Wikimedia-l August 2011

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131 participants
100 discussions

[Foundation-l] Stewards' question: How to make your Wikimedian life easier?
by Milos Rancic 19 Aug '11

19 Aug '11

New RfC [1] has been opened on Meta. Here is the description and one suggestion. * * * Stewards had short discussion at their list and came to the conclusion to start the discussion how stewards could help to make life of Wikimedians easier. It is mostly about small wikis and rules around them. The idea is to make those rules more simple and more accessible to editors of small wikis. Other ideas are welcome, as well. ''(Make your own suggestion inside of separate section.)'' == Admin and bureaucrat permissions == As admin and bureaucrat permissions shouldn't be a big deal, I suggest next changes: * Regular temporary adminship could be given once on three months. If user is active and willing to keep admin permissions, after three months she or he would get permanent permissions. * Bureaucrat permissions shouldn't be a big deal as well. One long-term active user should get them if necessary. Otherwise, let's say, if wiki has at least three active users and at least 80% support (in the case of less than 5 users, 100% support is needed), bureaucrat permissions would be given. * Inactivity: all permissions on small wikis could be lost due to inactivity. Let's say, no edits for 6 months would be treated as inactivity. [[Category:Requests for comments]] [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Stewards%27_question:_H…

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[Foundation-l] Fwd: Image filter referendum
by Huib Laurens 19 Aug '11

19 Aug '11

Hello, I just recieved this e-mail while I'm not enigble to vote and not able to remove myself from the list. I guess if I recieve it more people that aren't engible will recieve it. Best. Huib ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Wikimedia Referendum, 2011 <improve(a)wikimedia.org> Date: 2011/8/19 Subject: Image filter referendum To: Abigor <Abigor(a)forgotten-beauty.com> Dear Abigor, You are eligible to vote in the image filter referendum, a referendum to gather more input into the development and usage of an opt-in personal image hiding feature. This feature will allow readers to voluntarily screen particular types of images strictly for their own accounts. Its purpose is to enable readers to easily hide images on the Wikimedia projects that they do not wish to view, either when first viewing the image or ahead of time through individual preference settings. The feature is intended to benefit readers by offering them more choice, and to that end it will be made as user-friendly and simple as possible. We will also make it as easy as possible for editors to support. For its development, we have created a number of guiding principles, but trade-offs will need to be made throughout the development process. In order to aid the developers in making those trade-offs, we need your help us assess the importance of each by taking part in this referendum. For more information, please see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image_filter_referendum/en. To remove yourself from future notifications, please add your user name at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_nomail_list. -- Kind regards, Huib Laurens WickedWay.nl Webhosting the wicked way.

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[Foundation-l] IRC office hours with Sue Gardner, Thursday 8/18
by Steven Walling 18 Aug '11

18 Aug '11

Greetings all, Just a quick notice that this Thursday the 18th at 17:00 UTC there will be an IRC office hours with Sue Gardner. We haven't set a specific topic, so feel free to come with your burning questions in mind. ;-) As usual, instructions and other notes are available on Meta.[1] Thank you, -- Steven Walling Fellow at Wikimedia Foundation wikimediafoundation.org 1. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/wiki/IRC_office_hours

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Re: [Foundation-l] copyright issues
by Robin McCain 17 Aug '11

17 Aug '11

On 8/16/2011 12:51 PM, wjhonson(a)aol.com wrote: > I don't believe your claim that you can take something which is PD, make an exact image of it, slap it up in a new work of your own (enjoying copyright protection automatically) and then claim copyright over that PD image in your work. > > Copyright applies to the presentation of your work, showing creativity. An image that you reproduce faithfully shows no creativity and can enjoy no new copyright, no matter how hard you push your view. That's it. Period. > > So I can freely copy any PD image, from any source, and not need to worry about copyright violation. PD doesn't change simply because a PD item is republished. The presentation of the item is copyright, not the item itself. I personally agree with that. However, it often costs more to prove your right to use something in court than to knuckle under if an aggressive rights owner comes after you. This is especially true when you are planning to distribute your own work worldwide - just getting a letter from the publisher telling you that they either give you the right to use an image or have no rights over that image is necessary before your work will be accepted by a publisher or distributor. > > An additional minor quibble. At least in the US a person does*not* need to reapply for copyright each time they revise an item. Copyright is an automatic process, merely by the fact of presenting something in a fixed media. You*can* file a copyright. You do not*need* to file a copyright, in order to enjoy copyright protection under the law. I also agree with you - except that the registered version has an ironclad protection you can protect in court while revised versions afterwards may not be so easy to protect unless they are also registered. It becomes a kind of "chain of custody" issue. If I were to create something original and show it to no one else for 50 years until I published it and died 5 years later, which would apply to the copyright expiration date - date of author's death, date of creation or date of publication? In the real world there are many examples of published books and screenplays that could clearly be seen as derivative - even plagiarized works from one or more unpublished sources. This is a big deal within the Writer's Guild and the reason for their online system of protecting manuscripts by registering before a work is shown to others. One of the most (in)famous books in American Religion is "The Book of Mormon", parts of the first edition of which were (alleged to be) plagiarized from the "Manuscript Story" and arguably violated the 1790 Copyright Act. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Spalding The work has been revised at least nine times (not counting translations) to make it "fit" the theology of the modern day church. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Mormon

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[Foundation-l] Astonished by the so-called principle of least astonishment
by Teofilo 17 Aug '11

17 Aug '11

My attention being caught by the sitenotice to the image hiding referendum, I came to read the 29 May 2011 board "Controversial content" resolution [1]. And I was astonished. I have two main criticisms. A) The principle of least astonishment was one compound in a set of balanced principles, limited to a very specific scope: the management of redirected titles [2]. It was not meant for contents other than titles. I am afraid the WMF board is adulterating a good limited principle into a broad obscurantist ideology. I am afraid some people will read "content (...) should be presented to readers in such a way as to respect their expectations" as meaning that they are entitled to censor anything that does not fit their preconceived ideas. B) Is there a philosopher aboard the plane ? Did-it not occur to anybody in the board that astonishment and knowledge are synonymous ? If you are against astonishment, you are against knowledge. Learning is about being astonished. When you are told again something you already know, you are not learning. When you are told something important you did not previously know, you are astonished. If you believe that the Earth is the center of the world, and Galileo tells you that it is not, you are astonished. Galileo raised a controversy and his theory was a controversial content. In Plato's dialogues, the master never stops astonishing his students [3]. [1] http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Controversial_content [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Principle_of_least_asto… [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method

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[Foundation-l] Wikimedia chapters' raison d'?tre?
by WereSpielChequers 17 Aug '11

17 Aug '11

Hi Teofilo, Chapters are geographic entities, I don't think they have a role in disputes about Commons templates. As for the controversial content referendum, I suspect some chapters or proto chapters in Islamic countries will be strongly for having such filters. But the content filtering thing is a Foundation initiative. If you want to judge the chapters look at the things they are achieving - I'm a Londoner and I think that having a chapter helps with our collaborations with the British Museum and other UK Museums. Yes you can have a GLAM initiative without a chapter, but sometimes it makes a difference - some institutions want to talk to a local organisation not a local volunteer or a US organisation. Details as to what the United Kingdom chapter has been getting up to are at http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports - I don't know where you are from but if there is a chapter there I suggest you look up their reports. As for the money issue, we need local national if we are to get charity status in different tax jurisdictions. In some countries that may not mean much money, but here in the UK it is a big opportunity. If you look at other international charities you will find that creating national organisations is not an unusual strategy. WSC > Message: 1 > Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2011 14:14:11 +0200 > From: Teofilo <teofilowiki(a)gmail.com> > Subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia chapters' raison d'?tre? > To: foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > Message-ID: > <CABsdk68K0-L-pNUGp-LdydM2WG-ocuwERVWLkRUB9Ob+nzeAKQ(a)mail.gmail.com > > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > Wikimedia chapters are not only an example of what should not be seen > in Wikimedia projects (an "institution[...], of any kind, [...] > claiming to represent [...] individuals" [1]) they also absorb funds > and hire people, pushing with more weight the goal to make money (a > salaried person expects his/her salary to be increased by X % each > year) which is different from what a volunteer based project should > be. > > They aslo are de facto put in a position where people expect them to > perform decision making. It is already bad that they deprive the > communities of a decision making of their own, and take volunteer > seats at the WMF board of trustees, but they don't do the job. See > > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:CC-AR-Presidency#Bad_templa… > . If the chapters showed that they are helpful in doing things better > than what volunteer communities alone can do, they could prove that > they are useful. But I am afraid they are not doing this. If they are > not present when we need them... > > [1] > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Wikimedia_Study_of_Controversial_Conten… > > >

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[Foundation-l] Wikimedia chapters' raison d'être?
by Teofilo 17 Aug '11

17 Aug '11

Wikimedia chapters are not only an example of what should not be seen in Wikimedia projects (an "institution[...], of any kind, [...] claiming to represent [...] individuals" [1]) they also absorb funds and hire people, pushing with more weight the goal to make money (a salaried person expects his/her salary to be increased by X % each year) which is different from what a volunteer based project should be. They aslo are de facto put in a position where people expect them to perform decision making. It is already bad that they deprive the communities of a decision making of their own, and take volunteer seats at the WMF board of trustees, but they don't do the job. See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:CC-AR-Presidency#Bad_templa… . If the chapters showed that they are helpful in doing things better than what volunteer communities alone can do, they could prove that they are useful. But I am afraid they are not doing this. If they are not present when we need them... [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2010_Wikimedia_Study_of_Controversial_Conten…

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[Foundation-l] Image filter referendum
by WereSpielChequers 17 Aug '11

17 Aug '11

Re "(is anyone really going to say that they don't think it's important to be culturally neutral?)" That depends on what the referendum means by culturally neutral. If it will be interpreted as meaning that the setting of filters will be neutral between all cultures, so Moslems will be able to use it to filter out pictures of Mohammed and those cartoons; whilst other religious groups will be able to filter out things that offend them, then I would have supported it. But if it is meant to be read literally as for example a culturally neutral porn filter that somehow comes up with a common denominator between a Saudi Arabian definition of porn and a Papuan one then I would oppose it. Some cultures regard breasts, faces, ankles and midriffs as erotic and require then to be covered in ordinary wear, others don't. A single culturally neutral porn filter would probably be far more prudish than some cultures would expect, and insufficiently prudish for others. The Mahomed cartoons are a good example of something that is monoculturally offensive as opposed to multiculturally so (arguably they have become multiculturally offensive because they are known to be offensive to Moslems - but there will be other things that are offensive to various individual cultures but are not multiculturally offensive because people from other cultures would need an explanation as to why one culture found them offensive). WSC Regards WSC > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2011 19:57:25 +0100 > From: Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> > Subject: [Foundation-l] Image filter referendum > To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List > <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> > Message-ID: > <CALTQccdRqtASjdq3CJpFT-v-jB97gJAuU4YywUXzbVSu5yEC6A(a)mail.gmail.com > > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 > > I've just been looking at the image filter referendum. Could someone > from the Foundation please explain what you hope to gain by holding > it? The questions are extremely leading, so I doubt you will learn > anything useful from it (is anyone really going to say that they don't > think it's important to be culturally neutral?). Are you hoping to > determine people's priorities by seeing which ones they rate as 10 and > which as merely 8 or 9? If so, why? Can you not just implement them > all? > > My understanding was that this referendum was intended to give the > community some say in what happened with this proposed feature. The > questions you are asking don't do that in the slightest. If you want > to be able to say the feature has community support, you need to > actually ask the community whether or not they support it. > > > >

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[Foundation-l] Movement Roles: my suggestion of "Language Contact Persons"
by Ziko van Dijk 17 Aug '11

17 Aug '11

Dear friends, One element of the discussions on "Movement Roles" was about other / new entities within our movement, aside the already existing Foundation and the Chapters, which I prefer to call "national Wikimedia organizations". I would like to present to you here my idea of "Language Contact Persons" who form a link between the Foundation and the Wikipedia language versions. == New entities?== James Forrester and his group (sorry, I don't remember who was the official primus inter pares) presented in/before Haifa a list of new kinds of Wikimedia entities: * Chapters not based on national boundaries, but subjects such as railways, art, ethnic cultures, mathematics etc. * informal groups * Official partners, e.g. a museum we (the Foundation? a national Wikimedia organization?) that already exists outside our movement ==Scepticism== I myself, and also some people I have talked to, are very sceptical about such new entities. I believe that in theory it is possible to create and maintain them, but in practice there can come up a lot of problems. Imagine that a group wants to join that is occupied with Marxism, or Zionism, or other potentially controversial subjects. And then groups with antimarxism, antizionism etc. What subjects exactly (and what kind of behavior) do we want to allow? And what actual problem we would try to solve with such new entities? One particular question is the organization of ethnic or linguistic groups which cannot have a national Wikimedia organization (chapter), but which also cannot or don't want to integrate into existing national Wikimedia organizations. The best known example are the Catalans together with the Scottish Wikipedians (or just some of them?). == A concrete problem to be solved == I must mention here my personal interests. I am an editor of Wikipedia in Esperanto, a small, transnational language that never can have a national Wikimedia organization. We Esperanto-Wikipedians can also not easily integrate into existing national Wikimedia organizations because we live in many different countries, where other (national) languages are dominant. So, as an Esperantist I would like it very much to see a Esperanto "chapter" of Wikimedia, but as a Wikimedian in general I am afraid that it would open a box of Pandora. Thinking of practical problems, I remember that we small language Wikipedians often don't have good connections with the Wikimedia organizations. We don't know well how to make use of the existing material and other ressources. And the Foundation and the national Wikimedia organizations know little of us. When I go to the Foundation and ask whether we are allowed to use the logos for a flyer in my small language, then the Foundation might ask itself: *Who is this Ziko, can we trust him, does he speak for more people than only himself?* == Language Contact Person (LCP) == I would like to suggest a small solution to solve a part of the problems. Every language version of Wikipedia should designate a "Language Contact Person" for relations with the Foundation (and national Wikimedia organizations). This LCP is to be elected by a poll with the same requirements as for admins. A deputy LCP is also to be elected, in order to replace a LCP when necessary. If one of both is no longer active, it will be the task of the remaining one to take care of a new election of that other position. You know, originally it is often an admin who represents a language version in one way or other. But that is not really the task of an admin, and other people might be a suitable LCP but are not interesting in becoming an admin. The LCP would be only a liaison officer, he won't "officially represent" the language version. Like adminship it will be less a position of honour but of work. The LCP has to report to the Foundation about the language version and its community and outreach, monthly or at least once a year. (Think of my "Tell us about your Wikipedia" project on Meta.) And when the Foundation wishes to contact that language version, for example when it needs a translation or wants the whole movement to know about something important, the LCP is the best way to take care of that. The LCP knows the village pumps and mailing lists etc. of his language. So, in future, Casey Brown does not have to search and contact all those language versions and their activists, but will simply post to a common mailing list of all LCPs and they will do the rest. On the other hand, when the Wikipedians of a particular language version have a specific problem and seek for help from the Foundation, they can do that most efficiently via their LCP. Of course, a LCP is not only useful for small languages. Think of Spanish, a global language. Some Spanish speaking countries have a national Wikimedia organization, others have not. A Spanish Wikipedia LCP can be the coordinator of a flyer in Spanish for all of the Spanish speaking countries. == Experimental phase == My suggestion is that the Foundation asks the Wikipedia language versions to elect LCPs (and their deputies). After a year, the Foundation evaluates the experiences with the LCPs, whether they really make communication more efficient or not. Then, * the LCP system can remain the same as it is, * or has to be abolished because it caused more work than it helped, * or the system will be given a more formal basis, with the LCP getting a higher status or more tasks, or even becoming the nucleus of language based formal Wikimedia organizations. Maybe the LCP experiences can be of value with regard to Wikimedia projects such as Wikisource, Wikibooks etc. Please let me know what you think about the possibility and potential usefulness of Language Contact Persons. Kind regards Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk The Netherlands http://zikoblog.wordpress.com/

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[Foundation-l] a5f6c6b7e22485666d84ba3b04e18f1f577b4cae
by Geary Mcdonald Bean-Forbes 16 Aug '11

16 Aug '11

Sent from my iPhone

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Wikimedia-l August 2011