I have been a Wikipedian since 2001 and a MediaWiki developer since
2002. I was Chief Research Officer of the Foundation from May to
August 2005. I initiated two of Wikimedia's projects, Wikinews and the
Wikimedia Commons, and have made vital contributions to both. I have
made roughly 15,000 edits to the English Wikipedia, and uploaded about
15,000 files to Wikimedia Commons. A list of my overall contributions
can be found at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Eloquence
and the linked to pages; this does not include my numerous
international activities such as conference speeches, as well as my
book and articles about Wikipedia. I have never been blocked before,
nor have I ever been subject to an Arbitration Committee ruling (in
fact, I was one of Jimmy's original suggestions for the first ArbCom,
and one of the people who proposed that very committee).
I have just been indefinitely blocked from the English Wikipedia, and
desysopped, by user Danny, under the new nickname "Dannyisme", as an
"Office Action" for alleged "reckless endangerment" which was not
specified further. I have called Danny on the phone, but he said that
he was not willing to discuss the issue, and that I should instead
talk to the Foundation attorney instead. To my knowledge, this is the
first time office authority has been used to indefinitely block and
desysop a user.
What happened?
Yesterday, Danny radically shortened and protected two pages,
[[Newsmax.com]] and [[Christopher Ruddy]]. The protection summary was
"POV qualms" (nothing else), and there was only the following brief
comment on Talk:NewsMax.com:
"This article has been stubbed and protected pending resolution of POV
issues. Danny 19:26, 17 April 2006 (UTC)"
There was no mention of WP:OFFICE in the edit summary or on the talk
page. Danny did not apply the special Office template, {{office}}, nor
did he use the "Dannyisme" account that he created for Foundation
purposes, nor did he list the page on WP:OFFICE. Instead, he applied
the regular {{protected}} template.
Given that Danny has now more explicitly emphasized this distinction
between his role as a Foundation employee and a regular wiki user, I
assumed he was acting here as a normal sysop and editor, and
unprotected the two pages, with a brief reference to the protection
policy. I also asked Danny, on [[Talk:NewsMax.com]], to make it
explicit whether the protection was under WP:OFFICE. I would not have
reprotected, of course, if he had simply said that they were, and left
it at that.
I apologize if this action was perceived as "reckless", but I must
emphasize that I was acting in good faith, and that I would much
appreciate it if all office actions would be labeled as such. I was
under the impression that this was the case given past actions. In any
case, I think that the indefinite block and desysopping is very much
an overreaction, and would like to hereby publicly appeal to Danny,
the community and the Board (since Danny's authority is above the
ArbCom) to restore my editing privileges as well as my sysop status. I
pledge to be more careful in these matters in the future.
Thanks for reading,
Erik
Hi, I'm new here. I was trying to develop an idea on the spanish
wikipedia discussions, but they sent me here, stating that this could be
the best medium for such idea.
So, please check out http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiTimeLine and
tell me what you think!
I'm forwarding this to foundation-l as it seems to be the more
relevant list. Thread so far at:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-April/thread.html#44205
Erik
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Andre Engels <andreengels(a)gmail.com>
Date: Apr 18, 2006 4:52 PM
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dutch chapter
To: wikipedia-l(a)wikimedia.org
I think I speak for most of the Dutch Wikipedians if I say:
* Neither the Dutch Wikimedia Foundation (Stichting Wikimedia
Nederland) nor the Dutch Wikimedia Association (Vereniging Wikimedia
Nederland) has the right to influence the content and procedures of
the Dutch Wikipedia
* The board of neither has any formal special position on the Dutch Wikipedia
* At least the Dutch Wikimedia Foundation should not be allowed to
speak in name of the Dutch Wikipedia
* The Wikimedia Foundation is hereby requested not to give the Dutch
Wikimedia Foundation the status of chapter or any similar status
Thank you.
--
Andre Engels, andreengels(a)gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org
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> >What you need is an Eclipse Foundation like setup where large
> >corporations/system integrators make money on complementary services
> >and therefore can afford "altruistic" contributions to a real
> >open-source project like MediaWiki. Well, not only "afford" but
> "have to". :-)
> >
> >
>As much as I support open source concepts I have to admit that most of
>it remains untested in the courts. Patents can be a bigger problem than
>copyrights because they cover the ideas rather than just the expression
>of the idea. The first person to the patent office has an advantage
>even over others who may have had the idea earlier.
That's why you need a proper setup. The Eclipse Foundation, for
example, requires signing away any claims based on patents used in
source code contributions before they get accepted. It should be the
same for MediaWiki and related contributions.
Dirk
>can falter. Additionally, as the Mozilla note mentioned,
>contributions that aren't part of the mainline will likely bitrot. (I
>don't have a solution to this; just a cautionary note.)
Well, the main solution is to create an ecosystem where people get
hired to work (full-time) on providing such extensions (or additions
to the mainline) to MediaWiki. Only this setup can provide some continuity.
I'm working on getting projects setup to do exactly that. (I
mentioned this in a private note.) But for that to work the MediaWiki
community needs be accepting of (corporate) contributions (assuming
they follow the licenses and community spirit).
Are there any examples or even defined processes (on meta?) that I
could look up?
Thanks,
Dirk
The Privacy policy at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy is now out of date,
since it precedes the large scale use of "CheckUser" and claims only
"developers" have access to the IPs of logged in users.
I am suggested a revised version at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Angela/Privacy_policy (see
http://tinyurl.com/nbguc for a diff from the current version).
The main changes are to these two paragraphs:
"IP addresses of users, derived either from those logs or from records
in the database are frequently used to correlate usernames and network
addresses of edits in investigating abuse of the wiki, including the
suspected use of malicious "sockpuppets" (duplicate accounts),
vandalism, harassment of other users, or disruption of the wiki."
"It is the policy of Wikimedia that personally identifiable data
collected in the server logs, or through records in the database via
the CheckUser feature, may be released by the system administrators or
users with CheckUser access, in the following situations:"
I intend to propose that the Board accept the new draft as official
policy, but would appreciate feedback or further improvements before
then. Please comment on this list, or at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Privacy_policy
Thanks.
Angela.
(leaving in lots of quoting as original didn't make it to foundation-l)
Evan Prodromou wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-14-04 at 14:01 -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>> Google's doing their Summer of Code program again this year. We missed last
>> years', but I'm going to try signing us up as a mentoring organization this year.
>
> Great! I think SoC is good for MediaWiki for a couple of reasons. First,
> hey, free code. Second, I think getting the intern process straight for
> the SoC would make it easier if the Wikimedia Foundation ever wants to
> stimulate development by giving the same kind of grant packages. (The
> idea's been floated before, I don't know what the status is right now,
> just thought I'd point out that SoC might be good practice.)
Yep! The fact that a lot of the basic administrative work will be done by
someone else is obviously convenient for a first time...
>> Feel free to put any relevant-sounding project ideas here:
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2006
>
> I've added the list of future directions that Wikia, Wikitravel, and
> Wikimedia developed in LA last month. I think there are a lot of hot,
> juicy projects on there that a smart student might want to take a swipe
> at.
>
> I want to quickly run through the requirements, from
> http://code.google.com/soc/mentorfaq.html#2 :
>
> 1. A pool of project ideas for students to choose from. Check. Link
> is above.
> 2. Someone available to review student "blue-sky" proposals.
> Uncheck. I'll volunteer here if needed.
> 3. Someone available to decide which applications should be
> accepted. This is more of a lead developer job, albeit with
> input from the community and other developers, so I think it'd
> have to be brion or Tim.
> 4. A person (or people) to monitor the progress of the students.
> Unknown. Again, I would be happy to give some time to this, and
> I think there are probably other members of the team who would
> do it, too.
> 5. A mentor ready to take over for the assigned mentor(s) .
> Unknown. I can volunteer to be a mentor, but I can't volunteer
> to back myself up.
> 6. A written evaluation of each student developer. I can do that.
I've held myself out as our "organization administrator" for SoC; we can divide
the rest of the labor as necessary. :)
Once they get us in the system we should be able to set up the individual 'mentor's.
>> So I think it will be important to try to engage the folks working on our
>> projects if we want to keep them. :)
>
> I'd strongly suggest that any new development be made as an extension.
> That will keep it from being problematic for our mainstream codebase.
Where possible I totally agree.
> Brion: will you be sending the application to Google?
Already have, they sounded very positive. Should work its way through the system
soon...
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Hi. I responded to Brion's message on wikitech-l, but I got bounced from
foundation-l. Just thought I'd pass this along.
~Evan
--
Evan Prodromou <evan(a)prodromou.name>
My personal two cents on WS:User:Birgitte Arco is that she is a
responsible and valuable member of the community generally, and in large
measure the soul of Wikisource (tortured, fragmented or otherwise). I
was disturbed to hear about questioning of her ulterior motives, and
having been involved with Checkuser issues for Wikisource myself, in my
experience she acted positively and appropriately.
>From my perspective, I would hate to see damage done to the projects
"for want of a nail." The kingdom should not be lost; we should find a
way to either grant status on an interim basis or otherwise adjust the
guidelines. The vandals have tools, so should we. We must act to
defend ourselves - even Wikisource - and not let the primary goal of
promoting the projects fall flat in the face of rather arcane
administrative details (not that Checkuser isn't important - to the
contrary - but it shouldn't be more important than the project itself).
-BradPatrick
==========
When I have needed a checkuser in the past I have had
to go through third parties on IRC because no
available steward felt comfortable fulfilling my
request directly. And that makes it hard on me when
my blocks are questioned and I am accused having
ulterior motives (this was from outside the project).
I feel in my case I alerted and consulted with other
administrators and people outside of Wikisource enough
to feel confident these accusations cannot taken
seriously. However, administrators of small projects
are being put in the position of deciding between
protecting the project legally or from vandalism or
else protecting their reputations from accustions of
blocking people on unconfirmed suspicions. If I
hadn't been trusted by someone who was trusted by
stewards, I would have been put in a very nasty
postition. If things continue as they are, sooner or
later some one on some project is going to be stripped
of adminship because they did what they needed to do
to protect the project, and didn't think to cover
themselves as well as I did.
Birgitte SB
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Google's doing their Summer of Code program again this year. We missed last
years', but I'm going to try signing us up as a mentoring organization this year.
Feel free to put any relevant-sounding project ideas here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2006
Mozilla's experience last year wasn't so good[1]; some of their projects didn't
complete, and most of them haven't been touched since the end of the summer.
Mono however had a much more positive experience[2], with most of their projects
completing and being further developed and adopted after the end.
So I think it will be important to try to engage the folks working on our
projects if we want to keep them. :)
[1]
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/gerv/archives/2006/03/summer_of_code_six_mon…
[2] http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2006/Apr-13.html
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)