Wikimedia-l February 2011

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124 participants
112 discussions

[Foundation-l] Upload wizard: Why Creative Commons 1.0 and GFDL 1.2 must be saved
by Teofilo 27 Feb '11

27 Feb '11

What is a guru license, and what is a non-guru license? A guru license is a license where a guru can change the terms of the license according to his whims. You can recognise the existense of a guru to the presence of the following lines : CC-BY-SA 3.0 : "either this or a later license version". GFDL : "The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU Free Documentation License from time to time" (but you can opt-out of the guru if you remove "or any later version" from your licensing statement). Conversely, CC-BY-SA 1.0 does not contain any such revision mechanism. To the contrary of the other CC licenses, the following sentence at the end of the license : "This License constitutes the entire agreement between the parties with respect to the Work licensed here. There are no understandings, agreements or representations with respect to the Work not specified here", is true to its meaning. Philosophically, I don't see why I should choose for my created contents, or recommend to other creators to choose a guru-license. Depending on the whims of a guru amounts to the servitude denounced by Étienne de La Boétie (1530-1563) in his 1548 essay "Discourse on voluntary servitude"(1) CC-BY-SA-Guru is CC-BY-SA 3.0 CC-BY-SA-NonGuru is CC-BY-SA 1.0 GFDL-Guru is "GFDL + version number or any later version" GDFL-NonGuru is "GFDL version + version number" practically that means "GFDL 1.2" (GFDL 1.3 has to be avoided because of its transfer mechanism to Creative Commons) Both the CC-BY-SA 1.0, and the strict GFDL 1.2 must be included in the upload wizard. The uploading tutorial should explain beginners the difference between these licenses and the other licenses, enabling them to choose in full knowledge of the facts. (1) http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Discourse_on_Voluntary_Servitude

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[Foundation-l] Genisis of WMF Identification policy?
by Birgitte SB 27 Feb '11

27 Feb '11

I was looking for something unrelated in the archives and came across an email [1] that I believe people might find informative wrt to the Identification Policy which I believe has had discussion tabled for the moment. It seems to be the original suggestion that WMF needs some sort of identification policy by then volunteer/board-member Erik. He was *not* a staff member at the time of this message, just to be clear, since people seem to be fond of re-framing debate along such lines lately. Summary of the context follows (Not perfectly accurate chronologically speaking): A female leader in the zh.WP community was harassed/threatened by the creation of an account User:Rape[HerRealName]. Advice was sought in handling the situation. There was talk about going to the authorities. There was talk about which information about the account creator could be given to the authorities under what circumstances. The existing privacy policy was quoted as "6 Where it is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of the Wikimedia Foundation, its users or the public." . There was talk about it essentially being a matter of mature judgment to differentiate between derogatory comments, which however reprehensible, do not merit violating a user's privacy and threats of violence which would compel the violation of privacy in order to attempt to prevent such threats from being carried out. The idea was suggested that perhaps those with the technical ability to access private information need to be identified to WMF so that WMF will know who deal with in case of abuse. It seemed to me that many people were quite surprised that the WMF was planning on recording the identifications of those with access to private information, instead on the non-recording of this correspondense which I believe has been the previous practice. It even seemed to me as though some were shocked at the implication that WMF may perhaps be looking for legal accountability for the judgments made by those with this access. So I found it very interesting when I stumbled across evidence of public discussion of the need to record the identities of trusted users in order to be able to deal with any abuse of private information by one of the Community-seat Board Members before the adoption of the resolution that has become controversial so recently. I don't mean to suggest that the surprise and shock were insincere, just that they seem to be rather uninformed as to the genesis of the resolution. It seems to me that those things were in fact the original intentions behind the resolution and the staff does have an obligation, however unpopular this obligation may have become during the time period it has been left unfulfilled, to see to recording such identities. Granted there are good reasons the obligation was left unfulfilled before, namely the lack of confidence in the WMF Office's technical and organizational ability to keep these records secure. But once the WMF Office reaches a level of reliability in organizational and technical competence where that objection is mitigated, they then must address their obligation to keep identification records. Also there are valid concerns over the ambiguity over whether the access to which particular tools should qualify people as subject to the Identification Resolution. What, however, in hindsight do not appear to be valid concerns to me are why the WMF "wants" to "change" things, or that the decision to keep such records was not in given a proper public place for discussion. I can imagine that the staff (who are much in contact with Erik who we must grant understood the intentions of a resolution he himself suggested the seed of in 2006) to some degree assumed that the trusted volunteers understood that the Identification Resolution's ultimate goal was the production of records and that practice of destroying correspondence was done out of responsibility for the fact that staff did not feel confident in their current ability to keep such records. I can also imagine the trusted volunteers who were upset by the idea of such records being kept to some degree assumed because there has sometimes been a practice of destroying identification correspondence that this practice was in fact the agreed upon policy of the Identification Resolution and also because they could not recall otherwise trusted volunteers to some degree assumed the potential policy of actually keeping identification records and why such records may be needed had never been brought up for public discussion until after it had been adopted. Certainly the exact thoughts and communications during this recent misunderstanding were rather more varied, less articulated, and altogether a shade more grey than my speculation. But I am confident that my speculations are not entirely inaccurate and that they are completely in good faith. There has recently been a lot of discussion about getting back to the tenet of assuming good faith. Here is as a good a place to start that journey as any. On the tabled issue we are still left at least two important questions that need resolution through an open discussion that succeeds in convincing those volunteers who may be affected: *How can volunteers be made be confident in the security of their identification as records are being collected, recorded, and stored? How can this confidence be maintained changes occur at WMF? Do these concerns merit the expense of security audits? *What tools that volunteers use in order to do the work of WMF will require them to become a subject of the Identification Resolution? As new tools are developed, who will be responsible for keeping track of their existence and seeing that it is determined whether or not those who will be given access to them will need to become a subject of the Identification Resolution? Birgitte SB [1] http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/74095#74095

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[Foundation-l] Upload wizard: the different attribution mechanisms and spirits of GFDL and Creative Commons
by Teofilo 27 Feb '11

27 Feb '11

Upload wizard: the different attribution mechanisms and spirits of GFDL and Creative Commons Two small words make a big difference in the attribution mechanism of CC-BY-SA : "if supplied" in http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode 4(c). Put together with "designate another party or parties (...) for attribution", this enables sharks to rob the small fishes' attribution. Actually they don't have to rob it. They can use an inequal power relationship in their favor to persuade the small fish to waive their attribution and to designate the sharks as the "attribution party". The sharks can also add "You agree to be credited, at minimum, through a hyperlink or URL when your contributions are reused in any form" on edit boxes, or perhaps, even on upload wizards. To the contrary, the sharks don't have such a possibility with the GFDL. Because the GFDL requires to keep the license notice and the history, sharks cannot rewrite history in their favor and erase the small fishes' names. Creative Commons is shark-friendly. GFDL is small-fish-friendly. This is why they don't have the same spirit. The upload wizard must guarantee that the uploader will be fully attributed and MUST NOT require uploaders to waive their attribution rights. See also "If the sharks were people" by Bertholt Brecht at http://everything2.com/title/If+the+Sharks+Were+People (and just add "free" before "culture").

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[Foundation-l] Upload wizard: The other licenses and the future of Creative Commons
by Teofilo 27 Feb '11

27 Feb '11

The Upload wizard distorts competition in favour of Creative Commons, for the purpose of creating a monopoly (0). Instead, it would be safer that for every file licensed under a Creative Commons license, one licenses one other file under GFDL and another file under "Art libre", "open source music license", LGPL, etc. One should not put all her eggs in the same basket(1), keeping open the option to switch back to GFDL : one should keep a leverage to pressure the Creative Commons organization, at the very least to ensure that CC 4.0 won't be worse than 3.0, and that 5.0 won't be worse than 4.0. Instead of patching the holes in the CC-BY-SA, the Creative Commons organization is supplying weapons to the ennemy. CC Zero (2), perhaps named after Imperial Japan's fighter aircraft (3), is a weapon of mass destruction against the attributive share-alike community, putting the Creative Commons organization on the side of those who want to reuse contents without crediting the creators. As an open attack on moral rights, that license is morally flawed. Although they created the LGPL (more permissive, yet fully attributive), the Free Software Foundation seems to present its copyleft GPL license as its main license representing their philosophy and what they fight for. On the other hand, the Creative Commons organization has no philosophy and is losing its soul. If the Creative Commons guru decides that CC 4.0 is CC Zero, do we have any legal tool to fight against it ? I am afraid we don't. This would leave us nothing but our eyes to cry with. (0) http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia:Upload_wizard/Questions_%26_… (1) I was objected some time ago that I use too many agricultural metaphors. Sorry for this one again, but IANAEP : I am not an English poet ; (2) http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode (3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_A6M_Zero This one is not an agricultural metaphor.

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[Foundation-l] Splitting Wikipedia by Project
by WereSpielChequers 26 Feb '11

26 Feb '11

There are several drawbacks to the idea of splitting EN wiki by project, and I suspect the drawbacks will be equally true in other languages. 1 Not everything fits neatly once into one project. So an article about a Chilean Volcano might be of interest to projects as diverse as Vulcanology, Chile, Rockclimbing and Botany. Together that makes for a much better general article than if each project was only writing about its aspect of the mountain. 2 Gnomes are useful, and will work across all sorts of articles across one wiki, whether it is resolving death anomalies, adding intrawiki links or resolving obscure typos. If you split EN wiki into seven hundred or so different specialist pedia I might stay involved in some of them - but I have no real interest in Bollywood or anime; Yet I have huge numbers of edits there dealing with actors who were "staring" in particular movies and heroes who "posses" particular abilities. 3 We need 24/7 cover for admins to delete attack pages and block vandals, and though our number of active admins on EN wiki is falling by 1% a month, at present we can still provide that cover almost all the time. Divide us into several hundred projects and we lose that - I have admin rights on a small wiki outside Wikimedia where vandalism can be up for hours. 4 As for splitting off BLPs - that would be as arbitrary and unsuccessful as if we split off a pedia about places, buildings or articles beginning in R. An article about a Taiwanese Baseball player is a biography, but more significantly it is about a Baseball player and a Taiwanese one at that. Wikipedia is an incredible example of how the sum can be greater than the parts, and in some aspects of economies of scale. But there is more than that it - having a general encyclopaedia interlinked and organised the way we have almost inevitably lures people away from their initial interest and into editing stuff they might never otherwise have dreamed of getting involved in. If anyone had told me a few years ago that I would voluntarily be editing stuff about sport, weather or MilHist I would think they were mad. But I love being involved in topics as diverse as King John, the Somerset levels and Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Johnstown Inclined Plane/archive1 If wikipedia had been fragmented by project I would probably still be doing a daily Sudoku and my garden would be somewhat better tended. WereSpielChequers > ------------------------------ > > Message: 5 > Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2011 15:35:39 -0500 > From: David Goodman <dggenwp(a)gmail.com> > Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] breaking English Wikipedia apart > To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List > <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> > Message-ID: > <AANLkTi=rcoQVdkLa4mVFkaf2uEAUEOOJchx7os-EFvUp(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > To the extent that the enWP is a project to build a practical > encyclopedia, it seems to have been getting increased acceptance as it > gets larger. There is no indication that this trend is ceasing or or > even faltering. > > To the extent that WP is an experiment, the experiment has already > succeeded beyond the limits of similar projects, and there is no > reason to stop at this point. Predictions that there would be a size > beyond which it no longer scales have so far all of them been wrong. > Splitting the encyclopedia is irreversible--we can always decide to > split, but it is very unlikely that after sections develop separately > they will be able to recombine. But there is nothing to stop anyone > from making a split if they desire while leaving the actual Wikipedia > as it is. I think WP can only benefit from serious competition. > > I agree the role of the wikiprojects should be increased and perhaps > formalized, but already over the last few years at the enWP, some > of the various WikiProjects and less organized impromptu groups of > people interested in various aspects have made decisions that the > community has not supported. There is an advantage in having an > Encyclopedia with uniform policies that have general agreement--people > read it as a whole & have common expectations. > > And with respect to BLPs, the biographical information about living > people permeates most areas of the Encyclopedia, not just the articles > with a living person's name as the title. > > > On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 7:33 PM, John Vandenberg <jayvdb(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> Was: Re: [Foundation-l] Friendliness (was: Missing Wikipedians: An Essay) >> Was: Re: [Foundation-l] Friendliness >> >> On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 10:17 AM, Ryan Kaldari <rkaldari(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: >>> On 2/25/11 3:11 PM, John Vandenberg wrote: >>>> On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 11:18 PM, ?<dex2000(a)pc.dk> wrote: >>>>> .. >>>>> I think it could also be considered to divide our huge language wikis >>>>> into smaller parts. The existing WikiProjects could be made virtual wikis >>>>> with their own admins, recent changes etc. That way, each project is in >>>>> fact like a small wiki to which the newbie could sign up according to >>>>> 'hers' area of interest and where the clarrity and friendlier atmosphere >>>>> of the smaller wikis could prevail. >>>> >>>> This is the best solution, in my opinion. >>> >>> Yes, the larger wikis need to become WikiProject-centric. First step in >>> doing this would be to create a WikiProject namespace. Second step would >>> be to make WikiProject article tagging/assessment part of the software >>> instead of template-based. >> >> I can see how those would be useful steps, however I think those steps >> are part of a 10 year plan. >> >> A 10 year plan will be overrun by events. >> >> We need a much more direct plan. >> >> I recommend breaking enWP apart by finding easy chunks and moving them >> to a separate instance, and having readonly copies on the main project >> like we do for File: pages from Commons. >> >> IMO, the simplest and most useful set of articles to break apart is BLPs. >> The criteria is really simple, and those articles already have lots of >> policy differences around them. >> >> By the time we have perfected this system with the BLPs, the community >> will have come to understand the costs/benefits of moving other >> clusters of articles to separate projects, and we'll see other >> clusters of articles migrated to sub-projects. >> >> btw, this idea is not new, but maybe its time has come. >> http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=29729 >> >> -- >> John Vandenberg >> >> _______________________________________________ >> foundation-l mailing list >> foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l >>

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[Foundation-l] Friendliness: a radical proposal -- some proposed details and a diagram
by Neil Harris 26 Feb '11

26 Feb '11

Here are some more details to flesh out my proposal for new admin creation. Proposed rate of automatic new admin creation: 5% a month, until back to early-Wikipedia proportions of admin number relative to edit rate. Although this sounds a lot, it's only about 3 new admins a day. --------------------- State transitions: IP user | | Creates an account, passes captcha test V User | | Time passes V Autoconfirmed user | | Time passes. User gets chosen at random from pool of all editors, followed by machine checking for good participation. The daily rate of random selection is tuned to generate the correct rate of new admins over the long term. V Proposed new admin | | Gets message. Sends a request message to a list. Any "old admin" checks for human-like edits, then performs one-click action to issue admin bit. If they don't respond within (say) two weeks, the invitation is withdrawn, and they have to wait to be be drawn again at random. V New admin, with limited powers | | One year passes without being de-adminned V Old admin, with full powers ---------------------- Some possible machine-detectable criteria for "good participation", based on edits: * Account age: Has been a Wikipedia contributor for at least two years. * Recent activity: Has made at least one edit in at least X days in the last three months. * Recent blocks: has not been blocked at all in the last year * Responsiveness: Has edited a user page of an editor who has edited their user page, at least Y times in the last three months. * Edit comments: Has added a non-trivial edit comment to at least Z% of their edits * Namespaces: Has edited some balanced mix of articles, talk pages, user talk pages, and project talk pages, within the last three months Note that this is a satisficing activity -- the aim is not to find the best editors, or to be fair, but just to select active Wikipedia participants who know their way around, and are not misbehaving, and then select some of them by lot. The final test, for humanness, necessarily needs to be performed by a human being, to avoid the threat of bots gaming the system, but, if as suggested above, there are only about three or four candidates proposed each day. Note also that almost this process can be implemented in a bot, independently of the actual wikipedia software itself. -- Neil

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[Foundation-l] Steward Elections 2011 - Please vote soon if you havent
by Jyothis E 26 Feb '11

26 Feb '11

All, The Election is almost coming to an end. Kindly cast you vote if you havent already. Thanks. Regards, Jyothis. http://www.Jyothis.net My Malayalam Wikipedia page <http://ml.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jyothis> Metawiki page <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jyothis> I am the first customer of http://www.netdotnet.com My toolserver tools <http://toolserver.org/~jyothis> woods are lovely dark and deep, but i have promises to keep and miles to go before i sleep and *lines to go before I press sleep* completion date = (start date + ((estimated effort x 3.1415926) / resources) + ((total coffee breaks x 0.25) / 24)) + Effort in meetings

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Re: [Foundation-l] Friendliness (was: Missing Wikipedians: An Essay)
by Renata St 26 Feb '11

26 Feb '11

> > This is to some degree a question of balance in approach. > > Every day, thousands of absolutely idiotic, non notable articles get > started that really have no point or hope. Every day, new page > patrollers find (most) of those, and they go "kerpoof". It would > largely be a waste of time to prod them, mark them "citation needed" > talk to the new user. The user never had any intention of > contributing legitimately to an online information resource / > encyclopedia, they're just trying to insult/promote/blab about their > friend/school/work/favorite whatever. > > We could emphasize a more positive engagement intended to get the > message to these people about what an encyclopedia is, what Wikipedia > is, and what contributions would be appropriate. But by and large > these driveby contributions aren't intended to really stick. They're > an advanced form of vandalism, and the perpetrators know it. > That's what I though: "There is too much garbage coming in, too few admins to police. There is no way that we can deal with this other than nuke on sight and who cares about collateral damage -- we have a war to fight!" Then one day I stumbled upon Distributed Proofreaders ( http://www.pgdp.net/c/) and proofread a few pages. I couple days later I received *three* *personalized* welcoming messages & evaluations "this is what you got right, this is what you should improve". I was shocked. These people are overworked, they have huge backlogs, they are stricter about quality than the pickiest FAC reviewer, yet three of them found time, energy, and good will to write lengthy personalized messages for a newbie who reviewed 30 book pages... If it was Wikipedia and I was a newbie with 30 edits, best case scenario I would have been slapped with {{welcome}} and my articles with endless variations of {{cleanup}}. This opened my eyes that there *is* an alternative -- an unthinkable idea for someone born and raised up in the Wikipedia battlefield zone. The core of Wikipedia culture is battleground: fight vandals, nuke their articles, whack them and quick! Yes, it is important for the integrity of the encyclopedia. Yes, spam was prophesied to be the end of Wikipedia. But what will surely kill it is lack of participation. And we are killing the participation by whacking it with deletions, clean ups, bans, etc. We have to make a profound choice in the culture here: 1) we continue with the whacking and scaring the newbies away (content priority #1, people #2), or 2) we embrace the newbies and we let some spam through (people priority #1, content #2). So far we are steadily moving along the first route. I believe, it is time we switch the priorities. People are important. It's the people who will be creating content in the future, and not the other way around. Wikipedia will inevitably fail without participation. And content... we are already the largest and the best... Renata

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Re: [Foundation-l] Friendliness (was: Missing Wikipedians: An Essay)
by WJhonson＠aol.com 25 Feb '11

25 Feb '11

In a message dated 2/25/2011 3:12:17 PM Pacific Standard Time, jayvdb(a)gmail.com writes: > At the moment, we need admins who press buttons more than we need to > welcome new users. It is unfortunate, but that is how it is. > We need to find ways of reducing the amount of work needed, or > radically increase the number of admins. >> > I have to respectfully disagree with John. IMHO we need a more welcoming environment to new editors. The idea that the vast majority of new contributors contribute nonsense, or vandalize is in my opinion, not a well-founded claim. I would agree with a statement like the vast majority of new contributors don't really understand the now-Byzantine rule system in place, which is a completely different situation. I also agree that our templates make the I.R.S. appear friendly, and that our user outreach is close to non-existent. Whatever happened to the "Please Come Back" campaign which was seemingly moribund before even getting launched ? It's fine to say nothing's wrong as the Titanic sinks, but it's still sinking. W

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Re: [Foundation-l] Friendliness (was: Missing Wikipedians: An Essay)
by Ryan Kaldari 25 Feb '11

25 Feb '11

Here's a recent email I received from Answers.com after editing an answer there. Talk about friendly! Compared to this, we make the IRS look friendly. ---- Hey Kaldari, Someone's been busy lately! Don't think your contributions go unnoticed... your tireless efforts are helping thousands of individuals from all over the world. Continue to sharpen your WikiAnswers skills: * Keep your eye on the ball. Add your favorite categories and questions to your watchlist <http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Special:Watchlist&src=email&dim1=First5&dim2=Watc…>. * Go in for the win. Browse <http://wiki.answers.com/help/how_to_contribute&src=email&dim1=First5&dim2=B…> our tips, suggestions and how-tos, or check out the Help Center <http://wiki.answers.com/help/help_center&src=email&dim1=First5&dim2=Communi…>. * Be a pro. Find out if you're really as good as you think you are. Check out the Top Contributors Hall of Fame <http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Special:Tops&src=email&dim1=First5&dim2=TopContri…>. We're glad you're part of the team! ---- Ryan Kaldari

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Wikimedia-l February 2011