>... the standard category of a programmer who doesn't work well
> with non-programmers and sucks at writing specs/documentation.
That is an extremely rude way to characterize a volunteer who has
single-handedly saved volunteer-centuries of time and then taken a
principled, non-zero sum stand to offer agreement to the FOSS release
requirement on Wikimedia Labs in return for the resources necessary to
build new systems. Without the ability to experiment in an unfettered
manner, "Labs" should be renamed "Unpaid Intern Server Farm."
> the resources necessary to do it. (probably upwards of 25-30k dollars)
Could we please see an itemization? Is Dell's surveillance-compatible
premium hardware still being purchased by the Foundation? What is the
current state of the art at the Foundation for redundant arrays of
supposedly inexpensive disks comprising network attached storage at
present, and how much does the Foundation spend for it?
> many organizations share our mission, some (like IA) quite eager
> to push the boundaries of the law in ways that improve global access
> to information
For values of "push the boundaries" equivalent to "conform as closely
as possible to both the letter and the spirit and quickly respond to
legal requests for abridgement when requested." Oblique suggestions
that IA has any more legal risk than the Foundation are not
productive. See _Field vs Google,_ US District Court, District of
Nevada, CV-S-04-0413-RCJ-LRL. The Foundation has repeatedly failed to
support IA, webcitation.org, and the like, even though our volunteers
depend heavily on them for conscientious improvements.
>... insistence on a more formal proposal, and a deliberative process
> of some kind to evaluate it, is absolutely correct.
The insistence was on hierarchical "supervision" and a demand for
examination of the finished product in advance. Where was the request
for a formal proposal?
That's awesome. Congrats to Hebrew Wikipedia !
Sydney
Sydney Poore
User:FloNight
Wikipedian in Residence
at Cochrane Collaboration
On Thu, Jul 3, 2014 at 11:55 AM, Itzik - Wikimedia Israel <
itzik(a)wikimedia.org.il> wrote:
> Hey,
>
> I'm very excited to share that last night, we received the award at an
> event presence with of hundreds of guests (Picture of the award:
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Roaring_Lion_2014_award_to_Wikimedi…
> )
>
> The Roaring Lion competition is an award for excellence within Israel's
> communications and public relations industry awarded by the Israel Public
> Relations Associations. The campaign was chosen among many, judged by a
> committee of public relations executives, academics and public figures.
>
> Last July the Hebrew Wikipedia celebrated her 10th anniversary. The
> celebrations were followed by massive press coverage - TV radio, internet
> and print. You can give a look on some of them in our Press Book:
>
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9iobJg3Vpp0bDdKaDExNmU2VEU/edit?usp=shari…
>
> The strategy was to show the volunteers – the people behind the projects,
> so each cover presented another volunteer. To show the power of Wikipedia
> we collected a lot of numbers such the most viewed articles of the last 5
> years, numbers of edits, words and many others – which leads to many items
> covering the history of HEWP.
>
> But besides arranging massive coverage for the celebrations we were
> looking for a special way to celebrate – to do something that has never
> been done before. The result was a unique collaboration with TV Channel 2,
> the most viewed channel in Israel! For an entire week, five of the most
> senior Channel 2 reporters, who learned to edit Wikipedia by our
> volunteers, wrote or extended an article on Hebrew Wikipedia. Then, each
> recorded a one minute video, explaining why they have decided to write on
> this specific topic. Every day, just before the evening news broadcast, the
> video was broadcasted and while the anchor presented the project, he
> explained "we wanted to celebrate Wikipedia’s 10th anniversary and show
> that everyone can write an article on Wikipedia. Happy Birthday Wikipedia!”
>
> Due the success of the project Channel 2 decided to broadcast it all over
> again on the week after. According to the ratings records 2.033 million
> people (cumulatively) watched the project. On the celebrations month pages
> views on Hebrew Wikipedia showed increase of 12% (compare to 1%
> internationally) and increase of 12% in new articles (compare to 14%
> internationally decrease).
>
> You can watch them the videos (translated to English) on our Youtube
> Channel:
> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuQcXKjU3rwJ-TOL8lyru7oHvoufnWtED
>
> I wish to thank all the volunteers who take part making this happen, to
> the Wikimedia Israel team, and to Gidoen Amichay who supported and helped
> lead the Channel 2 cooperation.
>
>
>
> *Regards,Itzik Edri*
> Chairperson and Spokesperson, Wikimedia Israel
> +972-(0)-54-5878078 | http://www.wikimedia.org.il
> Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
> sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment!
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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:
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>
>
> throwing a tantrum because WMF won't give him 24TB of
> storage for a project that has legal questionablity
If society depended on lawyers for determining the parameters of their
inverted indices, you would all be using WAIS for the last five years
of corporate press releases for your reference needs.
> [Calling] when you ask for a huge chunk of hardware [and] someone
> dares to ask what you plan to do with it, once you get it for free ...
> censorship is trolling
I was not complaining about the question, I was sincerely complaining
about the answer. We need Foundation staff with the capability to
recognize the value of contributors' work without stalling them or
giving them the runaround. We need to be as respectful of our
colleagues' time as we expect them to be of ours.
To prove my sincerity, I offer to pay the full cost of the 24 TB
equipment and installation, reserving the right to pass the hat, if
and only if the Foundation matches my donation by surveying
contributors' opinions about new and existing strategic goals for
improving participation and providing the headcount and resources to
develop accuracy review:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Develop_systems_for_accuracy_re…
Is that a fair deal?
Best regards,
James Salsman
>... I am glad that there is at least some sanity checking
On my happy planet, sanity means taking historical progress into
account when telling people that they have to fill out a form and wait
for committee review when making a reasonable request for an obvious
need.
There is so much more that the Foundation could accomplish. When will
interest in responding to the requests from those who have proven they
are able to make good use of resources overtake "defining scope," a
euphemism for censorship, and building hierarchical fiefdoms?
>... His demands for the storage are for a new version of
> the tool he is yet to write that is meant to actually cache
> the external link's webpages...likely to need Legal to look into
Just like any search engine keeps a reconstructable representation of
the indexed text. There is absolutely no question that there would be
any legal impediments involved.
> a request he has yet to actually make to WMF Engineering.
WMF Engineering staff has known about the need for weeks to months.
> he'd need to make a proposal with explanation and rationale
> before we would commit several thousand dollars of resources
How much exactly would it cost the Foundation to provide 24 TB on Tool Labs?
Why does the Foundation need a proposal to do that? Where is that
requirement documented?
Shouldn't someone of User:Dispenser's stature, track record, not to
mention the person-centuries he has already saved editors be given
sufficient resources to experiment with different software
architectures for addressing the kinds of problems he sees as
community needs? Why do we need to impose a new layer of bureaucracy
on that?
> That he has not in fact moved his existing tools to Tool Labs is unrelated to this
Completely absurd. He owns his code, and since the Foundation has
demonstrated that they apparently have no interest in helping him
create expanded capabilities for it, he has every right to rescind his
permission for the Foundation to use his code.
> There's nothing that prevents us from allocating significant
> resources ... but we're not going to do that site unseen and
> without supervision.
So now developers have to fill out permission slips and obtain a
Foundation staff supervisor? Where are these requirements documented?
The community needs to start publishing measurements of individual
Foundation employees by how much their decisions help or hinder the
editor community.
Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the notice boards on Commons, or who is subscribed to this mailing list, will be aware of a huge, wide-ranging and unfocused set of disputes and ill-natured arguments that have been raging for several months. The disputes are becoming more and more intemperate, and the positions of some editors more and more entrenched. While a few contributors have tried hard to pull the community back to constructive discussion and have made sensible suggestions, their comments have been drowned out in the noise.
We need to stop now and focus not on stating a re-stating positions, but on making definite and constructive proposals for ways in which these issues can be fixed. The discussion on this list has been non-productive for some time, and I suggest that editors should drop discussion there and should focus attention on the discussion on Commons:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Di…
Michael.
Dear all,
The next WMF metrics and activities meeting will take place on Thursday,
July 3, 2014 at 6 PM UTC (11 AM PDT). 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:
* Welcoming recent hires
* Update and Q&A with the Executive Director, if available
* Review of key metrics including the monthly report card, but also
specialized reports and analytic
* Review of financials
* Brief presentations on recent projects, with a focus on highest priority
initiatives
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.
*** *Due to preparation for Wikimania 2014
<http://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page>, the August metrics
meeting has been rescheduled to July 31, 2014 at 6 PM UTC (11 AM PDT).
We'll send a separate invitation one week prior to this date*. ***
Thank you,
Praveena
--
Praveena Maharaj
Executive Assistant to the VP of Engineering & Product Development
Wikimedia Foundation
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