27;s independent of the foundation, but the
implication that it's not something people should expect to read about
in the Signpost would be a mistake.
Finally, as valuable as both the Signpost and Wikizine are, along with
this list and all other ways to disseminate information, no single
s
ard members. As such, I'm not
sure it's meaningful to have minutes, but as mentioned it will be an
open meeting and I'd think there should be no objection to publishing
the entire log. And if "minutes" is taken to mean simply a
Thomas Dalton wrote:
> 2009/9/8 Gregory Maxwell :
>
>> On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 2:58 PM, Michael Snow wrote:
>>
>>> It does, but this is not an official meeting for the board to conduct
>>> business, it's a meeting to provide people in the communi
dea to me. One difference is immediately
obvious from the way the incubator works presently, though. Rather than
having these projects move out of the incubator based on the decision of
the language committee, that issue would have to be considered by the
board directly in consultation with the br
at part of the criteria you're reading to paraphrase them
in those contingent terms. To quote from the page itself, "If your
chapter is still in development, you can still apply for funds
(especially when they are relevant to getting your chapter off the ground)".
--Michael S
ontacting
the advisory board individually, and we also still have some points to
wrap up at the board level as we try to establish a better overall
procedure for appointing them and making use of their advice. I do know
that Bridgespan has been interviewing a number of the
ng contributions to MediaWiki development, and
I hope that his other work will also add significantly to the free
culture movement, so that it really develops an ecosystem and not just a
couple of peculiar organizations.
--Michael Snow
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our
> personality has always been a pleasure to work with.
>
I'd agree that Brion's personality is one of the great attributes that
makes him so helpful to our endeavors. Fortunately, I see no reason to
think that his personality would chang
consider arguing over the propriety of covering meal expenses, even with
the possible cultural insensitivity involved, a more valuable discussion.
--Michael Snow
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h grants require
are not the optimal use of our resources.
--Michael Snow
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Samuel Klein wrote:
> In my experience, high-school teachers were 90/10 anti Wikipedia 3
> years ago, and are slightly in favor of it today.
I would guess that the shift is in part thanks to their students, who in
my experience have been 90/10 or better in favor of it.
--Michae
in
reconsidering whether these are really comparable sites.
--Michael Snow
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the discussion. I encourage people to
continue it, both here and on the strategic planning wiki.
--Michael Snow
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ecisionmaking overhead of doing so, or the weight someone might feel
accompanies the decision. Different people experience that differently,
because they think, feel, and act differently. This is not something for
us to call right or wrong, it is part of what we need to deal with in a
society wi
(partly to deal with the fact
that jetlag for at least some of the group is unavoidable), but we may
need to fill things up more in fewer days.
--Michael Snow
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uable resource, I think, with his understanding of the
challenges of growing and maintaining an active, engaged online
community. He also is taking an interest in issues of improving quality,
such as biographies of living people.
--Michael Snow
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relied
on my library privileges for such sources many times in the course of
editing Wikipedia, particularly news archives (including the Wall Street
Journal).
--Michael Snow
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izza from our lunch at one point. They've worked hard
to keep the fundraiser operational, not to mention considering a lot of
feedback and making improvements. It's easier when you see what things
are like in the office, but I hope we appreciate the dedicated staff and
their support for the wor
r. A
per-thread throttle would create an incentive to encourage that
behavior, by privileging those who are quickest to respond.
--Michael Snow
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l contributions (whether
we're talking content, finances, or publicity), none of them especially
huge in the overall scheme of things, it seems completely backwards to
suggest that such things are useless if they don't dwarf what has
already been achieved.
--Michael S
geni wrote:
> 2009/12/15 Michael Snow :
>
>> That's a strangely limited notion of who has the capability to help -
>> only people who are quantitatively more famous than us? For a project
>> that's built around lots and lots of individual contributions
strategic planning process and am grateful for their
willingness to serve on the board.
--Michael Snow
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kes people more willing to
donate. In addition, for those who deduct contributions on their taxes,
the end of the year is often a time when donors make gifts as they
adjust to reach the desired deduction.
--Michael Snow
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foun
done
a lot of hard work too. Thank you, all of you.
--Michael Snow
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out whether writing an email would
cause harm to consultants. It's more common for people to worry about
the harm they imagine the consultants might inflict.
--Michael Snow
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, religious wars, insane people who manage to get elected as
> POTUS, etc...
Can we discuss something else, rather than having the list get
sidetracked into geopolitical debates that aren't at all useful to the
work we do? Aside from fantasizing about a share of the prize m
Brian J Mingus wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 11:03 AM, Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> Brian J Mingus wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 10:10 AM, Tim Starling >> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Give the Nobel Peace Prize to DARPA for desig
Brian J Mingus wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 11:20 AM, Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> Brian J Mingus wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 11:03 AM, Michael Snow >> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Can we discuss something else, rather than having t
ther it's
blocking or something else. While I wouldn't say that the Meta wiki is
coextensive with the global community, it's one of the spaces that can
be used.
--Michael Snow
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nvolved as well.
--Michael Snow
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At
least, that's the kind of thing I check out when I want a sense of a
project's accomplishments (as distinct from the average quality of
output, for which something like recent changes is more useful).
--Michael Snow
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would benefit significantly. One of the first things a Governance
Committee would do is review which committees are needed, whether we
have them or not, what their responsibilities should be, composition and
so forth. More will be forthcoming as those recommendations are developed.
ding up to next week's chapters and board meeting. Coming out of
that, I hope we will start to develop a better sense of fundamentally
who we are and what kinds of relationships we should create to better
develop the Wikimedia projects.
--Michael Snow
__
people who might help fill those
roles may not recognize the opportunity to do so. Part of the exercise
will undoubtedly be an inventory of current and possible roles.
--Michael Snow
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real visual, interactive, or other
multimedia supplements, and not poor substitutes for these.
--Michael Snow
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rather to reaffirm and support policy that
already exists. We encourage Wikimedia editors to scrutinize potentially
offensive materials with the goal of assessing their educational or
informational value, and to remove them from the projects if there is no
such value.
--Mi
geni wrote:
> On 7 May 2010 20:30, Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> Having said that, the Wikimedia projects are intended to be educational
>> in nature, and there is no place in the projects for material that has
>> no educational or informational value.
>>
> Er
On 5/7/2010 5:30 PM, Sue Gardner wrote:
> On 7 May 2010 16:07, Kim Bruning wrote:
>
>> On Fri, May 07, 2010 at 12:30:18PM -0700, Michael Snow wrote:
>>
>>> announce-l still has issues. The Board of Trustees has directed me to
>>> release the followi
re was a desire from the community to go in
this direction long before we were ultimately able to. I don't imagine
that changing unless a better free licensing system arises and the
consensus changes. So to answer your suggestion, I'd reiterate my
earlier point: I really don't envisio
with multiple intended audiences (in this case, editors,
readers, and the media), there is inevitably a balancing act in
targeting your choice of words. It is unlikely that any name will be
absolutely perfect for all use cases. Some degree of editor
for FlaggedRevs. The only relevant mental
> association that comes to mind is "robot tongue".
>
As a sports fan, to me it looks like the backboard of a basketball hoop.
I actually rather liked "Hyperion Frobnosticating Endoswitch", but such
a wonderful name deserves to fi
outreach
forever to recruit underrepresented groups (whether it's ethnicity, age,
gender, or other factors), and it would accomplish very little without
significant improvements in our culture.
--Michael Snow
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On 6/6/2010 9:03 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
> Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> Similarly, we know that the community population skews young and male.
>> That has important consequences, and some of those unfortunately
>> reinforce our lack of diversity. It's be
the intent of the person doing the
"biting", it's about the impact on those who encounter it. We need to be
more welcoming to people, and striving for more cultural awareness is
part of that.
--Michael Snow
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he overall health of our
community in the long term, I don't think it's an overreaction to want
to address it.
--Michael Snow
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On 6/9/2010 12:12 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
> Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> There have been a lot of red herrings brought up on all sides of that
>> issue. Use of images in a context that is on-topic and educational is
>> clearly one of those, although I would sugge
or contractors when you're in
such a position. There are good reasons that work evaluations and other
personnel matters are considered confidential. I don't mean to say that
staff shouldn't be discussing code, roadmaps, or rationales as widely
and open
Chad wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 2:49 AM, Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> ...if for example I was qualified to review a
>> staff member's patch (which I'm not), I might want to think twice about
>> what audience gets that feedback.
>>
>> --Michael
Aryeh Gregor wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 11:22 AM, Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> The replies to my comment are missing the point. Sure, the developers
>> themselves need to be able to handle public criticism of their work,
>> just like wiki editors. But I was respondin
ished the
job and made it "campain".)
--Michael Snow
susanpgard...@gmail.com wrote:
> Hi Liam,
>
> We're not (looking to set up a new data centre in Europe). We're planning a
> second US data centre, likely in Virginia. Mark Bergsma's in the office this
&g
/Raul%27s_laws
I'd note that in the history of that page, it dates back to March 2006
and even then the original author was listed as unknown. That makes it
exactly the sort of quote that is easily misattributed to Winston
Churchill o
the board's immediate activity,
and the current work of the governance committee is focused more on
structures needed to organize the board's own functions.
--Michael Snow
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iously
implicated, like locker-room-type banter or casual objectification of
women. This is why I think it's so important for us to examine our
culture and figure out what we need to do to improve it.
--Michael Snow
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ell.
--Michael Snow
On 6/23/2010 10:47 PM, Michael Snow wrote:
> As a follow-up to the previous statement and discussion about
> appropriate educational content, the board has passed a resolution
> requesting a study of the issue of potentially objectionable content. We
> have aske
Replying for the purpose of forwarding the original message, part two.
--Michael Snow
On 6/23/2010 10:59 PM, Michael Snow wrote:
> What is the purpose of the resolution?
>
> The Board is asking its Executive Director to conduct a study, with the
> goal of figuring out what
ikipedia.org .
>
I don't think we've even decided those are the only options. It could
also use a namespace within the same domain, or take advantage of other
technical features like subpages, or be set up like a portal or
wikiproj
Thomas Dalton wrote:
> On 24 June 2010 19:08, geni wrote:
>
>> On 24 June 2010 07:20, Michael Snow wrote:
>>
>>>> 4. We do expect material in our projects to be educational in nature,
>>>> and any material that is not educational should be remo
Victor Vasiliev wrote:
> On 06/24/2010 10:20 AM, Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> 4. We do expect material in our projects to be educational in nature,
>>
>>> and any material that is not educational should be removed.
>>>
> I still believe such a
es). I'm not sure it will be used to hire any actual lobbyists
or mount a specific legislative campaign, although we should certainly
keep an eye out for further developments in that regard. If that does
materialize, I'd be happy to speak ou
mentioned except the first part involving
copyleft and Creative Commons. I think the length of that sentence ought
to illustrate just how tenuous the connection is.
--Michael Snow
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and develops, we may find better ways of auditing
that kind of performance. For now, it seems like the right thing for
chapters to focus on figuring out what they should be doing, and
learning from mistakes as they come up.
--Michael Snow
__
now that I'd hesitate to use them in languages that I've studied but
am not particularly fluent in, like Spanish or Italian (not that those
Wikipedias need this kind of contribution from me anyway). If the tools
are being used indiscriminately, it might be best to persuade peo
use
of many fits and starts in its overall development, it is for very good
reason that knowledge works from a rather larger picture.
--Michael Snow
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hanges in the English version. The point of seed
content is to provide a basis for new life and growth, which by
necessity must outgrow and cast off the shell in which the seed came. At
that point, trying to maintain or recreate the shell doesn't
particula
e could be indiscriminately
republishing works acceptable to the regime while taking a much more
restrictive approach to works from a dissident perspective.
--Michael Snow
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with bad
penmanship?
More seriously, while a wiki may not be a social network for its own
sake, I do think it's worth emphasizing that collaboration depends on
some sort of human connection. Bots can be great tools to facilitate
work, but they do nothing to facilitate conn
that they are not done - I'm certain people are
interested in seeing the full results matrix as well, so it would be
appreciated if they can release that at some point.
--Michael Snow
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eeded to bring in someone new from Omidyar to fill "their" board seat.
I figured that out, and honestly I wasn't even aware until now that Matt
had left Omidyar.
--Michael Snow
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On 6/22/2011 10:14 AM, MZMcBride wrote:
> Michael Snow wrote:
>> I thought it was reasonably understandable, even without perfect
>> grammar, that Ting was saying that since Matt is no longer at Omidyar,
>> if your insinuation were true, when he left the foundation would have
aboveboard than it was. And I recall there was
understandable displeasure that some of the targets being used to
evaluate the grant were considered confidential at Omidyar's request.
--Michael Snow
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ee
may not have felt like it could fully step into the shoes of the board
in evaluating candidates for what the board wanted. So I think there are
unresolved issues in terms of how much of the process can be delegated,
and how to more effectively delegate the parts that can be.
On 7/8/2011 11:15 AM, Nathan wrote:
> Michael Snow, Sage Ross, HaeB... I think the WMF is conspiring against
> the Signpost :-P
You could include Phoebe too, for that matter. I'm always impressed with
how much has been accomplished with the Signpost that I could never have
envisioned
uch things, but in the context of writing Wikipedia
articles, our beliefs about the sources we use should not be religious,
they should be based on analysis and editorial judgment.
--Michael Snow
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ople to resist subscribing. Honestly, I must say that it
is a colossal disappointment to find that with all the posts I've seen
both here and on internal-l, nobody has yet made a single edit to the
talk page on Meta where the letter was posted. Doesn't anybody here know
how to use a wi
On 8/5/2011 4:26 PM, John Vandenberg wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 6, 2011 at 8:06 AM, Michael Snow wrote:
>> .. Honestly, I must say that it
>> is a colossal disappointment to find that with all the posts I've seen
>> both here and on internal-l, nobody has yet made a single e
fully predictable six months in advance, but things don't
quite work out that way.)
--Michael Snow
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On 8/6/2011 4:00 PM, Florence Devouard wrote:
> On 8/6/11 1:36 AM, Michael Snow wrote:
>> On 8/5/2011 4:26 PM, John Vandenberg wrote:
>>> On Sat, Aug 6, 2011 at 8:06 AM, Michael Snow
>>> wrote:
>>>> .. Honestly, I must say that it
>>>> is
on would be the place to start. I don't know if it's a
meaningful difference in function, so I'm skeptical as to what the
proposal would accomplish.
--Michael Snow
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manage grants. At that point, it
may not be any more helpful to these objectives than the model we are
trying to move away from.
--Michael Snow
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n for the popular misconception is that most nonprofits avoid
lobbying altogether out of an abundance of caution. What the foundation
actually cannot do is contribute to political candidates or support
partisan activities, those are categorically prohibited
On 8/28/2011 10:04 PM, John Vandenberg wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 2:54 PM, Michael Snow wrote:
>> On 8/28/2011 9:00 PM, Victor Vasiliev wrote:
>>> On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 7:24 AM, Nathanwrote:
>>>> Which activities are these?
>>> Copyright and inte
erable to the foundation, and it could be fairly easy to
argue that they are an agent of the foundation. It undermines the
organizational independence much more dramatically.
If the point is to improve communication, then a more practical approach
might be
something like appointing
Jan-Bart as the observer for all European chapters, or Barry for all
Asian chapters (not that observers would necessarily have to be
Wikimedia board or staff). Again, I don't know that this is really the
best solution, but it's not completely i
the organization to have value. That makes it more work for the branding
agency, while simultaneously being less able to claim what their
contribution was. It may make more sense to develop that capacity
internally, which is one thing the foundation
t that
the board lacks the ability to deal with other issues and focuses on
Wikipedia as a result - I think it reflects the uncertain position of
the community generally, which hasn't coalesced much around any
particular answer to those questions. I do hope the board contin
.
It's not a normal practice with any organization in their experience,
and to them it's akin to an attorney letting a client publish the
attorney's work product. I would guess that similar reasoning might
apply to the Fusco report.
--Michael Snow
_
r people of a
certain era, maybe it also didn't help that the books were popular in
the USSR). It's possible that somebody somewhere did question its
inclusion once, which could be true of just about any book. Even if so,
nothing suggests that the concern had anything to do with enco
verse its manifestations are. But I
suspect that if we were substantially closer to a neutral approach in
our coverage of these topics, there might be much less pressure around
the principle of resistance to censorship.
--Michael Snow
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a community, that it is in the best position to judge whether
this protest is needed, what measures are appropriate to the situation,
and how long to carry on with it.
--Michael Snow
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On 10/5/2011 9:45 AM, emijrp wrote:
> 2011/10/5 Michael Snow
>> On 10/5/2011 7:03 AM, Domas Mituzas wrote:
>>> Editor strike means not editing, it doesn't mean full service downtime.
>> When labor unions go on strike, they do more than not show up for work.
>> Th
n
inclusion/deletion and notability.
In all respects, this was a very insightful analysis of the situation.
It's interesting to consider some of the unexpected tradeoffs involved
in taking different approaches to making an encyclopedia.
--Michael Snow
__
uld only
happen if requested by community consensus. At some level, it would not
make sense to insist that consensus is required prior to conducting any
experiment, as that effectively defeats the ability to experiment.
--Michael Snow
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y
highlight any portion of an article and open an edit window for just
that portion, could be helpful.
--Michael Snow
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On 12/1/2011 11:15 AM, Dan Collins wrote:
> The sum total of human knowledge, and we can't find a decent spam filter.
No, that really is the sum total of human knowledge, expressed in
hexadecimal. I was pretty sure it would add up to more than 42.
--Mich
have bigger issues, but it
strikes me that adding "Mark as Helpful" specifically to user talk
messages could be a good addition as well, assuming that the current
implementation indicates the feature has a positive impact.
--Michael Snow
#x27;t know what to do with them. We don't want to
ignore use of the database for mirrors or research, but it's only part
of the picture.
--Michael Snow
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l still be informed of changes).
--Michael Snow
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, especially if I was particular about how
they're posed or what breed they are.
There are no doubt bigger gaps in our library, and arguably more
important ones. But mostly we need to get more pictures and figure out
ways to use them.
--Michael Snow
bitration committees that regulate who has access.
Finally, as suggested in the resolution, I'll mention that we need to
reconstitute a committee to organize the board elections that will
happen later this year. Jan-Bart has again accepted the task of working
as the board's liaiso
list earlier, but I've taken a copy
and put it on Meta at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Sub-national_chapters
--Michael Snow
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