James Hare wrote:
> For the record, I'm asking about an apology for the poor communication,
> because that -was- rather minimal communication prior to the ad.
Others have said it already, but since I'm the chair of the
Communications Committee, I think it's appropriate for me to add my
apology for the difficulties in communication between the Wikimedia
Foundation and the community. It's clear that the level of communication
is not adequate, and I share the frustration that I think many of us
feel. Because of the scope of the problem, I think it's worthwhile to
explore it at some length.
Part of the problem is a lack of resources, both human and technical, in
the communications area as much as in any other. That sort of thing is,
of course, exactly what this fundraiser is trying to address. As has
been noted, we've barely managed sufficient communication to merely
coordinate what we're going to do, let alone communicate those
intentions more broadly. Although there has been some previous
communication that produced disappointingly little discussion. The
community seems much more inclined to give feedback when the Foundation
does something as opposed to when it talks about planning things.
Some of that feedback is over the issue of advertising, with various
attempts to draw lines in the silicon and declare them crossed or not
crossed. Honestly, it reminds me greatly of a typical dispute over
competing points of view on a Wikipedia talk page. It is not resolvable
by simply insisting on a particular interpretation, and in the meantime
the Foundation has to make decisions in order to continue operating.
Wikimedia is committed to maintaining a neutral point of view, as is
well known, and I believe that value has not been compromised in any
material way. Perceptions are admittedly important too, but they do not
always reflect reality, as anyone familiar with the media coverage of
Wikipedia can tell you. What is advertising and whether we should have
it are important considerations, and have been debated at length, but
it's not a fundamental value in the same way that free content or
neutrality are. Anyone who's convinced that our actual content has been
compromised already by the recent decisions is welcome to try and
demonstrate how that's the case.
A wise person once told me that basically all longstanding members of
the community are outliers on certain issues. I know that it's true for
me, and I'm sure that it's also true even of people closer to the center
of Wikimedia, including Jimbo himself. There will always be some matter
on which your personal viewpoint does not prevail, even though you think
it's an important point and use your most persuasive arguments to get
that across. In any group project that consists of more than just your
ideological clones, this is something we have to deal with. Here we do
share a few fundamental goals, and hope that people can put aside other
agendas to work on them. If upon closer examination you find that you
cannot adopt these goals, or that the path to them includes elements
that you absolutely cannot live with, then we wish you well in your
other endeavors.
Meanwhile, we have a number of communications needs, and some go beyond
communicating just with the immediate community of Wikimedia projects.
I'd like to mention some of those to remind people of the many tasks
being handled, often unseen and unappreciated, and invite additional
help. We have the general public to communicate with, for example
through the volume of email Wikimedia receives, which many volunteers
take turns responding to (some of you may know this as the OTRS system).
This is frequently overloaded, especially in English, but through a
valiant effort we actually cleaned out the backlog about a month ago. Of
course, over the holidays the emails have built up again, and we need to
renew the effort. Anyone willing to help with this for a few months,
please contact UninvitedCompany, the chair of the OTRS subcommittee, or
else the contact for your particular language. Good customer service
skills are a key here.
Communicating with the project communities is also a challenge, because
they are so widely distributed. There is no central place to reach
everyone, and many differing expectations about what "affects" the
community and how it should be notified. (I use quotes because
everything affects the community, but notice doesn't seem to be expected
every time we buy servers, as long as the site runs.) The solution is
for the community to help spread the word about anything that might be
of importance. Some people may be familiar with The Wikipedia Signpost
on en.wikipedia, or the Kurier on de.wikipedia. These are community
efforts to grow and build on, and more like them should be encouraged. I
know the TIME honor is so last year, but "You" are the only way
Wikimedia can ever communicate with its projects. Contributions like
Walter's Wikizine or Improv's LSS are invaluable (and as we regret the
latter's departure, thanks to BirgitteSB for committing to keep it going).
Returning to the public side, the Wikimedia Foundation gets a number of
requests to provide speakers at various functions. Some want Jimbo, but
he's not able to fill them all, and many of these requests would be
happy with community representatives. A few of these may be large
conferences that can offer to cover travel expenses, but often it's a
smaller function simply hoping that someone local would be available to
meet with them. We're looking for someone who can volunteer to
coordinate public speaking assignments, both handling requests and
organizing a pool of available speakers. If you're interested in doing
this, please let me know (in the meantime, if people who have presented
on Wikimedia subjects can
update http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Presentations it would be
appreciated).
--Michael Snow
Gatto Nero wrote:
> 2007/1/3, Michael Snow <wikipedia(a)earthlink.net>:
>
>> Part of the problem is a lack of resources, both human and technical, in
>> the communications area as much as in any other. That sort of thing is,
>> of course, exactly what this fundraiser is trying to address.
>
> I'm sorry, 'cause of language differences maybe I've not understood:
> are you saying that "lack of resources" is one of the reasons why are
> we collecting money?
Yes.
> This means, "people needs to be payed"? (I'm asking, 'cause I'm not
> sure, that's not an accusation)
See "human and technical" above. There's a need for servers, and there's
a need to hire staff to do the things that volunteers can't, won't, or
aren't trained to do.
> In the recent past, I remember a user answering to me and other
> italians "Communities doesn't matter. Funding does. Capisce?".
> How does this phrase should be interpreted?
> Let's think about a new user who's starting to communicate with the
> Foundation, and he's been answered in this way.
> Obviously, I don't think this is an isolated case.
I don't know who said it or how it was intended to be interpreted. At
face value, it's certainly not an appropriate expression of the
Foundation's position. However, I'm surprised that you would take a
random comment like this, that sounds like it was made on IRC, as an
authoritative statement. A "new user" who wants to "communicate with the
Foundation" is looking in entirely the wrong place there, and I'm not
sure how a truly new user would receive such an answer (as opposed to
someone used to getting information passed by word of mouth in a chat
room). As I mentioned with regard to OTRS, good customer service skills
are expected, and we do work with new volunteers so they understand not
to give such inappropriate responses.
> As far as I remember, I have no memories at all of reading a
> communication "signed" by the CommComm. Better: I have no memories at
> all of reading a communicaton about Foundation's issues or problem.
The former may not be surprising, although there have been some (like
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/htdig/foundation-l/2006-June/007393.html).
In part, the Communications Committee has been involved in coordinating
messages that do not necessarily come with its "signature", like the
material surrounding the closure of the French Wikiquote. Meanwhile, if
you've been subscribed to this list, and truly have no memory of reading
communications about the Foundation's issues, I really can't help you
with that.
> Why has there not been a periodical mail/message/zine/whatever
> summarizing what's going the Foundation?
Lack of time, attention, and resources. Anyone who wants to try to
resurrect the Wikimedia Quarto or do something similar is welcome to.
There have been lots of suggestions about things Wikimedia could be
doing, many of them useful, both as to communications and other issues.
These are nice, but simply adding more tasks to an already overloaded
to-do list doesn't produce a lot of progress. That's why we're asking
for help. We need more people like Improv or BirgitteSB, who are willing
to take a good idea and implement it. Ideas are cheap compared to action.
--Michael Snow
We may be the 9th most viewed site in the US.
We may be the second Google result for about 90% of their winners.
But the Academy Awards, SAG Awards, and Golden Globes all rejected us from
their red carpets. Getting free photos of A-list celebrities is not as easy
as it should be.
In the forms, I honestly stated that we had a Rolling Stone photographer on
the docket to take pics, who incidentally was fine with working for us for
free.
Either that means Rolling Stone isn't as legendary a publication as it makes
itself out to be, or they don't trust us, or they don't want free content
images released, as that would peave off the WireImages of the world.
Just so everyone knows,
Nick
PS : Any British photographers on this list? I'm going to be trying for some
of those award shows soon.
On 02/01/07, Michael Billington <michael.billington(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Slight problem I encountered, adding that HTML/wikimarkup un-modified to the
> [[MediaWiki:Copyright]] message makes a few broken links. (at least it did
> on Wikiversity) To do the same thing on any wiki, you have to swap some of
> the {{loaclurl}}s with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/, so that the Wikipedia
> articles will still link, rather than pointing to articles on your project
> which don't exist. Cheers -- Michael Billington
Ah yes. Whoops! Please note!
(I must say, changing a message on every single page of the site that
generates over half our hits gave me a certain amount of ...
trepidation.)
If your wiki's language isn't English, of course, you probably want
the links to "non-profit" and "charity" to be to those articles in the
wiki's own language.
- d.
I reply specifically to Brion Vibber's message here:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-December/012848.html
I find it very unfortunate that Brion characterises
people like me, who have been on the project for many
years, as being uncaring about our values. I care deeply
about the project, and feel that accepting advertising,
whether it be for brand identity or a specific product,
as unacceptable. The Spanish wikipedia and the many users
who have put userboxen against advertisements (as ironic
as that is) on their userpages should've taught Brion
(and others involved) that the values of the community
*do* have a substantial number of people who will never
accept this kind of thing. After reading some of the other
comments on this list and chatting with a few folks, I
understand that my concerns, while considered, will not be
addressed. To me, Wikipedia (and related projects) are and
must be noncommercial if I am to be involved - it is impossible
to honestly educate with one hand while waving a billboard
with the other.
I greatly regret the wrong turn the community
has made here, for it is not something I will live with and
stay. Y'all may want to keep a close eye on the Spanish
Wikipedia. Goodbye, all. You may do what you wish with my
accounts - I have left a note on my LSS project (to summarise
the foundation lists) that a new project head is needed.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS
If y'all want to see it continue, someone needs to pick up
the ball. Someone should take care of any OTRS replies I get.
It's actually, other than the end, been a pleasure working
with many of you - if any of you want to keep in touch,
I'm just an e-mail or IM away. It reminds me of the last
big social project I was on and how it slowly came to an end
through commercial entanglement after being acquired:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoWonder
Goodbye.
---
Pat Gunn
mod: csna, bmcm, bmco, cooa, cona, clpd, coom
http://dachte.org
Wanting to edit on the nl.wikipedia I found my IP blocked. All of the
IP's of my Thai internet provider are blocked it seems. So I cannot edit
nl.wikipedia!
On nl: user RonaldB has a private project of AUTOBLOCKING all open
proxies. All Thai providers use open proxies. So now I am blocked and
cannot log in. RonaldB never got agreement on nl: for this nor is this a
wikimedia policy to stop all users in Thailand from editing. Still
I AM FUCKING BLOCKED AGAIN.
Waerth
In a message dated 1/2/2007 2:50:59 PM Eastern Standard Time,
walter(a)vankalken.net writes:
Danny do I have your permission to repost this mail in the Dutch
villagepump?
Yes
Waerth,
Ronalvd has the support of the sysops on wikipedia NL. He is doing a great job by blocking open proxies of which we get a lot of vandalism.
Surely he doesn't block all open proxies (only the ones we need to block). Please contact him for a solution, instead of posting to this mailing list.
Greetings,
Annabel (@wikipedia.be)
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
http://hemlock.knams.wikimedia.org/~leon/stats/reqstats/reqstats-monthly.png
The quiestest two days for Wikimedia were the 24th and 25th, straddling
week 51 and 52 on the graph. A lull in request rate has continued
throughout the week. We're still seeing significantly more traffic now
than we were in the middle of the year, but I have to wonder if it might
not have been better, in hindsight, to move the fundraising drive back a
couple of weeks.
-- Tim Starling
[cc to wikien-l, wikipedia-l and foundation-l - this is why the text
on the bottom of each page on en:wp is suddenly a bit longer ... I
shoulda found the MediaWiki message in question a month ago!]
On 08/12/06, florencedevouard <anthere(a)anthere.org> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
>>On 07/12/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>>I want to get your ideas on how we can take this message forward as part of
>>>our PR blitz for the fund drive. As I think back to the Atlantic and New
>>>Yorker pieces, and even Mick Brown's piece, "the good ones" - "charity"
>>>wasn't really an emphasis. We have been a "phenomenon" - but not a
>>>phenomenal charity.
> >The message at the bottom of every page of English Wikipedia says:
> >"Wikipedia(r) is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc."
> >How about:
> >"Wikipedia(r) is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation,
> >Inc., a US-registered 501(c)3 tax-deductible nonprofit charity."
> >Or something like that.
> You got it right David !
> With a link under us-registered 501 :
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Deductibility_of_donations
This is actually a Mediawiki message, [[MediaWiki:Copyright]] - so
anyone with admin access on a given wiki can change it once we have a
translation.
I've just put the above text (with link) on en:wp since Florence
approves of it. If the wording is not *precisely* legally correct,
could Brad or Danny please correct it promptly!
The text I've placed (a curious mix of wikitext and plain HTML) is:
All text is available under the terms of the <a class='internal'
href="{{localurl:Wikipedia:Text of the GNU Free Documentation
License}}" title="Wikipedia:Text of the GNU Free Documentation
License">GNU Free Documentation License</a>. (See <b><a
class='internal' href="{{localurl:Wikipedia:Copyrights}}"
title="Wikipedia:Copyrights">Copyrights</a></b> for details.) <br />
Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the <a
href="http://www.wikimediafoundation.org">Wikimedia Foundation,
Inc.</a>, a US-registered <a class='internal'
href="{{localurl:501(c)}}" title="501(c)(3)">501(c)(3)</a> <a
href="http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Deductibility_of_donations">tax-deductible</a>
<a class='internal' href="{{localurl:Non-profit organization}}"
title="Non-profit organization">nonprofit</a> <a
href="{{localurl:Charitable organization}}" title="Charitable
organization">charity.<br />
Note the links to [[501(c)]], [[Non-profit organization]] and
[[Charitable organization]] as well.
> Also, on Foundationwiki, at the bottom, we have "About Wikimedia Foundation"
> Instead, we can change it in "[[About Wikimedia Foundation|Wikimedia
> Foundation]] is a us registered blablabla
Wiki admins and translators, please? The essential message is that
this is a charity, not a for-profit company.
- d.
