Wikimedia-l November 2013

wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

137 participants
91 discussions

addressing paid advocacy
by James Salsman 08 Nov '13

08 Nov '13

The Foundation should actively solicit paid advocacy as undercover mystery shoppers in order to expose the perpetrators and their activity patterns. In many cases it wouldn't be necessary to actually turn over any money if insider partners at e.g. XYZ corporation can "ask for references" from previous paid advocacy successes. If this were to become an ongoing effort culminating in name and shame releases ("We caught these paid advocates puffing up these corporations' articles and blocked them") it could easily drive the worst abusers out of business. Sincerely, James Salsman

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Invitation to WMF October 2013 Metrics & Activities Meeting: Thursday, November 7, 19:00 UTC
by Praveena Maharaj 07 Nov '13

07 Nov '13

Dear all, The next WMF metrics and activities meeting will take place on Thursday, November 7, 2013 at 7:00 PM UTC (11 AM PST). The IRC channel is #wikimedia-office on irc.freenode.net and the meeting will be broadcast as a live YouTube stream. The current structure of the meeting is: * Review of key metrics including the monthly report card, but also specialized reports and analytics * Review of financials * Welcoming recent hires * Brief presentations on recent projects, with a focus on highest priority initiatives * Update and Q&A with the Executive Director, if available Please review https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Metrics_and_activities_meetings for further information about how to participate. We’ll post the video recording publicly after the meeting. Thank you, Praveena -- Praveena Maharaj Executive Assistant to the VP of Engineering and Product Development +1 (415) 839 6885 ext. 6689 www.wikimedia.org

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[Wikimedia Announcements] [PRESS RELEASE] Wikimedia Foundation announces Wikipedia Zero partnership with Telenor in Myanmar
by Matthew Roth 07 Nov '13

07 Nov '13

(This press release is also available online here: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/Telenor_Wikipedia_Zero_… ) Myanmar to get access to the world's knowledge through Wikipedia Zero (Fornebu, Norway, and San Francisco, California) 7 November 2013 -- Telenor Group and the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, today announced Myanmar as the latest country to be included in their existing agreement to bring Wikipedia Zero to Telenor customers in Asia and Europe. Telenor is supporting the country's ambition of connecting its 60 million people. Through this agreement, Telenor's future subscribers in Myanmar will be able to access Wikipedia's vast knowledge base free of mobile data traffic charges when Telenor begins services in the country. "The Wikimedia Foundation imagines a world in which every single person has free access to the sum of human knowledge. By working with Telenor, we are able to put this knowledge in the hands of the masses, helping to close the knowledge gap between developed and developing countries. Today's announcement will pave the way for Telenor to offer all the knowledge that comes with Wikipedia Zero to its customers in Myanmar," said Carolynne Schloeder, Director of Mobile Programs at the Wikimedia Foundation. The partnership between Telenor and the Wikimedia Foundation was established in February 2012, and was founded on a shared commitment to bring Wikipedia to Telenor customers free of data charges. The initiative is part of the Wikimedia Foundation's mobile strategy, which focuses on reaching the billions of people around the world whose primary opportunity to access the Internet is via a mobile device. Following the agreement, special versions of Wikipedia for mobile phones were launched in Thailand, Malaysia and Montenegro. In addition, Telenor aims to launch Wikipedia Zero in Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Serbia in 2014. "Access to high quality telecommunications tools and affordable services plays a substantial role in empowering societies. To Telenor, this partnership enables us to provide a strong support to local communities by promoting the exchange and sharing of open knowledge. Offering Wikipedia free of traffic charges also helps introduce internet to mobile users, often for the first time. I am very satisfied that our cooperation with the Wikimedia Foundation will now include Myanmar," said Jon Fredrik Baksaas, President and CEO of Telenor Group. On 27 June 2013 Telenor was announced as one of the successful applicants for a telecommunications license in Myanmar. Following the process described in the auction guidelines, the company is now in discussions with the Myanmar authorities regarding the final terms and conditions of the license agreement. Telenor aims to launch services in Myanmar within eight months after the final license agreement is signed. The extension of this partnership was celebrated today in Oslo when Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, met with Jon Fredrik Baksaas, President and CEO of Telenor Group, and Rolv-Erik Spilling, Head of Telenor Digital, to participate in an event announcing the expansion of service. Jimmy Wales was also a keynote speaker at the "Digital Winners" conference hosted today by Telenor Digital at Telenor Headquarters, where he shared his views on crowdsourcing for the common good. About the Wikimedia Foundation http://wikimediafoundation.org http://blog.wikimedia.org The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that operates Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. According to comScore Media Metrix, Wikipedia and the other projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation receive 500 million unique visitors per month, making them the fifth-most popular web property worldwide (comScore, September 2013). Available in 287 languages, Wikipedia contains more than 29 million articles contributed by a global volunteer community of roughly 80,000 people. Based in San Francisco, California, the Wikimedia Foundation is an audited, 501(c)(3) charity that is funded primarily through donations and grants. Wikimedia Foundation Press Contact: Matthew Roth Communications +1 415-839-6885 ext 6635 (San Francisco) mroth(a)wikimedia.org About Telenor Group Telenor Group is an international provider of tele, data and media communication services. Telenor Group has mobile operations in 12 markets in the Nordic region, Central and Eastern Europe and in Asia, as well as a voting stake of 42.95 per cent (economic stake 33 per cent) in VimpelCom Ltd., operating in 17 markets. Headquartered in Norway, Telenor Group is one of the world's major mobile operators with 161 million mobile subscriptions in its consolidated operations per Q3 2013, revenues in 2012 of NOK 102 billion, and a workforce of nearly 34,000. For more information about Telenor Group, please visit www.telenor.com Telenor Press Contact: Glenn Mandelid Vice President Communications Telenor Group Mobile: +47 92 66 13 00 To be removed from the Wikimedia Foundation press release list, reply with "unsubscribe" in the subject line. _______________________________________________ Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Wikimedia-l, the public mailing list of the Wikimedia community. For more information about Wikimedia-l: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l

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Fwd: Research position ... WikiAfrica's Kumusha Takes Wiki
by Florence Devouard 07 Nov '13

07 Nov '13

fyi Florence -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Research position ... WikiAfrica's Kumusha Takes Wiki Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2013 13:39:14 +0200 From: Isla Haddow-Flood <islahf(a)africacentre.net> To: <wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Research position ... WikiAfrica's Kumusha Takes Wiki Dear All The WikiAfrica project at the Africa Centre is seeking a researcher who has exceptional investigative, data gathering, Wikipedia/Wikimedia knowledge and writing skills for an exciting 4-week intensive short-term project for WikiAfrica's Kumusha Takes Wiki project <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kumusha_Takes_Wiki>. Proficiency in French is a bonus, as is experience of Uganda and/or Cote d'Ivoire. The researcher will need to start immediately. Applicants should submit a CV showing relevant research experience to wikiafrica(a)africacentre.net <http://wikiafrica@africacentre.net>. Application deadline: 15th November. Connect: facebook <https://www.facebook.com/KumushaTakesWiki>. <https://www.facebook.com/KumushaTakesWiki%3E%3F> twitter <https://twitter.com/KumushaWiki> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ WikiAfrica *Isla Haddow-Flood *Project Manager: Africa tel: +27 21 418 3336 skype: islahaddow twitter: @wikiafrica www.africacentre.net/wikiafrica get started: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiAfrica en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Islahaddow

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EU Policy Monitoring Report - October
by Dimitar Parvanov Dimitrov 07 Nov '13

07 Nov '13

Sorry for cross-posting (from Advocacy Advisors-l), but I want to popularise the mailing list. Hello, everybody! This month there has been some gossip about legislative or non-legislative copyright reform which might be proposed either before or after the elections and might include an opt-in provision or not... Well, at least there’s talk about it. Dimi Past editions on Meta: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor/MR <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_policy/Monitor/MR> tl;dr Open Access is to be compulsory in the EU’s Horizon 2020 funding programme. The European Court of Human Rights has confirmed that an Estonian website is liable for third-party comments on their website. The European Parliament LIBE committee has passed its version of the Data Protection Regulation, making the "right to be forgotten" into the "right to be erased". ToC 1. European Court of Justice Backs Freedom of Information 2. European Court Rules Website Liable for Third-Party Comments 3. Studies on Intellectual Property Released & IP Infringements Observatory Meeting 4. Open Access in EU’s Horizon 2020 Funding Programme 5. Data Protection Regulation - Committee Vote 6. Commission Requesting Citizens’ Feedback on Internet Policies 7. Creative Commons Takes Global Position on Copyright Reform ----------------- ----------------- #ECJ #FoI 1. European Court of Justice Backs Freedom of Information Why is this relevant? Freedom of Information is our community’s top ranked topic in our Policy Issues Survey. [14] Apart from being a cornerstone of transparency, the access to more government documents would provide reliable sources for Wikipedia articles, thereby improving the overall quality. What happened? Documents requested from the European Council under Freedom of Information law were released only after masking member states’ positions (i.e. which countries were in favour or against certain points). The Spanish based NGO promoting free access to information - Access Info Europe - appealed to the European Court of Justice against this practice. In the court case the European Parliament, the United Kingdom and Greece sided with Access Info Europe, while France, Spain and the Czech Republic supported the Council. The ECJ ruled that the effectiveness of the decision making process does not trump the need for transparency, thereby prohibiting the erasure of Member States’ positions from released documents on a general basis. [15] What comes next? The European Council will have to release documents informing the public which countries were for or against a certain text. Further attempts by civil society organisations to “open up” the Council are expected, as it is still considered the least transparent of the EU’s institutions. In the future, public institutions will need to conclusively prove stated reasons when refusing access to information. ----------------- ----------------- #ECHR 2. European Court Rules Website Liable for Third-Party Comments Why is this relevant? A landmark decision that makes internet platform operators liable for user generated content on their websites. This decision is not only about the specific case, but has to be regarded against the backdrop of freedom of speech online. What happened? The European Court of Human Rights (Council of Europe, Strasbourg) has upheld an Estonian court’s decision making a news portal operated by Delfi AS liable for clearly illegal (defamatory) comments, even though website moderators had deleted them after being informed. [7] What comes next? Civil society organisations have claimed that this decision will lead to even more legal uncertainty and preventive, privately-enforced censorship. An appeal to the Grand Chamber of the ECHR is to be expected. [8] ----------------- ----------------- #IPstudy #LSE #OHIM 3. Studies on Intellectual Property Released & IP Infringements Observatory Meeting Why is this relevant? Albeit to different extents, such studies occupy public and political debates and help shape the narratives of the debates. With copyright being seeded as one of the first major reform initiatives of the next Commission in 2014, the current back and forth will set the starting points of the expected consultation and stakeholder dialogue. What happened? The European Commission has founded an European Observatory on Infringements of Intellectual Property Rights to “understand the challenges” and “enhance cooperation” in the field of counterfeiting and piracy. [1] As part of the initiative it has commissioned a study on the Contribution of Intellectual Property to the Economy, that it plans to update every two years. This study claims that 50% of the EU economy is “IPR intensive”. [2] In a strange coincidence, the same week this study was released, the London School of Economics released their own research, stating that there is no proof online file-sharing is hurting the industry. [3] What comes next? As the Commission has been criticised for having only industry associations in the IPR Infringements Observatory they took the step to invite several civil society organisations to their yearly plenary in Alicante - namely European Digital Rights (EDRi), the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) and us. At the two-day meeting me and Nikolas Becker (WMDE board member) requested that a complementary study on the contribution of open licensing and the public domain to the European economy be commissioned and that the observatory needs to start taking into account infringements on free licenses and the copyfraud cases. EDRi stated that it isn’t enough to just produce studies on how many people are downloading illegal content, but that future studies will need to explain what the motivation behind such actions is. Commission representatives (esp. DG MARKT and the Observatory staff) demonstrated openness to said proposals and committed to organise a further meeting with civil society in Brussels where they will try to include these points into the 2014 work programme. On a general note, Jean Bergevin form DG MARKT mentioned that the Commission is working on a legislative or non-legislative copyright reform proposal, which at least in part will be announced by the end of the year. Beginning of next year a decision will be made whether to proceed with the dossier or wait for the next Commission to be appointed. ----------------- ----------------- #OA #Horizon2020 4. Open Access in EU’s Horizon 2020 Funding Programme Why is this relevant? Horizon 2020 will be the EU’s framework programme for funding research and innovation for the period 2014-2020. Currently the last details of the funding criteria are being ironed out. [4] Things like compulsory Open Access licensing for works produced with money from this budget were on stake. What happened? A meeting at the European Parliament aptly titled “Open Science Works” was organised to discuss the situation regarding Horizon 2020. [5] Among others Alma Swan (SPARC Europe) and Gwen Franck from Creative Commons participated in the event. Good news is that the Commission has agreed to make open access a mandatory condition for funding research. The issues now are that there is no enforcement possibility (i.e. there is no way make scientists publish their works under OA if they don’t do it voluntarily) and that the Commission refuses to specify the type of license required. What comes next? The Commission representative (Celina Ramjoué, DG CONNECT) admitted that they were afraid of including an OA enforcement procedure and specifying the type of licensing, as they were afraid of “strong backlash if they they pushed too far”. At productive and friendly talks after the session I managed to talk to both, Alma Swan and Celina Ramjoué about the importance of licensing and the definition of Free Cultural Works. [6] While the former agreed that SPARC Europe would support such licensing, the latter was weary of making promising statements and instead emphasised that the only way to make the Commission start talking about such things internally is to have it requested from several organisations. Together with SPARC Europe and Creative Commons we agreed to keep each other informed posted and to try and harmonise civil society actions in the future. ----------------- ----------------- #EUdataP 5. EU General Data Protection Regulation - Committee Vote Why is this relevant? This concerns the general ecosystem of the internet, an environment we and our projects are born into and dependant upon. Furthermore, the Wikimedia Foundation is currently reviewing its privacy policy [9] and it would be productive to also take non-US legislations as well as different cultural debates and sensitivities into account. What happened? The LIBE Committee of the European Parliament has voted on its version of the General Data Protection Regulation proposal. [10][11] One of the changes is that the “right to be forgotten” was replaced by the “right of erasure”, which means that a freedom of speech element was included (e.g. A blogger will remain free to comment on a photo was subsequently taken down). The Parliament also supported the Commission proposal on strict rules on how data is transferred to non-EU countries, meaning that an additional EU authority might have to be asked for permission. At the same time the updated version widened the circumstances in which a company can process user data without prior consent. At the same time this new version was criticised by civil rights groups for meaning well, but tearing huge loopholes into the system. [12] What comes next? The LIBE Committee has given Rapporteur Jan-Philipp Albrecht (Greens/EFA) a mandate to negotiate a final text with the Council. It is the Council where adoption continues to stall with Member States finding it hard to agree on several parts, one of them being how national data protection authorities should cooperate with each other. This is also a crucial point which will determine how and where citizens will be able to file complaints. ----------------- ----------------- #DigitalAgenda 6. Commission Requesting Citizens’ Feedback on Internet Governance Why is this relevant? Internet policies are important to our ecosystem and it should be welcomed that the Commission is trying to open up the debate to new players and make access easier, cheaper and less time consuming. What happened? As part of its initiative to include more citizens in the legislative process and its efforts to promote its so-called Digital Agenda, the European Commission is asking for opinions on internet policy issues, currently focused on the future of Internet Governance. The request for comments is open until the 8. November. [13] What comes next? To be blunt, I don’t think anybody really knows. The comments could be used to start an actual stakeholder dialogue on Internet Governance or remain unheard. This, to a large extent, depends on how many answers the Commission will receive. ----------------- ----------------- #cc #copyright #fixcopyright 7. Creative Commons Takes Global Position on Copyright Reform Why is this relevant? The vast majority of our content is licensed under Creative Commons licenses. Creative Commons is not only a global partner of Wikimedia, but also a like-minded organisation with considerable community overlaps. What happened? In an initiative undertaken by their chapters, Creative Commons has released a policy position stating that CC licenses are “not a fix for the problems of the copyright system” and that a meaningful reform is still needed. [16] The corresponding blog post explains that CCHQ, affiliates and community have worked together to produce the policy statement. The process was also used to clarify the extent to which both CCHQ and the CC chapters are allowed to engage in advocacy. [17] What comes next? A discussion on whether Wikimedia should undertake a similar step was sparked off on the advocacy advisors mailing list [18]. As a result, a talk page has been created on meta-wiki and everybody is more than welcome to comment on the proposal.[19] ----------------- ----------------- [1] http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/iprenforcement/observatory/#maincontent… [2]http://oami.europa.eu/ows/rw/pages/OBS/IPContributionReport.en.do [3] http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/news/archives/2013/09/CreativeIndustries.… [4]http://ec.europa.eu/research/horizon2020/index_en.cfm?pg=h2020-timeline [5]http://openaccess.be/2013/10/15/open-science-works/ [6]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Cultural_Works [7]http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/webservices/content/pdf/003-4529626-5466299 [8] http://www.article19.org/resources.php/resource/37287/en/european-court-str… [9]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Privacy_policy [10]http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-13-923_en.htm [11] http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/bg/news-room/content/20131021IPR22706/ht… [12]http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number11.20/data-protection-vote-meps [13] https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/content/europe-and-internet-global-c… [14] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Policy_Issues_Survey_20… [15] http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?doclang=EN&text=&pageInd… [16]http://creativecommons.org/about/reform [17]https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/39639 [18] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/advocacy_advisors/2013-October/000239.… [19]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Advocacy

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Language Engineering IRC Office Hour on November 13, 2013 at 1500 UTC
by Runa Bhattacharjee 07 Nov '13

07 Nov '13

[x-posted] Hello, The Wikimedia Language Engineering team will be hosting an IRC office hour on Wednesday, November 13, 2013 between 15:00 - 16:00 UTC on #wikimedia-office. (See below for timezone conversion and other details.) We will be talking about some of our recent and upcoming projects and then taking questions for the remaining time. We also look forward to hear about anything that needs our attention. Questions and other concerns can also be sent to me directly before the event. See you there! Thanks Runa === Event Details === What: WMF Language Engineering Office hour When: November 13, 2013 (Wednesday). 1500-1600 UTC http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20131113T1500 Where: IRC Channel #wikimedia-office on FreeNode -- Language Engineering - Outreach and QA Coordinator Wikimedia Foundation

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December 2 & 3 office hours for VisualEditor
by Maggie Dennis 06 Nov '13

06 Nov '13

Hi, guys. I will push out a reminder closer to date, but I wanted to let people know early of the next set of office hours for VisualEditor. - Monday, December 2, 1900 UTC - Tuesday, December 3, 0100 UTC. You can see local time conversions by scrolling to the listings on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours James Forrester will be addressing questions about the VisualEditor. Logs of previous office hours on the subject are located here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:VisualEditor_office_hours_logs While I'm here, I might as well remind people that there is an office hour this Friday, November 8, to discuss Beta Features ( https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/About_Beta_Features), which includes some VisualEditor elements. That hour will be hosted by Fabrice Florin, James Forrester, Mark Holmquist, Keegan Peterzell and other team members and begins at 18:30 UTC. Hope you can make it. :) Maggie -- Maggie Dennis Senior Community Advocate Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

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[Wikimedia Announcement] CIS-A2K Grant Report for September 2012-June 2013
by Vishnu T 05 Nov '13

05 Nov '13

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society's(CIS) Access to Knowledge (A2K) Program, India! As many of you know that the Wikimedia Foundation approved a 22 month grant to the CIS-A2K. The aim of the grant was to support the growth of Wikimedia movement in India. Please find the Grant Report for the first 10 months period (i.e. September 2012-June 2013) on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Reports/CIS-A2K_N…<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Reports/CIS-A2K_N…> CIS-A2K will be happy to receive your feedback. Please let us know if you have any suggestions, questions and concerns about the report and our work. We would be glad to have this feedback on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:India_Access_To_Knowledge/Reports/CIS-…<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:India_Access_To_Knowledge/Reports/CIS-…> We are thankful to the Wikimedia community in India, Wikimedia India Chapter and the Wikimedia Foundation for actively engaging with our work. We will continue to work upon our deficiencies, failures and successes. Warm regards, Vishnu Program Director, CIS-A2K

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Introducing Beta Features
by Fabrice Florin 05 Nov '13

05 Nov '13

Hi all, We're pleased to announce Beta Features [1], a new program that lets you test new features on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites before they are released for everyone. Think of it as a digital laboratory where community members can preview upcoming software and give feedback to help improve them. This special preference page lets designers and engineers experiment with new features on a broad scale, but not in a disruptive manner. Beta Features is ready for testing now on MediaWiki.org [2]. This Thursday, we plan to also deploy it on Wikimedia Commons and MetaWiki. Based on test results, we aim to release it on all wikis worldwide on 21 November, 2013. Here are the first features you can test this week: * Media Viewer — view images in large size or full screen [3] * VisualEditor Formulæ — edit algebra or equations on your pages [4] * Typography Refresh — make text more readable (coming Thursday) [5] Would you like to try out BetaFeatures now? After you log in on MediaWiki.org, a small 'Beta' link will appear next to your 'Preferences'. Click on it to see features you can test, check the ones you want, then click 'Save'. Learn more on the BetaFeatures page. [1] After you've tested Beta Features, please let us know what you think on our discussion page [6] -- or report any bugs on Bugzilla [7]. For technical documentation, visit the BetaFeatures extension page. [8]. You're also welcome to join our IRC office hours chat on Friday, 8 November at 10:30am PST, 18:30 UTC. [9] Beta Features was developed by the Wikimedia Foundation's Design, Multimedia and VisualEditor teams. Along with other developers, we will be adding new features to this experimental program every few weeks. For now, we'd like to thank some key team members who made this project possible: Ed Sanders, Jon Robson, Gergő Tisza, May Galloway, Vibha Bamba, Aaron Schulz, Brion Vibber, Bryan Davis, Chris Steipp, Greg Grossmeier, Keegan Peterzell, Quim Gil, Guillaume Paumier, Erik Moeller, Rob Lanphier, Howie Fung and Tomasz Finc, to name but a few. We're also very grateful to all the community and other team members who helped create this system — and look forward to many more productive collaborations in the future. :) Enjoy, and don't forget to let us know what you think! Fabrice, James, Mark and Jared Wikimedia Engineering and Product Group [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/About_Beta_Features [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatu… [3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/About_Media_Viewer [4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Beta_Features/Formulae [5] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Typography_Update [6] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:About_Beta_Features [7] http://wmbug.com/new?product=MediaWiki%20extensions&component=BetaFeatures [8] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:BetaFeatures [9] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours#Upcoming_office_hours _______________________________ Fabrice Florin Product Manager, Multimedia Wikimedia Foundation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF) https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia

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Attention needed for Croatian Wikipedia issue
by Dalibor Bosits 04 Nov '13

04 Nov '13

Dear fellow Wikipedia and Wikimedia contributors and users, The issue at hand that has forced me to compose this address are the pressing circumstances surrounding the Croatian language branch of Wikipedia, which has become notoriously well known in the broader Wikipedia community in recent months. For some years now, a part of the administrators at Croatian language Wikipedia have been operating as a cabal of sorts; the exact number of members, the shape of this community and the extent of their doings difficult to discern. For the last couple of months on Wikipedia there has been an on-going prolonged dispute underway about abuse of administrator privileges and breach of Wikipedia rules. Three days ago, on 26 October 2013 and as a result of this dispute, one of the contributors (Frano Milić[1]), who can safely be figured among those who had avoided previous conflicts, called for a desysopping vote for the three admins that seem to be have been the most involved with the current issues regarding the project. [2] Immediately after this, SpeedyGonsales, one of the admins whose privileges were about to be put to vote and who had already been reported for promotion of fascism, breach of rules and abuse of administrative tools, now being in a conflict of interests, brought to a halt the voting process on his own initiative on the pretext of "lack of evidence" [3]. After the part of the admins who were not members of the cabal expressed their support for the mechanics allowing the community to express their opinions in a process of vote, a revert war broke out on the vote page and sitenotice. [4] SpeedyGonsales, the administrator whose work was under scrutiny and privileges put to the vote, now with other admins who we believe are members of the cabal, initiated the process of "admin poll request" (a process somewhat unique to Croatian Wikipedia, which is aimed at gathering opinions and decisions of the college of admins). It was an attempt to use orchestrated voting to silence those admins who supported the continuation of the desysopping vote. The presumed purpose was to attempt to win enough votes to either block those opposing him or desysop them in order to disable the continuation of the desysopping vote against him and the two of his colleagues. The overall sentiment of the community was evidently strongly inclined to vote which became clear when the voting recommenced as soon as the lock on the vote page had been lifted. However, under the current circumstances the process has been severely disturbed and it is not certain that the wish of the community would be respected. For the picture to be complete, one piece of information is crucial. The administrators who have expressed their resistance against the spirit of the cabal and the dictatorship are under a lot of pressure as they are harassed by e-mails and texting. The messages vary in content but as a general rule they contain little niceties. If the issue we are dealing with is not resolved very soon, if not immediately, a large number of contributors will simply leave the project. As we are all aware, the admins are hobbyists and not activists and their capacity for conflict and unpleasantries are limited. They are unable to resolve the problems without your assistance. And the problems they face have been in the making for many years, but it has taken a while for the community to unite and gather strength to deal with these issues. Now we are witnessing an almost unique situation on Wikipedia - that the community has made a decision and gained the required strength to get rid of all internal cabals. Stopping the process now would spell a disaster for the entire project - it would send a message of encouragement to anyone willing to usurp sysop privileges in the future. Additionally, the admins who have expressed dissent over the accumulated problems at Croatian Wikipedia have managed to accurately pinpoint the administrators responsible for the ridiculously low quality of certain articles, and the public and the media have recognized the overall soundness of the Wiki project and that the work lacking in quality is to be attributed to the minority of administrators-usurpers. However, we fear that the positive momentum might be lost now, if the process is stopped, and the critical public and media eye might see the current situation as reflective of the entire Wiki project’s quality. Please, lend aid any way you can Dalibor Bosits [1] https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posebno:Doprinosi/Frano_Mili%C4%87 [2] https://hr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedija:Administratori/Prijed… [3] https://hr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedija:Administratori/Prijed… has initiated full protection of the page, trying to stop the voting) [4] https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedija:Zahtjev_za_mi%C5%A1ljenje_administ…

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Wikimedia-l November 2013