Hi Sumana,
[CCing the English Wikipedia mailing list].
sorry for the late response.
On Fri, 08 Feb 2013 08:03:11 -0500
Sumana Harihareswara <sumanah(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings/2013-02-07
>
> Yesterday I gave a 3-minute presentation about the Outreach Program for
> Women at the monthly Wikimedia Foundation all-hands meeting. My slides
> are up on Commons:
>
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Opw-presentation-feb7-2013.pdf
>
> More about our participation in OPW:
>
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Outreach_Program_for_Women
>
Thanks for making the slides available, but I was annoyed by the fact that I
had to switch to every page individually, and could not figure out a way to
download the .pdf itself (but there should be). Your talk seems like a good
initiative, and I will encourage it.
Like I said earlier, I think part of the problem is that many people
(predominantly women, but naturally not only those) have very thin skin and
lack persistence and will give up after every social obstacle they encounter.
So what I suggest is:
1. Make sure to phrase the issues you have using constructive criticism,
telling what should be done instead of what is wrong. Leave comments on the
page, etc.
2. Make sure to contact the person who did the change and instruct them that
there is a problem, even using E-mail if necessary.
3. Tell people that have not followed this to have to know better and come to
the defence of people who are trying to contribute.
4. Thanks contributors of worthy changes (even small ones) for their changes on
their talk pages.
5. Enlighten people whose changes have been labelled as bad as to the correct
way.
6. Avoid mentioning too many acronyms and weird jargon in your comments, and
instead explain in plain English.
-----
All of this seems like much more work, but it will eventually pay in spades in
much less resentment and less hard feelings, more contributors, better happiness
and joy from all parties, and eventually much more useful edits.
I think we should change the templates on wikipedia to read
something more like “Please find citations from reliable sources for this
article.” instead of the much less constructive and more frightening “This
article lacks citations from reliable sources. It may be challenged and
removed.”.
Does anyone agree?
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/
"Humanity" - Parody of Modern Life - http://shlom.in/humanity
Trust in God, but tie your camel.
— http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helps_those_who_help_themselves
Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .
I have no idea, I don't have any dirt because I got quite bored quite quickly. I just answered questions on their text message service, and I'm not sure if that has anything to do with their other pages. Sorry I can't be of more help!
Sent from my HTC One™ S on T-Mobile. America’s First Nationwide 4G Network.
----- Reply message -----
From: "Daniel R. Tobias" <dan(a)tobias.name>
To: <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Is this a trademark violation?
Date: Sun, Feb 10, 2013 7:41 AM
On 10 Feb 2013 at 12:00, Keilana wrote:
> They also have some American staff, I used to work for them.
How many people do those guys have working for them? We've run into
two on this list already. Do you guys have any dirt you can dish on
them?
By the way, in the digest version of the list your "From" line comes
out as "=?utf-8?B?a2VpbGFuYXdpa2lAZ21haWwuY29t?=". Perhaps the
techies in charge of programming the list digesting ought to get the
software to decode UTF-8-encoded header lines before outputing them
into the body of the digest, since that form of encoding won't get
decoded by mail reader programs in that position.
And why is the digest body encoded as "base64" (usually used for
binary files) instead of the more readable-in-raw-source
quoted-printable?
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
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On 10 Feb 2013 at 12:00, Keilana wrote:
> They also have some American staff, I used to work for them.
How many people do those guys have working for them? We've run into
two on this list already. Do you guys have any dirt you can dish on
them?
By the way, in the digest version of the list your "From" line comes
out as "=?utf-8?B?a2VpbGFuYXdpa2lAZ21haWwuY29t?=". Perhaps the
techies in charge of programming the list digesting ought to get the
software to decode UTF-8-encoded header lines before outputing them
into the body of the digest, since that form of encoding won't get
decoded by mail reader programs in that position.
And why is the digest body encoded as "base64" (usually used for
binary files) instead of the more readable-in-raw-source
quoted-printable?
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
On Fri, 8 Feb 2013 06:55:33 -0700 (MST), Fred Bauder wrote:
> Clearly, it is.
So is anybody going to do anything about it? Should Wikimedia Legal
be notified?
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
I just ran into this Twitter account:
https://twitter.com/Wikipedia411
It has "Wikipedia" as part of its username/URL, and uses
"Wikipedia.org" as its account name (displayed at the top of its
tweets). However, the description on its account page says "Facts
brought to you daily. Not affiliated with Wikipedia, aggregate
content generator."
Where copyright is concerned, it would probably be in violation of
the license of Wikipedia if it used more than fair-use amounts of
Wikipedia text, since there's reference to credits or license, but if
they just paraphrase facts derived from Wikipedia (as they seem to be
doing, and just about the only way to get anything from Wikipedia
into 140 characters anyway) they're probably in the clear there since
facts are not copyrightable (only the expression of them).
However, it is trademark law they are most clearly afoul of; despite
their disclaimer, they're using an account name that seems to imply
that they represent Wikipedia (you have to pull up their profile page
to find out they're not official, so lots of people who see retweeted
tweets from them will think they're coming from Wikipedia), and they
also use Wikipedia's logo as their icon.
While most of their tweets have facts that presumably came from
Wikipedia, the stream is peppered with tweets with "teaser" text and
a link, which when followed doesn't go to Wikipedia but to some site
called ChaCha (the link destination, as usual on Twitter, is
obfuscated by the use of link-shorteners). That site has the typical
annoying style of many modern websites of presenting its content in
"slideshow" style with bite-size chunks of content that are "1 of 10"
and you have to keep following "Next" links to get to the rest of the
feature, and if you don't use AdBlock Plus they're all surrounded by
annoying ads, some of which blast sound at you, and try to spawn
popups and the like.
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
On Fri, 8 Feb 2013 13:52:06 +0000, Richard Symonds wrote:
> I used to work for cha cha... Or at least, I trained their staff at my old
> job. They're a text message question answering service based in the us but
> using Philippine staff.
The site, and the cluster of Twitter feeds that seems to be
associated with it, form a "walled garden" that seems to only link
within itself (other than paid ad links outward). The various Twitter
feeds constantly retweet one another, and are sprinkled with posts
with tantalizing teaser text and a link that tuns out to go to "Cha
Cha" (and to a page there that is invariably disappointing compared
to what was teased in the tweet, and which leads the user down a
rabbit hole of following "Next" links through multiple pages of
slideshow-like presentation in the vain hope of finding something
less lame). They draw people in with sometimes-clever one-liner quips
in tweets, but once you've followed any of their stuff you get
deluged with expoitative crap.
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
They also have some American staff, I used to work for them.
Keilana
Sent from my HTC One™ S on T-Mobile. America’s First Nationwide 4G Network.
----- Reply message -----
From: "Richard Symonds" <richard.symonds(a)wikimedia.org.uk>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Is this a trademark violation?
Date: Fri, Feb 8, 2013 7:52 AM
I used to work for cha cha... Or at least, I trained their staff at my old
job. They're a text message question answering service based in the us but
using Philippine staff.
On Feb 8, 2013 1:48 PM, "Daniel R. Tobias" <dan(a)tobias.name> wrote:
> I just ran into this Twitter account:
>
> https://twitter.com/Wikipedia411
>
> It has "Wikipedia" as part of its username/URL, and uses
> "Wikipedia.org" as its account name (displayed at the top of its
> tweets). However, the description on its account page says "Facts
> brought to you daily. Not affiliated with Wikipedia, aggregate
> content generator."
>
> Where copyright is concerned, it would probably be in violation of
> the license of Wikipedia if it used more than fair-use amounts of
> Wikipedia text, since there's reference to credits or license, but if
> they just paraphrase facts derived from Wikipedia (as they seem to be
> doing, and just about the only way to get anything from Wikipedia
> into 140 characters anyway) they're probably in the clear there since
> facts are not copyrightable (only the expression of them).
>
> However, it is trademark law they are most clearly afoul of; despite
> their disclaimer, they're using an account name that seems to imply
> that they represent Wikipedia (you have to pull up their profile page
> to find out they're not official, so lots of people who see retweeted
> tweets from them will think they're coming from Wikipedia), and they
> also use Wikipedia's logo as their icon.
>
> While most of their tweets have facts that presumably came from
> Wikipedia, the stream is peppered with tweets with "teaser" text and
> a link, which when followed doesn't go to Wikipedia but to some site
> called ChaCha (the link destination, as usual on Twitter, is
> obfuscated by the use of link-shorteners). That site has the typical
> annoying style of many modern websites of presenting its content in
> "slideshow" style with bite-size chunks of content that are "1 of 10"
> and you have to keep following "Next" links to get to the rest of the
> feature, and if you don't use AdBlock Plus they're all surrounded by
> annoying ads, some of which blast sound at you, and try to spawn
> popups and the like.
>
> --
> == Dan ==
> Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
> Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
> Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Citizendium#So_what_and_how_do_we_write_…
How to write about things like [[Citizendium]], [[Conservapedia]],
[[Veropedia]] - things that were notable at the time and got lots of
press coverage and hence articles, and which readers may well want to
read about into the future - but which have fallen out of notice and
so their decline (and, in the case of Veropedia, death) got no
coverage and hence we can't answer the reader question "so, whatever
did happen to X?"
(Anyone who wants to reply saying "Citizendium is alive and well and
will rise again!" or similar needs to check the most recent
WP:RS-suitable coverage from 2011:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/10/five-year-old-wikipedia-fork-is-…
and particularly the comments, where people have never heard of this
thing and in two weeks no-one even defends the project.)
- d.
The Wikimedia OTRS team[1] is receiving an increasing number of
emails, with almost 55,000 general information and permissions tickets
responded to in 2012 alone.[2] We are greatly in need of more
volunteers to catch up and help prevent continued backlog. OTRS
volunteers have the benefit of choosing how much time they'd like to
commit and share a wide variety of tools to help when responding to
inquires. Your private information would not be exposed to the public;
replies are issued from a shared Wikimedia email address.
We are looking especially for people who are strong in any or all of
the following areas:
* Familiar with processes on any Wikimedia project and able to answer
routine questions about them (some common responses include reference
desk referrals; explanations of deletion processes or how to edit. The
kind of thing you might run into at the Teahouse or Help desks);
* Familiar with acceptable licenses for images and text and willing to
handle correspondence related to permissions (many routine, but some
issues include unclear statements of permission or permissions issued
by people who can't be clearly connected to the source);
* Familiar with policies regarding living people and organizations and
able to assist article subjects with lightweight needs (updating
logos, correcting small information) or serious concerns (allegations
of gross inaccuracy; bias).
For more information about volunteering, please see the recruiting
page[3] on Meta. Being a member of the OTRS team is a great chance to
be part of the public face of Wikimedia. We can't always help people,
but we do our best to leave them impressed with our professionalism
and responsiveness. If this sounds like something you'd be interested
in, we encourage you to consider applying[4].
While the English queues are the busiest, the info queues for all
languages could use help, and we are always looking for new
volunteers. Please translate this message and pass the word along to
those in your local communities who may wish to apply.
We look forward to seeing your applications on Meta-Wiki. If you have
any questions, please feel free to contact myself or any other
administrator of the system.[5]
For the OTRS admins,
Casey Brown
[1]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS
[2]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS/Reports/2012
[3]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS/Recruiting
[4]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS/Volunteering
[5]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS#OTRS_administrators
--
Casey Brown (Cbrown1023)
caseybrown.org