On Sat, Jun 14, 2008 at 11:18 PM, Brian Salter-Duke
<b_duke(a)bigpond.net.au> wrote:
> Indeed, this is a great idea. Is it restricted to the US? How do people
> get involved?
>
> Asone of the few admins on the English Wikipedia who is over 65, I am
> interested in helping.
>
> Brian.
>
Er, it hasn't even occurred in the US yet (only in Germany so far), so
it is definitely not restricted to the US. :-) If you wanted to help
or possibly organize something like this of your own, your best bet
would be to contact our new Public Outreach Coordinator, Frank
Schulenberg by e-mail: fschulenburg[at]wikimedia(dot)org (cc'ed).
--
Casey Brown
Cbrown1023
---
Note: This e-mail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to
this address will probably get lost.
On Sat, Jun 14, 2008 at 3:55 AM, Florence Devouard <Anthere9(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hello participants !
> (...)
I understand this is a draft.
And correct me if I'm wrong, but this may be the global privacy policy
affecting all projects.
However there's a definitely bias towards both 1) english speaking
world and 2) english wikipedia.
Excerpt:
* ''Whether you register with your real name or with a pseudonym, you
should note that registered users may gain more access to the
Wikimedia projects. For example, only registered users can create a
new page on the Wikipedia. (See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:User_access_levels.)''
# THE Wikipedia is NOT the english wikipedia
# That statement is false in most wikis.
I just want people working on this to be extra careful to write a good
policy taking in account all projects and languages, not focusing on
the needs of the english wikipedia. ~~~~
On Wednesday 11 June 2008 23:03:28 Platonides wrote:
> I'm Ccing Wikitech, i suggest we follow this thread there.
I'm answering on the foundation-l, given that I don't follow wikitech-l, you
do follow foundation-l, and the issues you raise are more community than
software related.
> Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> > (thread about interwiki bots at toolserver)
> >
> > Coincidentally, yesterday I released a MediaWiki extension which, if
> > accepted on Wikimedia projects, may make interwiki bots much less busy.
> > See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/A_newer_look_at_the_interwiki_link
>
> It also works by manual writing of the interwikis. I don't think it's
> the good way.
> *You're not taking into account page moves. What will you do when a page
> is moved? (by a low tech user which knows nothing about the global wiki)
I am taking into account page moves. Right now, when a page is moved, if it
has 20 interwiki links, someone has to update 20 pages on 20 Wikipedias. With
the extension, someone has to update a single page on a single wiki -
clearly, something that is easier to do.
> *The articles will still have a 'preferred' title at the interwiki wiki.
> That means discussing about article titles, "Move to English name", "No,
> that's not", "Interwikis with pages on Chinese are ugly!"...
I proposed an easy and fair solution: use the name of the page on the first
wiki that covered the topic. If a topic has first been written about on the
Vietnamese Wikipedia, use the Vietnamese name. Either way, redirects work,
and even edit wars of this kind should pose no problem.
> IMHO it should be a shared table referencing the wiki and page ids.
> Then you provide a Special page showing all pages on that group. You'd
> reference it as 'include this page into the group XX:sometitle is on'.
> You can also provide some space for free-form commenting (such as
> explaining the difference with another page).
> Obviously, all of that must be properly logged, which with SUL should be
> much easier.
Everything that you described already exists, without the special page. The
shared table is the langlinks table on the central wiki; you reference it by
using {{#interlanguage:sometitle}}; free-form commenting is the text on the
central wiki page; it is properly logged in the page history.
>> > The main good reason to edit anonynously is because
>> Wikipedia is an open wiki and is incapable of
>> > preventing harrasment or any less seious sort of
>> contact.
>>
>> That seems to me more like a reason not to edit at all.
>
> I don't see why.
>
Well, mainly because the popular Wikipedias don't have any remotely
reasonable mechanism to allow anonymous edits. Tor is banned from
en.Wikipedia, so in order to edit anonymously you have to create a new
account for each edit, and where's the fun in that? Maybe Tor is
allowed on the Wikipedia you edit? I realize this is foundation-l, so
I'm trying not to assume too much about which project you're referring
to.
I guess I should clarify that I don't think the fact that Wikipedia
cannot prevent harassment is enough of a reason to not edit at all
*for everyone*; only for those who find themselves unable to edit
without hiding themselves from the other editors. And I'm not really
sure if you fall into that or not. You say you "have no problem
owning up to my pseudononymous edits", so 1) it sounds like you are
willing to reveal your identity to other editors; and 2) you're not
editing *anonymously* in any case, you're editing *pseudonymously*.
This goes back to one of my earlier statements, which is that
pseudonymity is incredibly difficult to maintain. All it takes is one
motivated person to decide to reveal your identity, and suddenly your
pseudonymity is broadcast on so called "attack sites". And there
doesn't seem to be any way to eliminate the possibility that someone
is going to be motivated like this. So what do you do, scrutinize
every edit to make sure that you're not revealing anything about
yourself? Never use IRC or skype or Yahoo email, lest you reveal your
IP address? Use Tor for every edit in case you accidentally get
logged out or follow a link to an unfriendly outing site? Where's the
fun in that? What's the purpose? To make sure some African kid is
well educated when he starves to death?
I hope you don't mind that I'm putting this back on the list. I don't
think you've said anything confidential so I think this is OK.
On Sat, Jun 14, 2008 at 7:48 AM, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote:
> Well, mainly because the popular Wikipedias don't have any remotely
> reasonable mechanism to allow anonymous edits.
[snip]
I think this might be worth asking again: Why do we grant the
equivalent of checkuser rights over a majority of our contributors to
every person on the planet?
As some of you know by now, Daniel Brandt recently published a list of all
my friends on Facebook. The timing strongly implies he did so in response
to my decision to step forward about having been the target of violent
threats.
It is a great pleasure to report I now have more Facebook friends than I did
when Mr. Brant published. Gerard Meijssen has set up a Facebook group
called "Durova and friends" in protest against harassers and their
enablers. The group is growing rapidly.
On a more practical and serious level, one thing that could have helped in
David Shankbone's situation is if there were a global block feature, and
perhaps a global protect for user pages. David's stalker followed him
across dozens of projects. One thing that often happens with such people is
that they test boundaries and become aggressive when they discover that
boundaries are weak or absent. By erecting better boundaries onsite we
improve the chances that a problem will end swiftly.
-Durova
--
http://durova.blogspot.com/
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mikael Häggström <haggstrom.mikael(a)gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 10:13 AM
Subject: Fwd: A wiki where every article is a real medical case
To: foundation-l-owner(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Dear Sirs
I'd like to give the following reply to
foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org, for the thread "Fwd: A wiki where
every article is a real medical case", and I hope I could help:
A agree it has some juridical issues that may need to be considered before
expanding the project on a large scale. Nevertheless, it seems the current
disclaimers on e.g. Wikiversity or Wikibooks are functional enough, so if
the project starts there then it should be easier. Still, additional
disclaimers in each article is probably needed.
askdrwiki.com and ganfyd.org are good sites - yet I don't think they make
this project redundant since they differ from this project, mainly because
the victims of diseases don't participate. It has both pro and cons - likely
more reliable but yet not the same potential to expand.
Mikael Häggström
--
Michael Bimmler
mbimmler(a)gmail.com
This is an attempt to separate and clarify the subject of Stalking as
applied to Wikipedia.
1) The term "Wikistalking", which has generally referred to following
someone's contributions on wikipedia and then making petty edits or
reverts. This is, I think, a poor choice of word, it's not 'Stalking'
in the threatening sense, and really just an additional avenue of
common place harassment. Rolling so called 'wikistalking' up as a
'subset of stalking' is not useful, and may in-fact be damaging
towards attempts to confront threatening stalking. Perhaps it should
be renamed "Contribution harassment", as it's a pattern of harassment
following someone's contributions. There have been recent issues of
accusations of "Stalking" being misused as an attack in it's self, by
labelling honest attempts to improve articles or review a user's
behaviour as attempts to 'stalk'.
2) It should be important to note, that under US law, notable editors
of Wikipedia may become "limited purpose public figures". This does
mean that, for example, "outing" a notable editor's identity, is not
something they can take action against. The outside world would not,
therefore, consider it 'stalking' behaviour. The existence of
'Harassment Sites' is not something that Wikimedia can realistically
do anything about. Attempts to enforce restrictions on linking to, and
restrictions on editors found to be involved with such sites was
discussed in depth on en.wikipedia, and proposals to enforce these
failed. There is likely still a large issue in the need to offer
anonymity, the need to provide accountability, and the need to prevent
conflicts of interest. However, these issues should not be combined
with 'Stalking'.
3) Threats of harm, ranging from threats of 'beating you up' to 'rape
you and kill you' should and must be handled by the police. It's
beyond the scope of Wikimedia's abilities to do anything about these
threats beyond blocking editors. Problems with getting your local
police force to do something, is also sadly beyond Wikimedia's
abilities. If your local police office refuses to take action on
threats of assault, make a complaint and write to your government
authority.
Generally, the best and most Wikimedia can do are...
* Limit "contribution harassment" on it's projects.
* Enforce policies on civility and threats.
* Refer threats of violence to the authorities.
* Co-operate with the authorities in investigations into harassment
and stalking.
* Provide professional advice and guidance to victims of stalking.
I think that some of the actions that have been taken in the name of
'combating stalking' so far have proved counter productive. The
setting up of a private invitation only "Wikistalking Mailing List"
especially. While well intentioned, has lead to a large amount of
mistrust in that it is seen as a secret administrator cabal. It does
seem to have become an unfortunate knee jerk reaction that the
solution to problems on wikipedia can only be solved by a secret Jimbo
approved cabal.
- John
gerard.meijssen at gmail.com wrote:
> There are in my opinion several issues at play. The most important
> one is
> that actual stalking, behaviour with real life threads is an
> observable
> phenomena and there are ample indications that the authorities fail
> to take
> these things seriously. When people are REALLY insistent they get the
> attention that is required. The notion to leave it all to the
> authorities
> leaves our fellow wikimedians that are threatened in this way
> isolated and
> threatened.
The police and the courts are the authorities to deal with real life
threats. Yes, this means it's up to the police to take things
seriously, and sometimes they don't. Unless you can think of some
other tangible action Wikimedia could possibly take, all they can do
is offer advice and support to victims of stalking, and co-operate
with the authorities in investigation of stalking.
It's hugely important to understand that the Wikimedia foundation has
no ability to take matters into it's own hands to deal with real life
threats. They have no policing powers. At best, they could back people
up when reporting things to the police or making a case for a
restraining order. Wikimedia can neither force the police to take
something seriously, or act as vigilantes and go after the stalkers
themselves.
I think this discussion has detached off into the "The Wiki is it's
own Country" fallacy. The Foundation is not a government, the wikis
are not city states, the 'real world' laws and authorities are still
in primacy. While Stalking and making threats of assault are indeed
problems, it's far beyond the scope of Wikimedia to enforce laws and
remedy's against it. These matters should and must be taken up with
the government authorities of the police and courts. Setting up "Anti-
Stalking Task Forces" and private mailing lists is not only useless,
it's counter productive. Effort should be directed at helping people
with support in contacting the police or getting a court order.
- John