In a message dated 11/8/2009 12:30:05 AM Pacific Standard Time,
gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com writes:
> Now if you think that you need to
> pass judgement on this, you have a self centred world. That is very much
> part of the issue. The issue is that the context of the issue IS clear
> from
> my original post. I will not damage these people by naming them.>>
You're passing judgement on others, while protesting that others (you
think) are passing judgement on you. You're a power poster, but you want others
to not be power posters.
People will always leave email lists and people will always join. Let's
see statistics on the number who've left and the number who've joined. Do we
really want 3000 readers with 10 speakers? Or maybe 1000 readers with 100
speakers?
I don't see a lot of lurkers as being exactly what we'd aim for. You're
free to convince me but of course that would require posting more messages
while asking for people to stop posting more messages.
In my mind the more active a list is, the more input you get, and the
broader community is drawn to the list, instead of a select few. That seems
closer to what we'd want.
Will
In a message dated 11/7/2009 9:13:01 PM Pacific Standard Time,
thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com writes:
> And how do you answer them? Based on your experience of what is
> usually accepted on the list in question? Who should I ask that has
> more experience of these lists than I do?>>
Ok I will begrudgingly accept the position of Supreme Knower of the Minds
of List Participants. It's a difficult position, but I psychically feel my
public clamoring for my expertise. So henceforth all list posters, must
submit to me first, their postings and I will decide what's of interest to all,
and what's not and act accordingly.
There is no need to thank me for my magnaminity.
P.S. I cannot help that some will read this message with "tone", where no
such tone is implied or intended.
Will Johnson
Hoi,
I am at the Commons usability conference in Paris. I am not on any internal
mailing lists. It has become painfully obvious that as a consequence of a
refusal to any longer post on the foundation-l by several people present at
this conference, the use of foundation-l has been severely diminished.
There have been frequent threads and pleas on this list to moderate the
output of opinions, restated opinions, and the people who are asked to do so
are adamant that it is their "democratic right" or whatever to state what
they have to say, that the onus of selecting what thread to read is on the
reader.
The consequence for me has been that the frequency that I post on this list
has decreased a lot. I now blog and this has proven to be more effective.
However for the issue at hand at this conference, there is little likelihood
that it will be discussed on this list. It will not be because several of
the key people refuse to. For me to keep informed, I will have to get access
to the internal list or I will find that much of what is happening will pass
me by.
The argument about "democratic right" to be heard is balanced with the
argument for our "democratic right" to be informed. We are not informed and
will not be informed because of the verbal diarrhoea by some and their
unrepentant claim that they are not responsible for the results. As I
indicated earlier I have no solution. The only solution I see is moderation.
Moderation preferably by the people involved but I would like us to consider
the moderation by moderators whereby people can be in extremis be completely
removed from the list.
Let us be clear, the value of foundation-l has a direct relation to the
quality of the discussions. The signal to noise ratio has devalued this
list. It is however the only mailing list that qualifies. Maybe and probably
mail is not the best technology for the existing unbridled discussion,
Google Wave has more potential but that is not the technology that is
currently available to us.
Please read it as an appeal to reply to foundation-l in moderation. Please
read it as an appeal to post liberally to this list as we do not have an
alternative.
Thanks,
GerardM
In a message dated 11/7/2009 8:54:55 PM Pacific Standard Time,
william(a)scissor.com writes:
> But as far as I know, they aren't actually imposing anything, in
> that nobody is actually stopping the posts in question. So if there's
> actual imposing going on, it's on the part of the posters.>>
>
That statement is false.
If I impose on you to hear, and you impose on me to shut up, that is
imposition on both sides. A gag in my mouth is just as much an imposition as
making you wear earmuffs.
Will
In a message dated 11/6/2009 6:28:20 AM Pacific Standard Time,
effeietsanders(a)gmail.com writes:
> except that this happens in many threads and is a general problem coming
> back allt he time.>>
At the point at which any particular person is no longer interested in
reading a thread, they should stop reading it. Then the thread can die a
natural death, and no one needs to get upset at a few messages a day appearing in
their mailbox. As you can see the thread died all by itself. On
soc.genealogy.medieval, some of the vicious cat-calling threads go on and on for a few
hundred postings, and get quite nasty. But they all die eventually. And
these are between scholars (self-proclaimed at times).
Will
In a message dated 11/7/2009 12:44:42 PM Pacific Standard Time,
andreengels(a)gmail.com writes:
> No, we don't. We need forces to help the encyclopedia get further. We
> don't need a force of people who stop people who are helping creating
> it, and we don't need a force of people who support people who are not
> helping creating it.>>
You are completely ignoring what I said.
Police do not help the work move forward. Police never help any progress
progress. Their only function is to stop something, not to make anything
occur.
You are labeling all those blocked as being vandals. That is begging the
question. The very point, is that many of those blocked, perhaps even most
of them, did *not* deserve it at all. Appealing to another admin is
pointless, all admins support each other in the same way that all police support
each other. It's called a Police State. That is what the term implies. That
is what we have in the project. The fact that many people can work just
fine within a Police State is not the same as saying that such a situation is
ideal or even matches the real world.
In the real world, we do not run society at the whim of the police.
Stating that people can appeal to ArbCom is fairly silly. We are discussing
trying to get people to become involved in the project. Not trying to teach them
how to run power games in a massive RPG. That is the exact opposite of
what I had hoped we were trying to do. If the entire project is a game then
we've failed. If we are forcing people to learn all the gamer rules just to
get their points considered, then we've failed. If we have a sink or swim
mentality for all new contributors then we've failed.
That's my point. A vanishingly tiny number of admins ever seek out and try
to help people who are blocked. Everyone is guiltly until they prove their
own innocence in a system which frowns on anyone trying to do so. That's
not the type of society that the majority of people want to live under. And
yet that's the type we've created. Anyone who has tried to learn how to win
under this sort of oppression in-project knows exactly what I'm speaking
about. I'm not sure that any admin would understand it. That's a given.
It's hard to show the police that a police state is a bad thing. That's why we
in the real world have checks against police abuse.
What I'm saying is that we need the exact same type of checks in the
project.
You had said previously that when this "Community Approval" was tried,
every block was challenged. Yes. Every person blocked is going to say "I'm
innocent". You see it on death row as well. No criminal is ever guilty. But
to presume that somehow that's not what we want, is to say that the real
world, in which we all live, is not what we want. That what we want is
criminals to behave nicely and not complain about the quality of food in prison.
And for those falsely locked up, to just serve their term and have no
"Innocence Project". I disagree.
Everyone is innocent until proven guilty. And that proof should not rest
in the arms of a sole person as it does in our project. In our project a
person can be locked up indefinitly with no trial, and no appeal. And you
wonder why people get disenchanted.
Will Johnson
I have been part of the wiki community for 6 years now. As I reflect
on what I've seen over the years, I've developed a definite sense that
the enthusiasm and energy in the community has waned. (I'm going to
frame this discussion mostly in terms of the English Wikipedia, though
I think it applies to most of the large, mature wikis.) It's a
qualitative sense that the community is less active and excited about
what they are doing today than they used to be. Some data supports
this, like the declines in editor activity and administrator
attrition, though I think I perceive it most directly as a change in
the experience of being in the community.
At the root, I think that Wikipedia is something of a victim of it's
own success. We've written the largest encyclopedia in history,
become a household name, and created a top web destination. Great
job. What now?
Most of our processes and policies have changed little in years. Most
of the recent software changes are small and evolutionary rather than
revolutionary. Compared to the days when parser functions, templates,
cite, and other things were being introduced, it is rare to see
changes that excite people and grow to be widely used. There are
perhaps a few such things still promised on the horizon (e.g. open
street maps), but mostly it seems like we've become satisfied with
what we have and are slow to change. In the editing community, we see
a growing interest in removing redlinks on the theory that if it
hasn't been started yet how interesting can it really be, or worse
deleting stubs and other incomplete articles because no one seems
interested in finishing them. At the Foundation level, we see efforts
to leverage Wikipedia with third party deals (e.g. Orange) and
important incremental improvements (e.g. Usability), but it is rare to
even consider whole new projects or have anyone articulate a grand new
vision.
I'm wondering what people think about this. On the one hand we could
simply accept it. We've already created a world changing
encyclopedia. We can embrace Wikipedia for what it is and accept that
maintaining it will not be as exciting as building it. That's the
direction I think we've implicitly been following, by inertia if no
other reason. We allow the policies, processes, and structures we
have now to become entrenched, and focus on ensuring that the work
which already exists will persist into the future. That would still
be a great achievement, but it is not sexy, and I think we would
continue to see a slowing and contraction in the community. Filling
in details and improving prose, isn't going to easily attract
volunteers.
On the other hand, I think we could try to recapture some of the
vision and fire of our initial growth. Push for new tools (e.g.
string functions, data storage mechanisms, new communication tools)
and new projects (e.g. directory services, almanacs). There any many
risks with innovating. It could backfire and damage what we have, but
on the other hand having new things to do and a fresh vision could
bring new energy to the community.
Personally, I look at Wikimedia and think there is still a lot of room
for expansion, innovation, and growth, but I also think we've become
resistant to it.
I'm wondering whether other people at the Foundation-l level perceive
the same trends, and what they think about the balance between
innovation and growth versus simply maintaining and solidifying the
processes and products that we already have.
-Robert Rohde
Hello all!
This Friday's office hours will once again feature Rand Montoya,
Wikimedia Foundation's Head of Community Giving. If you don't know
Rand, you can read about him at
<http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Rand_Montoya>.
Office hours on Thursday are from 2230 to 2330 UTC (3:30 PM - 4:30 PM PDT).
If you do not have an IRC client, there are two ways you can come chat
using a web browser: First is using the Wikizine chat gateway at
<http://chatwikizine.memebot.com/cgi-bin/cgiirc/irc.cgi>. Type a
nickname, select irc.freenode.net from the top menu and
#wikimedia-office from the following menu, then login to join.
Also, you can access Freenode by going to http://webchat.freenode.net/,
typing in the nickname of your choice and choosing wikimedia-office as
the channel. You may be prompted to click through a security warning.
It should be all right.
Please feel free to forward (and translate!) this email to any other
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--
Cary Bass
Volunteer Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
In a message dated 11/6/2009 3:10:33 AM Pacific Standard Time,
putevod(a)mccme.ru writes:
> To realize that (almost) all articles about computer games, anime series
> and Hollywood stars have been written. We just need to do a different
> work.>>
I would say that most articles about Hollywood stars have been written, but
for example we have no articles on many B stars even if IMDb shows they had
20 or more items credited.
In addition, we have few articles on movies. Sure we have the
blockbusters, but when you think that Hollywood puts out something like a hundred movies
a year (or more) we have only scratched the surface. One hundred times 100
years of output.
On the nobility front, I constantly encounter gaps in our lists of "Lord of
such-and-such" (a place or title or designation). This is more true for
the oldest parts of lines. With a name like Yaroslav, I'm sure you see a lot
of gaps in the details of the Kievan and Polish rulers from a thousand years
ago.
On biography, comparing the DNB with what we have, there are plenty of
gaps. And that was just the more comprehensive biography of English-language
people, without mentioning much on the rest of the world. And mostly focused
on the British at that.
So that's just a few areas that need improvement if we're trying to be
comprehensive and not just current.
Will Johnson