Hi everyone,
With the appointment of Raju to the Board of Trustees a couple of months
ago, we were left with a remaining open vacancy to fill. I am thrilled to
share that after several months of searching and discussions, we have made
another important appointment. At our November Board Retreat, the Board
appointed and welcomed Esra’a Al Shafei to fill our vacant expert seat.
Esra'a is a prominent international human rights activist and social
entrepreneur. She founded and directs Majal, a nonprofit which utilizes
digital media to amplify under-reported and marginalized voices throughout
the Middle East and North Africa. For those of you that heard her keynote
presentation at this year's Wikimania, I think you will agree she will make
a very valuable addition to the Board and brings an important perspective
and skillset to the Board's efforts.
Below (and on the Wikimedia Blog) you will find the official announcement
about Esra’a Al Shafei. Please join me in warmly welcoming her to the
Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees and to the Wikimedia movement!
Christophe
Chair, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
P.S. Due to the nature of Esra’a’s work, sharing photos or videos of Esra’a
may endanger her safety or the safety of others. To help ensure the privacy
and safety of Esra’a and her colleagues, we are not sharing any photographs
or videos of Esra'a. We ask that you please join us in supporting this
important safety consideration.
Press release
Header: Esra'a Al Shafei joins Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
Subheader: Bahraini human rights activist and social entrepreneur brings to
the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees more than a decade of experience
in applying creative solutions to challenges faced by underserved and
underrepresented communities.
Image: https://wikimania2017.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Esraa.png[a]
<https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1wNmwgJkUPp25nVLRVgX5WzU_LuEi5a9gJDp…>
[b]
<https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1wNmwgJkUPp25nVLRVgX5WzU_LuEi5a9gJDp…>
[c]
<https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1wNmwgJkUPp25nVLRVgX5WzU_LuEi5a9gJDp…>
[d]
<https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1wNmwgJkUPp25nVLRVgX5WzU_LuEi5a9gJDp…>
San Francisco, California, 1 December 2017 — The Wikimedia Foundation today
announced the appointment of Esra'a Al Shafei, a prominent human rights
activist and a passionate defender of free expression, to the Wikimedia
Foundation Board of Trustees.
A native of Bahrain, Esra'a’s work aims to increase and protect free
speech, promote expression for youth and underrepresented voices, and
improve the lives of LGBTQ people in the Middle East and North Africa. She
founded and directs Majal, a network of online platforms that
amplify under-reported and marginalized voices.
“Esra'a shares Wikimedia's foundational belief that shared knowledge can
facilitate shared understanding,” said Wikimedia Foundation Executive
Director, Katherine Maher. "Her achievements exemplify how intentional
community building can be a powerful tool for positive change, while
her passion
for beautiful and engaging user experiences will only elevate our work. We
are so fortunate to have her perspective in support of our global Wikimedia
communities."
Esra'a founded Majal in 2006 as Mideast Youth, at the time a series of
blogs bringing a voice to marginalized and underrepresented young
people across the Middle East. Today, the organization's team helps build
communities that celebrate, protect, and promote diversity and social
justice. Their endeavors include CrowdVoice.org, which curates crowdsourced
media to contextualize social movements throughout the world; Mideast
Tunes, the largest web and mobile app showcasing underground musicians in
the Middle East and North Africa who use music as a tool for social change;
and Ahwaa.org, an open discussion platform for Arab LGBTQ individuals that
uses game mechanics to protect and engage its community.
“When I first encountered Wikipedia shortly after obtaining an internet
connection in the early 2000s, I felt that the true purpose of the internet
was realized. With Wikipedia, I accessed research regarding persecuted
communities in my home country and the wider region: ethnic and religious
minorities whom we were discouraged from learning about, and whose
histories and beliefs were dictated to us from a singular government
perspective. Wikipedia’s open source and crowdsourcing practices would
inspire the platforms I built to advocate for underrepresented communities,
and the internet would shape my life’s work in advocating for freedom of
expression and identity around the world,” said Esra'a.
Esra'a received the Berkman Award for Internet Innovation from the Berkman
Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School in 2008 for
"outstanding contributions to the internet and its impact on society." The
World Economic Forum listed her as one of "15 Women Changing the World in
2015." She has won the "Most Courageous Media" Prize from Free Press
Unlimited, and the Monaco Media Prize, which acknowledges innovative uses
of media for the betterment of humanity.
She has been featured in Fast Company as one of the "100 Most Creative
People in Business;" in The Daily Beast as one of the 17 bravest bloggers
worldwide; and in Forbes' "30 Under 30" list of social entrepreneurs making
an impact in the world.
Esra'a was a keynote speaker at Wikimania 2017 in Montreal, the annual
conference centered on the Wikimedia projects.
“Esra'a brings tech expertise and a valuable perspective to the Board -
coming from a region where access to information is not taken for granted.
I was impressed by her talk during Wikimania 2017 on 'Experiences from the
Middle East: Overcoming Challenges and Serving Communities'. I think her
experience in that region will be important to our efforts around the
globe,” said Nataliia Tymkiv, Governance Chair for the Board.
Esra'a is a senior TED Fellow, an Echoing Green fellow, and a Director’s
Fellow at the MIT Media Lab. She received a Shuttleworth Foundation
Fellowship in 2012 for her work on CrowdVoice.org.
Esra'a joins nine other Foundation Trustees
<https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.google.com/url?q%3Dhttps://wikimed…>
who
collectively bring expertise in the Wikimedia community, financial
oversight, governance, and organizational development; and a commitment to
advancing Wikimedia’s mission of free knowledge for all.
She was approved unanimously by the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.
Her term is effective December 2017 and will continue for three years.
Please see the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
<https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.google.com/url?q%3Dhttps://wikimed…>
for
complete biographies.
About the Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that supports and
operates Wikipedia and its sister free knowledge projects. Wikipedia is the
world’s free knowledge resource, spanning more than 45 million articles
across nearly 300 languages. Every month, more than 200,000 people edit
Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects, collectively creating and improving
knowledge that is accessed by more than 1 billion unique devices every
month. This all makes Wikipedia one of the most popular web properties in
the world. Based in San Francisco, California, the Wikimedia Foundation is
a 501(c)(3) charity that is funded primarily through donations and grants.
Esra’a Al Shafei profile
Esra'a Al Shafei is a human rights activist and the founder and director of
Majal, a nonprofit which helps build communities that celebrate, protect,
and promote diversity, and social justice.
A native of Bahrain, Esra'a works avidly to increase and protect free
speech, promote expression for youth and underrepresented voices, and
improve the lives of LGBTQ people in the Middle East and North Africa. She
founded Majal in 2006 as Mideast Youth. The organization has built online
platforms that creatively facilitate the struggle for social change in the
Middle East and North Africa.
Esra'a received the Berkman Award for Internet Innovation from Berkman
Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School in 2008 for
"outstanding contributions to the internet and its impact on society." The
World Economic Forum listed her as one of "15 Women Changing the World in
2015."
She has won the "Most Courageous Media" Prize from Free Press Unlimited,
and the Monaco Media Prize, which acknowledges innovative uses of media for
the betterment of humanity.
Esra'a is a senior TED Fellow, an Echoing Green fellow, and a Director’s
Fellow at the MIT Media Lab. She received a Shuttleworth Foundation
Fellowship in 2012 for her work on CrowdVoice.org. She lives in the Middle
East and North Africa region.
The Terrehaven, New Hampshire contingent of the international Wikimedia
projects' editors' community is happy to announce the appointment of
George S. Bauer, Jr. as chief day shift manager at a major fast food outlet
less than four kilometers from his parents' home, the identity of which is
being withheld to protect Bauer's interests in editing early 1930s and
1940s
baseball card frequency statistics in several English Wikipedia articles
which Bauer hopes may some day include citations to reliable sources.
"I tell you, last week there was nobody replying to my requests for the
Cincinnati Rhino's back bench. Something's gotta give," the 17 year-old
white male was heard to exclaim while walking with a close confidant down
his neighborhood's suburban middle class streets, en route to the home of
his median wage-earning white middle class parents forced by economic
circumstance to the brink of any semblance of stability.
At press time calls to the nominating committee have not been returned.
Hello everyone,
On behalf of the Wikipedia Asian Month organising team, I'm happy to share
that WAM has ended with a great success. This year, 694 users from 51
languages have created around 7429 articles in the month of November. We
would like to congratulate and thank all the local organisers for putting
their efforts in conducting WAM in their language Wikipedias.
In this year we collaborated with 7 events from different affiliates[1],
with 5 on-site edit-a-thons in different cities (Supported by the local
affiliates)[2]. We would also like to mention the collaboration between
Amical Wikimedia and Museum of Music, Barcelona, the collaboration between
both the organisations has helped in getting 31 images of Korean musical
instruments to Wikimedia Commons[3]. Also in this year, we tried to
maintain a website to update about any collaborations and activities for
the participants and organisers.[4]
This year Wikipedia Asian Month was a challenge for the international
organising team due to planning of campaign. But thanks to our awesome
local organisers it went really well. We will wrap up the campaign in a few
days and bring up more analysis the overall project.
Thanks and Regards
Eric, Kevin, Le Loi, Liang & Sailesh
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Asian_Month_2017/Event_Partner
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Asian_Month_2017/Onsite_edit-a-th…
[3]https://asianmonth.wiki/2017/11/27/museum-korean-instruments-wikipedia/
[4] https://asianmonth.wiki/
--
Sailesh
==TODAY’S ASK ==
Today we are going to be testing a banner with a community quote included
alongside the main appeal:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple?banner=robin_20171201_dsk_lg_guardian_r…
This quote originated from a fundraising interview of Rosie
Stevenson-Goodknight conducted at Wikimania 2017.
So we have two asks:
1) We want to hear your stories about Wikipedia, what motivates you to
contribute and why you think it’s important. It can be a sentence or two or
something long, just go to the following link and tell us your story:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2017-18_Fundraising_ideas#Story…
2) We are testing banners showcasing the many diverse faces of the movement:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beringian_wolf?banner=B1718_120114_en6C_dsk_p…
We tested on staff for ease but we would really like to do a community
faces banner. If you would like to potentially see your face in a banner go
to the following link:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2017-18_Fundraising_ideas#We_ne…
Add your name and link to your photo on Wikimedia Commons. The photo MUST
be compatible with Commons hosting policies:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Licensing
==BRIEF UPDATE==
--Community selected banner content--
Over the weekend, we ran an experiment in deferring some of fundraisings
decision making to the community. Based on the outcome of that survey,
we’ve started updating our banners to the winning text with what we refer
to as the “heart and soul” line:
~~~The heart and soul of Wikipedia is a community of people working
passionately to bring you unlimited access to reliable, neutral
information.~~~
A huge thanks to all those who helped direct our efforts.
--Image ideas for emails--
We really need your ideas for new images to test in our fundraising emails.
We are looking for capitivating, fascinating or interesting images or gifs.
Please do get involved and submit your ideas here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2017-18_Fundraising_ideas#We_ne…
--Campaign Progress--
We launched our mobile campaign last Thursday and so had a busy weekend.
Things are progressing well and it’s looking like our efforts on mobile
show good growth from last year. Mobile fundraising still presents a
challenge as we try to make it as effective as desktop as our audience
shifts to mobile platforms. After a good first week we are taking stock of
where we are after our first week of testing and preparing our plans for
week two.
Will provide a more detailed update later this week!
Many Thanks
--
Seddon
*Community and Audience Engagement Associate*
*Advancement (Fundraising), Wikimedia Foundation*
Le 01/12/2017 à 09:34, Markus Kroetzsch a écrit :
> Dear Mathieu,
>
> You are in an impossible position. Either you want to be an objective
> researcher who tries to reconstruct past events as they happened, or
> you are pursuing an agenda to criticise and change some aspects of
> Wikidata. The way you do it, you are making yourself part of the
> debate that you claim you want to reconstruct.
Well, I guess this is a dilemma that many sociologists and
anthropologists have to deal with. That's a really hard epistemic
problem you are raising here, and I don't think this list is the place
to discuss it extensively. So to make it short, I fully agree that your
concern is legitimate, but if your implied conclusion is that it would
be better to do nothing rather than going into a difficult epistemic
position, I don't share this conclusion. Also, to my mind belief in
absolute objectiveness is only delusion. I prefer to expose clearly what
I can myself identify as my starting point of view and let audience take
my biases into account rather than pretending that I aim presenting the
ultimate objective truth.
So I recognize I have a strong bias toward copyleft licenses as general
solution. But as I already stated in this thread, I am also for
promoting solutions with less legal constraints depending on the context
of production and fixed goals. And this nothing new, I surely might be
able to provide links or get some testimony that here and there I do
promote and myself use solutions with less legal constraints.
For this project, believe it or not, I had no pre-established agenda to
criticise and change Wikidata in a predetermined fashion as point of
departure. Of course before starting this project I had an opinion, and
yes CC0 for Wikidata didn't look appealing to me. But a strong
motivation behind this project was to give me a chance to change my mind
with a broader view of this choice of CC0 as unique license. Its origin,
its impact, and opinion of the Wikimedia community regarding this topic.
And I stay in this open minded dynamic.
Now while doing my research with this goal, I found strong hints of
potential conflict of interest, which was absolutely not what I was
looking for. Now strong hints and potential conflict of interest are not
proof of conflict of interest. If there was no such a thing, then it's
great and I'll document that in this way.
Finally note that while I'm taking part of the debate right now won't
change the fact that I didn't at the moment that the decision was took.
That is, I don't have the power to change the past, and I am aiming at
documenting past events on the topic using verifiable available sources.
I don't expect anyone to blindly trust me. Don't blindly trust me.
Everybody should really interested in the subject should check sources
on which claims are done and possibly draw a different conclusion and be
bold and make evolve the project or at least provide feedback.
> From a research perspective, any material you gather in this way comes
> with a big question mark. You are not doing us much of a favour
> either, because by forcing us to refute accusations, you are placing
> our memories of the past events in a doubtful, heavily biased context.
Well, I'm sorry for that. But it's not nothing new that our community is
full of freaks obsessed with transparency, "respect the license" and
"reference needed", is it? So how possibly it wasn't envisioned that one
day it would be embarrassing to not have a documented information about
how exactly was done this license choice and by who? My guess is that
the simple answer is that human make errors. I do errors. A lot of it.
Many reply in this thread surely can attest that, doesn't it? But may be
it would be good to recognize that you too can make errors, rather than
trying to put all the shame on me for asking information about such an
important topic so many time after the decision occurred.
> Your overall approach of considering a theory to be true (or at least
> equally likely to be true) unless you are given "proofs that this
> claim is completely wrong" is not scientific.
Claiming that some approach is the one I'm following, discrediting this
approach and conclude that anything I say is then wrong is not fair either.
Contemporary scientific method mostly agree that you have to come with a
falsifiable theory, as exposed in by Thomas Kuhn in /The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions/. So this is a condition to have any chance to
have some scientific value. But of course this is not a guarantee that
the theory is true. At best it makes the theory not proven wrong by any
evidence.
> This is not how research works. For a start, Occam's Razor should make
> you disregard overly complex theories for things that have much
> simpler explanations (in our case: CC0 is a respected license chosen
> by many other projects for good reasons, so it is entirely plausible
> that the founders of Wikidata also just picked it for the usual
> reasons, without any secret conspiracy).
Occam's Razor states that you should always prefer the theory which
requires the smallest set of entities/rules couple available to explain
a phenomena in regard of empirical data. It's completely different from
opting for the simplest explanation. The possibility of conflict of
interest require no hidden conspiracy, no additional entity, and simply
consider the possibility of occurrence of a phenomena which is widely
documented in social science fields.
Maybe at this point it might also be interesting to explicitly state
that knowing that there was no conflict of interest intervening in this
decision is interesting for the sake of governance transparency. But
going with this hypothesis don't really have much importance with the
rather independent question of whether using CC0 as unique license for
Wikidata is the best choice for reaching the goal of the Wikimedia
movement in a sustainable manner.
> And once you have an interesting theory formed, you need to gather
> evidence for or against it in a way that is not affected by the theory
> (i.e., in particular, don't start calls for information with an
> emotional discussion of whether or not you would personally like the
> theory to turn out true).
I totally recognize that on this point I've misbehaved in this post, I
should have refrain of adding so much emotional emphaze in my message.
> What you are doing here is completely unscientific and I hope that
> your supervisor (?) will also point this out to you at some point.
> Moreover, I am afraid that you cannot really get back to the position
> of an objective observer from where you are now. Better leave this
> research to others who are not in publicly documented disagreement
> with the main historic witnesses.
This research don't have a supervisor. This is a Wikiversity research
project. Anyone can join and improve it.
> So you should understand that I don't feel compelled to give you a
> detailed account of every Wikidata-related discussion I had as if I
> were on some trial here. As a "researcher", it is you who has to prove
> your theories, not the rest of the world who has to disprove them. I
> already told you that your main guesses as far as they concern things
> I have witnessed are not true, and that's all from me for now.
The question is not whether you want to give me that kind of details. Me
and the feelings I might inspire doesn't matter here. The question is
whether you are willing to comply with the exigence of transparency that
the Wikimedia movement is attached to, on a topic which directly impact
its governance and future on a large scale.
Kind regards,
mathieu
> Kind regards,
>
> Markus
>
>
> On 01.12.2017 03:43, mathieu stumpf guntz wrote:
>> Hello Markus,
>>
>> First rest assured that any feedback provided will be integrated in
>> the research project on the topic with proper references, including
>> this email. It might not come before beginning of next week however,
>> as I'm already more than fully booked until then. But once again it's
>> on a wiki, be bold.
>>
>> Le 01/12/2017 à 01:18, Markus Krötzsch a écrit :
>>> Dear Mathieu,
>>>
>>> Your post demands my response since I was there when CC0 was first
>>> chosen (i.e., in the April meeting). I won't discuss your other
>>> claims here -- the discussions on the Wikidata list are already
>>> doing this, and I agree with Lydia that no shouting is necessary here.
>>>
>>> Nevertheless, I must at least testify to what John wrote in his
>>> earlier message (quote included below this email for reference): it
>>> was not Denny's decision to go for CC0, but the outcome of a
>>> discussion among several people who had worked with open data for
>>> some time before Wikidata was born. I have personally supported this
>>> choice and still do. I have never received any money directly or
>>> indirectly from Google, though -- full disclosure -- I got several
>>> T-shirts for supervising in Summer of Code projects.
>>
>> Maybe I wasn't clear enough on that too, but to my mind the problem
>> is not money but governance. Anyone with too much cash can throw it
>> wherever wanted, and if some fall into Wikimedia pocket, that's fine.
>>
>> But the moment a decision that impact so deeply Wikimedia governance
>> and future happen, then maximum transparency must be present,
>> communication must be extensive, and taking into account community
>> feedback is extremely preferable. No one is perfect, myself included,
>> so its all the more important to listen to external feedback. I said
>> earlier that I found the knowledge engine was a good idea, but for
>> what I red it seems that transparency didn't reach expectation of the
>> community.
>>
>> So, I was wrong my inferences around Denny, good news. Of course I
>> would prefer to have other archived sources to confirm that. No
>> mistrust intended, I think most of us are accustomed to put claims in
>> perspective with sources and think critically.
>>
>> For completeness, was this discussion online or – to bring bag the
>> earlier stated testimony – around a pizza? If possible, could you
>> provide a list of involved people? Did a single person took the final
>> decision, or was it a show of hands, or some consensus emerged from
>> discussion? Or maybe the community was consulted with a vote, and if
>> yes, where can I find the archive?
>>
>> Also archives show that lawyers were consulted on the topic, could we
>> have a copy of their report?
>>
>>> At no time did Google or any other company take part in our
>>> discussions in the zeroth hour of Wikidata. And why should they?
>>> From what I can see on their web page, Google has no problem with
>>> all kinds of different license terms in the data they display.
>> Because they are more and more moving to a business model of
>> providing themselves what people are looking for to keep users in
>> their sphere of tracking and influence, probably with the sole idea
>> of generating more revenue I guess.
>>> Also, I can tell you that we would have reacted in a very allergic
>>> way to such attempts, so if any company had approached us, this
>>> would quite likely have backfired. But, believe it or not, when we
>>> started it was all but clear that this would become a relevant
>>> project at all, and no major company even cared to lobby us. It was
>>> still mostly a few hackers getting together in varying locations in
>>> Berlin. There was a lot of fun, optimism, and excitement in this
>>> early phase of Wikidata (well, I guess we are still in this phase).
>> Please situate that in time so we can place that in a timeline. In
>> March 2012 Wikimedia DE announced the initial funding of 1.3 million
>> Euros by Google, Paul Allen's Institute for Artificial Intelligence
>> and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
>>>
>>> So please do not start emails with made-up stories around past
>>> events that you have not even been close to (calling something
>>> "research" is no substitute for methodology and rigour).
>> But that's all the problem here, no one should have to carry the pain
>> of trying to reconstruct what happened through such a research.
>> Process of this kind of decision should have been documented and
>> should be easily be found in archives. If you have suggestion in
>> methods, please provide them. Just denigrating the work don't help in
>> any way to improve it. If there are additional sources that I missed,
>> please provide them. If there are methodologies that would help
>> improve the work, references are welcome.
>>
>>> Putting unsourced personal attacks against community members before
>>> all other arguments is a reckless way of maximising effect, and such
>>> rhetoric can damage our movement beyond this thread or topic.
>> All this is built on references. If the analyze is wrong, for example
>> because it missed crucial undocumented information this must be
>> corrected with additional sources. Wikidata team, as far as I can
>> tell, was perfectly aware of this project for weeks. So if there was
>> some sources that the team considered that it merited my attention to
>> complete my thoughts on the topic, there was plenty of time to
>> provide them before I posted this message.
>>
>>> Our main strength is not our content but our community, and I am
>>> glad to see that many have already responded to you in such a
>>> measured and polite way.
>> We completely agree on that. This is a wonderful community. And
>> that's concerns for future of this very community which fueled this
>> project.
>>
>> I only can reiterate all apologies to anyone that might have felt
>> personally attacked. I can go back to reformulate my message.
>>
>> I hope you will help me to improve the research, or call it as you
>> like, with more relevant feedback and references.
>>
>> Peace
>>
>>>
>>> Peace,
>>>
>>> Markus
>>>
>>>
>>> On 30.11.2017 09:55, John Erling Blad wrote:
>>> > Licensing was discussed in the start of the project, as in start of
>>> > developing code for the project, and as I recall it the arguments for
>>> > CC0 was valid and sound. That was long before Danny started
>>> working for
>>> > Google.
>>> >
>>> > As I recall it was mention during first week of the project (first
>>> week
>>> > of april), and the duscussion reemerged during first week of
>>> > development. That must have been week 4 or 5 (first week of may),
>>> as the
>>> > delivery of the laptoppen was delayed. I was against CC0 as I
>>> expected
>>> > problems with reuse og external data. The arguments for CC0
>>> convinced me.
>>> >
>>> > And yes, Denny argued for CC0 AS did Daniel and I believe Jeroen and
>>> > Jens did too.
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
Saluton ĉiuj,
I forward here the message I initially posted on the Meta Tremendous
Wiktionary User Group talk page
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiktionary/Tremendous_Wiktionary_User_…>,
because I'm interested to have a wider feedback of the community on this
point. Whether you think that my view is completely misguided or that I
might have a few relevant points, I'm extremely interested to know it,
so please be bold.
Before you consider digging further in this reading, keep in mind that I
stay convinced that Wikidata is a wonderful project and I wish it a
bright future full of even more amazing things than what it already
brung so far. My sole concern is really a license issue.
Bellow is a copy/paste of the above linked message:
Thank you Lydia Pintscher
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Lydia_Pintscher_%28WMDE%29> for
taking the time to answer. Unfortunately this answer
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Lydia_Pintscher_%28WMDE%29/CC-0>
miss too many important points to solve all concerns which have been raised.
Notably, there is still no beginning of hint in it about where the
decision of using CC0 exclusively for Wikidata came from. But as this
inquiry on the topic
<https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/fr:Recherche:La_licence_CC-0_de_Wikidata,_o…>
advance, an answer is emerging from it. It seems that Wikidata choice
toward CC0 was heavily influenced by Denny Vrandečić, who – to make it
short – is now working in the Google Knowledge Graph team. Also it worth
noting that Google funded a quarter of the initial development work.
Another quarter came from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation,
established by Intel co-founder. And half the money came from Microsoft
co-founder Paul Allen's Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2)[1]
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiktionary/Tremendous_Wiktionary_User_…>.
To state it shortly in a conspirational fashion, Wikidata is the puppet
trojan horse of big tech hegemonic companies into the realm of
Wikimedia. For a less tragic, more argumentative version, please see the
research project (work in progress, only chapter 1 is in good enough
shape, and it's only available in French so far). Some proofs that this
claim is completely wrong are welcome, as it would be great that in fact
that was the community that was the driving force behind this single
license choice and that it is the best choice for its future, not the
future of giant tech companies. This would be a great contribution to
bring such a happy light on this subject, so we can all let this issue
alone and go back contributing in more interesting topics.
Now let's examine the thoughts proposed by Lydia.
Wikidata is here to give more people more access to more knowledge.
So far, it makes it matches Wikimedia movement stated goal.
This means we want our data to be used as widely as possible.
Sure, as long as it rhymes with equity. As in /Our strategic
direction: Service and //*Equity*/
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Direction/…>.
Just like we want freedom for everybody as widely as possible. That
is, starting where it confirms each others freedom. Because under
this level, freedom of one is murder and slavery of others.
CC-0 is one step towards that.
That's a thesis, you can propose to defend it but no one have to
agree without some convincing proof.
Data is different from many other things we produce in Wikimedia in that
it is aggregated, combined, mashed-up, filtered, and so on much more
extensively.
No it's not. From a data processing point of view, everything is
data. Whether it's stored in a wikisyntax, in a relational database
or engraved in stone only have a commodity side effect. Whether it's
a random stream of bit generated by a dumb chipset or some encoded
prose of Shakespeare make no difference. So from this point of view,
no, what Wikidata store is not different from what is produced
anywhere else in Wikimedia projects.
Sure, the way it's structured does extremely ease many things. But
this is not because it's data, when elsewhere there would be no
data. It's because it enforce data to be stored in a way that ease
aggregation, combination, mashing-up, filtering and so on.
Our data lives from being able to write queries over millions of
statements, putting it into a mobile app, visualizing parts of it on a
map and much more.
Sure. It also lives from being curated from millions[2]
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wiktionary/Tremendous_Wiktionary_User_…>
of benevolent contributors, or it would be just a useless pile of
random bytes.
This means, if we require attribution, in a huge number of cases
attribution would need to go back to potentially millions of editors and
sources (even if that data is not visible in the end result but only
helped to get the result).
No, it doesn't mean that.
First let's recall a few basics as it seems the whole answer makes
confusion between attribution and distribution of contributions
under the same license as the original. Attribution is crucial for
traceability and so for reliable and trusted knowledge that we are
targeting within the Wikimedia movement. The "same license" is the
sole legal guaranty of equity contributors have. That's it, trusted
knowledge and equity are requirements for the Wikimedia movement
goals. That means withdrawing this requirements is withdrawing this
goals.
Now, what would be the additional cost of storing sources in
Wikidata? Well, zero cost. Actually, it's already here as the
"reference" attribute is part of the Wikibase item structure. So
attribution is not a problem, you don't have to put it in front of
your derived work, just look at a Wikipedia article: until you go to
history, you have zero attribution visible, and it's ok. It's also
have probably zero or negligible computing cost, as it doesn't have
to be included in all computations, it just need to be retrievable
on demand.
What would be the additional cost of storing licenses for each item
based on its source? Well, adding a license attribute might help,
but actually if your reference is a work item, I guess it might
comes with a "license" statement, so zero additional cost. Now for
letting user specify under which free licenses they publish their
work, that would just require an additional attribute, a ridiculous
weight when balanced with equity concerns it resolves.
Could that prevent some uses for some actors? Yes, that's actually
the point, preventing abuse of those who doesn't want to act
equitably. For all other actors a "distribute under same condition"
is fine.
This is potentially computationally hard to do and and depending on
where the data is used very inconvenient (think of a map with hundreds
of data points in a mobile app).
OpenStreetMap which use ODbL, a copyleft attributive license, do
exactly that too, doesn't it? By the way, allowing a license by item
would enable to include OpenStreetMap data in WikiData, which is
currently impossible due to the CC0 single license policy of the
project. Too bad, it could be so useful to have this data accessible
for Wikimedia projects, but who cares?
This is a burden on our re-users that I do not want to impose on them.
Wait, which re-users? Surely one might expect that Wikidata would
care first of re-users which are in the phase with Wikimedia goal,
so surely needs of Wikimedia community in particular and Free/Libre
Culture in general should be considered. Do this re-users would be
penalized by a copyleft license? Surely no, or they wouldn't use it
extensively as they do. So who are this re-users for who it's
thought preferable, without consulting the community, to not annoy
with questions of equity and traceability?
It would make it significantly harder to re-use our data and be in
direct conflict with our goal of spreading knowledge.
No, technically it would be just as easy as punching a button on a
computer to do that rather than this. What is in direct conflict
with our clearly stated goals emerging from the 2017 community
consultation is going against equity and traceability. You propose
to discard both to satisfy exogenous demands which should have next
to no weight in decision impacting so deeply the future of our
community.
Whether data can be protected in this way at all or not depends on the
jurisdiction we are talking about. See this Wikilegal on on database
rights <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Database_Rights> for
more details.
It says basically that it's applicable in United States and Europe
on different legal bases and extents. And for the rest of the world,
it doesn't say it doesn't say nothing can apply, it states nothing.
So even if we would have decided to require attribution it would only be
enforceable in some jurisdictions.
What kind of logic is that? Maybe it might not be applicable in some
country, so let's withdraw the few rights we have.
Ambiguity, when it comes to legal matters, also unfortunately often
means that people refrain from what they want to to for fear of legal
repercussions. This is directly in conflict with our goal of spreading
knowledge.
Economic inequality, social inequity and legal imbalance might also
refrain people from doing what they want, as they fear practical
repercussions. CC0 strengthen this discrimination factors by
enforcing people to withdraw the few rights they have to weight
against the growing asymmetry that social structures are
concomitantly building. So CC0 as unique license choice is in direct
conflict with our goal of *equitably* spreading knowledge.
Also it seems like this statement suggest that releasing our
contributions only under CC0 is the sole solution to diminish legal
doubts. Actually any well written license would do an equal job
regarding this point, including many copyleft licenses out there. So
while associate a clear license to each data item might indeed
diminish legal uncertainty, it's not an argument at all for
enforcing CC0 as sole license available to contributors.
Moreover, just putting a license side by side with a work does not
ensure that the person who made the association was legally allowed
to do so. To have a better confidence in the legitimacy of a
statement that a work is covered by a certain license, there is once
again a traceability requirement. For example, Wikidata currently
include many items which were imported from misc. Wikipedia
versions, and claim that the derived work obtained – a set of items
and statements – is under CC0. That is a hugely doubtful statement
and it alarmingly looks like license laundering
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/license_laundering>. This is true for
Wikipedia, but it's also true for any source on which a large scale
extraction and import are operated, whether through bots or crowd
sourcing.
So the Wikidata project is currently extremely misplaced to give
lessons on legal ambiguity, as it heavily plays with legal blur and
the hope that its shady practises won't fall under too much scrutiny.
Licenses that require attribution are often used as a way to try to make
it harder for big companies to profit from openly available resources.
No there are not. They are used as /a way to try to make it harder
for big companies to profit from openly available resources/ *in
inequitable manners*. That's completely different. Copyleft licenses
give the same rights to big companies and individuals in a manner
that lower socio-economic inequalities which disproportionally
advantage the former.
The thing is there seems to be no indication of this working.
Because it's not trying to enforce what you pretend, so of course
it's not working for this goal. But for the goal that copyleft
licenses aims at, there are clear evidences that yes it works.
Big companies have the legal and engineering resources to handle both
the legal minefield and the technical hurdles easily.
There is no pitfall in copyleft licenses. Using war material analogy
is disrespectful. That's true that copyleft licenses might come with
some constraints that non-copyleft free licenses don't have, but
that the price for fostering equity. And it's a low price, that even
individuals can manage, it might require a very little extra time on
legal considerations, but on the other hand using the free work is
an immensely vast gain that worth it. In Why you shouldn't use the
Lesser GPL for your next library
<https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html> is stated
/proprietary software developers have the advantage of money; free
software developers need to make advantages for each other/. This
might be generalised as /big companies have the advantage of money;
free/libre culture contributors need to make advantages for each
other/. So at odd with what pretend this fallacious claims against
copyleft licenses, they are not a "minefield and the technical
hurdles" that only big companies can handle. All the more, let's
recall who financed the initial development of Wikidata: only actors
which are related to big companies.
Who it is really hurting is the smaller start-up, institution or hacker
who can not deal with it.
If this statement is about copyleft licenses, then this is just
plainly false. Smaller actors have more to gain in preserving mutual
benefit of the common ecosystem that a copyleft license fosters.
With Wikidata we are making structured data about the world available
for everyone.
And that's great. But that doesn't require CC0 as sole license to be
achieved.
We are leveling the playing field to give those who currently don’t have
access to the knowledge graphs of the big companies a chance to build
something amazing.
And that's great. But that doesn't require CC0 as sole license.
Actually CC0 makes it a less sustainable project on this point, as
it allows unfair actors to take it all, add some interesting added
value that our community can not afford, reach/reinforce an
hegemonic position in the ecosystem with their own closed solution.
And, ta ta, Wikidata can be discontinued quietly, just like Google
did with the defunct Freebase which was CC-BY-SA before they bought
the company that was running it, and after they imported it under
CC0 in Wikidata as a new attempt to gather a larger community of
free curators. And when it will have performed license laundering of
all Wikimedia projects works with shady mass extract and import,
Wikimedia can disappear as well. Of course big companies benefits
more of this possibilities than actors with smaller financial
support and no hegemonic position.
Thereby we are helping more people get access to knowledge from more
places than just the few big ones.
No, with CC0 you are certainly helping big companies to reinforce
their position in which they can distribute information manipulated
as they wish, without consideration for traceability and equity
considerations. Allowing contributors to also use copyleft licenses
would be far more effective to /collect and use different forms of
free, trusted knowledge/ that /focus efforts on the knowledge and
communities that have been left out by structures of power and
privilege/, as stated in /Our strategic direction: Service and Equity/.
CC-0 is becoming more and more common.
Just like economic inequality
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/economic_inequality>. But that is not
what we are aiming to foster in the Wikimedia movement.
Many organisations are releasing their data under CC-0 and are happy
with the experience. Among them are the European Union, Europeana, the
National Library of Sweden and the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Arts.
Good for them. But they are not the Wikimedia community, they have
their own goals and plan to be sustainable that does not necessarily
meet what our community can follow. Different contexts require
different means. States and their institutions can count on tax
revenue, and if taxpayers ends up in public domain works, that's
great and seems fair. States are rarely threatened by companies,
they have legal lever to pressure that kind of entity, although
conflict of interest and lobbying can of course mitigate this
statement.
Importing that kind of data with proper attribution and license is
fine, be it CC0 or any other free license. But that's not an
argument in favour of enforcing on benevolent a systematic withdraw
of all their rights as single option to contribute.
All this being said we do encourage all re-users of our data to give
attribution to Wikidata because we believe it is in the interest of all
parties involved.
That's it, zero legal hope of equity.
And our experience shows that many of our re-users do give credit to
Wikidata even if they are not forced to.
Experience also show that some prominent actors like Google won't
credit the Wikimedia community anymore when generating directly
answer based on, inter alia, information coming from Wikidata, which
is itself performing license laundering of Wikipedia data.
Are there no downsides to this? No, of course not. Some people chose not
to participate, some data can't be imported and some re-users do not
attribute us. But the benefits I have seen over the years for Wikidata
and the larger open knowledge ecosystem far outweigh them.
This should at least backed with some solid statistics that it had a
positive impact in term of audience and contribution in Wikimedia
project as a whole. Maybe the introduction of Wikidata did have a
positive effect on the evolution of total number of contributors, or
maybe so far it has no significant correlative effect, or maybe it
is correlative with a decrease of the total number of active
contributors. Some plots would be interesting here. Mere personal
feelings of benefits and hindrances means nothing here, mine
included of course.
Plus, there is not even the beginning of an attempt to A/B test with
a second Wikibase instant that allow users to select which licenses
its contributions are released under, so there is no possible way to
state anything backed on relevant comparison. The fact that they are
some people satisfied with the current state of things doesn't mean
they would not be even more satisfied with a more equitable solution
that allows contributors to chose a free license set for their
publications. All the more this is all about the sustainability and
fostering of our community and reaching its goals, not immediate
feeling of satisfaction for some people.
*
[1] Wikipedia Signpost 2015, 2nd december
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-12-02/Op…>
*
[2] according to the next statement of Lydia
Once again, I recall this is not a manifesto against Wikidata. The
motivation behind this message is a hope that one day one might
participate in Wikidata with the same respect for equity and
traceability that is granted in other Wikimedia projects.
Kun multe da vikiamo,
mathieu
Since WMF is not interested in the deescalation of the conflict and
actively obstructs the mediation process by doing something it said
just a couple of days it wont' do, I am leaving my role as a mediator
in this dispute resolution.
P.S. This was for your information. I am not interested in your opinion.
On Sat, Nov 18, 2017 at 5:30 PM, Milos Rancic <millosh(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Chico, Rodrigo and I had a very good meeting today. It lasted one hour
> and half, we were talking about various topics (via Google Hangouts)
> they care of and we've reached the agreement about the initial steps.
> (They've both agreed to lift the communication ban while talking with
> me.)
>
> Before taking mediation to myself, I've asked Patricio to do the same,
> but he is busy these days and he will join it in few months, after he
> comes out the busy days. (Both Rodrigo and Chico agreed with Patricio
> as a mediator, as well.)
>
> At this point of time, we've concluded the following:
>
> * Rodrigo apologized to Chico for harsh words.
> * Chico promised that their group won't raise the issues between the
> groups further.
> * Both of them agreed to treat this as their internal problem they are
> working to solve.
> * At the end of the week I will have separate meetings with Chico and
> Joao on one side and Rodrigo and Henrique on the other.
> * In two weeks, Rodrigo, Chico and I will have the next meeting.
>
> At this point of time and as long as I mediate in this case, I would
> ask WMF to refrain from any actions.
>
> I will inform you about the next steps and let's hope we'll solve this
> situation in the next couple of months.
==REALLY IMPORTANT ASK==
Before updating you on our first week. I have and ask
We need your help. We've had some really close results with some of our
best messages in banners recently.
Rather than the fundraising team making the decision what to do, we would
like the community to help us choose the direction of our banner messaging:
Just go to this link, click your favourite and submit:
https://wikimedia.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_09DMEWexSMnqyLr
A lot of these messages came from a recent interview the fundraising team
held with our founder, Jimmy Wales. But we would love to include more
voices in the campaign. If you’d like to suggest some of your own messages
for readers to see, please add ideas here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2017-18_Fundraising_ideas
==Other News==
--Raised so far--
We've raised approximate $9,000,000 since Giving Tuesday in online gifts
but I add the usual caution that this is a preliminary number.
--Emails to past donors--
We are closing out the 9th week of the Big English email campaign to past
donors, having decided to spread out the campaign to have more room to test
timing and creative ideas. We achieved a long-time campaign goal by
successfully adding another voice to the fundraising campaign with
Katherine Maher, alongside Jimmy. Check out how our Katherine message was
created in our latest blog post:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/11/30/fundraising-from-the-heart/
There are still more emails to send in December, and our goal this month is
to tell more community stories. Thanks for giving us such great stories to
tell!
--Banner testing--
The Big English banner campaign has been underway for only three full days
but we’ve already tried well over 50 banners. Desktop has been up since
Tuesday Nov 28. Mobile web and app fundraising? launched on Nov 30,
earlier than in previous years.
Along with Jimmy, we’re also trying out messages from Katherine and quotes
from community messages -- too early to report anything yet, but we’re
excited to share more voices with our readers in this year’s fundraiser.
--Matching Gift Challenge--
Next week, we will hopefully be announcing a significant matching gift
challenge from a generous donor. More details to come.
--Facebook Ads--
We are going to experimenting with running another Facebook ad campaign at
some point in the next few weeks. For information on past experiments with
Facebook ads, please see:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/Updates/FBAdsExperiment
Thank you all for your support and patience!
I leave you with old man Jimmy reading Wikipedia:
https://twitter.com/Wikipedia/status/935994802448900096
--
Seddon
Community and Audience Engagement Associate
Advancement (Fundraising), Wikimedia Foundation
![https://wikimania2017.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Esraa.png[a]](https://wikimania2017.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Esraa.png[a]){kind=link}