Wikimedia-l February 2011

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124 participants
112 discussions

[Foundation-l] Moral rights
by Teofilo 05 Mar '11

05 Mar '11

French authorship rights law: Article L121-1 An author shall enjoy the right to respect for his name, his authorship and his work. This right shall attach to his person. It shall be perpetual, inalienable and imprescriptible. It may be transmitted mortis causa to the heirs of the author. Exercise may be conferred on another person under the provisions of a will. http://195.83.177.9/code/liste.phtml?lang=uk&c=36&r=2497 "perpetual, inalienable and imprescriptible" means that they cannot be waived. It also means that they are enshrined in French law as dearly as human rights. In my opinion, the people who want to attack this, are on a sloppery slope where the next step is when they request you to waive your human rights.

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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] FCForum Declaration: Sustainable Models for Creativity
by Milos Rancic 04 Mar '11

04 Mar '11

I think WMF should endorse it. Catalan Wikipedia already did. http://fcforum.net/sustainable-models-for-creativity/declaration

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[Foundation-l] New members of Language committee
by Milos Rancic 01 Mar '11

01 Mar '11

I am glad to announce that Language committee is stronger for three new members. By the time of getting their applications, the list is: Ζαχαρίας Διακονικολάου (Zaharias Diakonikolau) (meta:User:ZaDiak) * languages spoken: el, en-4, de-2, grc-2, pnt-1 * living in: Europe, Greece, Rhodes * reason for inclusion: A couple of months ago Language committee announced that it is searching for members from the [types of] projects which don't have Wikipedia-like dynamics. Zaharias has passed as an applicant from Wikiversity (he is admin at Beta Wikiversity and bureaucrat at Greek Wikiversity). However, his qualifications go further: he is actively working on creation, editing and promoting projects in various Greek languages. Knowing that he is young, he will be our long term investment, too. Oliver Stegen]] (meta:User:Baba Tabita) * languages spoken: de, en-4, sw-3 <small style="color:gray;">nl-1, fr-1</small> * living in: Africa, Kenya, Nairobi (from Europe, Germany) * reason for inclusion: Oliver is a linguist who is working for SIL on East African languages. We'll have one ultra-relevant expert in LangCom thanks to Jon Harald Søby, one of the LangCom members, who met Oliver in Nairobi. Santhosh Thottingal]] (meta:User:Santhosh.thottingal) * languages spoken: ml, hi-3, en-3, ta-2, * living in: Asia, India, Chennai (Madras) * reason for inclusion: Santhosh is a free software guru interested in languages. He will help us in articulating projects for covering language-related needs of Wikimedia projects. I want to add one more point related to Santhosh. He has passed as a LangCom member not because he is from India, but because he has relevant expertise and right attitude. Although he speaks three Indian languages, he has become a member of LangCom because he is a free software guru interested in languages. Before Santhosh's application, we would have been happy to see anyone with this qualification and this attitude, no matter of location of birth or residence. However, Bishakha's question and subsequent conversation helped, as it gave impulse to Santhosh to submit the application. And that brings to my mind that it would be good to pass the whole world periodically and raise the geographical equality issue. And it is not a joke. That's obviously giving people courage, or at least the idea, that they have the same right to become members of any Wikimedia body, as any Westerner has. Sometimes the qualifications won't be relevant for particular position, sometimes they will.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Friendliness (was: Missing Wikipedians: An Essay)
by WJhonson＠aol.com 28 Feb '11

28 Feb '11

In a message dated 2/27/2011 12:26:22 PM Pacific Standard Time, dgerard(a)gmail.com writes: > The scope was supposedly textbooks - how-to books. > The problem I see with free books is just that you really need something that says... this is WHY you, the contributor would put in this amount of effort here. With Wikipedia, I can contribute a word here, a sentence there, parse some grammar over there, fix a bad phrasing, add a source... all to seven articles and call it a day. A book takes an awful lot of effort. And then I give it away free to the world. Sorry I'm just not seeing that. Some has been some effort on Knol to create books and collections. The books are not official but the collections are an official tool, even if the results are not. So on Wikibooks for example, I could create my own How-To Home Repair, and collect *chapters* contributed by a dozen people into a *book*. So what we should have created it not Wikibooks with which to start, but Wiki...How or WikiChapter or something small, that a person could actually accomplish. I suppose... maybe I'm just rambling. But just the name Wikibooks doesn't sound to me like How To, it sounds like 150 to 1000 pages on an overarching topic of some kind. W

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[Foundation-l] Licenses' biodiversity : my big disagreement with the Wikimedia usability initiative's software specifications
by Teofilo 28 Feb '11

28 Feb '11

I have tried the prototype upload wizard for the first time this week (1) I am confident that all bugs can be solved. Bugs don't matter. But I am much more skeptical on the specifications, as they are presented at http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia:Upload_wizard/Questions_%26_… (August 2010) 1) I think it conveys a feeling of being morally flawed, which is bad for the image of the projects and for the projects' relationship with users When you go shopping, do you give your money first, and choose which item you buy only after ? What happens if you find out that all the food in the shop is stale ? You have lost your money. And that shop keeper is a crook. Being put in a situation where you have to implore the shop keeper to give you your money back is not comfortable. I elaborate on this at https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=27500 2) This software developpement is a trojan horse for a non-negociated policy change. Although the Wikimedia Foundation's resolution on licensing policy (2) is neutral, deciding to accept any free license, without creating undue privileges for specific licenses, this neutrality is no longer respected with the concept of CC-BY-SA 3.0 above all : http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia:Upload_wizard/Questions_%26_… Commons currently has a pluralistic concept of "preferred licenses" at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Licensing#Well-known_licenses which includes, for example the "Art Libre" (or "Free Art") license. This pluralism is being attacked. Even the CC-BY-SA 2.0 which is compatible with Flickr is threatened. (See what happened to my poor CC-BY-SA 2.0 file (see "image title" in the EXIF metadata) at http://commons.prototype.wikimedia.org/uwd/File:Tree_at_Bourg-la-Reine_stat… ) This attempt at the creation of a CC-BY-SA 3.0 empire is bad. Having a choice of possible licenses is a richness. Because specific licenses might be more suitable to some specific needs than other licenses. Because they don't offer the same sort of protection in a variety of circumstances. Destroying licenses looks as bad as destroying biological species. Biodiversity is needed. (1) http://commons.prototype.wikimedia.org/uwd/Special:UploadWizard (2) http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy

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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikibooks (was Friendliness)
by Aaron Adrignola 27 Feb '11

27 Feb '11

<WJhonson at aol.com> wrote: > The problem I see with free books is just that you really need something > that says... this is WHY you, the contributor would put in this amount of > effort here. Well, I'd hate to see how things would had ended up if everyone had that attitude with regards to the idea of creating a free encyclopedia. However, I don't disagree that contributing to a book is a much larger endeavor than contributing to an article. While this is eased due to the greater freedom authors have in styling and structuring their books, it still takes patience and dedication to finish one. This is evident when one looks at the progress toward completion of the books at Wikibooks, based on each book's individual scope. To help readers find the ones that were more completed, I went through all 2,300+ books currently started and rated them on a percentage basis of completion based on stated scope and red links for pages created in the main contents. 130 are complete, 105 are at 75%, 236 are at 50%, 701 are at 25%, and 1,167 are stubs or single-page "books". So the books at Wikibooks are largely abandoned and unfinished; their primary authors gave up. <WJhonson at aol.com> wrote: > A book takes an awful lot of effort. And then I give it away free to the > world. Sorry I'm just not seeing that. Others don't see it either. The CK-12 Foundation has created quite a few textbooks using the "FlexBooks" platform. I acquired PDFs of many of them for importing into Wikibooks prior to the decision that giving content away for free under a license that allowed commercial reproduction wasn't acceptable and went to CC-BY-SA-NC just like WikiHow. <WJhonson at aol.com> wrote: > So what we should have created it not Wikibooks with which to start, but > Wiki...How or WikiChapter or something small, that a person could actually > accomplish. One of English Wikibooks' featured books, "Social and Cultural Foundations of American Education" [1], was created by many students at Old Dominion University with each one working on a specific topic. It's a fine example of how a collaboration of individuals working toward a common goal can get something accomplished. <WJhonson at aol.com> wrote: > But just the name Wikibooks doesn't sound to me like How To, it sounds like > 150 to 1000 pages on an overarching topic of some kind. And that is frankly what Wikibooks is. I know of one editor whose contributions to the Na'vi language article on Wikipedia were cut down heavily as being too much for an article. He went on to create a whole book on the topic [2] at Wikibooks. There have been many programming books started as a result of source code examples being removed from Wikipedia. And a 1000 page book would not be surprising to me. "Chess Opening Theory" already has 965 and it's not yet done [3]. <WJhonson at aol.com> wrote: > So on Wikibooks for example, I could create my own How-To Home Repair, and > collect *chapters* contributed by a dozen people into a *book*. It's important to not confuse Wikibooks with Wikipedia Books [4]. Unfortunately the name Wikipedia chose for collections of articles has already begun to lead to confusion [5]. Books at Wikibooks are absolutely not collections of standalone articles when done correctly, with knowledge and concepts built upon as a reader goes through the book. But this unique branding may be diluted due to the naming and placement of Wikipedia Books above Wikibooks books on articles. It does rule out a past proposal to rename Wikibooks to Wikipedia Books, though... <WJhonson at aol.com> wrote: > What is Wikibooks at all? > The scope, content, purpose were really poorly defined. This is intentional. Initially Wikibooks hosted strategy guides, but then they were deemed to be out of scope and removed. Organic development is encouraged. This can be seen in the definition of what Wikibooks is [6], where more space is spent on what it *isn't*, as an exhaustive list of the former would be incredibly large. With no projects created post-Wikiversity, some have even pushed to turn Wikibooks into an incubator [7]. <WJhonson at aol.com> wrote: > But heck, if I'm going to go to that much trouble, why not just throw it up > on my own web site? You could, but that wouldn't provide what Wikibooks helps to provide, "a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge", without having to pay for web hosting or be restricted by a platform that doesn't allow anyone else to edit. - Adrignola [1] http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Social_and_Cultural_Foundations_of_American_Ed… [2] http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Na%27vi [3] http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Chess_Opening_Theory [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Books [5] http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?oldid=2059824#Disappearance_of_Private_… [6] http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:What_is_Wikibooks [7] http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Incubator

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Re: [Foundation-l] Friendliness (was: Missing Wikipedians: An Essay)
by WJhonson＠aol.com 27 Feb '11

27 Feb '11

In a message dated 2/26/2011 6:12:10 AM Pacific Standard Time, dgerard(a)gmail.com writes: > So, for WIkibooks: what's the tuna? What's the compelling attraction > that will keep people lured in? > I will go one step further. What is Wikibooks at all? The scope, content, purpose were really poorly defined. "Something to large for Wikipedia" doesn't really cut it in my mind. When our Wikipedia article on Marilyn Monroe can be 25 screen pages long, than who needs a "book" and how much bigger would a "book" be anyway? I'm not sure it makes sense on the Internet to call anything a book. The other problem I have is who writes the book? I surely don't want to write a book on Obama, but I can contribute a *chapter* perhaps.... of course I'd want to be the editor-in-chief of my own chapter but allow contributors. But heck, if I'm going to go to that much trouble, why not just throw it up on my own web site ? W

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Re: [Foundation-l] Friendliness: a radical proposal -- some proposed details ...
by WJhonson＠aol.com 27 Feb '11

27 Feb '11

The problem with the approach that we can let the "welcoming" and "friendliness" be an emergent behaviour, is that we're already many years into this and it's simply... not. However the admin bit is an officially sanctioned method of enforcing rules. This is a lop-sided approach. To counter-balance the officially sanctioned rule enforcement, we need an *equally weighted* officially sanctioned welcoming committee type role that operates *on the level* of the editors exactly as an admin operates. A person well-suited to be an admin, is not necessarily and sometimes diametrically opposed to a person well-suited to be a welcomer. Whatever happened to the push to encourage editors to come back? W

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Re: [Foundation-l] Friendliness (was: Missing Wikipedians: An Essay)
by Aaron Adrignola 27 Feb '11

27 Feb '11

From: Andrew Gray <andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk> > > The absolute number of "active" community members on enwp peaked in > early 2007 and has been in a slow decline more or less steadily since > then; it's currently about two thirds what it was. > > I was given permission to forward any portion of an email I received from MZMcbride, and this is a relevant portion: "Sure, but there is a more fundamental question about what the goal and mission actually is. I see it as about content creation. Wikimedia's focus should primarily be creating the best free content it can. Others seem far more interested in creating a "movement" (a large social network)." From: Andrew Gray <andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk> If we don't increase the rate at which we attract and retain new > contributors while we can, there's a real danger we could end up by > 2020 or 2025 with a virtually moribund community - a small handful of > devoted vandal-fighters spending their days trying to keep millions of > pages clean and stable, and no influx of new users worth mentioning > because no-one has the time to cultivate it. > > That proportion of active administrators to content pages is already the case at Wikibooks. It pains me to say it as a heavy contributor, but the number of admins has fallen to a third of what it was in 2007. [1] While I could hope for content growth instead, that's also stagnated. [2] From: WJhonson(a)aol.com > > It's fine to say nothing's wrong as the Titanic sinks, but it's still > sinking. > > If Wikipedia is the Titanic, the sister projects are the Britannic. [3] I mourn the loss of many "missing Wikibookians" myself who were seriously involved in the community, helped mentor me and give me the enthusiasm I have for the project, but have since left. Nowadays I feel alone and the discussion rooms are nearly empty. I was disappointed that the usability initiative and outreach focused solely on Wikipedia. -- Adrignola [1] http://www.wikistatistics.net/wikibooks/en/admins/full [2] http://www.wikistatistics.net/wikibooks/en/articles/full [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMHS_Britannic

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Wikimedia-l February 2011