upload of images or discussion of features that some people
>> obviously want.
>>
>> kind regards
>> Teun Spaans
>>
>> ___
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

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

Re: [Foundation-l] Pre-wikis vs. maturing Wikipedia: taking away dedicated editors?

[teun spaans]

* They have to do lots of original research; it is impossible
 to follow development of the railway infrastructure and
 operations using only high quality published sources;

* They got bitten a bit by the "notability" discussions in their
 field; they want to document every track, every junction
 and every locomotive and they are tired of discussing
 how "notable" a particular piece of railway equipment
 really is.


Notability discussion seem to spring up on every wiki, and often seem to
lead to very heated discussions. The question of notability is also somehow
tied to reliable published sources. I remember a discussion where an
article on a game with >20 milllion players was removed because of lack of
appropriate sources.

Imho it is good that we do have rules on notability - we dont want to have
every wikipedian describe his entire family - but every rule seems to have
its quirks.

On the dutch wiki i recently encountered a discussion on notability of
Tolkien articles. Fans are describing every corner of the Tolkien world,
but in this discussion the notability of beetle species, plant species and
chess openings was also raised. Personally I don't mind too much about
notability - if the stuff seems relevant enough for a specialized paper
encyclopedia, i feel it's worth including it in a wikipedia.

''Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free
access to the sum of all human knowledge''

I wish you health and happiness
Teun Spaans
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] EFF & Bitcoins

[teun spaans]

On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 2:18 AM, Alec Conroy  wrote:

> On  Bitcoin--  we (and the web in general) desperately need a
> zero-overhead micropayment system of some kind.
>

Both wikimedia and the web could indeed use a free micropayment system very
well. It doesn' t need to be bitcoin as a currency, and it doesn' t need to
be bitcoin  as a payment system.

Free payments, that is, payments weher no fee is deducted for the processing
of the payment, would probably make a hugh difference for wikimedia and
donation driven websites and institutions. An added bonus for the usage of
bitcoins is that there is no controlling power. The US government was able
to have shut down virtual all payments to wikileaks, and other institutions
might in the future suffer the same fate.
Mind you, I'm not against the USA, against governments, or against
government regulation of financial markets, but it would be good for freedom
if 1 government can not single handedly block all funding - worldwide.

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

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

[teun spaans]

The number of 3 million surpises me.  Common hosts about 10 million items.
Are you certain this amount is approximately correct?



On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 8:40 PM, Geoff Brigham wrote:

> Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed an amicus
> ("friends of the court") brief in Golan v. Holder, a case of great
> importance before the Supreme Court that will affect our understanding of
> the public domain for years to come.  See
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_v._Holder.  The EFF is representing the
> Wikimedia Foundation in addition to the American Association of Libraries,
> the Association of College and Research Libraries, the Association of
> Research Libraries, the University of Michigan Dean of Libraries, and the
> Internet Archive.
>
> This case raises critical issues as to whether Congress may withdraw works
> from the public domain and throw them back under a copyright regime.  In
> 1994, in response to the U.S. joining of the Berne Convention, Congress
> granted copyright protection to a large body of foreign works that the
> Copyright Act had previously placed in the public domain.  Affected
> cultural
> goods probably number in the millions, including, for example, Metropolis
> (1927), The Third Man (1949), Prokofiev's Peter in the Wolf, music by
> Stravinsky, paintings by Picasso, drawings by M.C. Escher, films by
> Fellini,
> Hitchcock, and Renoir, and writings by George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, and
> J.R.R. Tolkien.
>
> The petitioners are orchestra conductors, educators, performers, film
> archivists, and motion picture distributors who depend upon the public
> domain for their livelihood.  They filed suit in 2001, pointing out that
> Congress exceeded its power under the Copyright Clause and the First
> Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.  They eventually won at the district
> court level, but that decision was overturned on appeal in the Tenth
> Circuit.   The U.S. Supreme Court - which rarely grants review - did so
> here.
>
> Petitioners filed their brief last week, and you can find it here:
> http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/6684.  We are expecting a number of
> parties to file "friends of the court" briefs.   The EFF's brief can be
> found here:  http://www.eff.org/cases/golan-v-holder .
>
> The Wikimedia Foundation joined the EFF brief in light of the tremendously
> important role that the public domain plays in our mission to "collect and
> develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain,
> and to disseminate it effectively and globally."  We host millions of works
> in the public domain and are dependent on thousands of volunteers to search
> out and archive these works.  Wikimedia Commons alone boasts approximately
> 3
> million items in these cultural commons.  To put it bluntly, Congress
> cannot
> be permitted the power to remove such works from the public domain whenever
> it finds it suitable to do so.  It is not right - legally or morally.   The
> Copyright Clause expressly requires limits on copyright terms.  The First
> Amendment disallows theft from the creative commons.  Such works belong to
> our global knowledge.  For this reason, we join with the EFF and many
> others
> to encourage the Court to overturn a law that so threatens our public
> domain
> - not only with respect to the particular works at issue but also with
> respect to the bad precedent such a law would set for the future.
>
> We anticipate the Court will reach a decision sometime before July 2012.
>
>
> --
> Geoff Brigham
> General Counsel
> Wikimedia Foundation
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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

[teun spaans]

Thank you, Ryan.

I did a quick check. The count for that Template:PD-Layout is indeed some
3.3 million.
I went to commons, and looked up the Template:PD-Layout. I think the correct
link is: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-Layout.
Then I looked up the lionk: What links here. The first one was:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Death_of_Hyacinthos.gif
According to the description, the author is Artist Jean
Broc<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Jean_Broc>(1771–1850) [image:
Link back to Creator infobox
template]<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Creator:Jean_Broc>
With a death of the author in 1850, that seems to me to be outside the scope
of this law. Though this is just one example, it indicates that the count
may be too generous.

Just to have an indication of the size, i went through the first 5 of the
links:
File:Chinese_opera051.jpg : 19th century drawing of Chinese opera, public
domain from en wiki
File:Alicebeggar.png : Description *English:* "Alice Pleasance
Liddell<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Liddell>as a beggar girl."
This was first published in Carroll's biography by his
nephew: Collingwood, Stuart Dodgson (1898).
File:LocatieRotterdam.png : This work has been released into the *public
domain <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:public_domain>* by its author,
*Mtcv<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Mtcv>
*. This applies worldwide.
File:AliceSilvy.png: Date 1861
None of these 5 seem to qualify as fitting into the gap of death of the
author between 50 and 70 years ago, though for File:Alicebeggar.png and
File:AliceSilvy.png: this is not 100% sure - if the artist was 20 years old
in 1861, and became 91, he died in 1942, just 69 years ago.
It looks to me that the template PD-Layout is too general. And a count of
PD-old gives just 17K.

kind regards,
Teun Spaans


On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 12:02 AM, Ryan Kaldari wrote:

> It's based on the template transclusion count here:
>
> http://toolserver.org/~jarry/templatecount/index.php?lang=commons&name=Template%3APD-Layout#bottom<http://toolserver.org/%7Ejarry/templatecount/index.php?lang=commons&name=Template%3APD-Layout#bottom>
>
> Ryan Kaldari
>
> On 6/23/11 1:01 PM, teun spaans wrote:
> > The number of 3 million surpises me.  Common hosts about 10 million
> items.
> > Are you certain this amount is approximately correct?
> >
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 8:40 PM, Geoff Brigham >wrote:
> >
> >> Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed an amicus
> >> ("friends of the court") brief in Golan v. Holder, a case of great
> >> importance before the Supreme Court that will affect our understanding
> of
> >> the public domain for years to come.  See
> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_v._Holder.  The EFF is representing
> the
> >> Wikimedia Foundation in addition to the American Association of
> Libraries,
> >> the Association of College and Research Libraries, the Association of
> >> Research Libraries, the University of Michigan Dean of Libraries, and
> the
> >> Internet Archive.
> >>
> >> This case raises critical issues as to whether Congress may withdraw
> works
> >> from the public domain and throw them back under a copyright regime.  In
> >> 1994, in response to the U.S. joining of the Berne Convention, Congress
> >> granted copyright protection to a large body of foreign works that the
> >> Copyright Act had previously placed in the public domain.  Affected
> >> cultural
> >> goods probably number in the millions, including, for example,
> Metropolis
> >> (1927), The Third Man (1949), Prokofiev's Peter in the Wolf, music by
> >> Stravinsky, paintings by Picasso, drawings by M.C. Escher, films by
> >> Fellini,
> >> Hitchcock, and Renoir, and writings by George Orwell, Virginia Woolf,
> and
> >> J.R.R. Tolkien.
> >>
> >> The petitioners are orchestra conductors, educators, performers, film
> >> archivists, and motion picture distributors who depend upon the public
> >> domain for their livelihood.  They filed suit in 2001, pointing out that
> >> Congress exceeded its power under the Copyright Clause and the First
> >> Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.  They eventually won at the district
> >> court level, but that decision was overturned on appeal in the Tenth
> >> Circuit.   The U.S. Supreme Court - which rarely grants review - did so
> >> here.
> >>
> >> Petitioners filed their brief last week, and you can find it here:
> >> http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/6684.  We are expecting a number of
> >> parties to fil

Re: [Foundation-l] Blackout at Italian Wikipedia

[teun spaans]

Isn't this premature? As I understand, the law is still being discussed, not
yet in affect.

On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 9:37 PM, Theo10011  wrote:

> For those not following, Italian Wikipedia went into lockdown a while ago.
> All content and pages direct to the notice.
>
> http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Comunicato_4_ottobre_2011
>
> Regards
> Theo
>
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Given that we have won, can we turn Italian Wikipedia back on now?

[teun spaans]

As I understand, the change has only been proposed.

Possibly another interesting issue will develop: the italian wiki was
discontinued by a short vote or poll. I suppose the most democratric way to
terminate it would be another vote or poll. How are they gonna have that
poll if they locked themselves out?

Teun


On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 6:27 AM, Jimmy Wales  wrote:

> http://www.linkiesta.it/wikipedia-law
>
> It'd be nice to have Italian Wikipedia back up as people are waking up
> in Italy.
>
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] News from Germany: White Bags and thinking about a fork

[teun spaans]

I completely agree :)

On Sat, Oct 22, 2011 at 11:23 PM, Nikola Smolenski wrote:

> On Sat, 2011-10-22 at 21:16 +0100, David Gerard wrote:
> > "Both the opinion poll itself and its proposal were accepted. In
> > contrary to the decision of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia
> > Foundation, personal image filters should not be introduced in
> > German-speaking wikipedia and categories for these filters may not be
> > created for files locally stored on this wikipedia. 260 of 306 users
> > (84.97 percent) accepted the poll as to be formally valid. 357 of 414
> > users (86.23 percent) do not agree to the introduction of a personal
> > image filter and categories for filtering in German wikipedia."
>
> I wanted to say this for a long time, and now seems like a good
> opportunity. I see this as a tyranny of the majority. I understand that
> a large majority of German Wikipedia editors are against the filter. But
> even if 99.99% of editors are against the filter, well, it is opt-in and
> they don't have to use it. But why would they prevent me from using it,
> if I want to use it?
>
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Agreement between WMF and O'Reilly Media about Wikipedia: The Missing Manual on Wikipedia?

[teun spaans]

Hi Gerard,

pls remain polite and dont call names.

teun

On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 11:24 AM, Gerard Meijssen  wrote:

> Hoi,
> You are out of your mind. The author of the book, a respected Wikipedian,
> can relicense it to anything he likes.
> Thanks,
>  GerardM
>
> 2009/1/28 geni 
>
> > 2009/1/28 Michael Peel :
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > The author of Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, John Broughton, has just
> > > uploaded the book to Wikipedia under the GFDL, see:
> > >
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Wikipedia:_The_Missing_Manual
> > >
> > > My reaction when I spotted this was: great, but shouldn't this be on
> > > Wikibooks? Part of the author's response to this was that "the
> > > agreement between O'Reilly Media and the Wikimedia Foundation was
> > > that this would be at /Wikipedia/ ... [do] not remove it from this
> > > site without a /lot/ more discussion among a /lot/ of other people."
> > >
> > > Did the WMF really make an agreement saying that the content should
> > > be on Wikipedia, rather than a WMF project or simply under a free
> > > license?
> > >
> > > Does anyone want to weigh in with comments on this on the talk page?
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > Mike Peel
> >
> > Copyright issues mean that it will be heading for deletio n once we
> > switch toi CC-BY-SA-3.0.
> >
> >
> > --
> > geni
> >
> > ___
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] dumps

[teun spaans]

A dump with just the article namespace would be grossly incomplete.

Much important information about the validity of the contents is on the
discussion pages. But not only there. Other discussions on articles have
been held on user talk pages. Missing these out would greatly hamper any
judgement on the validity of the articles.

teun spaans

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 8:35 PM, Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) <
newyorkb...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm not familiar with the details of the data dump process, so I can't
> comment on whether it's broken or not.
>
> However, one question that I have is whether the dump includes, or should
> conclude, all namespaces, or only articles.  In the past, there have
> allegedly been instances in which database dumps have been utilized for
> purposes such as harvesting oversighted edits in userspace and utilizing
> the
> information for purposes of harassment.  I am not sure whether there is
> value to providing dumps of other than the content spaces.  Comments?
>
> Newyorkbrad
>
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] South Korean Government's regulations on real name for Internet

[teun spaans]

"oncurrently April 1 is when the amendment to South Korea’s Act on the
Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and User
Protection will go into effect".
That date smells ;-)

On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 6:53 AM, RYU Cheol  wrote:

> According to this post,
>
> http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com/2009/03/google-korea-youtube-korea-to-begin.html
> ,
>
> "Google, the world’s largest Internet company, has finally submitted
> to South Korea‘s unprecedented Internet regulations, including
> agreeing to implement a “real name” system in which any South Korean
> can post their contents only after they confirm their resident
> registration number."
>
> Wikipedia have to response to this regulation.
>
> Any site which has more than 100,000 visitors for a day have to
> implement real name system according to the regulation.
> We have to check the number of visitors from South Korea. If we have
> more than that, we have to decide if we will allow editing or not from
> South Korea.
>
> It's a serious challenge for Wikipedia.
>
> -Cheol
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia tracks user behaviour via third party companies #2

[teun spaans]

I don't think that "any random admin on one of the projects should be able
to insert a web bug into
Common.js" is what he suggests. The Hungarian situation seems to have been
in place with support of the hungarian community, at least at start.

Frankly,  I'd rather see private sensitive data on an external server ran by
a couple of wiki volunteers, than on an external server ran by a contracted
3rd party supplier.

i wish you well,
teun

On Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 5:08 AM, Brian  wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 8:46 PM, Samuel Klein  wrote:
>
> > Peter said that he could run whatever was being done on an external
> > server on a WMF machine that [core] developers have access to.  What
> > does this have to do with being Foundation staff?
>
>
> He is trying rationalize his previous behavior by stating that he thinks
> any
> random admin on one of the projects should be able to insert a web bug into
> Common.js that logs user data to a non foundation server.
>
> I'm not sure what keywords to use but I seem to recall this issue coming up
> a couple of years ago (this exact case). At any rate it seems that he was
> aware of the controversy from the beginning.
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Issues about Copyright

[teun spaans]

IANAL, but I suppose three things must be considered:
- US law, where the servers are based
- the country where a work originates
- the country to which the wikipedian belongs.

The US Laws will have to be followed as far as copyright is concerned, as
the servers are in the US.

The second thing is the country where a work originates. For example, in
Germany there is panoramafreiheit, in some other countries there is not.
When I make a photo in Germany, I can only publish that photo when i make it
from a public raoad. German law does not grant me copyright on pictures of
copyrighted items inside a museum/garden/house. When I am in Italy,
different rules for my photos apply.

As a dutch citizen, I must also comply with Dutch law. There are not very
many differences between Dutch and US copyright laws, but there are some. I
can not recall them now.

In addition to copyright law, there may be other laws to consider. For
example, if the publication if Hitlers Mein kampf is forbidden, I will not
upload that text to wikibooks. I will leave that to someone else.

i wish you well,
teun spaans

On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 5:38 AM, Jimmy Xu  wrote:

> Hello all,
>  These days at the Village Pump of zhwiki, many wikipedians are
> arguing about whether Wikimedia project should apply to the US
> Copyright Law that is where the servers were placed, or the local
> ones, for us, that is the P.R. of China Copyright Law. These thread
> came from a disagreement of fair-use text of news in article, so I'm
> willing to find some (kind of) official resolution. Thanks a lot.
>
> jimmy_xu_...@zhwiki
> 06/25/2009
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Article: Public Domain Art in an Age of Easier Mechanical Reproducibility (Sage Ross)

[teun spaans]

"the fact of the matter is that it is not the author that benefits from
copyright"

unfounded and untrue.

I wish you health and true happiness.
teun

On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 5:55 PM, Gerard Meijssen
wrote:

> Hoi,
> I had a read of the first one. While it is nice that there is an
> understanding that copyright has to do with authorship, the fact of the
> matter is that it is not the author that benefits from copyright. This is
> best understood in the way they define the types of copyright:
> *commercial
> *scholarly
>
> In this way it is forgotten that there is research by people who are none
> of
> the above. In this duopoly it is easy to give to companies what should not
> be theirs in the first place.
> Thanks,
> GerardM
>
> 2009/7/13 Klaus Graf 
>
> > There are much morer statements than by Hamma and Hirtle, see:
> >
> > http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/5405864/
> > http://hangingtogether.org/?p=692
> >
> > Klaus Graf
> >
> > ___
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Wikispecies

[teun spaans]

Dear Klaus,

You refer to http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Gnom/Wikispecies, which
refers to Wikispecies:Village pump/Archive 24092005, a page which has been
deleted. The discussion on
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:L%C3%B6schkandidaten/11._September_2006#Wikispecies_.28gel.C3.B6scht.29refers
to a page on the german wiki, not to wikispecies. So I doubt you have
a point with 4 old references. From your references I also dont see a
permanent boycot of wikispecis by the german community, though

Personally i would not shed a tear when wikispecies is shredded, its
information is usually outdated - if present. And then I am not speaking
about the support of multiple taxonomies. Commons does (see for example
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cyclamen).
Imho wikispecies has a number of problems:
* It is text based, not db-structure based.
* Allthough often references are given at the bottom of a page, it is not
clear what is coming from what. See for example
http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Aspidytidae.
* Some species even have no reference at all, for example
http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ateles_paniscus
* Some referenced sources are not scientific publications.
* The target audience is not clear: scientific researcher? student?
interested laymen?
* Allthough I feel high respect for the people working at species,
information is soon outdated in this field. I feel sincere doubts about ever
being able to maintain a project like this by a limited number of volunteers
without substantial support from the scientific community.

For these reasons I would support a closure vote at meta.

kind regards,
teun spaans


On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 2:18 PM, Klaus Graf wrote:

> I cannot understand why WMF is unable to terminate Wikispecies which
> is a zero quality project. See
>
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Gnom/Wikispecies (also in English)
>
> Klaus Graf
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Projekt: OpenCritics (let's free subjective content, too!!)

[teun spaans]

This sounds like a good initiative. Wikimedia foundation favours neutral,
factual content, so the initiative is an addition in the area of open
licenses.

The only question which your statement here raises is why you limit yourself
to reviews. Imho there might be a considerable market area for people who
have opinions to voice on politics, religion, etc.

kind regards,
teun spaans

On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 12:52 PM, Georg von Zimmermann <
g.v.zimmerm...@evelope.de> wrote:

> Dear “Wikipedians”,
>
> please allow us to introduce a project we have been working on for
> about a year now:
>
> Explaining the importance of the open-source movement for a free
> internet or the importance of Wikipedia (i.e. free content in the form
> of factual knowledge) here would be like carrying coals to Newcastle.
> The question, however, is why has *subjective* open content been
> neglected so far? In the realm of user reviews and ratings we have
> pretty much forfeited to closed systems like Amazon or Ciao.
>
> That's why we created OpenCritics.com. The idea of OpenCritics is to
> develop an open platform for freely licensed reviews. Published
> reviews are then not only available for visitors of certain websites,
> e.g Amazon, Ciao, etc. but can be copied freely. This also helps
> against the trend towards internet monopolies.(Please find an
> explanation and more advantages of this on:
> http://www.opencritics.com/sp-dsp-user_idea )
>
> We started off with movie reviews; book reviews and more will follow.
> The ratings are published both on all participating websites as well
> as on OpenCritics.de (in German, other languages will follow).
>
> Who we are:
> -
>
> Our office, the development and my computer are financed by a private
> limited company. Eventually, I  would be pleased if our company could
> move into the direction of a non-profit organization and funding
> through donations. However, I do have doubts about that since this is
> even difficult for Wikipedia.
>
> The second best (realistic) alternative is to do what many
> Linux-distributors, companies like Zend etc do: The content will
> remain free and open while the project is financed by consulting and
> support for commercial users.
>
> We are still a small team, mainly in our office in Hamburg ,with very
> different backgound (juristic, webdesign, journalistic and two
> students).
>
> How to help:
> ---
>
> We are especially lacking a prominent team-member known even outside
> the world of free-internet-geeks who could help us let the little
> project rise above the attention threshold. Maybe you have an idea who
> we could contact?
>
> In the meantime we are happy about every blogentry (example:
> http://de.creativecommons.org/freiheit-fur-die-user-ratings/ [in
> German]) and  appreciate critical feedback!
>
> Kind regards
> Georg
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] A proposal of partnership between Wikimedia Foundation and Internet Archive

[teun spaans]

This looks like a solid organization. Solid in the sense that it wont
go suddenly offline.

Such links may be valuable for:
- article references to sources, in case the source goes offline
- article references to sources, in case thesource changes its content
- media copies when the source changes or removes a license

I took a look at the example in the french wiki, and didnt spot a date
in the archive reference. If the source changes its content, this may
pose a problem.

kind regards,
teun

On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 3:57 PM, emijrp  wrote:
> Hi all;
>
> I want to make a proposal about external links preservation. Many times,
> when you check an external link or a link reference, the website is dead or
> offline. This websites are important, because they are the sources for the
> facts showed in the articles. Internet Archive searches for interesting
> websites to save in their hard disks, so, we can send them our external
> links sql tables (all projects and languages of course). They improve their
> database and we always have a copy of the sources text to check when needed.
>
> I think that this can be a cool partnership.
>
> Regards,
> emijrp
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

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

Re: [Foundation-l] Pending Changes

[teun spaans]

If PC is what the german wiki has been using for some time, i think i
support its usage. Allthough it wont stop vandalism, it expect it does
greatly reduce it, allowing the volunteers to spend their time in a
more useful way. Imho it is working pretty well on the german wiki.
The first time i felt insulted when my changes were not live right
away (i had less than 300 edits), but they were qucikly approved and
now they are live immediately.

On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 12:37 AM, James Heilman  wrote:
> Decisions at Wikipedia are not based a vote.  The majority support
> Pending Changes and insufficient reasons have been put forwards by
> those who wish to see it quashed. I would like to thank Erik Moeller
> for the difficult discussion he has made. It is impossible to make
> everyone happy sometimes.
>
> I support PC for a number of reasons including.
>
> 1) Concerns are voiced both by academia and our readership regarding
> Wikipedia's reliability. Pending changes addresses some of these
> concerns. Thus there is a good chance that "pending changes" will not
> only increase our readership but the number of people who edit. No one
> wants to put in the work to create something good or excellent just to
> have it vandalized and left un-repaired.
>
> 2) Vandals like to see their work go "live". Pending changes stops
> this and will thus potentially decrease the entire volume of
> vandalism.  Most vandals will not be willing to pit in the effort to
> get around these measures.
>
> 3) We will have a tool to allow the world to seamlessly contribute to
> a greater part of Wikipedia. Instead of semi protecting some pages (
> and thus making it difficult for IPs to contribution ) we can use PC
> to make Wikipedia more open per our founding principles.
>
> --
> James Heilman
> MD, CCFP-EM, B.Sc.
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

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

Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

[teun spaans]

Imho the problem is much deeper than citing sources or lack of them.

The wikipedian may cite newspaper X, or even researchpaper Y, but
because he has limited inderstanding and/or knowledge about the field,
he may misinterpret the source or judge its weight in much more
absolute terms than the real expert does.

Errors may be very subtle. I have seen an edit war between a
wikipedian and an expert, where the admin protected the incorrect
version of the wikipedian against the changes made by the expert.
Motive of the admin: the changes mthis guy makes are not in wikipedia
style. And if he thinks there are any errors  he should point them
out. The expert was fed up with the situation.

Sad but true.

Having some basic knowledge of the subject, I was able to spot two of
the five errors introduced by "rewriting the text so that it is easier
to read", the other three are probably still there.

teun spaans

On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 9:14 PM,   wrote:
> In a message dated 9/20/2010 12:02:43 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
> peter.dam...@btinternet.com writes:
>
>
>> In my experience
>> the problem of humanities in Wikipedia is that the methods and training of
>>
>> the 'experts' is so fundamentally different from that of 'Wikipedians'
>> (who
>> by and large have no training at all) that disputes nearly always turn
>> ugly. >>
>>
>
> You are again stating the problem as expert vs pedestrian (untrained at
> least).
>
> However I again submit that in Wikipedia, you are not an "expert" because
> you have a credential, you are an expert because you behave like an expert.
> When challenged to provide a source, you cite your source and other readers
> find, that it does actually state what you claim it states.
>
> However it seems to me that you'd perhaps like experts to be able to make
> unchallengeable claims without sources.
>
> If I'm wrong in that last sentence, then tell me why being an expert is any
> different than being any editor at all.
>
> What is the actual procedure by which, when an expert edits, we see
> something different than when anyone edits.
>
> I can read a book on the History of the Fourth Crusade, and adds quotes to
> our articles on the persons and events, just as well as an expert in that
> specific field.
>
> The problem comes, imho, when "experts" add claims that are unsourced, and
> when challenged on them, get uppity about it.
>
> The issue is not uncited claims, or challenged claims.  All of our articles
> have uncited claims and many have challenged and yet-unfulfilled claims.
> The issue is how you are proposing these should be treated differently if the
> claim comes from an "expert" versus a "non-expert", isn't it?
>
> So address that.
>
> Will Johnson
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

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

Re: [Foundation-l] Liu Xiaobo

[teun spaans]

That word had occured to me, but I didnt dare to mention it in this
discussion as i had been "warned" here in the past about my usage of
that word here, and didnt want to be put on moderation list myself.

On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 9:44 AM, Florence Devouard  wrote:
> Censorship !
>
> :)
>
> On 10/9/10 12:35 AM, Austin Hair wrote:
>> Peter has been placed on moderation as a preventive measure.  If
>> future posts are still civil, irrespective of sanity considerations,
>> we'll let them through.
>>
>> Austin
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 11:49 PM, Peter Damian
>>   wrote:
>>> I don't know why such fuss has been made in the media about this.  Under
>>>   Chinese law, Xiaobo is a criminal who has been sentenced by Chinese
>>> judicial
>>>   departments for violating Chinese law
>>> http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/461876  His own community has delivered a
>>>   verdict upon him: he is a criminal.  He deserves 'fair treatment' no more
>>>   than the trolls who have disrupted the Wikipedia deserve so-called 'fair
>>>   treatment'.  Those who violate community norms, such as Xiaobo (in the 
>>> case
>>>   of China) or many of the disruptive elements who create havoc on the
>>> project
>>>   by their offensive comments and offsite attacks.  The Chinese government
 imposed a blackout on news of the award: quite right.  This is exactly
 what
>>>   would happen on Wikipedia, by means of blocks in article space, talk pages
>>>   and email access.  More power to the community!
>>>
>>>   Peter
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ___
>>> foundation-l mailing list
>>> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>>
>>
>> ___
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

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

Re: [Foundation-l] This is tolerated on the Wikimedia Foundation mailing list?

[teun spaans]

PA are simply NOT DONE.


On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 6:58 AM, Gerard Meijssen
 wrote:
> Hoi,
> What is unacceptable, that Greg is a dick or that he is said to be a dick?
>
> It takes a fair amount of doing to get banned on two projects and to be put
> on moderation on mailing lists. He achieved all that and he is now getting
> the accolade for his efforts.
> Thanks,
>      GerardM
>
> On 14 October 2010 19:21, Peter Damian  wrote:
>
>> This is unacceptable.  Please apologise to Greg.
>>  - Original Message -
>>  From: Gregory Kohs
>>  To: Ral315 ; Austin Hair
>>  Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2010 5:42 PM
>>  Subject: This is tolerated on the Wikimedia Foundation mailing list?
>>
>>
>>
>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-October/061603.html
>>
>>  So, it's okay to imply that I'm a dick, but I'm the one on moderation.
>>
>>  Got it.
>>
>>  Greg
>>
>>  --
>>  Gregory Kohs
>>  Cell: 302.463.1354
>> ___
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

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

Re: [Foundation-l] Should we offer to host citizendium?

[teun spaans]

I suggest that we look for ways  to help them.

That is not necessarily by doing their hosting, although i don' t oppose to
it.

There are other ways to help them, for example by using our network to find
other and cheaper hosting providers, helping them to find some friendly
organization that wants to support them, or helping to find them a sponsor.

kind regards
teun spaans

On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 8:56 AM, geni  wrote:

> Should we offer to host citizendium?
>
> Okey get over the instinctive reaction.
>
> ==The background==
> Those who have read this week's signpost will be aware that
> citizendium is in significant financial difficulties. If not see the
> end of the briefly section:
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2010-11-08/News_and_notes
>
> Now I know we haven't exactly had the best of relationships with
> citizendium but we are if not distant allies at least interested
> observers. Their mission and much of their product at this time
> coincides with ours.
>
> ==The proposal==
>
> We should offer to host citizendium on our servers at no cost for a
> period of 1 (one) year offering a level of support equivalent to our
> smaller projects. After one year the citizendium community/Editorial
> Council is expected to have sorted themselves out to the point where
> they can arrange their own hosting. At which point we lock the
> database and provide them with the dumps
>
>
> ===The pros===
>
> *It is inline with out mission
> *It wouldn't cost very much. Given their traffic levels and database
> size the cost to host would probably be lower than some of our more
> prolific image uploaders.
> *It would be possible to effectively give them instacommons
> *Citizendium is an interesting project and gives us a way to learn
> what the likely outcome of some alternative approaches would be
> *It helps with positioning the WMF as more than just wikipedia
> *It prevents the citizendium project from dying which since they have
> useful content would be unfortunate
>
> ===The cons===
> *They may still be on PostgreSQL rather than mysql which could create
> issues with compatibility
> *Some of their community are people banned from wikipedia
> *risk of looking like triumphalism over Larry (can be addressed by
> making sure jimbo is in no way involved)
> *keeping control of the relationship between the citizendium
> community/Editorial Council and the various WMF communities
> *Handing the password database back at the end of the year would need
> to be done with care.
>
>
> All in all other than the assuming we can deal with the database issue
> I think it is something we should do. The citizendium
> community/Editorial Council may well say no but at least we will have
> tried.
>
> --
> geni
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Paypal removal?

[teun spaans]

It was a matter of time before someone brought this subject up ;)

The refusal of paypal, mastercard and visa to process payments to wikileaks
is something i have watched with concern. Effectively, the victim has been
denied the acceptance of gifts and payments without any court involvement.
What this means for freedom and justice i leave to your own conclusions.

Should not any action be directed to all three or four organizations? But i
doubt anything is achieved by denying ourselves gifts.

I wish you joy and happiness,
teun spaans

On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 6:31 AM, Robert Tice  wrote:

> I suggest that use of Paypal is contraindicated due to their deliberate
> efforts to inhibit the spread of information by closing their account with
> Wikileaks.  It is inappropriate for Wiki to be associated with Paypal or
> Amazon.com.  These corporations are the opposite of what Wikipedia and
> associated entities hope to be or currently are.  Closing the account with
> Paypal will also send a message to Amazon that there are consequences to
> efforts to censor the knowledge base of humanity.
>
> Thanks for reading this.  I hope to see debate and action on this proposal.
>
> Robert T.
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Old Wikipedia backups discovered

[teun spaans]

Tim,

wonderful news!
Thank you for making them publicly available!

Of course I immediately downloaded them, and I must have a look at them
later this week. Though they are from before I became active (2003) I am
very curious if the articles in these files still exist, and how much they
changed.

teun spaans




On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 4:54 PM, Tim Starling wrote:

> I was looking through some old files in our SourceForge project. I
> opened a file called wiki.tar.gz, and inside were three complete
> backups of the text of Wikipedia, from February, March and August 2001!
>
> This is exciting, because there is lots of article history in here
> which was assumed to be lost forever.
>
> I've long been interested in Wikipedia's history, and I've tried in
> the past to locate such backups. I asked various people who might have
> had one. I had given up hope.
>
> The history of particularly old Wikipedia articles, as seen in the
> present Wikipedia database, is incomplete, due to Usemod's policy of
> deleting old revisions of pages after about a month. The script which
> Brion wrote to import the article histories from UseMod to MediaWiki
> only fetched those revisions which hadn't been purged yet.
>
> I didn't want to believe that those revisions had been lost forever,
> and I even opened the UseMod source code and stared forlornly at the
> unlink() call. What I (and Brion before) missed is that UseMod appends
> a record of every change made to two files, called diff_log and rclog.
> In these two files is a record of every change made to Wikipedia from
> January 15 to August 17, 2001.
>
> I've put the two log files up on the web, at:
>
> http://noc.wikimedia.org/~tstarling/wikipedia-logs-2001-08-17.7z<http://noc.wikimedia.org/%7Etstarling/wikipedia-logs-2001-08-17.7z>
>
> The 7-zip archive is only 8.4MB -- much more manageable than today's
> backups.
>
> rclog contains IP addresses. The Usemod software made IP addresses of
> logged-in users public, so the people who made these edits had no
> expectation that their IP address would be kept private. That, coupled
> with the passage of time, makes me think that no harm to user privacy
> can come from releasing these files.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia / Wikipedia Statistics

[teun spaans]

The stats on http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesArticlesNewPerDay.htm are
actual till Jun 2009
The stats on http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm are up to date till
sep 2010.

Eriks explanation explains the situation for not being updated since sep
2010, not for those since june 2009.


On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 5:09 PM,  wrote:

> In a message dated 12/16/2010 2:14:01 AM Pacific Standard Time,
> z...@mzmcbride.com writes:
>
>
> > Erik Zachte wrote:
> > > On 12/16/2010 0:12, wjhon...@aol.com wrote:
> > >> Why are these tables so out of date?
> > >>
> > >> http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesArticlesNewPerDay.htm
> > >
> > > Technical problems:
> > > First the dump server needed fixing , now the wikistats server is
> > > broken: power unit is no longer.
> > > Replacement is on order.
> >
> > I don't follow. The latest stats at that link currently are from June
> > 2009.
> >
> > MZMcBride
> >
>
> What don't you follow?  That they are out of date?  Or that something is
> broken?
> Can you be more clear.
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Template Overkill

[teun spaans]

Both are true. Yes, templates are very useful, and yes, imho they do scare
away newbies.
Templates are useful not for navigation (that could be done without
templates) but for sparing human and bot effort.
Unfortunately many templates are at the top of our articles, so its the
first thing that new volunteers see.

I see some overlap with the discussion started by David on WYSIWYG editing.
WYSIWYG editors can not deal with our templates.
A WYSIWYG editor with 2 modes (WYSIWYG and old fashioned wiki markup) would
do a good job. The WYSIWYG modus should support standard wiki markup like
* lists (#, *)
* bold, underline, italic (')
* headers (=)
* tables (preferably, but not necessarily))
I think this covers the bulk of what we have in our articles as far as
normal editing goes. The templates can be hidden/ignored for editing
purposes in WYSIWYG editing mode.

With a two mode editor, such as blogger supports, we can have a best of both
worlds: Newbies have an easy start, while old hands can still have all the
templates the want.

Teun Spaans
On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 5:59 AM, Birgitte SB  wrote:

> What  project are you speaking of?  At en.WS the entire navigation
> structure of
> how to move between Chapters within a book is encoded in templates.  I
> can't
> imagine how they could be scapped.
>
> Birgitte SB
>
>
> - Original Message 
> > From: "wjhon...@aol.com" 
> > To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Sent: Tue, December 28, 2010 9:46:56 PM
> > Subject: [Foundation-l] Template Overkill
> >
> > Most of the templates in our project, imho are just more clutter.
> >
> > The number of people who know how to use any particular template, can
> > probably be counted with a box of marbles.  However when others see the
> > templates, they just shy away, they don't bother to try to learn them.
> >
> > If we want to make things easier for editors, we should scrape templates
> > entirely.  What they add to the project is not worth, what they detract.
> >
> > W
> > ___
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
>
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Comes of Age

[teun spaans]

A courageous point of view. With arguments.

On Sat, Jan 8, 2011 at 9:56 PM, Fred Bauder  wrote:

> http://chronicle.com/article/article-content/125899/
>
> January 7, 2011
> Wikipedia Comes of Age
> By Casper Grathwohl
>
> Casper Grathwohl is vice president and publisher of digital and reference
> content for Oxford University Press.
>
> Fred Bauder
>
>
>
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Friendliness (was: Missing Wikipedians: An Essay)

[teun spaans]

"You have just made your 100th edit: congratulations."
That would be good bot to run: encourage people!
Another idea: A simple message to make a compliment on people who make their
first 3 posts which are not reverted after a day. make it aimed at anonymous
contributors, and inviting them to register.

My own welcome was in the pre-bot age, so it was personal and warm. In that
tradition I have long placed a personal welcome message at newbies talk
pages, with different results. Some harrassed me with questions, some
disappeared, some stayed on and became valuable wikipedians. I strongly
believe in warmth and people orientation.

I still remember a game forum, where i was welcomed by two different people,
where everyone commented on each others posts, sometimes critical, sometimes
positive, but always with an undertone of friendliness. It was that
atmosphere which kept me going there a long time.
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] [Announce] Brion Vibber to rejoin Wikimedia Foundation

[teun spaans]

Welcome back, Brion!
Imho there is no one better suited forthe job than you!

Teun

On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 12:27 AM, Jay Walsh  wrote:

> Sending on behalf of Danese...
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > Yes, the rumors are true!  Today I am pleased to announce that after more
> than a year away, Brion Vibber will be returning as a full-time employee of
> Wikimedia Foundation on March 31, 2011.  The public posting is available
> http://blog.wikimedia.org/blog/2011/03/07/brion-vibber-rejoins-wikimedia-foundation.
>  I'm really excited to be announcing this hire, especially at this time.
>  I've been looking for a Lead Architect for the next generation MediaWiki
> platform, and Brion is of course the ultimate expert in MediaWiki internals.
>  He's also deeply committed to the work we are doing to keep MediaWiki
> relevant for the next 10 years.
> >
> > I completely enjoy working with Brion, and I'm totally looking forward to
> having him back on the team full time (he has always helped out on a
> volunteer basis).
> >
> > Anyway, I wanted to give you all a heads up before the public
> announcement. Please join me in welcoming him back!
> >
> > Danese Cooper
> > CTO, Wikimedia Foundation
> >
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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

[teun spaans]

I posted the two links in the pub of the dutch wiki, and 2 reactions are
worth mentioning.

One volunteer offered to look up scientific articles, as a student he has
free access to many science publishers through his university library. I had
more such offers in the past, and it may be worth to have a page for
volunteers who are willing to look up specific facts.  That might be an
idead for other wikis. I doubt it would be legal to pass on an entire pdf.

The second remarked concerned established publishers like Springer and
Elsevier, who according to the volunteer offer authors the choice to pay a
bit more and have their publciatiuons open access. That sounds like an
interesting development to me.

Teun Spaans


On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 3:30 PM, Melissa Hagemann wrote:

> On Wed, 9 Mar 2011, John Vandenberg  wrote:
>
> > > And if there is interest in advocating on this issue, SPARC
> developed
> > > the Alliance for Taxpayer Access
> > > (http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/action/index.shtml) which represents
> > > universities, libraries, patient advocacy groups, and physicians
> working
> > > to promote OA.
> >
> > I haven't heard of this before.
> >
> > The website/campaign name begs a lot of questions.
> >
> > "Why tax-payer access only?"
>
> The message of public access to publicly funded research resonates with
> policymakers.
>
> > "What copyright license allows for tax-payer only redistribution?"
>
> Once it is available to the taxpayers who fund it, it is made freely
> available online to everyone, in every country.
>
> > If I understand correctly, they are promoting unrestricted access to
> > tax-payer funded research.  Do they explicitly want govt-funded
> > research to be public domain, like US federal works are, and therefore
> > accessible to everyone, in every country?
>
> Probably the biggest victory to date for the OA movement was a mandate
> adopted by the U.S. NIH which stipulates that all the research funded by
> the NIH (which amounts to approximately $29 billion annually) is now
> made freely available through PubMed Central
> (http://publicaccess.nih.gov/). Now the OA movement in the U.S. is
> trying to extend this type of mandate to all federal research funding
> agencies with budgets over $100 million. Likewise, there are projects
> underway in other countries to advocate for similar policies, including
> an open letter recently announced which targets UK funding councils
> (http://tinyurl.com/64v9nvc). And finally, in addition to federal
> research funding agencies, the OA movement also works with universities
> to advocate for the adoption of institutional mandates which stipulate
> that all  research produced by those affiliated with a university or
> faculty be made freely available (see OA policies adopted by several of
> Harvard's Faculties http://osc.hul.harvard.edu/).
>
> So some progress, but much more to do!
>
> Melissa
>
> > --
> > John Vandenberg
>
>
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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

[teun spaans]

Quote:Many volunteers don't have a lot to write.
This sounds like an opinion, not like a fact. Even on English wikipedia, we
still have about two hundred thousand plant species to describe, and
millions of animal species. And then I'm not talking about fungi and other
kingdoms

I do agree with some of your remarks about motivation. One way to motivate
people might be to provide more information on the process that google maps
uses to locate wikipedia artciles to its maps. It's much nicer if lots of
people actually read 'your' article.

Teun Spaans

On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 6:57 AM, Milos Rancic  wrote:

> Let's start with a couple of simple facts:
> * Our main product is Wikipedia.
> * Wikipedia has been built on Internet.
> * Wikipedia has been built by volunteer community.
> * Mature Wikipedia editions have now a lot of articles. Many
> volunteers don't have a lot to write.
> * Mature Wikipedia editions have now complex social structures.
> Complex social structures require social institutions.
> * The main features of our software are 10 years old.
> * During the last ten years Internet has changed.
>
> However:
> * Organizationally, we are focused on Internet just during fundraising.
> * Volunteer community is valued just when it's been realized that
> there are some problems.
> * Except media (i.e. Wikimedia Commons), we lack of any systemic work
> on improving content. (I don't count particular initiatives, like
> cooperation between Wikipedia in X language and University in X
> country.)
> * Wikiversity, the last started Wikimedia project is old four and half
> years.
> * Besides top bodies (Board, ArbComs), we don't have
> volunteer/community institutions.
> * New features are limited on those of limited importance.
> * We are still living in 2005 or so.
>
> To fix it, logically, we need:
> * While offline and real-life activities are very important, we need
> to be more focused on Internet. There are many options and many
> approaches for that. I'll mention just two within one approach:
> editing Wikimedia projects from Facebook and WoW would bring some
> editors.
> * Motivating volunteers to edit (not to participate in Wikimania or
> join chapters) -- would help. Let's say, a plaque signed by Jimmy for
> hard work would help. But, there are much more intelligent ways for
> motivating volunteers without money and without competition.
> * Organized work with universities and similar -- organized by WMF and
> chapters -- would help in improving quality.
> * We have a number of ideas here [1], but none of them has become a
> Wikimedia project. I don't think that all of the proposals are bad.
> * We need volunteer/community institutions. There are tons of
> frustrations because there are no ways to solve many problems.
> * We need, for example, WYSIWYG editor. Some more important features,
> too. And it is not expensive.
> * In the world where the funniest thing is to send an email, editing
> wiki sounds really cool. In the world of virtual worlds, causal games
> and watching what your friend from childhood is doing -- there is a
> thin edge between editing Wikipedia and masochism. We need to provide
> more fun.
>
> [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Project_proposals
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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

[teun spaans]

Hi Keegan,

Thank you for starting with a compliment!
If your intention is to stress the point that we wikipedia is also a
community, and not just a bunch of article writers, I agree. I am not sure
what you mean with "our content is ridiculously misunderstood for the fifth
most popular website in the world."

The study gives a lot of facts. I am glad a lot of trends have been
discovered. I am glad that the problem has not been shoved under the carpet.
It does not go out, however and tell the why. I know why i have diminished
my contributions - I only occasionally write articles nowadays - but what we
need to address these questions is facts and analysis on the whole
"lifecycle" of a wikipedian:
- what made people try to contribute to wp in the first place?
- what barriers did people encounter making them give up after their first,
or even before their first attempt?
- what made people tick?
- why do people stop after they have been active for months or years?
- have their goals been reached?
- are there any typical volunteer patterns, for example the super nova who
explodes with hundreds and thousands of articles and then stop, the slow but
steady contributor who writes one article a week, the bot operator who wrote
about a hundred articles and then decided to use bots instead? The manager
who puts more energy in project coordination then in actual writing? The
bureaucrat?
- What makes people stop after they have been long time volunteers?
- Have their ever been any surveys (we have their email addresses) on why
volunteers left wp after contributing a long time?
There will be 'leakage' over all phases of the aforementioned lifecycle, but
we can probably concentrate on just a few.

>From the reactions here (p.e. Milos: my topic was exhausted, Kirill: lots of
frustration) we have an idea. It would be nice to have some more statistical
data.

(and apologies if these questions are just another prove of the old saying
that one fool can ask more questions than a thousand wise men can answer)



On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 9:28 AM, Keegan Peterzell wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 2:14 AM, teun spaans 
> wrote:
>
> > Quote:Many volunteers don't have a lot to write.
> > This sounds like an opinion, not like a fact. Even on English wikipedia,
> we
> > still have about two hundred thousand plant species to describe, and
> > millions of animal species. And then I'm not talking about fungi and
> other
> > kingdoms
>
>
> That is a good point, Teun, and work between Wikispecies and Wikipedia has
> done more to fill taxonomy than would anywhere near exist.  However,
> participation and growth is not purely content creation and expansion.  The
> content is most important, but it is impossible to do so forever on the
> English Wikipedia in isolation.  If we want to focus on how to "get a
> Wikipedian", it is my firm belief that we cannot.  The focus, in my meager
> opinion, is not on instructions, wizards, or templates.  The solution is
> what we want to acheive: knowledge.  This comes from helping new users and
> appreciating that our content is ridiculously misunderstood for the fifth
> most popular website in the world.
>
>
> --
> ~Keegan
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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

[teun spaans]

Milos,
Fully agree with your remark about the WYSIWYG editor!

On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 6:57 AM, Milos Rancic  wrote:
...

> * We need, for example, WYSIWYG editor. Some more important features,
> too. And it is not expensive.
> * In the world where the funniest thing is to send an email, editing
> wiki sounds really cool. In the world of virtual worlds, causal games
> and watching what your friend from childhood is doing -- there is a
> thin edge between editing Wikipedia and masochism. We need to provide
> more fun.
>
> [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Project_proposals
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] BNR: "Less writers on wikipedia due to agression" (dutch)

[teun spaans]

I can confirm what Gerard says: they are influential in the financial and
management sector. I occasionally listen to them while driving.
The article mentions a german research. At the moment there is one reaction
confirming it from personal experience.

On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 10:26 PM, Austin Hair  wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 10:22 PM, Kim Bruning 
> wrote:
> > See
> >
> http://www.bnr.nl/programma/bnrdigitaal/2011/03/30/minder-schrijvers-wikipedia-door-agressie1
>
> Dit is niet nieuw, natuurlijk.
>
> I've lived in the Netherlands for a year, now, and I've never heard of
> BNR—but then, I don't listen to the radio; I still get most of my news
> from teh internets and the satellite dish I have pointed at the BBC.
> How influential are they?
>
> Austin
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia, The Book

[teun spaans]

If i interpret the link correctly, these are only featured articles?

2011/3/30 David Richfield 

> On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 7:34 PM, Fred Bauder 
> wrote:
> > http://www.rob-matthews.com/index.php?/project/wikipedia/
> >
> > Rob,
> >
> > May I direct your attention to:
> >
> > https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/wiki/Commons:Upload
> >
> > Fred
>
> This is quite cool!  I've seen those diagrams of how many shelves
> en.wikipedia would fill if printed, but now I'm wondering: if you only
> printed the nearly 17 thousand featured articles and good articles,
> how big would that be?
>
> --
> David Richfield
> e^(πi)+1=0
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] BNR: "Less writers on wikipedia due to agression" (dutch)

[teun spaans]

And of course the widely read sensation newspaper is copying the message
widely:
http://www.telegraaf.nl/buitenland/9409794/__Minder_schrijvers_Wikipedia__.html?p=24,2
Their readers often react, usually without much feeling for nuance.

On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 10:57 PM, Martijn Hoekstra <
martijnhoeks...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 10:26 PM, Austin Hair  wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 10:22 PM, Kim Bruning 
> wrote:
> >> See
> >>
> http://www.bnr.nl/programma/bnrdigitaal/2011/03/30/minder-schrijvers-wikipedia-door-agressie1
> >
> > Dit is niet nieuw, natuurlijk.
> >
> > I've lived in the Netherlands for a year, now, and I've never heard of
> > BNR—but then, I don't listen to the radio; I still get most of my news
> > from teh internets and the satellite dish I have pointed at the BBC.
> > How influential are they?
> >
> > Austin
> >
>
> I think they're fairly well listened to in the financial sector and by
> management types on the road (and Jazz fans for their evening
> programme, but that's a different story altogether). Being none of
> those I'm not all that sure.
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] CentralNotice use

[teun spaans]

Hi Tobias,

thank you for bringing this up. The thought had crossed my mind too.

I'm glad that the election banner seems to appear only when logged in - it
is absolutely useless for people who only read articles, even for only 3
days.

More annoying was the POTY competition - this type of cross wiki advertising
should not be done. What will we have next? The ad of the week for
wikibooks, wikinews, wikiversity, spoken wikipedia? Where will it stop? If
we have these, why not ads for specific projects like history or art or over
all wikis?

For every message we should look for the most optimal way to communicate
that message. An email or article in the signpost might be a much more cost
effective way than a banner.

kind regards,
Teun Spaans


On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 10:52 AM, church.of.emacs.ml  wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Do we have any guidelines limiting the use of CentralNotices? I noticed
> there are a lot lately (fundraising, wikimania and most recently board
> elections and commons POTY), some of which are not of much interest to
> the audience.
>
>
> Take for example one of the most recent banners about candidate
> submissions for Wikimedia's Board Elections[1]. Until most recently, it
> has been displayed on every single page view for most of our 400 Million
> readers or so, according to the setup for 20 days. >99.% of our
> readers won't be candidates and for most of them, this is of no interest
> at all. Which is sad of course, we'd love to get more qualified and
> diverse candidates – that is to say, not only members of Wikimedia's
> core community. Nevertheless, the question remains: do the positive
> effects (chances on higher diversity) outweigh the negative consequences
> (readers/authors are annoyed)?
>
> Take another example: The call for votes on common's anual picture of
> the year competition has two very large banners with colorful images on
> them [2].
>
> I think, there has to be a serious consideration for each banner,
> whether its positive effects outweigh negative consequences. Most
> importantly, the fact that banners divert the readers attention and are
> therefor in most cases not in his direct interest, has to be considered.
>
> There are several ways of minimizing negative effects:
> 1. Display it for logged-in users only. This is especially useful for
> information concerning active Wikimedians, e.g. Wikimania, POTY, etc.
> 2. Reduce weight - don't display a banner on every page view, but only
> on one in ten. (We have to use blank banners to do that, right?[3])
> 3. Reduce duration. (e.g. Don't display banners for a month, only a week)
> 4. Reduce banner size and intrusiveness. Use text banners instead of
> colorful images.
>
> What do you think? Do we need to limit the use of CentralNotice through
> guidelines or introduce technical measurements (e.g. blank banners[3])
> or just appeal to meta admins to consider negative effects or is
> everything fine the way it is?
>
> Regards,
> Tobias / User:Church of emacs
>
>
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] CTO Leaving Wikimedia Foundation end of July

[teun spaans]

Danese, sorry to see you go. Though not always visible, you have done a lot
:)
Thank you for your efforts!

Teun Spaans
Everybody knew it was impossible, until someone turned up who didnt know
that.


On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 6:32 PM, Gerard Meijssen
wrote:

> Hoi,
> This is a sad day.
> Thanks,
>  Gerard
>
> On 2 June 2011 18:23, Danese Cooper  wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> > It is with considerable regret that I inform you of my planned departure
> > from the Wikimedia Foundation at the end of July. I’ve really enjoyed my
> > time here, and I’m proud of what Wikimedia Engineering has accomplished
> > together.
> >
> > While I tremendously enjoyed helping to build the engineering
> organization,
> > at this point in the development of the organization and the role, Sue,
> Erik
> > and I have agreed that there’s no longer a fit between the identified
> near
> > term needs and goals of the organization, and my own interests.  I’ve
> > therefore decided to leave WMF as CTO, but I remain a friend of the
> > organization and the mission, and Sue, Erik and I talked about some ways
> to
> > work together in coming months.
> >
> > To allow for an orderly transition, I will stay on as Wikimedia’s CTO
> > through July. I'll be representing the Foundation and recruiting talent
> at
> > several tech conferences, as well as engaging in transition activites
> within
> > the Foundation. Erik will assume the title of Interim VP of Engineering
> and
> > Product Development, and we’ll immediately start the transition of
> personnel
> > and reporting lines.
> >
> > Erik will send a note about the transition shortly.
> >
> > Danese
> >
> > ___
> > Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately
> > directed to Foundation-L, the public mailing list about the Wikimedia
> > Foundation and its projects. For more information about Foundation-L:
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > ___
> > WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list
> > wikimediaannounc...@lists.wikimedia.org
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
> >
> >
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Request: WMF commitment as a long term cultural archive?

[teun spaans]

A lot of questions here.
IF an image is hosted and not used for in 100 years, it would be up to the
people in 100 years to decide. Any guarantee we try to make for such periods
is absolutely useless. Every rule we make can be re-discussed and changed in
such a period.

If an organization such as the NYT uses an image from commons by inline
linking, then we could indeed invalidate their historical research by
deleting that image if it contains a copyright violation. CV are the main
reason for deletion. Other reasons include bad quality, and duplicate
images.

Teun Spaans
Everybody knew it was impossible, until someone turned up who didnt know
that


On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 8:14 PM, Wjhonson  wrote:

> Because Commons is to be used by the world, not just sister projects.
> If the New York Times Online links a picture in from Commons (and credits
> it properly) are we going to make their later-historical story useless by
> deleting the picture ?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Fred Bauder 
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List 
> Sent: Thu, Jun 2, 2011 11:01 am
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Request: WMF commitment as a long term cultural
> archive?
>
>
> > On 2 June 2011 14:21, Fae  wrote:
> >> Briefly responding to a couple of points raised so far:
> >>
> >> Yes, there is a need for a policy as otherwise the WMF would have no
> >> long term operational archive plan.
> >
> > Why would we have an archive plan? Archives are for things that aren't
> > expected to needed on a regular basis any more but may need to be
> > referred to in the future. We're not going to archive things on
> > Commons, they'll just stay on Commons indefinitely.
>
> If an image is hosted on Commons for 100 years and NEVER used by any
> other Wikimedia project would we, or why should we, retain it?
>
> Fred
>
>
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] European Commission Green Paper - Copyright in the Knowledge Economy

[teun spaans]

Agree.

And perhaps other organizations working with copy left licenses could be
informed?



On Fri, Nov 14, 2008 at 4:20 PM, Teofilo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> The European Commission published in July a "Green Paper - Copyright
> in the Knowledge Economy" (1) .
>
> In §3.4. They talk about the possibility to adapt copyright law so
> that user-created contents would become easier, and they ask to send
> them feedback by 30 November 2008 at [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
>
> I thought it would be kind of cool if the foundation or the individual
> european chapters would use this opportunity to give them some hints
> of what a Wikipedia-friendly copyright law/directive should look like,
> or a few concrete examples of the worries we are having in present
> time with the current laws. In particular it should be stressed how
> laws in some country lacking a "fair use" restriction for pictures
> and/or without a "panorama freedom" are cumbersome. Non copyright
> issues like the ltalian law on cultural goods should also be
> mentioned.
>
> I am sending the same message on the village pump on Commons :
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#European_Commission_Green_Paper_-_Copyright_in_the_Knowledge_Economy
>
>
> (1)
> http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2008:0466:FIN:EN:HTML
>  (English)
>
> Other languages are available here :
>
> http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:52008DC0466:FR:NOT
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] EN Wikipedia Editing Statistics

[teun spaans]

It is good to hear that en: is replicated. I assume this also applies to
commons?

Still, it might be a good idea to think about a redesign of the dump
process.



On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 4:09 AM, Robert Rohde <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 6:16 PM, Neil Harris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
> > Is the data replicated anywhere outside the Tampa data centre (such as
> > in Amsterdam or Seoul)? If not, just one fire, flood or hurricane could
> > destroy the entire en: Wikipedia.
>
> There are database mirrors of every wiki, including en, as part of the
> toolserver cluster in Amsterdam.
>
> -Robert Rohde
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] 80% of our projects are failing

[teun spaans]

I agree that creating an article should be much easier. Creating a wysiwyg
editor would greatly facilitate that.

It would also help if we promoted a culture where people are invited to
create new articles. Many hard code wikipedians seem to have adopted the
attitude that red links are ugly - so red links are converted to normal
text. But a red link is and should be an invitation to create an article.

2008/12/3 Milos Rancic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

> On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 5:50 PM, Nathan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Milos - you wrote: "To be honest, I was thinking that the most useful
> > Wikimedian project in Serbia is English Wikipedia, but I was wrong.
> Serbian
> > Wikipedia is the most useful project, even it has ~30 times less articles
> > than en.wp." Can I ask how you arrived at this change of mind? It makes
> > sense to me that a reference in the common language of Serbia is more
> useful
> > than one that is not, but since you originally believed the opposite I'm
> > curious to know what data changed your mind.
>
> I have to make one correction: Usually, when I say "Serbia", I think
> "Belgrade". My "intuition" is connected to Belgrade and I am not so
> able to analyze the whole Serbia. Belgrade develops similarly to other
> European cities, while parts of Serbia may vary significantly
> regionally. But, including Belgrade's "gravitation area", it includes
> between 1/4 and 1/3 of population of Serbia (without Kosovo).
>
> I had social bias for a long time. For people around me, which means
> fairly educated persons between their 20s and 50s, English Wikipedia
> is indeed the most useful project. When some of them is trying to find
> informations about [[Earth]], [[Alexander the Great]], [[Amazon]],
> [[Arthur C. Clarke]], [[Mikhail Bulgakov]], [[Apache HTTP Server]]
> etc., they are going to en.wp. A number of them are not able to
> participate actively in English, but they are fully able to understand
> what is written in one encyclopedic article.
>
> A couple of years passed from the time when I realized that it was my
> social bias. I think that in 2005 I've started to have this kind of
> conversations: "Wikipedia is very useful for me!" -- "You mean,
> Wikipedia in English?" -- "No, Wikipedia in Serbian."
>
> One more personal bias which I had was a reason why I am using one
> encyclopedia. I am using it to find informations which don't below to
> something which may be called "a basic set of informations". I am
> using Wikipedia to find informations which don't below to my general
> knowledge. So, when I am searching for, let's say, some information
> from astronomy, I am not going to the articles like [[Moon]] or
> [[Jupiter]] are, but about newly discovered planets, [[Timeline of the
> Big Bang]] or [[Ultimate fate of the universe]].
>
> BUT, it seems that the most important role of Wikipedia is not to
> cover those fields. The most important role is to cover the basic
> educational fields, where pupils may find informations for their
> classes. So, even I think that [[Ultimate fate of the universe]] is a
> very important article, much more important than the article about
> lesser known Serbian feudal ruler, like [[sr:Grgur Branković]] is, for
> one pupil who learns history from the 5th grade of primary school
> (while astronomy is a course just in some of the high schools at, I
> think, 4th grade), this Serbian feudal ruler is much more important.
>
> There is no article about the ultimate fate of the universe on sr.wp,
> while there is no article about Grgur Branković on en.wp. Conclusion
> about usefulness is obvious: for the most of pupils and their parents
> the article about Grgur Branković may be used (and it is in Serbian),
> while speculations about the ultimate fate of the universe are
> comparable with watching Battlestar Galactica or Star Track (and it is
> in English).
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Site notice suggestion needed.

[teun spaans]

make it a random selection of 2 items from everything that has been
suggested

On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 3:01 AM, Chad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 8:47 PM, Kul Takanao Wadhwa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >wrote:
>
> > McDonalds: serves 75 million people a month
> > Wikipedia: 275 million
> >
> > 'nuff said.
> >
> >
> That we're more addictive than fast food?
>
> -Chad
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening

[teun spaans]

Cite: Adding to this, a culture of deletionism and arrogance has
infested Wikimedia Commons in the last year or two.  
I think on the whole i can agree with this. And it is not limited to
copyright violations. Commons has turned celf-centered more and more over
the past years.

Out of disgust over its bad organization, i have limited my presence on
commons as much as possible. But one of the last times I logged on, there
was a poll or vote which looked like it was designed to limit voting to hard
code commonists: volunteers had to do at least 20-50 edits a month to be
able to vote. I think it is ridiculous that a small bunch of hard core
volunteers try to lock out those of who are actually contributing the media.
Luckily it was stopped, but mainly on technical grounds, not because it is
ethically incorrect to lock contributors out.

(But may be I am prejudiced, once an enthousiastic supporter of commons, i
nowadays avoid it as much as possible in wiki contexts - which forces me to
use it regularly, much to my charin).

A good question is of cource: why are flickr, webshots and picassa so much
more popular than commons? And: can we create a free alternative that can
compete with them?

Sometimes i wonder if some wikia like organization could do a better
service, with a wider scope of images - if i would try to upload my holiday
pix on commons they would speedily get deleted as "not encyclopedic". But
while some are not encyclopedic, many would qualify for free usage, such as
cities, panoramas, and even some people pix.

I wish you health and happiness,
Teun Spaans


On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 11:31 PM, Lars Aronsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Geoffrey Plourde wrote:
>
> > That might be a hell of a incentive to change. Before we talk
> > about getting out the torches, I think we should see if we can
> > make Commons functional. The incentive of being shuttered makes
> > it more relevant to those who are in denial. I have made two
> > suggestions on improvements. One is a training program with
> > specific handling, i.e. no more we delete in 7 days, a different
> > template that is more collegial. The second is to cross appoint
> > administrators from underrepresented projects who agree to
> > undergo a boot camp program. Thoughts?
>
> Maybe we are too fast to discuss solutions now, when we should
> first discuss the problem.  I brought this up on commons-l before
> it spread to foundation-l.  With the risk of making myself a
> target for "tl;dr" (too long; didn't read), here's the problem
> that I see:
>
> Wikipedia in many languages is at a stage where the basic articles
> are written (apple is a fruit, Paris is the capital of France) and
> we need to recruit more people who know more areas, both academics
> and people who lived through the politics of the 1960s.  This
> includes events such as Wikipedia Academy and also courses for the
> elderly.  We can't hope that these people are skilled in PHP
> programming or fluent in English, as many people are on this list.
> Some might be able to write good text, but not used to wiki
> markup, and completely disabled in wiki template design.  Perhaps
> they should stick to scanning and uploading their old photos from
> the 1970s.
>
> We still have all kinds of vandalism on Wikipedia.  If patrolling
> is efficient and finds and reverts 95% of vandalism, it might also
> spill over to falsely "fighting" 1% of beginner contributions.
> We're scaring serious people away by our own mistake.  This is
> where we need to improve.  It's like having a zero tolerance on
> crime, without becoming a brutal fascist state. Within each
> (small/medium) language of Wikipedia, this is quite easy.  We all
> speak the same language and we know each other.
>
> But as soon as it comes to image uploading, an area where the
> elderly have decades of photos to contribute, we're sending our
> beginners off to Wikimedia Commons.  Even if the menues and most
> templates are localized in every major language, this is not true
> of the admin community there. If a beginner fails to fill out all
> details of free licensing, their user talk page will receive an
> image deletion request in English. Even if there is a translated
> version of that notification, the user's explanation in a local
> language might not be understood by the admins.  If the user has
> good credentials that are easily verified (retired schoolteacher,
> museum manager, ...) and has built a solid reputation in the local
> language Wikipedia, a Commons admin from another language might
> not fully understand this.
>
> Adding to this, a culture of deletionism and arrogance has
> infested Wikimedia Commons in the last year or two.  So many
> copyright violations and 

Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening

[teun spaans]

Many times it works well.
But the procedures also irregularly goes amiss.

I also received deletion messages of a pic i had uploaded with a correct
license. Some wikimedian had accidently removed the license, making a bot
come along and warn me. By pure coincidence i happened to come along at
commons - sometimes months go by without me dropping in - and was able to
restore the license, protest angainst its deletion, and so on.
7 days is awfully short. One easy thing that can be approved is an email
instead of a bot message on a talk page.

But that wont change the self centered attitude of commonists.

On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 9:28 AM, Nikola Smolenski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Waerth wrote:
> > The commons issue is not just a language issua. If it was it was
> > solvable. It is a hositility issue. Where people who upload the second
> > picture of the same object (like a TukTuk) get told it is not necassary
> > because the project already has one picture of a TukTuk . The
>
> It's interesting that I don't notice anything mentioned in this thread.
> For example, recently I uploaded a picture of a scarlet ibis, and it was
> not deleted despite the fact that there are 40 other scarlet ibis pictures.
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] and what if...

[teun spaans]

cite:* if a legal decision forbid us to show a certain article or a certain
image, we'll implement a system to block showing the images or text in a
certain country.

I feel doubts with this statement. It sounds like giving in to censorship,
though I think this is noty what you mean.
When i take it literally, if in Saudi Arabia an article on Jesus of Nazareth
is forbidden (as many things about Christianity are forbidden there), would
we assist them? I dont think we should.

On the other hand: our mission is to spread knowledge in a free form. Under
a free license. I think it is NOT our task to combat censorship, or to
advocate free speech. That is a different mission, and we should leave it to
organizations who regard it as their mission. We can and should cooperate
with them, but we should not fight their war, much as we are hindered by
censorship.

I wish you health and happiness,
teun spaans
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Commons-l] Making Wikimedia Commons less frightening

[teun spaans]

On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 3:02 PM, Platonides  wrote:

> teun spaans wrote:
> > Many times it works well.
> > But the procedures also irregularly goes amiss.
> >
> > I also received deletion messages of a pic i had uploaded with a correct
> > license. Some wikimedian had accidently removed the license, making a bot
> > come along and warn me. By pure coincidence i happened to come along at
> > commons - sometimes months go by without me dropping in - and was able to
> > restore the license, protest angainst its deletion, and so on.
> > 7 days is awfully short. One easy thing that can be approved is an email
> > instead of a bot message on a talk page.
> >
> > But that wont change the self centered attitude of commonists.
>
> You *will* get an email if have chosen on your Preferences to get an
> email whenever your talk page is modified.
> Having that option available on WMF wikis was pushed from commons
> community, and in fact Commons was one of the first projects where it
> was added. Now it is enabled on all wikis but the big ones.
>
> Thank you, I now have this enabled on commons.
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Re: [Foundation-l] Britannica became free

[teun spaans]

"but possibly illegal" you can omit the word "possibly". I dont see a copy
left license at their site.

On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 3:29 PM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote:

> 2008/12/22 Amir E. Aharoni :
> > 2008/12/22 Milos Rancic :
> > And Britannica has this totally weird feature - the article loads
> > itself as soon as the scrollbar progresses through it. So even if it
> > is free as in beer, it is obnoxiously inconvenient to copy text from
> > it, 'cuz Ctrl-A doesn't work as expected.
>
> ... And of course, i forgot to mention that it is not free in the
> Stallman-Lessig sense, so copying text from is not only inconvenient,
> but possibly illegal.
>
> --
> Amir Elisha Aharoni
>
> heb: http://haharoni.wordpress.com | eng: http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> cat: http://aprenent.wordpress.com | rus: http://amire80.livejournal.com
>
> "We're living in pieces,
>  I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
>
> ___
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
___
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l