Hi,
I think having alternating sitenotices (between the licensing vote and
the Wikimania CFP/scholarships) is confusing for some people who
expect to see a link there for voting. See the comments at
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/13967 for example.
Could we please have both at once, or if not, just the licensing one?
I think the licensing vote is important enough that everyone should be
given the best possible opportunity to participate.
thanks,
Brianna
--
They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment:
http://modernthings.org/
Are all your emails showing up at
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-April/author.html
Birgitte SB
--- On Wed, 4/22/09, Gregory Kohs <thekohser(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> From: Gregory Kohs <thekohser(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Board statement regarding biographies of living people
> To: foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org, wikipedia(a)verizon.net
> Date: Wednesday, April 22, 2009, 2:09 PM
> Am I on moderation?
>
> On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 9:23 AM, Gregory Kohs <thekohser(a)gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Says Michael Snow:
> >
> > The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees urges the
> global Wikimedia
> > community to uphold and strengthen our commitment to
> high-quality,
> > accurate information
> >
> > ++++++
> >
> > So, the "community" is urged to do this work at the
> request of the Board,
> > but the
> > Board itself is going to do virtually nothing (other
> than this collection
> > of words
> > that urges the community to work harder) to strengthen
> the commitment to
> > high-quality, accurate information.
> >
> > How many Board members were in attendance in Berlin,
> and what was the mean
> > travel distance of the Board attendees for this
> excursion?
> >
> > --
> > Gregory Kohs
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
--- On Wed, 4/22/09, Ting Chen <wing.philopp(a)gmx.de> wrote:
> From: Ting Chen <wing.philopp(a)gmx.de>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] NPOV as common value? (was Re: Board statement regarding biographies of living people)
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Wednesday, April 22, 2009, 6:11 AM
> Hallo Brianna,
>
> NPOV is mainly a principle of Wikipedia, later also used by
> Wikibooks
> and Wikinews. There is at least one project (Wikiversity)
> which
> explicitely allow participants not to follow NPOV, but the
> Disclosure of
> Point of Views in Wikiversity follow in principle the ideal
> of NPOV: It
> tells the reader and participants that the content has a
> point of view
> and thus gives the reader and participants to be aware of
> this and
> accordingly to adjust their judgement in reading and
> writing the content.
>
> The question here is about projects like Commons or
> Wikisource. Mainly
> they collect free content and serve as a shared repository
> for other
> projects so that these other projects can use these
> content. The content
> themselves may have POV, that's for sure, and we don't make
> edits or
> comments in these sources to make them NPOV. But we do
> category them.
> And at least here we do make sort of comment in the source.
> Let me take
> an example that actually happend on Commons. It makes a
> diffrence if we
> categorize a caricature of an israeli bus in form of a
> coffin to the
> very neutral Category:Bus or to more commentary category
> Category:Political caricature or to the very strong
> commentary category
> Category:Anti-israeli caricature. It makes very big
> difference how
> Commons categorize such images. And I am in these cases
> more for the
> implementation of a similar policy like Wikiversity's
> Disclosure of
> Point of View: A source with a very strong bias of point of
> view should
> be accordingly categorized. With that we do nothing else as
> to hold our
> principle ideal of NPOV on projects like commons.
I don't think of NPOV as being a common value, but rather I think NPOV as being Wikipedia's answer to the common value of avoiding editorial bias. Wikipedia has much more fine-grained editorial input than Wikisource or Commons. Wikisource and Commons must avoid editorial bias in the presentation of the works we host, rather than within the works themselves. Wikisource for example does not allow excerpts of published works (as opposed to published excerpts). While we host biased material, we aim to avoid biased presentations of material. So far it seems to have been successful, even where there have been initial accusations of bias or inaccuracy to be worked out.
I think the people who are saying NPOV is a common value, are just using this acronym as shorthand. If you really examine how NPOV is defined; it simply doesn't hold up for other projects. The real value behind this issue if the "sum of all human knowledge". Bias in the form that excludes other information or interpretations is taboo, yet bias itself is not excluded.
Birgitte SB
As it may be of interest here, I am sending my blog
post<http://blog.millosh.org/2009/04/anarchopedia-changed-its-license.html>to
the list.
* * * * *
First of all, anarchists don't care about licenses. Because of that, one
month of discussion
<http://meta.anarchopedia.org/License_change/Decision>and voting
didn't pass with a lot of discussions. Actually, some of the most
active members of the community didn't discuss and didn't vote. I didn't
vote, too, but it is because I didn't want to influence others.
At the beginning I thought that we have the next options:
- Stay at GFDL
- Switch to Wikipedia licensing
- Switch to Wikipedia licensing with a possibility of importing GFDL
texts
- Switch to the straight dual licensing
- Switch to the straight dual licensing with a possibility to import GFDL
and CC-BY-SA texts
- Switch to CC-BY-SA
Actually, my mind is so strong inside of the licensing issues that I totally
forgot that there are a couple of other options. (I have to think about this
problem.)
So, I was thinking that the best option is to switch to the straight dual
licensing, while Wikipedia-like licensing would be the most pragmatic
approach. (However, again, even two community members voted for the straight
dual licensing, I didn't express my opinion.)
But, fortunately, there are anarchists inside of the community :) and we've
got the option "Switch to multiple licensing / public domain". At the first
moment, I didn't understand that, so I said that this solution is not
possible. However, in brief, this proposal is about per-page licensing, as
well as that Anarchopedia by default realizes its content under the public
domain or attribution-only terms (depending of jurisdiction).
We had a clause that we'll switch our licensing just in case if Wikimedia
community switch its licensing. However, during the discussion, it became
obviously that the most of the community is willing to change the licensing
terms.
The conclusion of the decision making process is:
- Anarchopedia used the right described inside of the GNU Free
Documentation License 1.3 to release its content under CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported
license, too.
- Anarchopedia is switching to per page licensing, which may
include any acceptably
licensed material<http://meta.anarchopedia.org/Licenses_acceptable_for_usage_at_Anarchopedia>for
the work based on wiki system.
- License change is valid since April 22nd, 2009, no matter what
Wikimedia community would decide. Almost all of the participants expressed
will to switch the licensing terms no matter what Wikimedia community would
decide.
- If not stated opposite at the page, all contributions by editors of
Anarchopedia are under public domain (for Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions) or
under attribution-only terms (for Continental jurisdictions).
- As previous conditions will be valid for all Anarchopedia content, any
editor of the content may mark article which he or she previously edited as
licensed under GFDL and CC-BY-SA.
- Any editor may mark her or his new content as licensed under any
acceptable license if it is not in collision with previously declared per
page license.
Acceptable licensing terms by preference for Anarchopedia are:
- *Public domain / attribution-only* (depending of jurisdiction). This is
Anarchopedia default. If you don't put any license template at article in
which you contributed, article will be published under those conditions.
- *Attribution-only forced*. We may use and create content explicitly
licensed under attribution-only terms of use or under some license which
defines it. Such licenses are, for example, CC-BY, GNU Lesser General Public
License and BSD Revised License.
- *Copyleft license*. Examples of copyleft licenses are GNU Free
Documentation License, Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License, GNU
General Public License and so on. In brief, such licensing allows any kind
of usage, distribution and modification of the content while the content
stays under the same license.
- *Solidarity terms*. "Solidarity terms" mean that the content may be
used just by a particular group related to anarchists and Anarchopedia. We
may adopt materials which may be used just by anarchists, socialists,
anti-authoritarians and so on.
- *Non-commercial attribution-only licenses*. We may use non-commercial
content as Anarchopedia is not a commercial project. The example for such
licenses is Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License.
- *Non-commercial share-alike licenses*. We may use this type of
licenses, too. The example of such licenses is Creative Commons Attribution
Non-Commercial Share-Alike license.
- *Anarchopedia only*. This is the bottom of the sum of acceptable
licenses.
All interested persons may join us in discussion about the final form of the
terms of use of the content at the page
License<http://meta.anarchopedia.org/License>
.
And a couple of my personal notes:
- Anarchists are not a part of the free culture movement. Free culture is
defined by licenses and licenses are the part of state system.
- I even think that "free culture" term is an oxymoronic one. There is no
free culture. Every culture defines its own rules, which is lowering
freedom. Of course, I am not against culture, but I, simply, think that
"free culture" is a similar phrase to "free prison". There are no such
things.
- Yes, it is better to have non-proprietary knowledge than proprietary
knowledge. As well as capitalism is better than feudalism or slavery.
However, licensed knowledge and capitalism are just far away of anarchist
political positions.
- And, inside of current social organization I think that the best option
for one anarchist project is to choose the most pragmatic one.
--- On Mon, 4/20/09, Samuel Klein <meta.sj(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> From: Samuel Klein <meta.sj(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Principle and pragmatism with nudity and sexual content
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Monday, April 20, 2009, 6:26 PM
> On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 10:18 AM,
> David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > 2009/4/20 Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb(a)yahoo.com>:
> >
> >> I second this. Does anyone really believe it is
> even possible to set one standard of what it means to be
> 'collegial' and 'collaborative' for all cultures? These
> things are not absolute values and each community needs to
> work out what standards are most pragmatic for it's
> members.
>
> Well, we do have a few universal values shared across
> projects --
> including those which were made concrete when community
> members hashed
> out the foundation mission and vision statements. But
> it's not clear
> in which community it is appropriate to discuss those...
> [certainly
> many people are now expected to abide by the global
> standards set
> forth in the language of those statements who were active
> editors a
> few years ago and did not take part in the discussions
> about how to
> word them]
>
I didn't mean to imply there were no common standards or values for the mission of the projects. But whether certain behaviors are perceived as 'collegial' and 'collaborative' or not is not some kind of cross-cultural value. There is a big difference between the cross-cultural goals that we are trying accomplish in all projects and the most practical way to accomplish these common goals within each community.
> > There is no shortcut or appeal to authority that can
> solve this for en.WP. en.WP has to do the work and find
> these answers from within.
>
> I didn't quite read PM's mail as an appeal to authority --
> more as an
> appeal to "make more concrete decisions", by someone who is
> used to
> such decisions coming down from on high. It is hard
> to be Bold and
> 'find answers from within' when that's not how you are used
> to
> problemsolving.
>
PM's mail included a bit on an attempt at an appeal to authority by way of Jimbo.
Birgitte SB
As I mentioned in my previous message, the Board of Trustees prepared a
statement at its meeting related to biographies of living people. It
touches on the major considerations in this issue, but also how this
relates to our fundamental objectives. The statement was unanimously
approved by the board. The text of the statement follows:
The Wikimedia Foundation takes this opportunity to reiterate some core
principles related to our shared vision, mission, and values. One of
these values which is common to all our projects is a commitment to
maintaining a neutral point of view.
In our efforts to offer a source of knowledge that is valuable and
useful to all, we have a responsibility to uphold these values by also
providing accurate information. Participants in Wikimedia projects have
created resources of vast size and scope. As we have emphasized for
several years, in addition to the quantity of knowledge that is
available, its quality is also an essential matter. The generally high
quality of information in Wikimedia projects has been confirmed by a
number of studies, but it is important that we always strive to improve.
As with any endeavor that provides educational and informational
material, errors need to be avoided, especially when they have the
potential to cause harm. One area where this applies is when writing
about living people.
Increasingly, Wikimedia articles are among the top search engine results
for just about any query. That means that when a potential employer, a
colleague, friend, neighbor or acquaintance looks for information about
a person, they may find it at the Wikimedia sites. As the popularity of
the Wikimedia projects grows, so does the editing community's
responsibility to ensure articles about living people are
neutrally-written, accurate and well-sourced.
As our popularity has grown, some issues have become more prominent:
* Many people create articles that are overly promotional in tone: about
themselves, people they admire, or those they are paid to represent.
These are not neutral, and have no place in our projects. Generally, the
Wikimedia community protects the projects well against this common
problem by deleting or improving hagiographies.
* People sometimes vandalize articles about living people. The Wikimedia
community has developed tools and techniques for counteracting
vandalism: in general they seem to work reasonably well.
* Some articles about living people contain small errors, are
poorly-written or poorly-sourced. Articles about people who are only
marginally well-known are often neglected, and tend to improve much more
slowly over time, if at all.
* People sometimes make edits designed to smear others. This is
difficult to identify and counteract, particularly if the malicious
editor is persistent.
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees urges the global Wikimedia
community to uphold and strengthen our commitment to high-quality,
accurate information, by:
1) Ensuring that projects in all languages that describe living people
have policies in place calling for special attention to the principles
of neutrality and verifiability in those articles;
2) Taking human dignity and respect for personal privacy into account
when adding or removing information, especially in articles of ephemeral
or marginal interest;
3) Investigating new technical mechanisms to assess edits, particularly
when they affect living people, and to better enable readers to report
problems;
4) Treating any person who has a complaint about how they are described
in our projects with patience, kindness, and respect, and encouraging
others to do the same.
--Michael Snow
I apologize that this took so long; the survey team spent a lot of
time cleaning up the very large number of responses that they
received. But we're sharing now with their permission the first
preliminary results from the Wikipedia survey of readers and
contributors last year:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2009/04/16/first-preliminary-results-from-unu-mer…
Use with caution as it's still preliminary, but hopefully already
gives a first snapshot of the key findings. Breakdown by languages is
one of the next key priorities. They've committed to frequent updates
now that the data is ready for analysis.
Enjoy!
Erik
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Hello all,
Those of you foolish enough to watchlist the english wikipedia's admin.s
noticeboard, or Jimmy's talk page, might have noticed a broo ha ha this last
weekend concerning nude pictures on userpages. Basically, a user has an
image of a shaven vagina on their userpage with the caption 'No more Bush,
phew!' - a witticism that's been floating around US political satire for a
few years.
An admin. asked Jimbo what he thought, and he responded quite strongly ("The
user page is unacceptable and should be speedy deleted, and the user blocked
if he insists on recreating it") - a discussion about whether or not to
delete the page resulted in an avalache of 'keep' opinions, and jimmy
continues to be rather strongly criticised on his talk page for expressing
his opinion.
Anywhoo.. this list not being a sort of round up / gossip column for
wiki-nonsense, I'll get to the substantive point - just wanted to give a bit
of context first :-)
The WMF has a large, and growing collection of material reasonably described
as pornography. Here's a few questions about the foundation's role in
ensuring the projects are responsible media hosts - Can the foundation play
a role in discussing and establishing things like what it means to be
'collegial' and 'collaborative' on the various projects? Can the foundation
offer guidance, and dare I say it 'rules' for the boundaries of behaviour?
Is there space, beyond limiting project activities to legality, to offer
firm leadership and direction in project governance?
I'm hoping the answer to all of the above is a careful 'yes'. - for example,
would our projects suffer if the foundation mandated that material loosely
definied as 'sexual content' was restricted from the social 'user' space?
(conversely, would there be any benefit to project health / reputation /
smooth running?) (that's a 'no' and a 'yes' from me :-)
Currently commons and the english wikipedia have very few restrictions
beyond limiting media to what volunteers hope is legal. Media which is
deleted as possibly illegal remains available to administrators, and no
effort beyond the assumption of good faith is possible to ascertain model
ages and release permissions - I neither hope nor believe this is
sustainable.
On a tangential note, I've also been looking at various governmental, and
NGO 'codes of conduct', some of which recommend things like accurate record
keeping on model information, ensuring users confirm that they wish to view
material reasonably defined as 'adult', etc. etc. - perhaps we could take
some pointers from some of these paths which are already well trodden.
It's also my view that, generally speaking, the level of conversation about
this is rubbish - please try to avoid pulling either the 'censorship' and
'prude' guns or the 'immoral' and 'depraved' guns out - they're just not
helpful.
For more from me, read
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Sexual_content or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Privatemusings/Lets_talk_about_sex
cheers,
Peter
PM.