Wikimedia-l May 2010

wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

162 participants
148 discussions

[Foundation-l] drive-by site updates
by Amir E. Aharoni 16 May '10

16 May '10

The people who decided to enable without any proper testing and announcement the collapsible sidebar that hides interlanguage links, the search box that can't search and the new Wikipedia logo which nearly everybody hates - please don't do this again. Thank you. -- אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי Amir Elisha Aharoni http://aharoni.wordpress.com "We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace." - T. Moore

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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikitech-l] Visual impairment
by Chad 16 May '10

16 May '10

On Sun, May 16, 2010 at 3:04 AM, Christopher Grant <chrisgrantmail(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Sun, May 16, 2010 at 11:09 AM, K. Peachey <p858snake(a)yahoo.com.au> wrote: >> I believe reCaptcha has it implemented as part of their service (we >> do/did have a extension to implement theres) but then we would have to >> reply on third party servers. > > Yes, reCaptcha does. However iirc it has been rejected in the past because > of both the reliance on 3rd party servers and not all the code is open. > - Chris > Yes, and I think that makes it pretty much a non-starter for both reasons. Nothing's really changed there. -Chad

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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikitech-l] Visual impairment
by emijrp 16 May '10

16 May '10

Perhaps, we can offer two captchas. First, the current one, and a link with this label "if you can't read this captcha, try this one" and a link to the sound reCAPTCHA. Requesting an account to admins is not a good solution (perhaps as a third option). Regards, emijrp 2010/5/16 Christopher Grant <chrisgrantmail(a)gmail.com> > On Sun, May 16, 2010 at 11:09 AM, K. Peachey <p858snake(a)yahoo.com.au> > wrote: > > I believe reCaptcha has it implemented as part of their service (we > > do/did have a extension to implement theres) but then we would have to > > reply on third party servers. > > Yes, reCaptcha does. However iirc it has been rejected in the past because > of both the reliance on 3rd party servers and not all the code is open. > - Chris > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l >

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Re: [Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content
by Joan Goma 15 May '10

15 May '10

*The roots of the problem* Michael, if the Board is analyzing the issue then it should address the roots of the problem. The fact that recent discussion has taken place around sexual images has the advantage that sex raises a lot of interest from everybody. But from my point of view the issue is grounded in two deeper problems: 1) what happens if the board takes a decision against the community consensus? 2) What happens if the community of a project rejects discussing deeply an issue up to finding a consensus, if they simply vote and applies the majority decision? It seems to me that this is what happened. The community defined a policy without analyzing the issue deeply enough, they didn’t reached a consensus. The board decided that this should addressed and Jimbo actuated. Perhaps this is a caricature of what happened. Surely the real story is far more complex. There was an open debate in the community, the board resolution was more or less ambiguous, and the actions of Jimbo could have been more polite. But I believe that the roots of the problem are more or less there. *Proposed changes in the system* >From my point of view the system should be changed in two ways: First Wikimedia Foundation (and its governing body, the Board) should have a mechanism to force the community to debate and search for a consensus. Call it founder’s flag or voice of conscience flag or whatever you want. This is exactly what Jimbo did. He didn’t impose his will although founder’s flag gave him the power to do it. Secondly it should be stated clearly that once a true consensus is reached, the community is sovereign in developing the project. The duty of the Foundation is providing the means to put in practice those decisions. To put a humoristic example, if the law of some state says that the value for number pi is mandatorily 3.2 [1] and the community reaches the consensus that we must explain clearly that the law is wrong, then if necessary the Foundarion must avoid being under the rules of that state. Perhaps some other hygienic measures should be taken. By example perhaps stewards should hold only rights to change user’s status but not to act as sysop of any project. *The case of Images and other “sensible” material* Going to the images with sexual content I think that this should be addresses in a parallel way as other sensible issues like: 1) Images that could offend people of some religion. 2) Images in fair use. 3) Statements in biographies of living people. 4) Statements that can harm the image of products or companies. 5) Naming the articles when the name can carry a biased point of view. By example naming the articles of small towns in Spain using the name imposed by fascist dictatorship instead of the official Spanish name. 6) Contents possibly infringing copyrights. 7) Etc. I think that in those cases we should not change our policies to make happy the affected people but we should create mechanisms to guarantee we are in the safe side: Not publish or publish only the safe official version until we have enough evidences that the sensible material is right, legal, relevant, and has educational purposes. Perhaps we must strength some policies; perhaps to call somebody “thief” in their biography we can’t accept any kind of reference but a reference providing clear evidences that this is true. We also must give to the world clear evidences that we are extremely serious and careful with this issues if we decide to put an image “sensible” there must be clear evidences that we have done our best to guarantee that this image has educational content, that this image is required for the project, that this image accomplish with the law. We can’t make happy everybody; our goal of providing the sum of all human knowledge is above the interest of reaching a broader public or making happy some kind of readers. But we can make everybody agree with us that in “sensible issues” we have strong reasons to say every thing we say and to provide every image we have. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill > Message: 9 > Date: Fri, 14 May 2010 23:42:44 -0700 > From: Michael Snow <wikipedia(a)verizon.net> > Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational > content > To: foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > Message-ID: <4BEE4264.9020408(a)verizon.net> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed > > On 5/7/2010 5:30 PM, Sue Gardner wrote: > > On 7 May 2010 16:07, Kim Bruning<kim(a)bruning.xs4all.nl> wrote: > > > >> On Fri, May 07, 2010 at 12:30:18PM -0700, Michael Snow wrote: > >> > >>> announce-l still has issues. The Board of Trustees has directed me to > >>> release the following statement: > >>> > >> Just to be sure: > >> Are there no other statements that have been made by the board > >> or are being planned to be made by the board on this subject? > >> > >> sincerly, > >> Kim Bruning > >> > > Kim, the board (and I) have been talking about this for the past > > couple of days, and we'll continue to talk about it over the next > > couple of weeks. I think it's fairly likely there will be some kind > > of statement or statements at the end of that. I'm expecting that > > over the next few weeks, we all will be paying attention to the > > conversations on Commons and elsewhere, including here. > > > Just to come back to this point, the board has had some ongoing > discussion and will be having a meeting on Tuesday, May 18. I don't know > for certain that there will be a statement following that meeting, or > whether there will be any particular outcome. I have been informed that > some resolutions will be proposed, but I can't predict whether they will > be acted upon. > > Also, did anyone keep a log of the open meeting from Wednesday in the > #wikimedia IRC channel? Has that been posted anywhere for others to review? > > --Michael Snow > >

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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikitech-l] Visual impairment
by K. Peachey 15 May '10

15 May '10

since i forgot to reply to all and only did the reply on to wikitech-l. -Peachey ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: K. Peachey <p858snake(a)yahoo.com.au> Date: Sun, May 16, 2010 at 12:14 PM Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Visual impairment To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> I believe reCaptcha has it implemented as part of their service (we do/did have a extension to implement theres) but then we would have to reply on third party servers.

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[Foundation-l] FYI: Wikipedia, Open Access and Cognitive Virology
by Klaus Graf 15 May '10

15 May '10

Stevan Harnad in the American Scientist Open Access Forum: On Sat, 15 May 2010, Barbara Kirsop [Electronic Publishing Trust for Development] wrote: What is very confusing about [the SAGE survey's] call for feedback is the title ["Open Access Publishing"]. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/soap_survey_a I do not understand the phrase 'Open Access Publishing'. Open access is about 'access'. It is not a publishing process. The title should refer to 'open access journals'. The use of the phrase 'OA publishing' reinforces the idea that OA is about publishing and this is one reason why 'OA repositories' are often left out of the equation. With the title provided it is unlikely that anyone will think it is about OA repositories. Those I respect in the OA world tell me I am being pedantic, but it is little things like this that cause confusion to newcomers to the debate. I make a plea that we stop using the phrase 'open access publishing' and use 'open access journals' or 'the publishing of open access journals' instead! Dear Barbara, you are in no way being pedantic! You are quite right that the relentless (and mindless) tendency to refer to (and think of) OA itself as "OA Publishing" instead of just OA (thereby completely conflating and confusing Green OA self-archiving with Gold OA publishing) has been an endless source of misunderstanding, misdirection and, worst of all, delay in the progress of OA. A high-profile accomplice in the perpetuation of this constant canard is the entry for "Open Access" in Wikipedia, Google's ubiquitous "top hit" (hence always the top hit for "Open Access" queries). Originally the Wikipedia entry was entitled "Open Access," as it should be. But then some of the self-appointed vigilantes ("trolls") in the bowels of Wikipedia -- mostly anonymous individuals with plenty of time on their hands who accrue the "power" to adjudicate and legislate Wikipedia items and disputes not through expertise in the subject matter but "recursively," through cumulative air-time in adjudicating and legislating! -- decided to rename the entry "Open Access (publishing)." So there you are. Why did they do it? It's Wikipedia's usual fetish, which is that "notability" -- perhaps "notoriety" is a better descriptor -- always trumps truth (or expertise): The tendency to see OA as synonymous with OA publishing is in the air. So, by the air-time criterion, instead of clearing the air, Wikipedia just compounds the error, by canonizing it. Wikipedia could have disambiguated the various different senses of "Open Access" helpfully by using something like "Open Access (Research)" but -- against all attempts (including by myself) not to have the entry for "Open Access" re-named "Open Access (Publishing)" -- it has been so re-named for several years now. (The history of the "debate" is still in the entrails of Wikipedia, for the intrepid to read, but I'm afraid the error is now too entrenched by troll-power to correct. Like politicians, trolls tend to dig into their misjudgments and misdeeds, not dig out of them.) Wikipedia itself (notably, hence notoriously) is in many ways the "alternative" to OA in (too) many people's minds. Wikipedia is not only anonymous and not peer-reviewed, it is (aside from some recent ambivalence on this score) "ideologically" opposed to peer review (adjudication by qualified experts). In contrast, OA's primary target content is peer-reviewed research papers. ("Peer Review" is another descriptor that has been excised from the Wikipedia definition of OA's target content, despite repeated corrections: The trolls will not abide anything like that!) So there we are: OA's biggest canard and nemesis, being daily, cumulatively, canonized and amplified by Wikipedia, riding the recursive tide of its own notability and notoriety (as an infectious virus, cheerfully propagated by the denizens of Wikipedia). I expect that this posting will elicit stout defenses by Wiki-Warriors, but be forewarned that this Forum is devoted to Open Access (Sic), and discussion on Wikipedia ideology rather than OA pragmatics will be foreclosed, as such digressions tend to drive off the mainstay of this Forum who have been faithfully following the evolution of OA since 1998... Stevan Harnad

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[Foundation-l] The new Wikipedia logo-v2 is ugly
by Teofilo 15 May '10

15 May '10

When I read and edited the English language wikipedia this morning, I saw that the logo had changed. I had a strange feeling, at first not being sure if this was only a feeling of surprise or if there was some real problem with that new logo. After performing my editing tasks, I had a closer look at the new logo and compared it with the older one, and I found the following design flaws : * the diameter of the sphere has become shorter than the Wikipedia word below (some harmony is broken). * It is darker. * It is fuzzier (while the older one was brisk, with contrast). * It bears geometric flaws : when you look at a planet, the meridians which are farther should be closer to each other than the nearer ones. The same kind of problem occured on the old logo, but as it was bigger, the proportions were different, and that problem was less conspicuous. I suspect a management flaw in the way the Wikimedia Foundation is managed. 1) I suspect this logo change has very little to do with usability. So I don't understand why the "usability people" have been authorised to touch this. 2) When the city council of a big city decides to redesign the statue located on the main square of the city, usually an artistic contest is organised, with a jury of professionals whose job is to find the proposal which has the greatest artistic merit. The same sort of organisation should take place when redesigning something as important as the Wikipedia logo. Also I feel sorry for the designer of the old logo. It seems that his/her talent is not recognized as should be. Useful links : New logo at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia-logo-v2-en.png Older logo at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia-logo-en.png

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Re: [Foundation-l] Legal requirements for sexual content -- help, please!
by Jussi-Ville Heiskanen 15 May '10

15 May '10

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote: > Nathan wrote: >> On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 10:14 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> >> >>> The obligation to protect people against an invasion of their privacy >>> is not limited to, or even mostly applicable to sexual images. >>> Although sexual images are one of several "most important" cases, the >>> moral imperative to respect the privacy of private individuals exists >>> everywhere. >>> >>> As such, Commons has a specific policy on this: >>> >>> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Photographs_of_identifiable_peopl… >>> >>> >> >> >> Not much of a policy, in my opinion. A general statement of principle, >> with no mechanism of enforcement, doesn't have much impact on the >> state of things. We don't require evidence of release, but we should. >> And in the case of explicit content, we should require that release >> even if the photograph is taken in a public place. Topless sunbathing >> on a beach in Nice is not the same as a worldwide license for >> unlimited publicity. >> >> I may have said it before -- and I do apologize if I sound like a record stuck into repeating the same groove again and again -- but the issue in cases like that *decidedly* isn't the "explicitness" of the image, but the _privacy_ _violation_. It may be that here again the ugly head of my Nordic liberal values may be rising above the parapet, but I do not consider a female of the species enjoying the sun without incurring tan-lines to their upper torso as remotely "explicit" in any sensible sense of the word -- any more than I would consider "explicit" an image of a woman breastfeeding her one year old baby. Though I do recognize the sentiment that people who have very few opportunities to see womens breasts in "the flesh", might feel otherwise. I forget who it was in relation to a campus ban on shows of affection, that said "Kissing in public in front of lonely people is like eating a hamburger in front of people on the point of starvation." -- or words to that effect. So to recap, I wouldn't support a selective standard only applied to "explicit" images, no matter how defined. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

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[Foundation-l] Statement on appropriate educational content
by Michael Snow 14 May '10

14 May '10

Distributing this more widely, since apparently the forwarding from announce-l still has issues. The Board of Trustees has directed me to release the following statement: The Wikimedia Foundation projects aim to bring the sum of human knowledge to every person on the planet. To that end, our projects contain a vast amount of material. Currently, there are more than six million images and 15 million articles on the Wikimedia sites, with new material continually being added. The vast majority of that material is entirely uncontroversial, but the projects do contain material that may be inappropriate or offensive to some audiences, such as children or people with religious or cultural sensitivities. That is consistent with Wikimedia's goal to provide the sum of all human knowledge. We do immediately remove material that is illegal under U.S. law, but we do not remove material purely on the grounds that it may offend. Having said that, the Wikimedia projects are intended to be educational in nature, and there is no place in the projects for material that has no educational or informational value. In saying this, we don't intend to create new policy, but rather to reaffirm and support policy that already exists. We encourage Wikimedia editors to scrutinize potentially offensive materials with the goal of assessing their educational or informational value, and to remove them from the projects if there is no such value. --Michael Snow

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Re: [Foundation-l] Legal requirements for sexual content -- help, please!
by WJhonson＠aol.com 14 May '10

14 May '10

In a message dated 5/14/2010 11:35:43 AM Pacific Daylight Time, wiki-list(a)phizz.demon.co.uk writes: > How do you ascertain the veracity of their statement? >> --------------------------- Welcome to WikiWorld. We've never been able to claim that we know that people are telling the truth, we trust that they are, that's all we can do.

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Wikimedia-l May 2010