Hi everyone,
The next strategic planning office hours are:
Wednesday, 04:00-05:00 UTC, which is:
-Tuesday (8-9pm PST)
-Tuesday (11pm-12am EST)
There has been a lot of tremendous work on the strategy wiki the past
few months, and Task Forces are finishing up their work.
Office hours will be a great opportunity to discuss the work that's
happened as well as the work to come.
As always, you can access the chat by going to
https://webchat.freenode.net and filling in a username and the channel
name (#wikimedia-strategy). You may be prompted to click through a
security warning. It's fine. More details at:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours
Thanks! Hope to see many of you there.
____________________
Philippe Beaudette
Facilitator, Strategy Project
Wikimedia Foundation
philippe(a)wikimedia.org
mobile: 918 200-WIKI (9454)
Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Hi!
One of the Czech online news services, Aktuálně.cz ( http://aktualne.cz ) has launched its own encyclopedia a few weeks ago. Links to the encyclopedia's articles are used in news articles on this server. That would not be anything strange if the encyclopedia wasn't named "Wiki". Even that would not be so strange. But it is not a wiki at all. Users and/or readers of this server cannot edit it. It looks like the name was not chosen after a generic word "wiki" but "Wikipedia". I consider this as a misuse of the Wikipedia trade mark.
The issue has been brought to the Czech Wikipedia community (by accident twice):
http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedie:Pod_l%C3%ADpou_%28v_rohu%29#Wiki_akt…http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedie:Pod_l%C3%ADpou_%28pr%C3%A1va%29#Zneu…
The community is not unanimous. Therefore I would like to ask an international Wikipedia community for its opinion. Is it a violation of the Wikimedia Foundation rights?
Something more to know:
1) The "Wiki" is here: http://wiki.aktualne.centrum.cz/ . The article "Poslanecká sněmovna Parlamentu ČR" ("Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic") is currently used as its title page.
2) According to the Czech Wikipedia user Elm, the Aktualne.cz wants to make editing by users possible in the future.
3) No license violation has been noticed in this encyclopedia so far.
Additional questions:
Are any Wikimedia Foundation's trademarks registered also for / in Czechia or the European Union? How the Wikimedia Foundation would defend its trademarks in Czechia or the EU? Did the Wikimedia Foundation solved a similar case ever before?
Thanks for your opinions. I hope a clear statement will be given by the Wikimedia Foundation.
Jiri
I have found some of the suggestions for increasing participation
strange. Wikipedia is not a MMORG, it is not a social networking
site, it is not a file/picture/video hosting service, it is an online
encyclopedia. Some people like the first three. However trying to
turn Wikipedia into a combination of them is not how we go about
writing an encyclopedia. We need to attract people who are interested
in writing an encyclopedia and need to drive away / direct to the
appropriate venue those who are looking for something different.
My suggestion for increasing editor numbers would be to promote
Wikipedia at Universities. McGill has a Wikipedia club. Promoting
the formation of clubs at other Universities would have a positive
influence. Currently most University students are female ( about 55%
) http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20091023110831548
however Asperger syndrome occurs 5 times more frequently in males than
females. This might have something to do with the gender ratio we
see. :-)
--
James Heilman
MD, CCFP-EM, B.Sc.
Hi everyone,
As I'm sure you're all aware, the Pending Changes trial began earlier this
week, and seems to be off to a great start. There are many issues to be
sorted out both on the community policy side and on the technical side, but
everyone here seems to grappling with the community issues without a lot of
prodding. On the development front, the team now has a blissfully mundane
software maintenance/incremental improvement process to deal with, as
opposed to feeling antsy about needing to deploy.
With the launch out of the way, William is now wrapping up and turning the
project management reigns over to me. When I first started contracting with
WMF back in the beginning of May, I had the mistaken assumption that I'd be
taking over then, since William had/has another huge opportunity that is
looming on the horizon that appeared likely to take 100% of his time. In
our first meeting as we started going over the transition, he resolutely
pointed out "no, I'm staying until we deploy this, however long it takes".
We are really glad he was able to stick with us through this, and we're
extremely grateful for his tenacity and commitment. This feature would
likely have been delayed longer and would have missed many critical details
without him. I learned a lot about project management working with him, and
enjoyed it a great deal. Thanks William!
The main developers, (Aaron and Chad) plan to continue knocking down issues
as they discover them, as well as continuing to whittle down the backlog of
issues we postponed until after the initial deployment:
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/projects/46157
Some of the most significant work surrounds the "reject" button an a few
related tweaks. Since the topic of how exactly to optimize the workflow is
still a subject of debate, we'd appreciate some feedback on the subject.
The features in question are all linked to from here:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:FlaggedRevs/Specifications
The trial itself is slated to last until August 15. After that, community
consensus will be required to leave the feature on permanently. A strict
reading of the proposed trial would suggest we're obligated to turn the
feature off immediately around August 15, but I've seen at least one comment
suggesting we leave it on that time. I've proposed here that we instead
leave the feature turned on while we discuss the permanent status:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Pending_changes/Trial#leaverunn…
If you have any concerns that need the dev team's attention, please bring
them up here:
http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Pending_Changes_issues
We're a little behind in looking at that page, but we will get back to you
if you post there. We'll also get back to you if you prefer to post to
Bugzilla:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=MediaWiki%20extensions…
That's all for now. Thanks for reading!
Rob
p.s. I didn't want to turn this email into a parody of an overly-long Oscar
speech, but I also did want to specially call out Aaron Schulz, the lead
developer on this project, who did a remarkable job developing and preparing
the software for this launch as well as making sure that any problems that
we did inadvertently introduced were knocked down extremely quickly (often
within minutes of finding out). Great work, Aaron!
Hi folks,
For several years now, people have occasionally floated the notion
that there should be a permanent Wikimania oversight committee –
basically, a group of people responsible for giving some coaching and
guidance and oversight to the local planning team each year. Over the
years, support has been offered each year by people like Phoebe, James
Forrester, Delphine (Delphine both in her staff role and as a
volunteer) and SJ … but there has never (AFAIK) been a formal
oversight committee. I think there probably should be.
I've been talking about this idea with a few people over the past
several months. Based on those conversations, I'd propose a mixed
committee of volunteers and staff, with a small membership – let's
say, five or so people. Ideally the people would remain on the
committee for several years, and would have experience with past
Wikimanias. The role of the committee would be to provide coaching
and guidance for the local planning team (“here is how we've done it
in past years, here's what usually works, here are some problems you
should watch out for”) … and also to provide oversight to the local
team, and help them course-correct if they're having problems.
Essentially, the committee would be responsible for helping to ensure,
in partnership with the local team, that every Wikimania is a success.
I want to reiterate that I (and I think we all) see Wikimania as a
volunteer-led event. The Wikimedia Foundation plays a fairly small
role --- it is its biggest sponsor, and it supports it in various
ways. But Wikimania is a community event, which I don't think should
change.
I'd like to throw this out for discussion, and also ask people to
self-nominate if they're interested in being on such a committee. If
everyone interested will be at Gdansk, the best next step may be to
arrange a face-to-face meeting there to figure out how best to do
this. And I warn Phoebe via this note (although I'm sure she can
anticipate it), I will be aiming to pull her in to help think it
through, since she has been one of the most consistently-active
planners/organizers, at pretty much every Wikimania so far.
I'm interested in everyone's views on this, and I'd be particularly
interested in hearing from the people who've been involved in past
Wikimanias, and also from the Haifa people, to hear if this'd be
useful for them for 2011.
Thanks,
Sue
--
Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation
415 839 6885 office
415 816 9967 cell
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
I created a page about country portals a while ago (things like
wikipedia.de), with the intention of asking people to take a look at
it, make sure everything was right, and expand it... but I never got
around to it and here I am now. ;-)
The page is here: <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Country_portals> and
I'd appreciate it if you made sure that your local portal is on there.
If you know anything about portals, please add to the page. :-)
--
Casey Brown
Cbrown1023
Gregory,
I'm sorry if I misinterpreted your post, but it sounded very much like
you were saying that encyclopedia writing is a skill that is too
academic for women:
"...general approaches which make Wikipedia more palatable to "average
people"... may have a greater impact at reducing gender imbalance than
female centric improvements... Though are limits to the amount of
main-streaming you can do of an academic activity such as encyclopaedia
writing."
Perhaps you were not meaning to imply that women are too "average" to be
interested in academic activities. I'm glad to hear that isn't the case,
but I would encourage you to be more careful with your wording in the
future. There is a long history of scientific apologetics being used to
perpetuate sexism, racism, etc. Just look at the "science" of
phrenology, or more recently "The Bell Curve". Anyway, I don't want to
drag this thread into a debate on scientific -isms. I just wanted to
remind everyone that there are real steps that can be taken to address
the gender imbalance problem, regardless of any real or perceived gender
differences.
Ryan Kaldari
On 6/17/10 8:46 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 11:08 PM, Ryan Kaldari<rkaldari(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>> I don't think scapegoating Wikipedia's gender imbalances to biological
>> differences is especially helpful. And the suggestion that it may not be
>> possible to dumb-down Wikipedia enough to attract women is ridiculous
>> (and offensive).
>>
> I'm finding your response fairly offensive and insulting. It is out
> of line and I believe you owe me a public apology.
>
> That kind of hostility is no way to create an effective environment
> for collaboration for _anyone_.
>
> How can we hope to be inclusive of a broader audience when we can't
> even maintain professional decorum among the regulars?
>
"The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in theory. It could
never work in practice."
I've seen that quote attributed to Jimmy, and also to Miikka Ryokas,
quoted by Noam Cohen in his NY Times story about Virginia Tech. But
neither of them, I think, originated it.
Does anyone have a good attribution for first use of that quote? (I'm
using it in a presentation and want to attribute if I can.)
Thanks,
Sue
--
Sue Gardner
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation
415 839 6885 office
415 816 9967 cell
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Forwarded per request.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Joseph Reagle <joseph.2008(a)reagle.org>
Date: Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 6:45 PM
Subject: Fwd: Re: [Foundation-l] "The problem with Wikipedia..."
To: foundation-l-owner(a)lists.wikimedia.org
On Thursday, June 17, 2010, phoebe ayers wrote:
> Actually, the other way around, as others have stated.
>
> Now that you mention it, I've seen that quote attributed to Gareth
> Owen before, so that may actually be the origin of it. I think it's
> quite a bit older than 2006 though.
A wonderful question and one I've been interested in since I think such
aphorisms have an interesting normative power (e.g., some others include
[a]). Of course scholars, at least, like it so much because it shows that
the theory is incomplete and hence is grist for their mills, i.e., new
theory! :-)
I can't provide a provenance any more specific than already noted (i.e.,
appearing on Gareth Owen's user page) and I always found it ironically apt
that such a prominent statement about Wikipedia is attributed to an
anonymous. (If anyone knows Owen, please ask!) However, here's a bit of a
time-line, I think it certainly spread as a meme in wider circles thanks to
Cohen at the NYT.
20060120: Gareth Owen's user page [1].
20060321: Raul654's adds it to his laws [2].
20070423: Noam Cohen reference in NYT [3].
20070501: Quoted in Wikizine [4].
20070613: Sage Ross refers to it as old hat a few months later in response
to popular Britannica blog entry [5].
20080106: Cohen references it again [6].
[a]:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/archived_content/people/reagle/inet-quotations…
[1]:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Gareth_Owen&oldid=35978744
[2]:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Raul654/Raul%27s_laws&oldid=…
[3]: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/23/technology/23link.html
[4]: http://en.wikizine.org/2007/05/year-2007-week-18-number-69.html
[5]: http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2007/06/authority-of-a-new-kind/
[6]: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/books/06cohenintro.html
Thank you all! Very helpful. I'll attribute it to Gareth, and note that it's passed into widespread use.
Thanks,
Sue
-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph Reagle <joseph.nyu(a)reagle.org>
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2010 18:39:41
To: phoebe ayers<phoebe.wiki(a)gmail.com>
Cc: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>; Sage Ross<ragesoss(a)gmail.com>; Sue Gardner<sgardner(a)wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] "The problem with Wikipedia..."
On Thursday, June 17, 2010, phoebe ayers wrote:
> Actually, the other way around, as others have stated.
>
> Now that you mention it, I've seen that quote attributed to Gareth
> Owen before, so that may actually be the origin of it. I think it's
> quite a bit older than 2006 though.
A wonderful question and one I've been interested in since I think such aphorisms have an interesting normative power (e.g., some others include [a]). Of course scholars, at least, like it so much *because* it shows that the theory is incomplete and hence is grist for their mills, i.e., new theory! :-)
I can't provide a provenance any more specific than already noted (i.e., appearing on Gareth Owen's user page) and I always found it ironically apt that such a prominent statement about Wikipedia is attributed to an anonymous. (If anyone knows Owen, please ask!) However, here's a bit of a time-line, I think it certainly spread as a meme in wider circles thanks to Cohen at the NYT.
20060120: Gareth Owen's user page [1].
20060321: Raul654's adds it to his laws [2].
20070423: Noam Cohen reference in NYT [3].
20070501: Quoted in Wikizine [4].
20070613: Sage Ross refers to it as old hat a few months later in response to popular Britannica blog entry [5].
20080106: Cohen references it again [6].
[a]:http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/archived_content/people/reagle/inet-quotati…
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Gareth_Owen&oldid=35978744
[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Raul654/Raul%27s_laws&oldid=…
[3]: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/23/technology/23link.html
[4]: http://en.wikizine.org/2007/05/year-2007-week-18-number-69.html
[5]: http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2007/06/authority-of-a-new-kind/
[6]: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/books/06cohenintro.html