Wikimedia-l January 2011

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138 participants
87 discussions

[Foundation-l] Improving search in Wikipedia through quality and concept discovery
by Brian J Mingus 09 Sep '22

09 Sep '22

This paper (first reference) is the result of a class project I was part of almost two years ago for CSCI 5417 Information Retrieval Systems. It builds on a class project I did in CSCI 5832 Natural Language Processing and which I presented at Wikimania '07. The project was very late as we didn't send the final paper in until the day before new years. This technical report was never really announced that I recall so I thought it would be interesting to look briefly at the results. The goal of this paper was to break articles down into surface features and latent features and then use those to study the rating system being used, predict article quality and rank results in a search engine. We used the [[random forests]] classifier which allowed us to analyze the contribution of each feature to performance by looking directly at the weights that were assigned. While the surface analysis was performed on the whole english wikipedia, the latent analysis was performed on the simple english wikipedia (it is more expensive to compute). = Surface features = * Readability measures are the single best predictor of quality that I have found, as defined by the Wikipedia Editorial Team (WET). The [[Automated Readability Index]], [[Gunning Fog Index]] and [[Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level]] were the strongest predictors, followed by length of article html, number of paragraphs, [[Flesh Reading Ease]], [[Smog Grading]], number of internal links, [[Laesbarhedsindex Readability Formula]], number of words and number of references. Weakly predictive were number of to be's, number of sentences, [[Coleman-Liau Index]], number of templates, PageRank, number of external links, number of relative links. Not predictive (overall - see the end of section 2 for the per-rating score breakdown): Number of h2 or h3's, number of conjunctions, number of images*, average word length, number of h4's, number of prepositions, number of pronouns, number of interlanguage links, average syllables per word, number of nominalizations, article age (based on page id), proportion of questions, average sentence length. :* Number of images was actually by far the single strongest predictor of any class, but only for Featured articles. Because it was so good at picking out featured articles and somewhat good at picking out A and G articles the classifier was confused in so many cases that the overall contribution of this feature to classification performance is zero. :* Number of external links is strongly predictive of Featured articles. :* The B class is highly distinctive. It has a strong "signature," with high predictive value assigned to many features. The Featured class is also very distinctive. F, B and S (Stop/Stub) contain the most information. :* A is the least distinct class, not being very different from F or G. = Latent features = The algorithm used for latent analysis, which is an analysis of the occurence of words in every document with respect to the link structure of the encyclopedia ("concepts"), is [[Latent Dirichlet Allocation]]. This part of the analysis was done by CS PhD student Praful Mangalath. An example of what can be done with the result of this analysis is that you provide a word (a search query) such as "hippie". You can then look at the weight of every article for the word hippie. You can pick the article with the largest weight, and then look at its link network. You can pick out the articles that this article links to and/or which link to this article that are also weighted strongly for the word hippie, while also contributing maximally to this articles "hippieness". We tried this query in our system (LDA), Google (site:en.wikipedia.org hippie), and the Simple English Wikipedia's Lucene search engine. The breakdown of articles occuring in the top ten search results for this word for those engines is: * LDA only: [[Acid rock]], [[Aldeburgh Festival]], [[Anne Murray]], [[Carl Radle]], [[Harry Nilsson]], [[Jack Kerouac]], [[Phil Spector]], [[Plastic Ono Band]], [[Rock and Roll]], [[Salvador Allende]], [[Smothers brothers]], [[Stanley Kubrick]]. * Google only: [[Glam Rock]], [[South Park]]. * Simple only: [[African Americans]], [[Charles Manson]], [[Counterculture]], [[Drug use]], [[Flower Power]], [[Nuclear weapons]], [[Phish]], [[Sexual liberation]], [[Summer of Love]] * LDA & Google & Simple: [[Hippie]], [[Human Be-in]], [[Students for a democratic society]], [[Woodstock festival]] * LDA & Google: [[Psychedelic Pop]] * Google & Simple: [[Lysergic acid diethylamide]], [[Summer of Love]] ( See the paper for the articles produced for the keywords philosophy and economics ) = Discussion / Conclusion = * The results of the latent analysis are totally up to your perception. But what is interesting is that the LDA features predict the WET ratings of quality just as well as the surface level features. Both feature sets (surface and latent) both pull out all almost of the information that the rating system bears. * The rating system devised by the WET is not distinctive. You can best tell the difference between, grouped together, Featured, A and Good articles vs B articles. Featured, A and Good articles are also quite distinctive (Figure 1). Note that in this study we didn't look at Start's and Stubs, but in earlier paper we did. :* This is interesting when compared to this recent entry on the YouTube blog. "Five Stars Dominate Ratings" http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2009/09/five-stars-dominate-ratings.html… I think a sane, well researched (with actual subjects) rating system is well within the purview of the Usability Initiative. Helping people find and create good content is what Wikipedia is all about. Having a solid rating system allows you to reorganized the user interface, the Wikipedia namespace, and the main namespace around good content and bad content as needed. If you don't have a solid, information bearing rating system you don't know what good content really is (really bad content is easy to spot). :* My Wikimania talk was all about gathering data from people about articles and using that to train machines to automatically pick out good content. You ask people questions along dimensions that make sense to people, and give the machine access to other surface features (such as a statistical measure of readability, or length) and latent features (such as can be derived from document word occurence and encyclopedia link structure). I referenced page 262 of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to give an example of the kind of qualitative features I would ask people. It really depends on what features end up bearing information, to be tested in "the lab". Each word is an example dimension of quality: We have "*unity, vividness, authority, economy, sensitivity, clarity, emphasis, flow, suspense, brilliance, precision, proportion, depth and so on.*" You then use surface and latent features to predict these values for all articles. You can also say, when a person rates this article as high on the x scale, they also mean that it has has this much of these surface and these latent features. = References = - DeHoust, C., Mangalath, P., Mingus., B. (2008). *Improving search in Wikipedia through quality and concept discovery*. Technical Report. PDF<http://grey.colorado.edu/mediawiki/sites/mingus/images/6/68/DeHoustMangalat…> - Rassbach, L., Mingus., B, Blackford, T. (2007). *Exploring the feasibility of automatically rating online article quality*. Technical Report. PDF<http://grey.colorado.edu/mediawiki/sites/mingus/images/d/d3/RassbachPincock…>

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[Foundation-l] Fwd: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers
by GerardM 09 Aug '22

09 Aug '22

Hoi, I have asked and received permission to forward to you all this most excellent bit of news. The linguist list, is a most excellent resource for people interested in the field of linguistics. As I mentioned some time ago they have had a funding drive and in that funding drive they asked for a certain amount of money in a given amount of days and they would then have a project on Wikipedia to learn what needs doing to get better coverage for the field of linguistics. What you will read in this mail that the total community of linguists are asked to cooperate. I am really thrilled as it will also get us more linguists interested in what we do. My hope is that a fraction will be interested in the languages that they care for and help it become more relevant. As a member of the "language prevention committee", I love to get more knowledgeable people involved in our smaller projects. If it means that we get more requests for more projects we will really feel embarrassed with all the new projects we will have to approve because of the quality of the Incubator content and the quality of the linguistic arguments why we should approve yet another language :) NB Is this not a really clever way of raising money; give us this much in this time frame and we will then do this as a bonus... Thanks, GerardM ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: LINGUIST Network <linguist(a)linguistlist.org> Date: Jun 18, 2007 6:53 PM Subject: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers To: LINGUIST(a)listserv.linguistlist.org LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1831. Mon Jun 18 2007. ISSN: 1068 - 4875. Subject: 18.1831, All: Call for Participation: Wikipedia Volunteers Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Eastern Michigan U <aristar(a)linguistlist.org> Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry(a)linguistlist.org> Reviews: Laura Welcher, Rosetta Project <reviews(a)linguistlist.org> Homepage: http://linguistlist.org/ The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University, and donations from subscribers and publishers. Editor for this issue: Ann Sawyer <sawyer(a)linguistlist.org> ================================================================ To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.html ===========================Directory============================== 1) Date: 18-Jun-2007 From: Hannah Morales < hannah(a)linguistlist.org > Subject: Wikipedia Volunteers -------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 12:49:35 From: Hannah Morales < hannah(a)linguistlist.org > Subject: Wikipedia Volunteers Dear subscribers, As you may recall, one of our Fund Drive 2007 campaigns was called the "Wikipedia Update Vote." We asked our viewers to consider earmarking their donations to organize an update project on linguistics entries in the English-language Wikipedia. You can find more background information on this at: http://linguistlist.org/donation/fund-drive2007/wikipedia/index.cfm. The speed with which we met our goal, thanks to the interest and generosity of our readers, was a sure sign that the linguistics community was enthusiastic about the idea. Now that summer is upon us, and some of you may have a bit more leisure time, we are hoping that you will be able to help us get started on the Wikipedia project. The LINGUIST List's role in this project is a purely organizational one. We will: *Help, with your input, to identify major gaps in the Wikipedia materials or pages that need improvement; *Compile a list of linguistics pages that Wikipedia editors have identified as "in need of attention from an expert on the subject" or " does not cite any references or sources," etc; *Send out periodical calls for volunteer contributors on specific topics or articles; *Provide simple instructions on how to upload your entries into Wikipedia; *Keep track of our project Wikipedians; *Keep track of revisions and new entries; *Work with Wikimedia Foundation to publicize the linguistics community's efforts. We hope you are as enthusiastic about this effort as we are. Just to help us all get started looking at Wikipedia more critically, and to easily identify an area needing improvement, we suggest that you take a look at the List of Linguists page at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguists. M Many people are not listed there; others need to have more facts and information added. If you would like to participate in this exciting update effort, please respond by sending an email to LINGUIST Editor Hannah Morales at hannah(a)linguistlist.org, suggesting what your role might be or which linguistics entries you feel should be updated or added. Some linguists who saw our campaign on the Internet have already written us with specific suggestions, which we will share with you soon. This update project will take major time and effort on all our parts. The end result will be a much richer internet resource of information on the breadth and depth of the field of linguistics. Our efforts should also stimulate prospective students to consider studying linguistics and to educate a wider public on what we do. Please consider participating. Sincerely, Hannah Morales Editor, Wikipedia Update Project Linguistic Field(s): Not Applicable ----------------------------------------------------------- LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1831

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[Foundation-l] Ancient Greek reconstructed an analysis of a proposal for a new Wikipedia
by Gerard Meijssen 21 Sep '11

21 Sep '11

Hoi, There is a request for a Wikipedia in Ancient Greek. This request has so far been denied. A lot of words have been used about it. Many people maintain their positions and do not for whatever reason consider the arguments of others. In my opinion their are a few roadblocks. - Ancient Greek is an ancient language - the policy does not allow for it - Text in ancient Greek written today about contemporary subjects require the reconstruction of Ancient Greek. - it requires the use of existing words for concepts that did not exist at the time when the language was alive - neologisms will be needed to describe things that did not exist at the time when the language was alive - modern texts will not represent the language as it used to be - Constructed and by inference reconstructed languages are effectively not permitted We can change the policy if there are sufficient arguments, when we agree on a need. When a text is written in reconstructed ancient Greek, and when it is clearly stated that it is NOT the ancient Greek of bygone days, it can be obvious that it is a great tool to learn skills to read and write ancient Greek but that it is in itself not Ancient Greek. Ancient Greek as a language is ancient. I have had a word with people who are involved in the working group that deals with the ISO-639, I have had a word with someone from SIL and it is clear that a proposal for a code for "Ancient Greek reconstructed" will be considered for the ISO-639-3. For the ISO-639-6 a code is likely to be given because a clear use for this code can be given. We can apply for a code and as it has a use bigger then Wikipedia alone it clearly has merit. With modern texts clearly labelled as distinct from the original language, it will be obvious that innovations a writers needs for his writing are legitimate. This leaves the fact that constructed and reconstructed languages are not permitted because of the notion that mother tongue users are required. In my opinion, this has always been only a gesture to those people who are dead set against any and all constructed languages. In the policies there is something vague "*it must have a reasonable degree of recognition as determined by discussion (this requirement is being discussed by the language subcommittee <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Language_subcommittee>)."* It is vague because even though the policy talks about a discussion, it is killed off immediately by stating "The proposal has a sufficient number of living native speakers to form a viable community and audience." In my opinion, this discussion for criteria for the acceptance of constructed or reconstructed languages has not happened. Proposals for objective criteria have been ignored. In essence, to be clear about it: - We can get a code for reconstructed languages. - We need to change the policy to allow for reconstructed and constructed languages We need to do both in order to move forward. The proposal for objective criteria for constructed and reconstructed languages is in a nutshell: - The language must have an ISO-639-3 code - We need full WMF localisation from the start - The language must be sufficiently expressive for writing a modern encyclopaedia - The Incubator project must have sufficiently large articles that demonstrate both the language and its ability to write about a wide range of topics - A sufficiently large group of editors must be part of the Incubator project Thanks, GerardM

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[Foundation-l] Pending Changes development update: September 27
by Rob Lanphier 02 Aug '11

02 Aug '11

Hi everyone, As many of you know, the results of the poll to keep Pending Changes on through a short development cycle were approved for interim usage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pending_changes/Straw_poll_on_interi… Ongoing use of Pending Changes is contingent upon consensus after the deployment of an interim release of Pending Changes in November 2010, which is currently under development. The roadmap for this deployment is described here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Pending_Changes_enwiki_trial/Roadmap An update on the date: we'd previously scheduled this for November 9. However, because that week is the same week as the start of the fundraiser (and accompanying futzing with the site) we'd like to move the date one week later, to November 16. Aaron Schulz is advising us as the author of the vast majority of the code, having mostly implemented the "reject" button. Chad Horohoe and Priyanka Dhanda are working on some of the short term development items, and Brandon Harris is advising us on how we can make this feature mesh with our long term usability strategy. We're currently tracking the list of items we intend to complete in Bugzilla. You can see the latest list here: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=25293 Many of the items in the list are things we're looking for feedback on: Bug 25295 - "Improve reviewer experience when multiple simultaneous users review Pending Changes" https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25295 Bug 25296 - "History style cleanup - investigate possible fixes and detail the fixes" https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25296 Bug 25298 - "Figure out what (if any) new Pending Changes links there should be in the side bar" https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25298 Bug 25299 - "Make pending revision status clearer when viewing page" https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25299 Bug 25300 - "Better names for special pages in Pending Changes configuration" https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25300 Bug 25301 - "Firm up the list of minor UI improvements for the November 2010 Pending Changes release" https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25301 Please provide your input in Bugzilla if you're comfortable with that; otherwise, please remark on the feedback page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pending_changes/Feedback Thanks! Rob

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Re: [Foundation-l] Greg Kohs and Peter Damian
by Marc Riddell 25 Jul '11

25 Jul '11

Let's see what we've got here: A "Board" that appears answerable only to some god; an "Executive Director" who answers only to this "Board"; a group of "Moderators" who claim (with a straight face) that they are "independent", but whose "moderations" are clearly designed to keep the first two in a favorable light; and, dead last, you have the people who, not so ironically, create the substance of the thing that makes the first three possible. This setup sounds achingly familiar. And, like all similar setups throughout history, is set up to fail. Marc Riddell on 10/20/10 12:44 AM, Virgilio A. P. Machado at vam(a)fct.unl.pt wrote: > Brigitte, > > I agree with you. You raised some very good points. > > Sincerely, > > Virgilio A. P. Machado > > > At 03:47 20-10-2010, you wrote: >> ________________________________ From: Austin >> Hair <adhair(a)gmail.com> To: Wikimedia Foundation >> Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> >> Sent: Tue, October 19, 2010 12:35:07 PM Subject: >> Re: [Foundation-l] Greg Kohs and Peter Damian On >> Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 6:40 PM, Nathan >> <nawrich(a)gmail.com> wrote: > If it pleases the >> moderators, might we know on what basis Greg >> was > banned and Peter indefinitely muzzled? >> Greg Kohs was banned for the same reason that >> he's been on moderation for the better part of >> the past yearnamely, that he was completely >> unable tto keep his contributions civil, and >> caused more flamewars than constructive >> discussion. Peter Damian is only on moderation, >> and we'll follow our usual policy of letting >> through anything that could be considered even >> marginally acceptable. We really are very >> liberal about thisotheerwise you wouldn't have >> heard from Mr. Kohs at all in the past six >> months. I'm sure that my saying this won't >> convince anyone who's currently defending him, >> but nothing about the decision to ban Greg Kohs >> was retaliatory. I'll also (not for the first >> time) remind everyone that neither the Wikimedia >> Foundation Board, nor its staff, nor any chapter >> or other organizational body has any say in the >> administration of this list. I hope that clears >> up all of the questions asked in this thread so >> far. It is not about defending anyone but about >> the fact that the "I know bannable when I see >> it" theory of moderation is unconstructive and >> leads to dramafests. The next ban is the one >> that will likely cause a real flame war. I >> suspect *more* people would be on moderation if >> any sort of objective criteria were being >> used. The lack of explanation over this bothers >> me so much because I suspect that you *can't* >> explain it. It seems to be the sort of gut-shot >> that hasn't been thought through. Moderate more >> people based on real criteria, rather than how >> you feel about them. Birgitte >> SB >> _______________________________________________ >> foundation-l mailing list >> foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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Re: [Foundation-l] Greg Kohs and Peter Damian
by Mike Dupont 23 Jul '11

23 Jul '11

Hello, >From what I have seen about Greg Kohs is that he does have some interesting points to make, but I do see that he is jumping to conclusions and does seem to have a biased viewpoint. People want to make their own decisions and have enough information to do that. We don't want to have important information deleted away because it is uncomfortable. Banning him makes it less likely for him to be heard, and these interesting points which are worth considering are not heard my many people : this is depriving people of critical information, that is not fair to the people involved. Just look at this article for example, it is quite interesting and well written, and why should it not be visible to everyone on the list. http://www.examiner.com/wiki-edits-in-national/wikimedia-foundation-directo… Deleting and banning people who say things that are not comfortable, that does make you look balanced and trustworthy. The Wikimedia foundation should be able to stand up to such accusations without resorting to gagging people, it just gives more credit to the people being gagged and makes people wonder if there is any merit in what they say. This brings up my favorite subject of unneeded deletions versions needed ones. Of course there is material that should be deleted that is hateful, Spam etc, lets call that evil content. But the articles that i wrote and my friends wrote that were deleted did not fall into that category, they might have been just bad or not notable. We have had a constant struggle to keep our articles from being deleted in a manner that we consider unfair. Additionally, the bad content is lost and falls into the same category as evil content. Also there should be more transparency on deleted material on the Wikipedia itself, there is a lot of information that is being deleted and gone forever without proper process or review. In my eyes there is a connection between the two topics, the banning of people and the deleting of information. Both are depriving people from information that they want and need in an unfair manner. Instead of articles about obscure events, things, and old places in Kosovo you have a wikipedia full of the latest information about every television show, is that what you really want? I think there should be room for things in places that are not not notable because they are not part of mainstream pop culture, we also need to support the underdogs of Wikipedia even if they are not mainstream, Mr Kohs definitely has something to say and I would like like to hear it. And the Kosovars have something to say even if the Serbs don't want to hear it. The Albanians have something to say even if the Greeks don't want to hear it, etc. There are many cases of people from Kosovo and Albania driven out of Wikipedia and depriving the project of important information because they are not able to get started and the contributions are so far way from the dominating political viewpoint of the opposite side that they don't even get a chance to be heard. We need to make a way for these people to be heard and to moderate the conflicts better, that will make Wikipedia stronger and more robust. thanks, mike

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[Foundation-l] IRC general meetings
by phoebe ayers 30 May '11

30 May '11

Hi all, Back in September we had an open community IRC meeting, where we introduced the new Trustees and talked about various issues. It was pretty successful and we discussed afterwards making such "community meetings" a regular event. I'd like to revive this idea :) I've made a proposal for having community meetings on the first Saturday of the month: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_meetings Which would make the first upcoming meeting on February 5. I proposed 17:00UTC as a time, but please discuss good days/times on the talk page if you are interested in attending; we'll need to rotate times. I envision this as not really a Q&A session like the staff office hours, but rather as a chance for community members to get together and talk about important issues in a structured way. To that end, please add your proposed agenda items to the wiki. It would also be great to have some volunteers to take notes/moderate. Of course this is just an experiment -- but there seemed to be a lot of interest in having such meetings, so I'd like to try it out. Let me know what you think and if you'd be interested. best, Phoebe -- * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers <at> gmail.com *

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[Foundation-l] retire the administrator privilege
by Amir E. Aharoni 04 Mar '11

04 Mar '11

In his 10th anniversary address Jimmy Wales says: "Today is a great moment to reflect on where we've been." What my reflection brings up is that the single thing that probably raised more controversy among the widest range of Wikimedians is not the content of articles about sex, celebrities or geopolitical and linguistic conflicts, but the procedures of appointing administrators. It should have never been a big deal, but it is, in all projects in all languages. The "administrator" privilege lumps together several very different permissions: * rollback * blocking and unblocking * deleting and restoring pages and versions of pages * viewing deleted versions of pages * protect and unprotect pages and edit protected pages * some PendingChanges/FlaggedRevisions-related permissions, which i haven't quite figured out yet :) Now i, in general, think that these permissions should be given liberally to as many reasonable Wikimedians as possible. I always believed in it, and since most of these actions became visible in the watchlist a few years ago, this belief became even stronger. But some re-thinking is needed. The administrator privilege, as it is now, should be retired and broken up to several separate privileges: * block/unblock * protect, unprotect, edit protected, config PendingChanges on the page * edit highly technical pages - the MediaWiki: namespace, common.css, etc. * revert, delete/undelete, view deleted The permission to revert, delete and undelete unprotected pages can be given to those users who can create and move pages ("autoconfirmed"). There is no big functional difference between deleting a page and deleting a paragraph in an existing page or doing a major re-write. The difference between reverting and undoing is a matter of civility and a lot of uncivil things can be done without permissions anyway. Limiting these actions only to certain users is quite pointless. Viewing deleted pages shouldn't be a big deal either. Deletion is not so much eliminating non-notable topics and nonsense from existence, as about separating them from encyclopedic articles. It shouldn't be a big deal to let bored people read them somewhere. Eliminating egregiously offensive and illegal content, major copyright violations and BLP issues can be accomplished today with the oversight permission. Controlling Pending Changes, although i haven't figured out all of its intricacies, is essentially an improved version of page protection. It makes sense to give this permission to (many) selected people. It will probably evolve over time, and i believe that it will evolve more organically if conceptually separated from blocking and deletion. Another comment about protection is that protecting system messages (the MediaWiki: namespace) and sensitive CSS and JS pages (commons.css etc.) is very different from protecting vandalism-prone articles (Obama etc.). The protection of these technical pages and sensitive articles should be a different concept. The permission to block should be a separate one. Separating the discussions about giving users the permission to protect pages and to block vandals will not stop the holy wars, but it will focus them. There will be no more comments such as: * "User:PhDhistorian may be a good editor who understands Verifiability and who can be trusted to edit sensitive BLP articles, but he has personal grudges with User:FatMadonna and he may block her, so he shouldn't be given the Administrator privilege." * "User:VandalFighterGrrrl is excellent at patrolling RC, but she's too inclusionist and shouldn't be given the right to decide about content protection." All of the above is formulated in the English Wikipedia terms. I believe that the English Wikipedia policies for deletion, protection and blocking make a lot of sense and should be adopted by all Wikipedias, but this obviously can't be forced on any Wikipedia. Other projects may have very different understanding of these processes and it's OK. I'm only talking about the technical separation of the privileges. Now, fight. -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com "We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace." - T. Moore

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[Foundation-l] Since Egypt has shutdown internet, should we too?
by Ashar Voultoiz 11 Feb '11

11 Feb '11

Hello, Tonight, Egypt has ordered all operators to shut down their BGP adjacencies with out of countries providers. This mean Egypt is disconnected from the rest of the internet. I am wondering, should we just close our site in support? That would surely have a huge impact and show how much we care about free information for everyone. -- Ashar Voultoiz

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[Foundation-l] Call for volunteers: Election Committee
by Jan-Bart de Vreede 02 Feb '11

02 Feb '11

Hi Everyone, Apart from celebrating 10 years of Wikipedia 2011 is also an election year for the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation. As you may recall the board has three directly elected representatives on it which serve for two years. Currently those are Mindspillage, SJ and Wing. As in the past years we rely on an effective election committee to coordinate the elections for us. They not only guarantee that the election is overseen by an independent body, but they also make sure that the tremendous amount of work that needs to be done is taken care of. My job is to coordinate the formation of this committee. This is a call for volunteers to serve on the election committee. If you feel that you can contribute to this committee, please contact me and give a small summary of why you think you would be able to help out with this process. Just to make sure we all understand: you cannot be part of the election committee if you are planning to be a candidate or are planning to support any candidate publicly. Deadline for any extra volunteers is January 22 th 12:00 UTC. The timeline for the next steps in the process will be published somewhere in February by the election committee. So if you are interested in becoming a candidate, time to start preparing! Regards Jan-Bart de Vreede Wikimedia Board of Trustees Board Liason Election Committee PS: Should you want to know more about the role of a board member: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_board_manual

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Wikimedia-l January 2011