Hi folks,
The last Report to the Board that I published here was the October
one, published December 13. I owe you November, December, January and
February.
First, I'd like to sincerely apologize for the delay. There's no
justification for it, just a number of factors coincided to make me
unusually busy, and the reports to the board fell by the wayside. I
appreciate your patience, and I _also_ appreciate the people who
hassled me offlist to get back on track. Really I do :-)
I'll publish November here in a few minutes, and the remainder over
the coming few days. I want to stage them out a bit, so that you have
time to read them and discuss :-)
Thanks,
Sue
Hi folks,
This is just a quick interim update on the BLP issue I raised here last week.
First, thanks to everyone who has contributed to the discussion thus
far. We all know that foundation-l isn't necessarily reflective of
general Wikimedia opinion, and that many experiences and skills are
unrepresented here – but nonetheless, I have read every word, and have
found it really, really useful. Thank you for helping.
Here's my quick rough summary of what we've discussed:
First, there seems to be a general view that BLPs are a problem that
is worth addressing. I won't recap all the reasons for that, because
it seems there is ---happpily--- already consensus.
Second, there is also a fear ---represented here probably most
strongly by David Gerard, but I believe lots of other people think the
same thing--- that if we tackle BLPs clumsily, we could make things
worse not better, or at least might introduce new problems. For
example, we might make the error of privileging kindness over
neutrality, resulting in a general whitewashing of BLPs. Or we could
accidentally encourage a massive wave of deletionism, resulting in
much smaller and less useful Wikipedias.
There is also general concern about policy creep and instruction
creep, which is important. We know that the sheer volume of Wikipedia
policies is confusing and intimidating for new people who want to
engage with us – so in general, given that we aspire to attract new
contributors and generally make it easier for people to interact with
us, it is probably better to generally aim to refine and streamline
existing policies, rather than adding to their number.
With that as preamble, here are the areas that I think we've surfaced
as needing further attention:
1) There is a big unresolved question around whether, if
marginally-notable people ask to have their articles deleted, that
request should be granted. My sense -both from the discussion here
and other discussions elsewhere- is that many Wikipedians are very
strongly protective of their general right to retain even very
marginal BLPs. Presumably this is because notability is hard to
define, and they are worried about stupid across-the-board
interpretations that will result in massive deletionism. However,
other people strongly feel that the current quantity of BLPs about
less-notable people diminish the overall quality of the encyclopedia,
reduce our credibility, and run the risk of hurting real people.
There seems to be little consensus here. Roughly: some people seem
to strongly feel the bar for notability should be set higher, and
deletion requests generally granted: others seem to strongly feel the
current state is preferable. I would welcome discussion about how to
achieve better consensus on this issue.
2) There is broad general agreement that we should continue to create
and implement mechanisms and tools designed to catch and correct
vandalism and poor-quality edits, both before and after-the-fact.
There is a lot of work being done in this area - for example, projects
continue to request and receive implementations of Flagged Revs. I
wonder if there is more we could/should be doing in this area.
3) Currently, we know that people with BLP problems have trouble
getting in touch with us: the contact information is buried or
confusing. I believe there is broad general agreement that we should
make it easier for people to request help with BLPs, and to report
problems in general. And I am glad that some work on that is
beginning to happen (e.g., a “report a problem” tool, a “rate this
article” tool, a BLP FAQ for article subjects). It's obvious we need
to be cautious – we can't afford to open the floodgates to complaints
if we will all then immediately drown in them. And we need to ensure
the new tools are user-friendly - that they will actually help the
people they're intended for. But in general, I believe there is
agreement that we need to do a better job of enabling BLP article
subjects to communicate with us.
And 4) I believe there is general support for the notion of training
Wikipedians to handle BLP issues well. I personally strongly believe
that handling BLPs requires a set of specific skills and abilities –
for example, an excellent understanding of core Wikipedia policies;
experience with policies such as notability that are particularly
important in BLP issues; diplomacy, kindness and patience. I am very
interested in exploring further how the Foundation could support such
training, and how it could be scaled up so everyone could access it.
(I've been kicking around notions such as face-to-face training camps;
training at Wikimania and the all-chapters meetings; the provision of
support materials to chapters; monthly “train the trainer” webcast
sessions, etc.)
So .. that is my rough, quick recap of where I think we're at.
In terms of next steps – as I said, I'll be speaking about this issue
with the board in early April. This is just an interim note: Please
feel free to help me further my thinking on all this -particularly #1
and #4 above- over the next few weeks. And thank you for your help
thus far.
Thanks,
Sue
The author attribution survey is now closed. We have 1017 complete
responses. I've posted results of the attribution data in the
following report:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:Attribution_Survey_Results.pdf
I've posted the raw data of the attribution survey here:
Respondents from English Wikipedia:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:Attsurvey-en.ods
Respondents from German Wikipedia:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:Attsurvey-de.ods
Respondents from miscellaneous languages and projects:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/File:Attsurvey-misc.ods
(The survey was linked via the WikimediaNotifier bot, so we got quite
a bit of nicely dispersed traffic.)
As the report shows, and as I indicated in my prior e-mail, there is
wide support for simple attribution models, and fairly strong and
visible opposition to full author attribution (as well as complete
absence of any attribution). Full author attribution is the second
least popular option, at 32.82%. Many comments pointed out the tension
between free content and attribution, such as:
* "While the whole point of Wikipedia is to provide access to
information freely and easily, a balance must be struck between
recognising authors' contributions and the constraints on utilising
the information." (User's preferred attribution model is link to the
article.)
* "Giving credit to all authors is ridiculous! I think the 'Wikipedia
Community' is sufficient credit, this project is not about personal
gratification, its about community collaboration."
* "Full list of authors is terribly impractical."
* "Including the full list of authors on a 'NOT online' resource would
be a waste of resources, i.e. paper and ink, most of the time. But
even for online use, who would read the version history? On the other
hand, a link can't do much harm..."
* "Establishing which editors to credit would cause enormous disagreement"
* "Although requiring credit may sound noncontroversial, it actually
is a pretty big can of worms in contexts of (a) editing
wikipedia-sourced content into rather different things (for example,
the way that some wikipedia articles grew out of 1911 Britannica
articles), (b) what if the wikimedia foundation has some kind of
meltdown and it is necessary to fork the project. Therefore my
recommendation is to not think in terms of 'requirements' but
suggested practices."
Some users commented on the fact that Wikipedia is primarily written
by people under pseudonyms, and that being suddenly visibly attributed
would actually come as a surprise:
* "If any version of credit-sharing citing editors is made policy, all
editors should be given notice and allowed to change their monikers to
their choice. In my case, I choose a moniker I liked when I thought
the community would remain anonymous forever. If my contributions went
into print or were used similarly I would like to use my actual name."
Community credit proved a quite popular option, second only to a
direct link to the article. Many people viewed it as a simple method
to credit their contribution both online and offline. (At least one
user suggested linking to detailed histories online, and crediting the
community collectively offline.)
A few users felt very strongly about always giving author credit. The
strongest example I found:
"I won't accept nothing less than what I chosed above, and I'm ready
to leave my sysop status and other wmf-related roles if WMF will
underestimate the meaning of GFDL to our projects. GFDL is what we
would have chosen if asked 8 years ago, and is what we will stand up
for."
Some users also pointed out that our options were constrained by the
requirements set forth in the GFDL.
I'd love to see deeper analysis of the survey. I want to restate my
original intent in running it: it's intended to be a feeler survey, to
get a rough impression of what attribution models are widely
considered acceptable by contributors to our projects, and which ones
aren't. It served this purpose, and I have no intent in running
additional surveys; we're on an aggressive timeline and have to move
forward. It's also not intended to dictate a solution.
My preliminary conclusion is that a simple, manageable attribution
model, while causing some short-term disruption, will widely be
considered not only acceptable, but preferable to complex attribution
models, in support of our mission to disseminate free information.
That being said, we probably still have to find a compromise, as well
as language that appropriate deals with single-author multimedia
contributions. I imagine that if we a) have a more prominent "list of
authors / list of people who contributed to this revision" credit link
on article pages; b) require that a link must be given, and that the
preferred linking format is to the revision that is being copied, c)
explicitly state in our attribution terms that for images, sounds and
videos that aren't the result of extensive collaboration, credit must
be given to the creator, we're covering most cases.
We then still have to resolve the issue of giving credit for content
imported into our projects consistently, which is a bit of a can of
worms. (We might want to set some limitations on what kinds of content
we import, to prevent "attribution pollution".) But it's secondary to
the main issue of a consistent attribution model within our projects.
A model like the above is consistent with CC-BY-SA. There is a
question as to whether it can be reconciled with our current
practices. I believe it can, and I also think we can find mitigation
strategies for contributors who vehemently disagree. I'll work on a
revision to the currently proposed language, and will post that next
week, alongside some further thoughts.
In terms of our timeline, I don't believe we can wrap things up prior
to the Board meeting in April, but I think we can still hit a timeline
to make a migration decision by mid-to-late April. SPI has committed
to help administer the vote as an independent third party. What still
needs to be done:
* We need to form a little workgroup/committee to help with the usual
process of tallying the votes;
* We need to translate all relevant text (including the vote
announcements), once it's final, into as many languages as possible;
* We need to implement a modified Special:Boardvote so it can be used
for this decision.
* We also want to allow sufficient time for the actual
decision-making, ideally 3-4 weeks.
We have a big all-staff meeting and an all-day tech meeting next week,
which will hamper us a bit in moving this forward aggressively, but
I'll see if I can move things along a bit before then. If someone
wants to create draft pages for any of the above (workgroup,
announcement, etc.), I'd be very grateful :-)
More soon,
Erik
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Hoi,
It is with pleasure that we announce that we have enlarged the language
committee with SPQRobin. Robin is the longest serving administrator on the
Incubator and we hope to make the procedure of getting new projects started
more obvious and clear.
On the incubator many projects start without any announcement or request on
Meta. We hope that the Incubator communities will have an early and
realistic expectation of their chances of getting their request approved and
implemented. There is nothing more frustrating that working on a new project
only to find that it will be denied by default.
Thanks,
GerardM
Hi,
Wikimedia Polska Conference 2009 s a fourth event organized by the
Wikimedia Polska to encourage ideas, exchange of Wikimedia projects
users in Poland and people connected with free software, free
knowledge and free culture in a information
society. We invite everyone interested in all areas of free culture
movement in various aspects of it: education, society, legal and
technical.
The Conference will be held on May1st-3rd, 2009 (Friday-Sunday) in
Conference and Tourist Center of Prime Ministers' Chancellery in
Jadwisin, near Warsaw. http://www.owjadwisin.pl/eng.shtml . Although
being near of Warsaw (just around 1 hr by bus from city center) it is
located in nice and calm forestry and lake area in the very center of
Mazowia.
The conference fee is really cheap - just 50 PLN (around EUR 12) per
person and it includes accommodation and food. Although the planned
main language of the conference is Polish, if there will be enough
foreign speakers we can arrange one session in English. The scope of
the conference is more or less similar to Wikimania.
More information:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/pl/e/e8/Cyrkularz_pierwszy-1-en.pdf
--
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerekhttp://www.ganicz.pl/poli/http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html
Hi,
Wikimedia Polska Conference 2009 s a fourth event organized by the
Wikimedia Polska to encourage ideas, exchange of Wikimedia projects
users in Poland and people connected with free software, free
knowledge and free culture in a information
society. We invite everyone interested in all areas of free culture
movement in various aspects of it: education, society, legal and
technical.
The Conference will be held on May1st-3rd, 2009 (Friday-Sunday) in
Conference and Tourist Center of Prime Ministers' Chancellery in
Jadwisin, near Warsaw. http://www.owjadwisin.pl/eng.shtml . Although
being near of Warsaw (just around 1 hr by bus from city center) it is
located in nice and calm forestry and lake area in the very center of
Mazowia.
The conference fee is really cheap - just 50 PLN (around EUR 12) per
person and it includes accommodation and food. Although the planned
main language of the conference is Polish, if there will be enough
foreign speakers we can arrange one session in English. The scope of
the conference is more or less similar to Wikimania.
More information:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/pl/e/e8/Cyrkularz_pierwszy-1-en.pdf
--
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerekhttp://www.ganicz.pl/poli/http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html
Hello all,
Bidding is now closed for Wikimania 2010! The bidding cities are
Oxford, Amsterdam, Gdansk, and Philadelphia.
The bidding cities now have a month to complete work on their bids,
after which a public meeting will be held to answer questions and the
Jury will evaluate the bids.
Also, a reminder that the Call for Participation for Wikimania 2009 in
Buenos Aires is now open: please see
http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org/wiki/Call_for_Participation to
submit talks, posters, workshops and panels.
best,
Phoebe
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Friends,
I have returned from the field, and look forward to picking up where
I/we left off on the project.
Best regards,
Jon
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On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 8:52 PM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/3/2 Chris Down <neuro.wikipedia(a)googlemail.com>:
>
>> Ipatrol has just came on IRC claiming that he has been told that the WMF is
>> hiring people to "validate" articles, and that the foundation is doing it in
>> secret by using thousands of IPs and academics. He claims that the WMF has
>> contracted colleges all across the US have been recruiting academics to
>> "validate" articles, and states that admins are involved in this 'cabal', or
>> whatever.
>
>
> o_0
>
> If we were doing such a thing:
>
> 1. we wouldn't be paying anyone
> 2. we'd be shouting it from the rooftops.
>
> Nice idea, actually. Anyone feel they could put together a serious
> programme to recruit academics to such a cause?
(changed subject as this is an interesting discussion)
I was thinking about this as well recently and yes, Thomas, I agree,
this is something that could coordinated or at least supported by
chapters, many of which have good connections to local universities.
Michael
--
Michael Bimmler
mbimmler(a)gmail.com