Hi Keegan,
I looked for equivalent Meta policies before posting the links to English Wikipedia.
Canvassing is referenced on Meta and Commons although there is no page on Meta or Commons specifically describing a canvassing policy that I see. Perhaps there should be, since both wikis seem to have an unwritten rule against canvassing.
I believe I was clear that the RfC guidelines and the Drama essay are from English Wikipedia but I think they are the best practice to follow here, and that this is my opinion only.
I agree that posting a notification to this list was appropriate, but not with forking or moving the discussion to here.
Pine
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 4:26 AM, ENWP Pine deyntestiss@hotmail.com wrote:
I agree that posting a notification to this list was appropriate, but not with forking or moving the discussion to here.
I wish there was actually a discussion to fork. Both The_ed17 and I raised it on the Main_page Talk and the Commons administrator's noticeboard, where things of urgency are normally monitored. Silence. Crickets.
If it comes to a choice of keeping images of emaciated concentration camp corpses on the front page of a high profile Wikimedia project and raising this issue on Wikimedia-L, I choose the latter.
-Andrew
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 11:43 AM, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 4:26 AM, ENWP Pine deyntestiss@hotmail.com wrote:
I agree that posting a notification to this list was appropriate, but not with forking or moving the discussion to here.
I wish there was actually a discussion to fork. Both The_ed17 and I raised it on the Main_page Talk and the Commons administrator's noticeboard, where things of urgency are normally monitored. Silence. Crickets.
If it comes to a choice of keeping images of emaciated concentration camp corpses on the front page of a high profile Wikimedia project and raising this issue on Wikimedia-L, I choose the latter.
-Andrew
Indeed. No need to beat around the bush here - the purpose of e-mailing this list was explicitly to canvass for more opinions, more participants. The policy on en.wp is of mixed usefulness, imho, and often abused to restrict the availability of useful input and illumination. It doesn't apply to this list or to Commons or Meta.
On the actual topic - what's the base process for selecting a still from a featured video? Is it automatic once the video is selected? Does the user have to specify a particular frame?
~Nathan
Already answered on the talk page by the editor who had chosen it. Comment there if you really want to help us. Continue the comments here if other interests. ;)
Regards, Jee
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 9:32 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 11:43 AM, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 4:26 AM, ENWP Pine deyntestiss@hotmail.com
wrote:
I agree that posting a notification to this list was appropriate, but
not
with forking or moving the discussion to here.
I wish there was actually a discussion to fork. Both The_ed17 and I
raised
it on the Main_page Talk and the Commons administrator's noticeboard,
where
things of urgency are normally monitored. Silence. Crickets.
If it comes to a choice of keeping images of emaciated concentration camp corpses on the front page of a high profile Wikimedia project and raising this issue on Wikimedia-L, I choose the latter.
-Andrew
Indeed. No need to beat around the bush here - the purpose of e-mailing this list was explicitly to canvass for more opinions, more participants. The policy on en.wp is of mixed usefulness, imho, and often abused to restrict the availability of useful input and illumination. It doesn't apply to this list or to Commons or Meta.
On the actual topic - what's the base process for selecting a still from a featured video? Is it automatic once the video is selected? Does the user have to specify a particular frame?
~Nathan _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 1:19 PM, Jeevan Jose jkadavoor@gmail.com wrote:
Already answered on the talk page by the editor who had chosen it. Comment there if you really want to help us. Continue the comments here if other interests. ;)
Regards, Jee
I don't think it was answered, it wasn't even asked. My question isn't how the video was selected, it's how the *still* from the video was selected.
See the comment by Pristurushttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pristurus at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page#Dead_bodies.3F
Regards, Jee
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 10:57 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 1:19 PM, Jeevan Jose jkadavoor@gmail.com wrote:
Already answered on the talk page by the editor who had chosen it.
Comment
there if you really want to help us. Continue the comments here if other interests. ;)
Regards, Jee
I don't think it was answered, it wasn't even asked. My question isn't how the video was selected, it's how the *still* from the video was selected. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 1:30 PM, Jeevan Jose jkadavoor@gmail.com wrote:
See the comment by Pristurus< https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pristurus%3E at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page#Dead_bodies.3F
Regards, Jee
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 10:57 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 1:19 PM, Jeevan Jose jkadavoor@gmail.com wrote:
Already answered on the talk page by the editor who had chosen it.
Comment
there if you really want to help us. Continue the comments here if
other
interests. ;)
Regards, Jee
Ah, thanks. Amazing how handy links are. I was a little surprised to see that even on that talkpage, you asked people to move the discussion to yet a different page. I asked that question because a debate on the merits might be somewhat moot if the still was selected randomly or by software, it's interesting to see that it wasn't.
In any case, Pristurus has a good point and one that it would be hard to craft a policy around. Least astonishment is a useful principle, but it doesn't beat out journalistic and/or educational value. Newspapers, magazines, textbooks and other sources of educational material often pick striking images of tragic or shocking circumstances. The point is precisely to draw attention, to disrupt the consciousness of the viewer so that the meaning behind the image and any accompanying material sinks in and the message is imparted strongly. Good sources of knowledge do this rarely but well; shock sites do it constantly and for no particular reason.
Many Pulitzer prize winning photographs feature dead people, people who have been shot, dismembered, even people in the midst of burning alive. They win prizes because they have extraordinary communicative power and meaningfully illustrate very important subjects. Would anyone truly argue that such images should never be used on the main page of any project?
Pine: besides the unusually high effect Commons has on other projects (most projects are essentially forced to use Commons,) Commons' lack of a local canvassing policy, and the general unenforceability of canvassing policies on mailing lists anyway, when a local project has a low population of active editors and is pretty consistently making poor decisions that impact all projects, I see absolutely nothing wrong with raising the discussion at a higher-than-local level, and don't think that raising a discussion at a higher-than-local level needs to be done in a neutral fashion. I think that Commons' not uncommonly acts in a way that is actively detrimental to every other project (and a way that is certainly actively detrimental to building relationships with edu and GLAM institutions,) and given that there's not a large local population on Commons, think a non-neutral posting to a broader audience is absolutely appropriate. Discussion of issues with the Acehnese Wikipedia years ago wasn't confined to the Acehnese Wikipedia, and in recent years issues with the Kazakh Wikipedia and at least a couple of other projects have been brought up on a meta level as well. (The fact that the decision to put a piece of content like this on Common's frontpage was made by *two people* highlights an issue as well..)
I'm not upset about the fact that we have a video of the aftermath of the liberation of Buchenwald on Commons - if we didn't, I'd go find one and upload it. It's an event (and a video) of enormous historic significance, and not one that should ever be forgotten. I'm not even opposed to featuring it on Commons' frontpage - in a way that adheres to the principle of least astonishment and provides viewers with context. That's not what was done here. A still image featuring a pile of corpses was put on Commons' frontpage with any context whatsoever only provided for viewers of five languages - and we run projects in 287 different languages. More than that, since Commons only supports open video formats, a sizable majority of people who use Wikimedia projects are literally incapable of actually playing the video in question. Is there enough journalistic or educational value in displaying a still photo of a pile of corpses that links to a video that cannot be played by most people that provides after the fact context in only 5 of the 287 languages we run projects in to justify putting it on Commons front page? I'm gonna go with no.
FWIW: I would explicitly support featuring this video (or an article about Buchenwald, etc,) albeit with a different freezeframe and appropriate context provided, on the frontpage of the English Wikipedia or any other project where it was actually possible to provide appropriate context to the viewership of the project. ENWP's article about Buchenwald - quite rightly - contains numerous images more graphic than the one that was on Commons front page yesterday. They add significant educational value to the article - and they also only appear past the lede of the article, at a point when anyone reading the article will be fully aware what the article is about and will have intentionally sought the article out - rather than, say, going to Commons to look up an image of a horse and being confronted with a freezeframe of a stack of bodies from a video your browser cannot play with context provided only in languages you do not speak.
----- Kevin Gorman Wikipedian-in-Residence American Cultures Program UC Berkeley
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 10:48 AM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 1:30 PM, Jeevan Jose jkadavoor@gmail.com wrote:
See the comment by Pristurus< https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pristurus%3E at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page#Dead_bodies.3F
Regards, Jee
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 10:57 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 1:19 PM, Jeevan Jose jkadavoor@gmail.com
wrote:
Already answered on the talk page by the editor who had chosen it.
Comment
there if you really want to help us. Continue the comments here if
other
interests. ;)
Regards, Jee
Ah, thanks. Amazing how handy links are. I was a little surprised to see that even on that talkpage, you asked people to move the discussion to yet a different page. I asked that question because a debate on the merits might be somewhat moot if the still was selected randomly or by software, it's interesting to see that it wasn't.
In any case, Pristurus has a good point and one that it would be hard to craft a policy around. Least astonishment is a useful principle, but it doesn't beat out journalistic and/or educational value. Newspapers, magazines, textbooks and other sources of educational material often pick striking images of tragic or shocking circumstances. The point is precisely to draw attention, to disrupt the consciousness of the viewer so that the meaning behind the image and any accompanying material sinks in and the message is imparted strongly. Good sources of knowledge do this rarely but well; shock sites do it constantly and for no particular reason.
Many Pulitzer prize winning photographs feature dead people, people who have been shot, dismembered, even people in the midst of burning alive. They win prizes because they have extraordinary communicative power and meaningfully illustrate very important subjects. Would anyone truly argue that such images should never be used on the main page of any project? _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On 9 May 2014 20:11, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
Pine: besides the unusually high effect Commons has on other projects (most projects are essentially forced to use Commons,) Commons' lack of a local
Have you raised this in response to the actual, and extensive, discussion on Talk:Main Page? e.g., in response to the person who put it there?
Oh, I see you haven't - you've just said "I'm taking this elsewhere."
You probably should address his substantive points directly. There are quite a few, and I found them quite convincing.
- d.
David: when I started this discussion, there was literally nothing but crickets on Commons. Since starting this discussion prompted a discussion on Commons to actually start, yes, I have engaged in it. Writing up replies to posts takes time and I happened to send my reply to this thread before replying to Commons, and replied to Commons within five minutes of your post going out (and spent the time between sending my message here and posting to Commons, er, formulating replies to people on Commons and talking with another person over chat about the situation.)
Leigh: I don't want to cover that up, which is why I explicitly support us having the video and other relevant images, and using them in a way that provides educational/editorial value. Yesterday, most viewers couldn't have played the video the still linked to, because it was in a format relatively few browsers support. Context for the image was only provided in 5 languages, whereas we run projects in 287 different languages. For any viewer who didn't speak one of those five languages and who couldn't play the video (and most viewers can't play the video,) the still wouldn't have had the effect of serving as a shocking reminder of the events of the holocaust. It would've just been a grainy black and white stack of corpses decontextualised from any meaning.
To resnip a bit from my last post, I would explicitly support featuring this video (or an article about Buchenwald, etc,) albeit with a different freezeframe and appropriate context provided, on the frontpage of the English Wikipedia or any other project where it was actually possible to provide appropriate context to the viewership of the project. ENWP's article about Buchenwald - quite rightly - contains numerous images more graphic than the one that was on Commons front page yesterday. They add significant educational value to the article - and they also only appear past the lede of the article, at a point when anyone reading the article will be fully aware what the article is about and will have intentionally sought the article out - rather than, say, going to Commons to look up an image of a horse and being confronted with a freezeframe of a stack of bodies from a video your browser cannot play with context provided only in languages you do not speak.
---- Kevin Gorman Wikipedian-in-Residence UC Berkeley
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 12:24 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 9 May 2014 20:11, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
Pine: besides the unusually high effect Commons has on other projects
(most
projects are essentially forced to use Commons,) Commons' lack of a local
Have you raised this in response to the actual, and extensive, discussion on Talk:Main Page? e.g., in response to the person who put it there?
Oh, I see you haven't - you've just said "I'm taking this elsewhere."
You probably should address his substantive points directly. There are quite a few, and I found them quite convincing.
- d.
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 3:46 PM, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
Leigh: I don't want to cover that up, which is why I explicitly support us having the video and other relevant images, and using them in a way that provides educational/editorial value. Yesterday, most viewers couldn't have played the video the still linked to, because it was in a format relatively few browsers support. Context for the image was only provided in 5 languages, whereas we run projects in 287 different languages. For any viewer who didn't speak one of those five languages and who couldn't play the video (and most viewers can't play the video,) the still wouldn't have had the effect of serving as a shocking reminder of the events of the holocaust. It would've just been a grainy black and white stack of corpses decontextualised from any meaning.
Kevin - can I ask, if the video were playable by many or most people, would that make it acceptable to you? What proportion of Commons viewers (as opposed to the number of languages supported by any Wikimedia project) need to be able to read the explanation before the context issue is resolved? To me, context and accessibility are really secondary questions that assume the fundamental question of appropriateness has already been answered positively.
Just to note - many other projects feature the Commons picture and media of the day on their main pages. It would not just be Commons users who came upon this image; it would have been readers and visitors from several dozen other projects, many of whose languages are not includd in the image information, who were perhaps unexpectedly greeted by an image of stacked dead bodies with their morning cornflakes - and based on the discussion on Commons, being confronted with this deliberately and intentionally, and in a format that the majority of people cannot access or mitigate.
Risker/Anne
On 9 May 2014 15:50, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 3:46 PM, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
Leigh: I don't want to cover that up, which is why I explicitly support
us
having the video and other relevant images, and using them in a way that provides educational/editorial value. Yesterday, most viewers couldn't
have
played the video the still linked to, because it was in a format
relatively
few browsers support. Context for the image was only provided in 5 languages, whereas we run projects in 287 different languages. For any viewer who didn't speak one of those five languages and who couldn't play the video (and most viewers can't play the video,) the still wouldn't
have
had the effect of serving as a shocking reminder of the events of the holocaust. It would've just been a grainy black and white stack of
corpses
decontextualised from any meaning.
Kevin - can I ask, if the video were playable by many or most people, would that make it acceptable to you? What proportion of Commons viewers (as opposed to the number of languages supported by any Wikimedia project) need to be able to read the explanation before the context issue is resolved? To me, context and accessibility are really secondary questions that assume the fundamental question of appropriateness has already been answered positively. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.orghttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/GuidelinesWikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
The actual argument from Talk:Main Page:
"Well, I have deliberately selected this frame. And yes, it is a shocking picture of victims killed by the inhumanity of a totalitarian ideology. The frame shows exactly the result of such a belief. For me a "softer" motive would be a belittlement of the historical events in Nazi Germany. I'm sorry, but the world is often shockingly brutal, this is the reality in which we must still live (open your eyes in direction to Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, South-Sudan, Nigeria and so on and so on...). "
I don't find your morning cornflakes (please don't try to claim third parties' cornflakes) a compelling counterargument.
- d.
Ah yes, David. We must shock people into being aware of what is happening in the world. It's mandatory. How else would Wikimedia function?
I know that's sarcastic. But it's exactly the kind of attitude - that forcing people to confront whatever cause the POTD/MOTD person wants them to confront is a useful method of education - that reduces the value of Commons. The person who selected the image does not care that most of the people who viewed that image saw only dead bodies without context. Yes, the world is brutal. It's not our job to make it less so, nor is our job to confront people with its brutality unexpectedly. Is that image appropriate for viewers who have themselves been victims of violence, including all those in the countries mentioned? What about Holocaust survivors, many of whom still suffer from the horrendous trauma of those events more than sixty years later? They have to see this again so that... why exactly?
Risker/Anne
On 9 May 2014 16:00, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
The actual argument from Talk:Main Page:
"Well, I have deliberately selected this frame. And yes, it is a shocking picture of victims killed by the inhumanity of a totalitarian ideology. The frame shows exactly the result of such a belief. For me a "softer" motive would be a belittlement of the historical events in Nazi Germany. I'm sorry, but the world is often shockingly brutal, this is the reality in which we must still live (open your eyes in direction to Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, South-Sudan, Nigeria and so on and so on...). "
I don't find your morning cornflakes (please don't try to claim third parties' cornflakes) a compelling counterargument.
- d.
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.orghttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/GuidelinesWikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On 9 May 2014 21:13, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
The person who selected the image does not care that most of the people who viewed that image saw only dead bodies without context.
You could go to Talk:Main Page and say that there. The discussion is quite active.
Argument from "I don't like it" in a forum-shopped venue, however, really isn't convincing.
- d.
On 9 May 2014 16:14, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 9 May 2014 21:13, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
The person who selected the image does not care that most of the people who viewed that image saw only dead bodies without context.
You could go to Talk:Main Page and say that there. The discussion is quite active.
Argument from "I don't like it" in a forum-shopped venue, however, really isn't convincing.
Who's arguing from "I don't like it"? Seems to me the entire purpose of putting this on the main page was "I really want people to be upset", which in other contexts we call "trolling" - something that you've spoken out about on numerous occasions.
Risker/Anne
As I just pointed out on the talk page -- this is no longer the Media of the Day. It's a new day. There is new media.
So I think continuing to use Wikimedia-L to debate the *specifics* of this case is not so great. Any comments on the *general* points made above, by myself and a few others?
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 1:23 PM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
On 9 May 2014 16:14, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 9 May 2014 21:13, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
The person who selected the image does not care that most of the people who viewed that image saw only dead bodies without context.
You could go to Talk:Main Page and say that there. The discussion is quite active.
Argument from "I don't like it" in a forum-shopped venue, however, really isn't convincing.
Who's arguing from "I don't like it"? Seems to me the entire purpose of putting this on the main page was "I really want people to be upset", which in other contexts we call "trolling" - something that you've spoken out about on numerous occasions.
Risker/Anne _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On 9 May 2014 21:13, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
The person who selected the image does not care that most of the people who viewed that image saw only dead bodies without context.
The process on Commons for selecting what goes on the front page is very lightweight, and this was a decision made by one person, in the normal way. That’s going to mean that sometimes others might disagree.
It would be perfectly possible to set up some sort of more labour-intensive system if people really want that. It would be easy to do: please, everyone, just come over to Commons and volunteer your time.
Michael
Seems like a fair offer, Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Michael Maggs Sent: 09 May 2014 10:32 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons' frontpage probably shouldn't prominently feature a decontextualised stack of corpses.
On 9 May 2014 21:13, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
The person who selected the image does not care that most of the people who viewed that image saw only dead bodies without context.
The process on Commons for selecting what goes on the front page is very lightweight, and this was a decision made by one person, in the normal way. That’s going to mean that sometimes others might disagree.
It would be perfectly possible to set up some sort of more labour-intensive system if people really want that. It would be easy to do: please, everyone, just come over to Commons and volunteer your time.
Michael
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David, the only reason the discussion at T:MP is active is *because* a discussion was started here. Prior to this thread being started, comments at both COM:AN and T:MP had gone without reply for quite a while. I don't think it's terribly productive to complain about forumshopping in a thread about something that effects substantially more than just one project and was started before any of the threads on commons actually had active discussion. Doubly so because, as Risker points out, other projects transclude Commons' MOTD in to their frontpages, including projects in languages that do not number among the five that had any degree of context provided.
Nathan: I don't think there's any question that the video *could* have been appropriately featured, although it would have been harder to do on Commons than on a monolingual project. With a different still and the use of Wikidata to pull appropriate contextual information - which I believe is possible, though correct me if I'm wrong - Buchenwald is object Q152802 on Wikidata - the video could have been appropriately featured. Wikidata has enough interwiki links that it would've been possible to provide appropriate contextual information to a great majority of viewers of commons, whereas as it was many of them just saw a grainy black and white image of a stack of corpses with no context and no ability to actually even play the video in question (most Wikimedia viewers cannot play the video formats we support.)
Pete: you're right that discussion of how to improve process is something that needs to happen, although I think continuing discussion of the MOTD in question is worthwhile given that it's selection flies in the face of both commonsense and a WMF board resolution and a significant fraction of regular Commons contributors don't seem to see an issue with it. I'm happy to participate in any discussion about process, to assist in any process that results from such a discussion, and will probably start a discussion about it myself in the relatively near future if no one beats me to it - there's something seriously weird about the fact that a project that all other projects depend on has the media it displays on it's front page selected by pretty much one person with no oversight.
---- Kevin Gorman
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 1:14 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 9 May 2014 21:13, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
The person who selected the image does not care that most of the people who viewed that image saw only dead bodies without context.
You could go to Talk:Main Page and say that there. The discussion is quite active.
Argument from "I don't like it" in a forum-shopped venue, however, really isn't convincing.
- d.
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On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 2:11 PM, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
there's something seriously weird about the fact that a project that all other projects depend on has the media it displays on it's front page selected by pretty much one person with no
I was with you up until the last word. Did you really mean:
oversight.
???
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
Heh, I probably shouldn't have chosen a word with two more or less contradictory ideas that also refers to a mediawiki userright. I meant oversight as in scrutiny by other Wikimedians to ensure the process doesn't go off the rails, not oversight as in negligence or oversight as in what we do to especially nasty content instead of revdel. (I would consider any process that gets large graphics on to prominent pages on the projects with so few checks on it as lacking sufficient oversight.)
----- Kevin Gorman Wikipedian-in-Residence UC Berkeley
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 2:26 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 2:11 PM, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
there's something seriously weird about the fact that a project that all other projects depend on has the media it displays on it's front page selected by pretty much one person with no
I was with you up until the last word. Did you really mean:
oversight.
???
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
*contradictory meanings, not ideas - I just woke up from a nap and am typing like a sleepy person.
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 6:27 PM, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
Heh, I probably shouldn't have chosen a word with two more or less contradictory ideas that also refers to a mediawiki userright. I meant oversight as in scrutiny by other Wikimedians to ensure the process doesn't go off the rails, not oversight as in negligence or oversight as in what we do to especially nasty content instead of revdel. (I would consider any process that gets large graphics on to prominent pages on the projects with so few checks on it as lacking sufficient oversight.)
Kevin Gorman Wikipedian-in-Residence UC Berkeley
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 2:26 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.comwrote:
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 2:11 PM, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
there's something seriously weird about the fact that a project that all other projects depend on has the media it displays on it's front page selected by pretty much one person with no
I was with you up until the last word. Did you really mean:
oversight.
???
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.orghttps://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/GuidelinesWikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
I replied to a few questions at the main page talk: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page#Dead_bodies.3F
Regards, Jee
On Sat, May 10, 2014 at 6:58 AM, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
*contradictory meanings, not ideas - I just woke up from a nap and am typing like a sleepy person.
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 6:27 PM, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
Heh, I probably shouldn't have chosen a word with two more or less contradictory ideas that also refers to a mediawiki userright. I meant oversight as in scrutiny by other Wikimedians to ensure the process
doesn't
go off the rails, not oversight as in negligence or oversight as in what
we
do to especially nasty content instead of revdel. (I would consider any process that gets large graphics on to prominent pages on the projects
with
so few checks on it as lacking sufficient oversight.)
Kevin Gorman Wikipedian-in-Residence UC Berkeley
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 2:26 PM, Pete Forsyth <peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 2:11 PM, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
there's something seriously weird about the fact that a project that
all
other projects depend on has the media it displays on it's front page selected by pretty much one person with no
I was with you up until the last word. Did you really mean:
oversight.
???
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org<
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Kevin,
I didn't think you were using "oversight" in the MediaWiki jargon sense. But I do think the concept of oversight -- as distinct from consideration, discussion, deliberation, or consensus-building -- is very disconnected from the present reality. What authority would be claimed in conducting this oversight, and what set of rules would be enforced?
Pete
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 6:27 PM, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
Heh, I probably shouldn't have chosen a word with two more or less contradictory ideas that also refers to a mediawiki userright. I meant oversight as in scrutiny by other Wikimedians to ensure the process doesn't go off the rails, not oversight as in negligence or oversight as in what we do to especially nasty content instead of revdel. (I would consider any process that gets large graphics on to prominent pages on the projects with so few checks on it as lacking sufficient oversight.)
Kevin Gorman Wikipedian-in-Residence UC Berkeley
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 2:26 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 2:11 PM, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
there's something seriously weird about the fact that a project that
all
other projects depend on has the media it displays on it's front page selected by pretty much one person with no
I was with you up until the last word. Did you really mean:
oversight.
???
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Hi Pete -
I was using oversight rather loosely to mean "there's a body of people looking over the process sufficient to catch any terrific fumbles before they get out of the gate," rather than any stricter sense of the term. I view the scrutiny of a reasonable number of other Wikimedians as a form of oversight, even without a hierarchical structure in place. I would say that ITN or DYK on ENWP have reasonable oversight (although it certainly sometimes fails,) but don't view a process that needs 1-2 people to promote something to a highly viewed mainpage as having reasonable oversight.
Best, Kevin Gorman Wikipedian-in-Residence UC Berkeley
On Sat, May 10, 2014 at 10:10 AM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.comwrote:
Kevin,
I didn't think you were using "oversight" in the MediaWiki jargon sense. But I do think the concept of oversight -- as distinct from consideration, discussion, deliberation, or consensus-building -- is very disconnected from the present reality. What authority would be claimed in conducting this oversight, and what set of rules would be enforced?
Pete
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 6:27 PM, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
Heh, I probably shouldn't have chosen a word with two more or less contradictory ideas that also refers to a mediawiki userright. I meant oversight as in scrutiny by other Wikimedians to ensure the process
doesn't
go off the rails, not oversight as in negligence or oversight as in what
we
do to especially nasty content instead of revdel. (I would consider any process that gets large graphics on to prominent pages on the projects
with
so few checks on it as lacking sufficient oversight.)
Kevin Gorman Wikipedian-in-Residence UC Berkeley
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 2:26 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 2:11 PM, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com
wrote:
there's something seriously weird about the fact that a project that
all
other projects depend on has the media it displays on it's front page selected by pretty much one person with no
I was with you up until the last word. Did you really mean:
oversight.
???
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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On 10 May 2014 23:54, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
I was using oversight rather loosely to mean "there's a body of people looking over the process sufficient to catch any terrific fumbles before they get out of the gate," rather than any stricter sense of the term. I view the scrutiny of a reasonable number of other Wikimedians as a form of oversight, even without a hierarchical structure in place. I would say that ITN or DYK on ENWP have reasonable oversight (although it certainly sometimes fails,) but don't view a process that needs 1-2 people to promote something to a highly viewed mainpage as having reasonable oversight.
So you're signing up? Excellent! How long do you think you'll keep it up?
- d.
Go for it Kevin, That’s putting your money where your mouth is. Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of David Gerard Sent: 11 May 2014 01:04 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons' frontpage probably shouldn't prominently feature a decontextualised stack of corpses.
On 10 May 2014 23:54, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
I was using oversight rather loosely to mean "there's a body of people looking over the process sufficient to catch any terrific fumbles before they get out of the gate," rather than any stricter sense of the term. I view the scrutiny of a reasonable number of other Wikimedians as a form of oversight, even without a hierarchical structure in place. I would say that ITN or DYK on ENWP have reasonable oversight (although it certainly sometimes fails,) but don't view a process that needs 1-2 people to promote something to a highly viewed mainpage as having reasonable oversight.
So you're signing up? Excellent! How long do you think you'll keep it up?
- d.
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Kevin,
On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 6:54 AM, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Pete -
I was using oversight rather loosely to mean "there's a body of people looking over the process sufficient to catch any terrific fumbles before they get out of the gate," rather than any stricter sense of the term. I view the scrutiny of a reasonable number of other Wikimedians as a form of oversight, even without a hierarchical structure in place. I would say that ITN or DYK on ENWP have reasonable oversight (although it certainly sometimes fails,) but don't view a process that needs 1-2 people to promote something to a highly viewed mainpage as having reasonable oversight.
You seem to be suggesting that:
1) Commons should follow the "lead" of English Wikipedia and, 2) Commons should become as self-censored as what English Wikipedia has become.
Several years ago, I 5x expanded the article for Fucking[1] and I nominated it for DYK.[2] The article had the potential to be the most viewed DYK of all time, but instead of being placed as the lead hook, it was "buried" at the bottom. When I asked about it possibly being the lead hook, I was told that it was up to any individual to promote hooks, and that it should be taken up with them. I remember getting a response that it would be inappropriate to have "foul" language (or a photo thereof) visible like that on the front page, even though it certainly wasn't foul language at all....it's simply the name of the town. So needless to say, a DYK which could have gotten 100,000 views was left to get only around 15,000 views for that day.
Is this the type of oversight you mean Kevin? If so, keep that sort of oversight on English Wikipedia thank you very much.
Cheers
Russavia
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucking,_Austria [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template_talk:Did_you_know&ol...
On 12 May 2014 07:29, Russavia russavia.wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
individual to promote hooks, and that it should be taken up with them. I remember getting a response that it would be inappropriate to have "foul" language (or a photo thereof) visible like that on the front page, even though it certainly wasn't foul language at all....it's simply the name of the town.
No it isn't and you know that.
Geni,
On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 2:42 PM, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12 May 2014 07:29, Russavia russavia.wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
individual to promote hooks, and that it should be taken up with them. I remember getting a response that it would be inappropriate to have "foul" language (or a photo thereof) visible like that on the front page, even though it certainly wasn't foul language at all....it's simply the name of the town.
No it isn't and you know that.
Of course it is, because it was clearly given context. If it was just a photo of that sign and nothing more, then one could rightly say it is what one would likely think.
But when given context: "that the Austrian town of Fucking installed theft-resistant road signs in 2005 because the signs were frequently stolen by tourists?" it is indeed just a sign for the town, and nothing more than that.
Like the Fucking police chief said on the issue of theft of the signs: "[w]hat they are, I am not at liberty to disclose, but we will not stand for the Fucking signs being removed. It may be very amusing for you British, but Fucking is simply Fucking to us. What is this big Fucking joke? It is puerile."
That others read more into than this shows that the issue clearly lays with them....just like the non-issue on Commons.
Cheers,
Russavia
No, Russavia: I'm not suggesting that Commons' policies should mirror those of ENWP. I'm suggesting that Commons should have a process in place that ensures that it follows the clearly established resolutions of the WMF board, which I would remind you *do* trump local policy. This particular incident failed to do so, and it's not the first time that such a thing has occurred on Commons. I would suggest further that if a process that brings Commons in to compliance with WMF board resolutions is not designed and implemented by the next time this occurs, Commons will likely either be forced to rapidly adopt a process to address the problem, or, if reluctant to do so, is likely to have stewards step in to ensure that WMF board resolutions are not flagrantly disregarded. Neither of those are ideal outcomes for anyone involved. Commons as a community is generally pretty hardline anti-anything-that-could-be-perceived as censorship, which is absolutely fine. However, ignoring WMF board resolutions - repeatedly - especially with no justification other than OMG THIS IS CENSORSHIP is not absolutely fine. If you view my initial post here as an incoherent rant as you've described it elsewhere, I'd suggest you read it again.
I'm absolutely happy to help with setting up a process that ensures that ridiculous stuff like this doesn't happen in the future, and intend to participate in on-wiki discussions trying to set up such a process. I will admit that I'm doubtful Commons is willing to comply with resolutions of the WMF board - at least not without putting up a hell of a fight - since the last time I came to Commons and started some deletion nominations based on the fact that the media in question violated multiple WMF board resolutions, although my deletion nominations were pretty consistently upheld, at least one commons admin suggested in seriousness that a more appropriate resolution to the situation would simply be indeffing me from the project rather than conforming to the WMF Board's resolutions about media which involves identifiable people.
---- Kevin Gorman
On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 11:29 PM, Russavia russavia.wikipedia@gmail.comwrote:
Kevin,
On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 6:54 AM, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Pete -
I was using oversight rather loosely to mean "there's a body of people looking over the process sufficient to catch any terrific fumbles before they get out of the gate," rather than any stricter sense of the term. I view the scrutiny of a reasonable number of other Wikimedians as a form
of
oversight, even without a hierarchical structure in place. I would say that ITN or DYK on ENWP have reasonable oversight (although it certainly sometimes fails,) but don't view a process that needs 1-2 people to
promote
something to a highly viewed mainpage as having reasonable oversight.
You seem to be suggesting that:
- Commons should follow the "lead" of English Wikipedia and,
- Commons should become as self-censored as what English Wikipedia has
become.
Several years ago, I 5x expanded the article for Fucking[1] and I nominated it for DYK.[2] The article had the potential to be the most viewed DYK of all time, but instead of being placed as the lead hook, it was "buried" at the bottom. When I asked about it possibly being the lead hook, I was told that it was up to any individual to promote hooks, and that it should be taken up with them. I remember getting a response that it would be inappropriate to have "foul" language (or a photo thereof) visible like that on the front page, even though it certainly wasn't foul language at all....it's simply the name of the town. So needless to say, a DYK which could have gotten 100,000 views was left to get only around 15,000 views for that day.
Is this the type of oversight you mean Kevin? If so, keep that sort of oversight on English Wikipedia thank you very much.
Cheers
Russavia
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucking,_Austria [2]
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On 13 May 2014 05:04, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
No, Russavia: I'm not suggesting that Commons' policies should mirror those of ENWP. I'm suggesting that Commons should have a process in place that ensures that it follows the clearly established resolutions of the WMF board, which I would remind you *do* trump local policy. This particular incident failed to do so, and it's not the first time that such a thing has occurred on Commons.
See, there you're asserting that this is a slam-dunk violation, and it's really clear just from this thread that it really isn't. Your personal feelings are not the determinant of Wikimedia comment, and won't become so through repetition.
- d.
Pete: there's not really any point in making this thread a laundry list of times that admins and crats on commons fucked up vs times they didn't fuck up. There are plenty of historical decisions on Commons that I agree wholeheartedly with. There have even been cases where I advanced arguments in deletion nominations that I honestly didn't expect to be accepted that were, including one instance where someone who initially voted keep took the time to go ahead and read the laws of the country the photograph was taken in w/r/t identifiable people and changed his vote. Instances like that are absolutely commendable, but they're also far from universal. Admins and crats on commons have also historically made a large number of decisions that fly in the face of WMF board resolutions, often repeatedly. Commons doesn't speak with a unified voice, but people with advanced userrights on Commons do speak with a louder voice than the rest of the community, in that they have the ostensible authority to actually carry out their actions. A project where people with advanced userrights fairly regularly make decisions that fly in the face of WMF board resolutions and are not censured by their peers is a project with problems.
David: I haven't seen anyone assert that the image in question isn't a violation of the principle of least astonishment. I've seen several people suggest the image was acceptable for other reasons. If you can articulate a reasonable (i.e., not full of snark and one that indicates you've read at least most of the ongoing discussion) argument that putting the image in question on Commons frontpage (and the frontpage of numerous other projects in the process,) is not a violation of the principle of least astonishment, I'd love to hear it. Especially if you craft your argument to recognize the fact that the image was both displayed on projects that didn't speak any of the languages it was captioned in, and given that most Wikimedia viewers can't actually play our video formats. I guess you could argue that the resolution only says that the board "supports" the POLA rather than requires it, but that's a rather weak argument for putting a grainy black and white stack of dead corpses linking to a video many can't play that's only captioned in a handful of langauges on the frontpage of a project that serves projects in 287 different languages.
---- Kevin Gorman
On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 12:14 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 13 May 2014 05:04, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
No, Russavia: I'm not suggesting that Commons' policies should mirror
those
of ENWP. I'm suggesting that Commons should have a process in place that ensures that it follows the clearly established resolutions of the WMF board, which I would remind you *do* trump local policy. This particular incident failed to do so, and it's not the first time that such a thing
has
occurred on Commons.
See, there you're asserting that this is a slam-dunk violation, and it's really clear just from this thread that it really isn't. Your personal feelings are not the determinant of Wikimedia comment, and won't become so through repetition.
- d.
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On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 3:39 PM, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
David: I haven't seen anyone assert that the image in question isn't a violation of the principle of least astonishment. I've seen several people suggest the image was acceptable for other reasons. If you can articulate a reasonable (i.e., not full of snark and one that indicates you've read at least most of the ongoing discussion) argument that putting the image in question on Commons frontpage (and the frontpage of numerous other projects in the process,) is not a violation of the principle of least astonishment, I'd love to hear it. Especially if you craft your argument to recognize the fact that the image was both displayed on projects that didn't speak any of the languages it was captioned in, and given that most Wikimedia viewers can't actually play our video formats. I guess you could argue that the resolution only says that the board "supports" the POLA rather than requires it, but that's a rather weak argument for putting a grainy black and white stack of dead corpses linking to a video many can't play that's only captioned in a handful of langauges on the frontpage of a project that serves projects in 287 different languages.
I think David was reacting to your bold assertion that the next time you determine Commons has violated a Board resolution, drastic action would be taken. This suggests some certainty on your part that the Board and stewards agree with your judgment. I haven't seen evidence of that. You can certainly advocate that action be taken, but dire warnings of certain consequences seem a bit beyond your authority to issue.
On 13 May 2014 20:47, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I think David was reacting to your bold assertion that the next time you determine Commons has violated a Board resolution, drastic action would be taken. This suggests some certainty on your part that the Board and stewards agree with your judgment. I haven't seen evidence of that. You can certainly advocate that action be taken, but dire warnings of certain consequences seem a bit beyond your authority to issue.
I was more disagreeing with the implicit claim that this was such an obvious slam dunk that Kevin could get action on it while explicitly refusing to engage with the community in question, literally on the grounds that he'd previously been so disruptive they'd spoken of banning him. That last bit really doesn't suggest the case is very strong.
- d.
David, just out of curiosity, do you actually read most posts on this mailing list? Or monitor Commons? I'll be typing up an additional response on Commons later today as I have the time but the last time you asked why I wasn't engaging on Commons the answer was, quite literally, because I hadn't finished typing my post on commons yet, and had it up within five minutes of your post (and hadn't seen your post until after I had it up.) Could you please point out again where I'm refusing to engage with the community in question?
In the meantime, I'd still love to hear the reasonable articulation that this wasn't a violation of POLA that you keep seeming to suggest exists.
---- Kevin Gorman
On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 12:49 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 13 May 2014 20:47, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I think David was reacting to your bold assertion that the next time you determine Commons has violated a Board resolution, drastic action would
be
taken. This suggests some certainty on your part that the Board and stewards agree with your judgment. I haven't seen evidence of that. You
can
certainly advocate that action be taken, but dire warnings of certain consequences seem a bit beyond your authority to issue.
I was more disagreeing with the implicit claim that this was such an obvious slam dunk that Kevin could get action on it while explicitly refusing to engage with the community in question, literally on the grounds that he'd previously been so disruptive they'd spoken of banning him. That last bit really doesn't suggest the case is very strong.
- d.
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I've never heard "Principle of Least Astonishment" used this way. I've only heard it used in the context of software design- specifically user experience- and never to describe content. WP seems to agree: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment Certain terms seem to have special significance in the WP community; is this one of those cases?
FWIW, I'm not taken aback by words like "fuck," but in my experience it always undermines serious arguments that it is used in.
,Wil
On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 12:39 PM, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
Pete: there's not really any point in making this thread a laundry list of times that admins and crats on commons fucked up vs times they didn't fuck up. There are plenty of historical decisions on Commons that I agree wholeheartedly with. There have even been cases where I advanced arguments in deletion nominations that I honestly didn't expect to be accepted that were, including one instance where someone who initially voted keep took the time to go ahead and read the laws of the country the photograph was taken in w/r/t identifiable people and changed his vote. Instances like that are absolutely commendable, but they're also far from universal. Admins and crats on commons have also historically made a large number of decisions that fly in the face of WMF board resolutions, often repeatedly. Commons doesn't speak with a unified voice, but people with advanced userrights on Commons do speak with a louder voice than the rest of the community, in that they have the ostensible authority to actually carry out their actions. A project where people with advanced userrights fairly regularly make decisions that fly in the face of WMF board resolutions and are not censured by their peers is a project with problems.
David: I haven't seen anyone assert that the image in question isn't a violation of the principle of least astonishment. I've seen several people suggest the image was acceptable for other reasons. If you can articulate a reasonable (i.e., not full of snark and one that indicates you've read at least most of the ongoing discussion) argument that putting the image in question on Commons frontpage (and the frontpage of numerous other projects in the process,) is not a violation of the principle of least astonishment, I'd love to hear it. Especially if you craft your argument to recognize the fact that the image was both displayed on projects that didn't speak any of the languages it was captioned in, and given that most Wikimedia viewers can't actually play our video formats. I guess you could argue that the resolution only says that the board "supports" the POLA rather than requires it, but that's a rather weak argument for putting a grainy black and white stack of dead corpses linking to a video many can't play that's only captioned in a handful of langauges on the frontpage of a project that serves projects in 287 different languages.
Kevin Gorman
On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 12:14 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 13 May 2014 05:04, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
No, Russavia: I'm not suggesting that Commons' policies should mirror
those
of ENWP. I'm suggesting that Commons should have a process in place that ensures that it follows the clearly established resolutions of the WMF board, which I would remind you *do* trump local policy. This particular incident failed to do so, and it's not the first time that such a thing
has
occurred on Commons.
See, there you're asserting that this is a slam-dunk violation, and it's really clear just from this thread that it really isn't. Your personal feelings are not the determinant of Wikimedia comment, and won't become so through repetition.
- d.
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Hi Wil -
It is indeed based on the idea from software design. To quote from the WMF board's iteration of it ([1]): "
- We support the principle of least astonishment: content on Wikimedia projects should be presented to readers in such a way as to respect their expectations of what any page or feature might contain."
Best, Kevin Gorman
[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Controversial_content
On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 1:08 PM, Wil Sinclair wllm@wllm.com wrote:
I've never heard "Principle of Least Astonishment" used this way. I've only heard it used in the context of software design- specifically user experience- and never to describe content. WP seems to agree: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment Certain terms seem to have special significance in the WP community; is this one of those cases?
FWIW, I'm not taken aback by words like "fuck," but in my experience it always undermines serious arguments that it is used in.
,Wil
On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 12:39 PM, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
Pete: there's not really any point in making this thread a laundry list
of
times that admins and crats on commons fucked up vs times they didn't
fuck
up. There are plenty of historical decisions on Commons that I agree wholeheartedly with. There have even been cases where I advanced
arguments
in deletion nominations that I honestly didn't expect to be accepted that were, including one instance where someone who initially voted keep took the time to go ahead and read the laws of the country the photograph was taken in w/r/t identifiable people and changed his vote. Instances like that are absolutely commendable, but they're also far from universal. Admins and crats on commons have also historically made a large number
of
decisions that fly in the face of WMF board resolutions, often
repeatedly.
Commons doesn't speak with a unified voice, but people with advanced userrights on Commons do speak with a louder voice than the rest of the community, in that they have the ostensible authority to actually carry
out
their actions. A project where people with advanced userrights fairly regularly make decisions that fly in the face of WMF board resolutions
and
are not censured by their peers is a project with problems.
David: I haven't seen anyone assert that the image in question isn't a violation of the principle of least astonishment. I've seen several
people
suggest the image was acceptable for other reasons. If you can
articulate
a reasonable (i.e., not full of snark and one that indicates you've read
at
least most of the ongoing discussion) argument that putting the image in question on Commons frontpage (and the frontpage of numerous other
projects
in the process,) is not a violation of the principle of least
astonishment,
I'd love to hear it. Especially if you craft your argument to recognize the fact that the image was both displayed on projects that didn't speak any of the languages it was captioned in, and given that most Wikimedia viewers can't actually play our video formats. I guess you could argue that the resolution only says that the board "supports" the POLA rather than requires it, but that's a rather weak argument for putting a grainy black and white stack of dead corpses linking to a video many can't play that's only captioned in a handful of langauges on the frontpage of a project that serves projects in 287 different languages.
Kevin Gorman
On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 12:14 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com
wrote:
On 13 May 2014 05:04, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
No, Russavia: I'm not suggesting that Commons' policies should mirror
those
of ENWP. I'm suggesting that Commons should have a process in place
that
ensures that it follows the clearly established resolutions of the WMF board, which I would remind you *do* trump local policy. This
particular
incident failed to do so, and it's not the first time that such a
thing
has
occurred on Commons.
See, there you're asserting that this is a slam-dunk violation, and it's really clear just from this thread that it really isn't. Your personal feelings are not the determinant of Wikimedia comment, and won't become so through repetition.
- d.
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On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 1:08 PM, Wil Sinclair wllm@wllm.com wrote:
I've never heard "Principle of Least Astonishment" used this way. I've only heard it used in the context of software design- specifically user experience- and never to describe content. WP seems to agree: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment Certain terms seem to have special significance in the WP community; is this one of those cases?
Yes -- although I don't think it's been linked in this discussion, I'm pretty sure the resolution Kevin is referring to is this one: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Controversial_content
Two comments on that:
- It does not have specific requirements of the community that must be complied with; rather, it makes suggestions of stuff to keep in mind, which have certainly been much discussed since the passage of the resolution in 2011; - Beyond the issues related to applying a principle of software design to the world of editorial judgment, this resolution has itself been the topic of some controversy in the Wikimedia movement. But not, as far as I'm aware, from the Commons community specifically; as I understand it, it was more a matter of the German Wikipedia community rebelling at the notion of a software feature designed to suppress (for instance) images depicting nudity from the default view (or even as an opt-in feature, since that would require tagging certain images in a way that might support entities outside Wikimedia to apply censorship.)
FWIW, I'm not taken aback by words like "fuck," but in my experience
it always undermines serious arguments that it is used in.
Agreed. Especially in a discussion of meeting cultural expectations, this seems like a very strange and provocative choice of words.
Pete
On 13 May 2014 21:08, Wil Sinclair wllm@wllm.com wrote:
I've never heard "Principle of Least Astonishment" used this way. I've only heard it used in the context of software design- specifically user experience- and never to describe content. WP seems to agree: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment Certain terms seem to have special significance in the WP community; is this one of those cases?
FWIW, I'm not taken aback by words like "fuck," but in my experience it always undermines serious arguments that it is used in.
This is grand historic debate :-)
POLA got thrown around a lot in the c. 2011 debates about whether WP should support/enable/allow/contemplate some kind of image filtering - it was used in the Board resolution which more or less kicked the whole thing off.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Controversial_content
The sense here seems to be that you might expect nudity on a medical or sexuality-related page, but you wouldn't expect random nudity in an article about a bridge.* But then, what level of nudity? Click-to-view? How graphic? etc. It's a good principle but relies on individual editorial common sense, which of course is very difficult to scale and very vulnerable to deliberate disruption.
We had a few months of yelling, lots of grumbling and accusations of bad faith, and the whole thing eventually ground to a halt in late 2011 with very little actually done. The resolution is still out there, though...
Andrew.
* today's surprising fact: a particularly odd contributor tried to argue for this, at great length, in ~2005. I forget which article on enwiki it was.
How about you shut your mouth and stop insulting volunteer from other projects that you just don't know. Really that would spare a lot of time to everyone here on this mailing list.
2014-05-13 21:39 GMT+02:00 Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com:
Pete: there's not really any point in making this thread a laundry list of times that admins and crats on commons fucked up vs times they didn't fuck up. There are plenty of historical decisions on Commons that I agree wholeheartedly with. There have even been cases where I advanced arguments in deletion nominations that I honestly didn't expect to be accepted that were, including one instance where someone who initially voted keep took the time to go ahead and read the laws of the country the photograph was taken in w/r/t identifiable people and changed his vote. Instances like that are absolutely commendable, but they're also far from universal. Admins and crats on commons have also historically made a large number of decisions that fly in the face of WMF board resolutions, often repeatedly. Commons doesn't speak with a unified voice, but people with advanced userrights on Commons do speak with a louder voice than the rest of the community, in that they have the ostensible authority to actually carry out their actions. A project where people with advanced userrights fairly regularly make decisions that fly in the face of WMF board resolutions and are not censured by their peers is a project with problems.
David: I haven't seen anyone assert that the image in question isn't a violation of the principle of least astonishment. I've seen several people suggest the image was acceptable for other reasons. If you can articulate a reasonable (i.e., not full of snark and one that indicates you've read at least most of the ongoing discussion) argument that putting the image in question on Commons frontpage (and the frontpage of numerous other projects in the process,) is not a violation of the principle of least astonishment, I'd love to hear it. Especially if you craft your argument to recognize the fact that the image was both displayed on projects that didn't speak any of the languages it was captioned in, and given that most Wikimedia viewers can't actually play our video formats. I guess you could argue that the resolution only says that the board "supports" the POLA rather than requires it, but that's a rather weak argument for putting a grainy black and white stack of dead corpses linking to a video many can't play that's only captioned in a handful of langauges on the frontpage of a project that serves projects in 287 different languages.
Kevin Gorman
On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 12:14 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 13 May 2014 05:04, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
No, Russavia: I'm not suggesting that Commons' policies should mirror
those
of ENWP. I'm suggesting that Commons should have a process in place
that
ensures that it follows the clearly established resolutions of the WMF board, which I would remind you *do* trump local policy. This
particular
incident failed to do so, and it's not the first time that such a thing
has
occurred on Commons.
See, there you're asserting that this is a slam-dunk violation, and it's really clear just from this thread that it really isn't. Your personal feelings are not the determinant of Wikimedia comment, and won't become so through repetition.
- d.
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Pierre, if you could point out to where exactly I've insulted a volunteer I don't know, it would be appreciated. As someone who has been significantly active in meta-discussions about Commons, and at times significantly active on Commons, and who has monitored all traffic on all Wikimedia mailing lists (or at least 95% of it) for the last three years as well as a significant portion of traffic on individual projects, I'm also going to have to disagree with the idea that I know nothing about Commons :) Having looked back over my posts here, the closest I see is implicitly suggesting that Russavia might be snarky, and suggesting that people with advanced privileges on Commons, as a whole, have frequently exercised less than ideal judgement, as well as an incidental use of a profanity on my part (when interacting in multiple contexts at once, I don't always context switch appropriately.) The first two things which could be conceived as insults (I suppose) are first and foremost true, and secondarily I'm sure that Russavia can deal having it suggested that he might, sometimes, be kind of snarky.
---- Kevin Gorman
On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 1:21 PM, Pierre-Selim pierre-selim@huard.infowrote:
How about you shut your mouth and stop insulting volunteer from other projects that you just don't know. Really that would spare a lot of time to everyone here on this mailing list.
2014-05-13 21:39 GMT+02:00 Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com:
Pete: there's not really any point in making this thread a laundry list
of
times that admins and crats on commons fucked up vs times they didn't
fuck
up. There are plenty of historical decisions on Commons that I agree wholeheartedly with. There have even been cases where I advanced
arguments
in deletion nominations that I honestly didn't expect to be accepted that were, including one instance where someone who initially voted keep took the time to go ahead and read the laws of the country the photograph was taken in w/r/t identifiable people and changed his vote. Instances like that are absolutely commendable, but they're also far from universal. Admins and crats on commons have also historically made a large number
of
decisions that fly in the face of WMF board resolutions, often
repeatedly.
Commons doesn't speak with a unified voice, but people with advanced userrights on Commons do speak with a louder voice than the rest of the community, in that they have the ostensible authority to actually carry
out
their actions. A project where people with advanced userrights fairly regularly make decisions that fly in the face of WMF board resolutions
and
are not censured by their peers is a project with problems.
David: I haven't seen anyone assert that the image in question isn't a violation of the principle of least astonishment. I've seen several
people
suggest the image was acceptable for other reasons. If you can
articulate
a reasonable (i.e., not full of snark and one that indicates you've read
at
least most of the ongoing discussion) argument that putting the image in question on Commons frontpage (and the frontpage of numerous other
projects
in the process,) is not a violation of the principle of least
astonishment,
I'd love to hear it. Especially if you craft your argument to recognize the fact that the image was both displayed on projects that didn't speak any of the languages it was captioned in, and given that most Wikimedia viewers can't actually play our video formats. I guess you could argue that the resolution only says that the board "supports" the POLA rather than requires it, but that's a rather weak argument for putting a grainy black and white stack of dead corpses linking to a video many can't play that's only captioned in a handful of langauges on the frontpage of a project that serves projects in 287 different languages.
Kevin Gorman
On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 12:14 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com
wrote:
On 13 May 2014 05:04, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
No, Russavia: I'm not suggesting that Commons' policies should mirror
those
of ENWP. I'm suggesting that Commons should have a process in place
that
ensures that it follows the clearly established resolutions of the
WMF
board, which I would remind you *do* trump local policy. This
particular
incident failed to do so, and it's not the first time that such a
thing
has
occurred on Commons.
See, there you're asserting that this is a slam-dunk violation, and it's really clear just from this thread that it really isn't. Your personal feelings are not the determinant of Wikimedia comment, and won't become so through repetition.
- d.
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I don't think it's a secret that I've also been active on the Wikipediocracy forums. I've seen some rough stuff over there, and I've even started a thread lecturing them on the nature of their discourse: http://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=4527 That said, I haven't seen anyone on Wikipediocracy treat another person in their forums like this yet.
My point is that no matter what our views on Wikipedia, parts of the WP community, and individuals within that community, everyone benefits from each participant in the discussion holding themselves to high standards of personal respect and everyone loses when disagreement turns to insult. Forums with these kinds of comments are not taken as seriously as more civil forums, and anyone who chooses to express themselves this way should think about how it impacts everyone else in the group.
There. I'm done lecturing now. :) ,Wil
On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 1:21 PM, Pierre-Selim pierre-selim@huard.info wrote:
How about you shut your mouth and stop insulting volunteer from other projects that you just don't know. Really that would spare a lot of time to everyone here on this mailing list.
2014-05-13 21:39 GMT+02:00 Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com:
Pete: there's not really any point in making this thread a laundry list of times that admins and crats on commons fucked up vs times they didn't fuck up. There are plenty of historical decisions on Commons that I agree wholeheartedly with. There have even been cases where I advanced arguments in deletion nominations that I honestly didn't expect to be accepted that were, including one instance where someone who initially voted keep took the time to go ahead and read the laws of the country the photograph was taken in w/r/t identifiable people and changed his vote. Instances like that are absolutely commendable, but they're also far from universal. Admins and crats on commons have also historically made a large number of decisions that fly in the face of WMF board resolutions, often repeatedly. Commons doesn't speak with a unified voice, but people with advanced userrights on Commons do speak with a louder voice than the rest of the community, in that they have the ostensible authority to actually carry out their actions. A project where people with advanced userrights fairly regularly make decisions that fly in the face of WMF board resolutions and are not censured by their peers is a project with problems.
David: I haven't seen anyone assert that the image in question isn't a violation of the principle of least astonishment. I've seen several people suggest the image was acceptable for other reasons. If you can articulate a reasonable (i.e., not full of snark and one that indicates you've read at least most of the ongoing discussion) argument that putting the image in question on Commons frontpage (and the frontpage of numerous other projects in the process,) is not a violation of the principle of least astonishment, I'd love to hear it. Especially if you craft your argument to recognize the fact that the image was both displayed on projects that didn't speak any of the languages it was captioned in, and given that most Wikimedia viewers can't actually play our video formats. I guess you could argue that the resolution only says that the board "supports" the POLA rather than requires it, but that's a rather weak argument for putting a grainy black and white stack of dead corpses linking to a video many can't play that's only captioned in a handful of langauges on the frontpage of a project that serves projects in 287 different languages.
Kevin Gorman
On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 12:14 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 13 May 2014 05:04, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
No, Russavia: I'm not suggesting that Commons' policies should mirror
those
of ENWP. I'm suggesting that Commons should have a process in place
that
ensures that it follows the clearly established resolutions of the WMF board, which I would remind you *do* trump local policy. This
particular
incident failed to do so, and it's not the first time that such a thing
has
occurred on Commons.
See, there you're asserting that this is a slam-dunk violation, and it's really clear just from this thread that it really isn't. Your personal feelings are not the determinant of Wikimedia comment, and won't become so through repetition.
- d.
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On 13 May 2014 21:21, Pierre-Selim pierre-selim@huard.info wrote:
How about you shut your mouth and stop insulting volunteer from other projects that you just don't know. Really that would spare a lot of time to everyone here on this mailing list.
You had me laughing with this one, it was so out of character.
I think this thread ended a while back.
PS Wil - there are some very, very nasty people on Wikipediocracy, who do not appear to know where the boundaries of normal human decency are. Comparing this list to that place is ... unhelpful. No doubt you will discover that for yourself.
Fae
On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 12:39 PM, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
Pete: there's not really any point in making this thread a laundry list of times that admins and crats on commons fucked up vs times they didn't fuck up.
As I said (at Fae's suggestion), there's no reason to clutter the list. If you want to dig into this, I'd suggest setting up a wiki page (or a discussion at, say, the Commons Village Pump). And the reason I suggested it is, as I said, to generate some actual examples, so that we can move away from the sweeping generalizations you have been repeatedly making in this discussion thread.
Admins and crats on commons have also historically made a large number of decisions that fly in the face of WMF board resolutions, often repeatedly.
David Gerard's point is ringing very true here: you will not make this assertion more true merely by repeating it. Examples, please -- or else please drop it.
A project where people with advanced userrights fairly
regularly make decisions that fly in the face of WMF board resolutions and are not censured by their peers is a project with problems.
And then you repeat it again, within the same message. Again, without substantiation.
I guess you could argue
that the resolution only says that the board "supports" the POLA rather than requires it,
Indeed: the Board apparently recognized that the POLA as they defined it does not create black-and-white scenarios, and rather than requiring anybody (besides the ED) to do anything specific, concluded with a general request that the community take it into account. That is a strong argument against your position, not a weak one. It clearly demonstrates that there is no rebellion against this resolution, for the very simple reason that *the resolution (wisely) contains no specific mandate against which to rebel.*
Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 12:14 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 13 May 2014 05:04, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
No, Russavia: I'm not suggesting that Commons' policies should mirror
those
of ENWP. I'm suggesting that Commons should have a process in place
that
ensures that it follows the clearly established resolutions of the WMF board, which I would remind you *do* trump local policy. This
particular
incident failed to do so, and it's not the first time that such a thing
has
occurred on Commons.
See, there you're asserting that this is a slam-dunk violation, and it's really clear just from this thread that it really isn't. Your personal feelings are not the determinant of Wikimedia comment, and won't become so through repetition.
- d.
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On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 9:53 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
Admins and crats on commons have also historically made a large number of decisions that fly in the face of WMF board resolutions, often
repeatedly.
David Gerard's point is ringing very true here: you will not make this assertion more true merely by repeating it. Examples, please -- or else please drop it.
Example 1:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/ObiWolf_Lesbian...)
Clear violation (no evidence of model consent, photographer made clear the models wanted them off Commons). Took six attempts over several years to delete, despite a board member personally voting Delete in one or two prior nominations.
Example 2:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Category:Sexual...
Again, review the prior deletion discussions where these were kept. Models shown full-face, recognisable, no evidence whatsoever of model consent, geo-tagged to a precise street address.
On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 2:05 PM, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Example 1:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/ObiWolf_Lesbian...)
Clear violation (no evidence of model consent, photographer made clear the models wanted them off Commons). Took six attempts over several years to delete, despite a board member personally voting Delete in one or two prior nominations.
Example 2:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Category:Sexual...
Again, review the prior deletion discussions where these were kept. Models shown full-face, recognisable, no evidence whatsoever of model consent, geo-tagged to a precise street address.
So you've provided two examples where you agree that the correct decision was ultimately made, and where that decision has stood (in one case) for a year, and (in the other) for two years without being challenged or reversed. Your examples don't match what I was asking for (and there are plenty of examples like that out there, so I'm surprised you've brought these ones forward). Your point is like saying that the entire US court system is broken, on the basis that some decisions in trial courts have historically been overturned by the more careful analysis of the Supreme Court. You're underscoring the *healthy* (if maybe inefficient) functioning of Commons, not the opposite.
But, I appreciate the opportunity to talk about some good decisions, so I'll give your strange nominations the benefit of the doubt and come up with 10 examples of clearly good decisions. Unfortunately I don't have time to dig into it right now, but I should be able to get to it in the next 12-24 hours. I'll post to a page on Commons, and publish a link here.
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 1:18 AM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 2:05 PM, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 9:53 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.comwrote:
Admins and crats on commons have also historically made a large number of decisions that fly in the face of WMF board resolutions, often
repeatedly.
David Gerard's point is ringing very true here: you will not make this assertion more true merely by repeating it. Examples, please -- or else please drop it.
Example 1:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/ObiWolf_Lesbian...)
Clear violation (no evidence of model consent, photographer made clear
the
models wanted them off Commons). Took six attempts over several years to delete, despite a board member personally voting Delete in one or two
prior
nominations.
Example 2:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Category:Sexual...
Again, review the prior deletion discussions where these were kept.
Models
shown full-face, recognisable, no evidence whatsoever of model consent, geo-tagged to a precise street address.
So you've provided two examples where you agree that the correct decision was ultimately made, and where that decision has stood (in one case) for a year, and (in the other) for two years without being challenged or reversed. Your examples don't match what I was asking for (and there are plenty of examples like that out there, so I'm surprised you've brought these ones forward).
What more do you want, mate? You asked for examples of historical decisions that flew in the face of the board resolution.
Yes, after these cases received a lot of attention on the mailing lists, people (including some of the same people who had previously decided Keep) did indeed, with remarkable unanimity, come to the conclusion that these files should be deleted.
This was after the closing admin in one of these cases had threatened, after the thirteenth "Keep" closure (well after the board resolution was published), that if he were to see another nomination, "I will probably just revert it and protect the page".
Kevin, Andreas, et al:
It took me a couple days, but I've assembled my list of files, exceeding the 10 I had committed to: http://wikistrategies.net/wikimedia-commons-is-far-from-ethically-broken/
I hope this annotated list of interesting deletion discussions on Commons is helpful to those who don't regularly participate; there is so much activity there that can be difficult to track. Of course, it's not close to exhaustive; I'd welcome suggestions of additional examples to highlight, and if anybody wants to copy this to a wiki page for further expansion that's fine by me.
Andreas, in response to your last message -- I'm perfectly fine with the examples you provided! I just happen to think they do a better job supporting my position ("Commons is healthy and productive") than they do yours ("Commons is broken"). I understand you disagree, and that's fine.
A final detail, directed mainly to Wil (and anybody interested in the Board resolution that's been discussed): I don't think it's been mentioned that the directive to develop an image suppression feature was rescinded a year later: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Personal_image_hiding_featur...
Anyway -- I hope we can have a bit more discussion about the decision-making practices at Commons, informed by a wider variety of specific examples than we have had so far in this discussion thread.
Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 2:05 PM, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 9:53 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
Admins and crats on commons have also historically made a large number
of
decisions that fly in the face of WMF board resolutions, often
repeatedly.
David Gerard's point is ringing very true here: you will not make this assertion more true merely by repeating it. Examples, please -- or else please drop it.
Example 1:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/ObiWolf_Lesbian...)
Clear violation (no evidence of model consent, photographer made clear the models wanted them off Commons). Took six attempts over several years to delete, despite a board member personally voting Delete in one or two prior nominations.
Example 2:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Category:Sexual...
Again, review the prior deletion discussions where these were kept. Models shown full-face, recognisable, no evidence whatsoever of model consent, geo-tagged to a precise street address. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On 15 May 2014 23:20, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
A final detail, directed mainly to Wil (and anybody interested in the Board resolution that's been discussed): I don't think it's been mentioned that the directive to develop an image suppression feature was rescinded a year later: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Personal_image_hiding_featur...
The most important thing to remember about tihe image filter - and its enabling resolution, the "principle of least surprise" - is that this was such a *stupendously* bad idea that it very nearly led to the second hostile fork of a Wikimedia project. Thus, anyone citing the POLS without noting this is being disingenous at absolute best. (Look back through this thread. I see one aspirant to steward.)
- d.
Pete, you know the "toothbrush" image you talk about on your blog still shows up on a Commons search for "electric toothbrush", right? It's in Category:Nude or partially nude people with electric toothbrusheshttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Nude_or_partially_nude_people_with_electric_toothbrusheswhich is in turn a subcategory of Category:People with electric toothbrusheshttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:People_with_electric_toothbrushesso it shows up on any search of "electric toothbrush".
Seems the whole category thing really isn't as solved as well as people think. It still comes up as image #4 on a multimedia search of enwiki for "electric toothbrush" and about #45 for a multimedia search of "toothbrush". Even though the title was changed, it remains in the category that gives high-ranking searches.
Risker/Anne
On 15 May 2014 18:20, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
Kevin, Andreas, et al:
It took me a couple days, but I've assembled my list of files, exceeding the 10 I had committed to: http://wikistrategies.net/wikimedia-commons-is-far-from-ethically-broken/
I hope this annotated list of interesting deletion discussions on Commons is helpful to those who don't regularly participate; there is so much activity there that can be difficult to track. Of course, it's not close to exhaustive; I'd welcome suggestions of additional examples to highlight, and if anybody wants to copy this to a wiki page for further expansion that's fine by me.
Andreas, in response to your last message -- I'm perfectly fine with the examples you provided! I just happen to think they do a better job supporting my position ("Commons is healthy and productive") than they do yours ("Commons is broken"). I understand you disagree, and that's fine.
A final detail, directed mainly to Wil (and anybody interested in the Board resolution that's been discussed): I don't think it's been mentioned that the directive to develop an image suppression feature was rescinded a year later:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Personal_image_hiding_featur...
Anyway -- I hope we can have a bit more discussion about the decision-making practices at Commons, informed by a wider variety of specific examples than we have had so far in this discussion thread.
Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 2:05 PM, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 9:53 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
Admins and crats on commons have also historically made a large
number
of
decisions that fly in the face of WMF board resolutions, often
repeatedly.
David Gerard's point is ringing very true here: you will not make this assertion more true merely by repeating it. Examples, please -- or else please drop it.
Example 1:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/ObiWolf_Lesbian...)
Clear violation (no evidence of model consent, photographer made clear
the
models wanted them off Commons). Took six attempts over several years to delete, despite a board member personally voting Delete in one or two
prior
nominations.
Example 2:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Category:Sexual...
Again, review the prior deletion discussions where these were kept.
Models
shown full-face, recognisable, no evidence whatsoever of model consent, geo-tagged to a precise street address. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 3:09 AM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Pete, you know the "toothbrush" image you talk about on your blog still shows up on a Commons search for "electric toothbrush", right? It's in Category:Nude or partially nude people with electric toothbrushes< https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Nude_or_partially_nude_people_wi...
which
is in turn a subcategory of Category:People with electric toothbrushes< https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:People_with_electric_toothbrushe...
so
it shows up on any search of "electric toothbrush".
Seems the whole category thing really isn't as solved as well as people think. It still comes up as image #4 on a multimedia search of enwiki for "electric toothbrush" and about #45 for a multimedia search of "toothbrush". Even though the title was changed, it remains in the category that gives high-ranking searches.
Quite. Same goes for "beads", "flashlight", or the French word for cucumber ("concombre"). The "tolling bells" toll as loudly as ever.
This Wikipedia search form is SFW (safe for work):
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&search=&fu...
The search results for the above terms (and many others) are not SFW.
The NSFW search results issue never was solved. It's just one of those things there was no political will to fix.
Pete,
I am sure that I speak on behalf of all of the Commons community when I say that it is disheartening to continually hear the mantra "commons is broken", when that could not be further from the truth. Your blog post, helps to present some of that reality, so I thank you, both on my behalf and on behalf of the Commons community. I will have some comments later on a couple of issues.
Risker,
Of course the image still shows up on search for electric toothbrush. If you read the closure on that DR, which I wrote in conjunction with 3 other admins, the issue is very clear. It's not a Commons problem, but a WMF problem.
Cheers
Russavia
On 15 May 2014 22:22, Russavia russavia.wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
Pete,
I am sure that I speak on behalf of all of the Commons community when I say that it is disheartening to continually hear the mantra "commons is broken", when that could not be further from the truth. Your blog post, helps to present some of that reality, so I thank you, both on my behalf and on behalf of the Commons community. I will have some comments later on a couple of issues.
Risker,
Of course the image still shows up on search for electric toothbrush. If you read the closure on that DR, which I wrote in conjunction with 3 other admins, the issue is very clear. It's not a Commons problem, but a WMF problem.
Cheers
The solution to the problem is entirely within the control of Commons - recategorize the image to "improvised vibrators" instead of "electric toothbrush" and you're done. I wouldn't dare do it myself, it would be the kind of "provocative" activity from "someone who doesn't really understand Commons" that could result in my being blocked. I do understand that much about Commons and its culture.
Risker
Risker,
The solution to the problem is entirely within the control of Commons - recategorize the image to "improvised vibrators" instead of "electric toothbrush" and you're done. I wouldn't dare do it myself, it would be the kinunderstandd of "provocative" activity from "someone who doesn't really Commons" that could result in my being blocked. I do understand that much about Commons and its culture.
I will respond to your last point first. I, as well as many other Commonists/Commoners/whatever, make ourselves available on IRC in #wikimedia-commons, and we often have people visiting the channel with queries on images. I recall only ever having seen you on two occasions in that channel, and I remember both occasions vividly, because I said g'day on both occasions, and assisted you.
The first occasion you brought to our attention a logo which was on Commons, and which was an obvious copyright violation. I proceeded to immediately delete the file, and explained to you that in future you can simply apply {{copyvio}} to the file in question and it would be dealt with. It's not because we don't mind people using IRC to bring files to our attention, because we don't mind at all, it's just that workflows on Commons in that area are dealt with pretty quickly, as this attests to,[1] and it would you to streamline your time as well.
The second occasion you brought to our attention a sexual image, and upon looking at it I immediately deleted it as being out of scope. I didn't bother taking it to DR, and have deleted literally hundreds of sexual images from Commons this way by using the discretion that the community places in admins. You were thanked for bringing it to our attention, and I told you not to hesitate to contact me directly if you should come across other such images in future, and I would review them, and deal with them as appropriate.
This just doesn't align with the "Commons and its culture" that you understand, does it? But ok, let's use an example which could result in an editor being blocked.
There was a thread on Gendergap which discussed some images on Commons.[2] As a result of this thread, an English Wikipedia Bureaucrat, and an only occasional admin on Commons, proceeded to mass delete the entire lot of images, many of which had been through a deletion request in the past, and some of which were in use.[3] As Pete Forsyth mentioned,[4] EVula showed utter contempt for Commons process and really should have gone through the de-admin process. How did that pan out?[5]
But of course, you, with a grand total of 303 edits on Commons going back to 2007 (most of which comprises of voting on Picture of the Year) are speaking from a position of experience when you say you understand Commons and its culture. So you'll excuse me, but it is a bit rich you saying that, and see your comments as insanely out of touch with the reality.[6] And, quite frankly, you should ensure your "own house" is in order, before making ill-informed judgments on project culture as you have made. Would you like me to provide a prime example of what I mean? And it is a most disgusting episode I can tell you, and list members would cringe with horror if they were to see this example. Tell me if you would like to hear the example, and I'll start a new thread on it. It could also generate discussion on an issue which afflicts our projects.
Now, Risker, the solution to the problem that you have described lies not in censoring Commons, which is essentially what you have suggested, but in what is written in the closure of the DR. Unfortunately, that would require some money to be spent on fixing the problem, and would stop anti-Commons tirades as we are seeing here and elsewhere.
It would appear that the WMF is more interested in spending money on having Indian students inserting copyright violations en masse on English Wikipedia[7] and other such nonsense. I do totally sympathise with the Indian students, however,[8] because I have contacted relevant people at the WMF on numerous occasions, but unlike the Indian students I have never received a response (usual for the WMF unfortunately).
I have been told that it might cost $10-20,000 to get someone to write code to implement the solution that sees varied support amongst different "camps",[9] (including support by a WMF Trustee) yet here we are, the WMF has $60+ million budgets, spends $1.5 million to fly the entire WMF staff for a junket to Hong Kong, and a host of other wasteful spending, and yet one of the most prominent issues on our projects is actively ignored.
You're close with the WMF Risker, why don't you lobby them for a solution as was pointed out in that DR closure? It would certainly go a huge way to fixing the problem if they would spend some real money on search and implement solutions that the community so direly requires.
Perhaps, finally, we can drop the the anti-Commons combative attitude as has been so prevalent in this thread, and other projects can work with Commons to give the WMF a firm kick up the behind, and help us to help you.
Cheers
Russavia
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Copyright_violations [2] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/gendergap/2013-May/subject.html (search for thread "[Gendergap] Category:Nude portrayals of computer technology") [3] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:EVula/Archive-2013#Speedy_delet... [4] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Use... [5] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:EVula/Archive-2013#COM:AN.2FU [6] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Russavia/userboxes/bullshit [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:India_Education_Program/Analysis/Ind... [8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:India_Education_Program/Analysis/Ind... [9] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Requests_for_comment/improving_se...
On 16 May 2014 15:09, Russavia russavia.wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
But of course, you, with a grand total of 303 edits on Commons going back to 2007 (most of which comprises of voting on Picture of the Year) are speaking from a position of experience when you say you understand Commons and its culture. So you'll excuse me, but it is a bit rich you saying that, and see your comments as insanely out of touch with the reality.
Out of curiosity, how many edits to Commons must one have for their opinion to be valid?
Cheers, Craig
On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 11:20 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.comwrote:
Andreas, in response to your last message -- I'm perfectly fine with the examples you provided! I just happen to think they do a better job supporting my position ("Commons is healthy and productive")
I'd have been more impressed if Commons had got there by itself, without massive mailing list discussions carrying on for weeks.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2012-March/006409.html http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2012-April/date.html
than they do yours ("Commons is broken"). I understand you disagree, and that's fine.
Don't put words in my mouth, Pete. "Commons is broken" is a Jimmy Wales quote.
I do think Commons has some ways to go, though, on adult material. File names that make no pretence at using educational wording are one such area.
On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 8:20 PM, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Don't put words in my mouth, Pete. "Commons is broken" is a Jimmy Wales quote.
It's something many people have said, and I do apologize for my mistake -- I thought you were one of them. I am very happy to learn that I was wrong about that, and appreciate the clarification.
I do think Commons has some ways to go, though,
Agree 100%. This is something I work on, if not every day, probably every week. I do think that progress is being made, on adult material and in many other areas. But you're right, there's lots of work to do in developing a a shared understanding of what issues are at play and how to go about addressing them. The point of I'm trying to make in this discussion is, we do a lot more good by focusing on what's working, and then expanding on that, than we do by getting all accusatory about the things that are *not* working. (And such accusations often seem to be accompanied by an unjustified assumption that the bad somehow outweighs the good.)
Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 9:05 AM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
The point of I'm trying to make in this discussion is, we
do a lot more good by focusing on what's working, and then expanding on
that, than we do by getting all accusatory about the things that are *not* working.
Think of a surgeon who's done thousands of successful routine operations. But every once in a while, he does a gastric bypass, and those patients more often than not end up harmed.
It isn't appropriate in such a case to "focus on what's working".
(And such accusations often seem to be accompanied by an unjustified assumption that the bad somehow outweighs the good.)
The question isn't whether the bad outweighs the good.
On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 1:39 AM, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 9:05 AM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
The point of I'm trying to make in this discussion is, we
do a lot more good by focusing on what's working, and then expanding on
that, than we do by getting all accusatory about the things that are
*not*
working.
Think of a surgeon who's done thousands of successful routine operations. But every once in a while, he does a gastric bypass, and those patients more often than not end up harmed.
It isn't appropriate in such a case to "focus on what's working".
(And such accusations often seem to be accompanied by an unjustified assumption that the bad somehow outweighs the good.)
The question isn't whether the bad outweighs the good.
Andreas,
I agree with your more sophisticated concerns about what is going on. However, I think it's really important to put them in context. If Wikimedia Commons had existed in 1985, this would be a very compelling line of criticism. But in 2014, the same kind of issues -- occasionally encountering shockingly inappropriate images on occasion -- happens whether you are using Wikimedia Commons, Google search, Flickr, Instagram, or any number of other sites -- not to mention spam that arrives unbidden in your email box. If there are studies that quantify how often this happens in different contexts, I'm not aware of them (and would be very happy to learn about them). Until we can look at that kind of study, I refuse to accept as a premise that Commons is categorically worse than other broad collections of media on the Internet.
This is a problem to be addressed, yes. And it is a problem that the Commons community works to address (at least in incremental fashion) every single day. But in my opinion, it is not a problem to panic about.
Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 9:46 AM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
I agree with your more sophisticated concerns about what is going on. However, I think it's really important to put them in context. If Wikimedia Commons had existed in 1985, this would be a very compelling line of criticism. But in 2014, the same kind of issues -- occasionally encountering shockingly inappropriate images on occasion -- happens whether you are using Wikimedia Commons, Google search, Flickr, Instagram, or any number of other sites -- not to mention spam that arrives unbidden in your email box. If there are studies that quantify how often this happens in different contexts, I'm not aware of them (and would be very happy to learn about them). Until we can look at that kind of study, I refuse to accept as a premise that Commons is categorically worse than other broad collections of media on the Internet.
Commons is fundamentally different from Google, Flickr and other image repositories in that it doesn't have safe search, neither as default nor as an option.
If you enter "human male", "forefinger", "Asian", "Caucasian", or "Black" as search terms in –
1.
Google Images
2.
Flickr
3.
Wikipedia Multimedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&search=&fu...
– the results are strikingly different, with the Wikimedia image repository the only one returning NSFW results (this applies even if you switch Google Safe Search off).
You can philosophically debate, applaud or excoriate that fact, as many have done, but it remains a fact.
On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 2:54 AM, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Commons is fundamentally different from Google, Flickr and other image repositories in that it doesn't have safe search, neither as default nor as an option.
Have you never had Safe Search features fail? It seems to happen regularly for me.
Overall though -- I don't disagree with you, this is stuff that should be fixed. But as Erik pointed out, the fix is not obvious.
The thing that bothers me is when people (especially movement leaders) falsely accuse entire communities of standing in the way of progress.
Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 4:53 PM, Pete Forsyth peteforsyth@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 12:39 PM, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
Pete: there's not really any point in making this thread a laundry list
of
times that admins and crats on commons fucked up vs times they didn't
fuck
up.
As I said (at Fae's suggestion), there's no reason to clutter the list. If you want to dig into this, I'd suggest setting up a wiki page (or a discussion at, say, the Commons Village Pump). And the reason I suggested it is, as I said, to generate some actual examples, so that we can move away from the sweeping generalizations you have been repeatedly making in this discussion thread.
Admins and crats on commons have also historically made a large number of decisions that fly in the face of WMF board resolutions, often
repeatedly.
David Gerard's point is ringing very true here: you will not make this assertion more true merely by repeating it. Examples, please -- or else please drop it.
A project where people with advanced userrights fairly
regularly make decisions that fly in the face of WMF board resolutions
and
are not censured by their peers is a project with problems.
And then you repeat it again, within the same message. Again, without substantiation.
A lot of the issues Kevin is probably referring to revolve around the 2011 debate, and many of the most blatant problems have since been cleaned up. I haven't looked into it recently, but there was a serious issue years ago with wank galleries, images with questionable provenance, images of potentially underage models, etc. Many of the policies around consent and identity that have been developed in recent years came to Commons partly as the result of huge external pressure and in the face of massive resistance by many (but by no means all or even most) Commoners.
Nathan wrote:
A lot of the issues Kevin is probably referring to revolve around the 2011 debate, and many of the most blatant problems have since been cleaned up.
Perhaps some of the most blatant problems have been addressed, but I'm skeptical. I admit I haven't been following this discussion terribly closely, but I just looked at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Controversial_content/Problems again and the first link I clicked...
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Search/asian
The first result is "File:Asian vulva.jpg" while the third result is "File:Asian penis.jpg". Perhaps our search capability is simply really bad. Personally, I would expect a search for the term "asian" to show pictures of Asians. I think there's room for at least consideration of lessons from other fields, such as the principle of least astonishment. Another way of framing this particular issue (search) might be: are the results users receiving what they were looking for or expected? I think in many cases, image search is failing our users.
MZMcBride
On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 9:42 AM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Nathan wrote:
A lot of the issues Kevin is probably referring to revolve around the 2011 debate, and many of the most blatant problems have since been cleaned up.
Perhaps some of the most blatant problems have been addressed, but I'm skeptical. I admit I haven't been following this discussion terribly closely, but I just looked at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Controversial_content/Problems again and the first link I clicked...
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Search/asian
The first result is "File:Asian vulva.jpg" while the third result is "File:Asian penis.jpg". Perhaps our search capability is simply really bad. Personally, I would expect a search for the term "asian" to show pictures of Asians. I think there's room for at least consideration of lessons from other fields, such as the principle of least astonishment. Another way of framing this particular issue (search) might be: are the results users receiving what they were looking for or expected? I think in many cases, image search is failing our users.
We're getting a long way off topic of the still frame on MOTD, but I agree, and wish that the WMF would make this a priority for their multimedia and search team. Many improvements have been suggested by the community, and both sides of the fence have even agreed on some of them, such as clustered search results:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Controversial_content/Brainstorming#Clusteri... https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35701
-- John Vandenberg
On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 10:03 PM, John Mark Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
We're getting a long way off topic of the still frame on MOTD, but I agree, and wish that the WMF would make this a priority for their multimedia and search team. Many improvements have been suggested by the community, and both sides of the fence have even agreed on some of them, such as clustered search results:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Controversial_content/Brainstorming#Clusteri... https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35701
First, as general background, WMF recently started migrating its search infrastructure over to ElasticSearch. See:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Search https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:CirrusSearch
The new search is available on Commons as a BetaFeature. It's worth looking at search results that are viewed as problematic through the new search and compare. For example, the results for "Asian" are markedly different in the new search.
I would caution against a simplistic characterization of technology as a solution for what's inherently a complex socio-technical problem. That was a core issue with the image filter proposal and it's a similar issue here. If people insist on uploading pictures of masturbation with toothbrushes, those pictures will come up in searches. If we insist on not having a distinction between explicit and non-explicit materials in file metadata, search results won't have it either. We can point the finger at technology because that's easy, but it's not magical pixie dust.
To get a feel for ElasticSearch's capabilities, please see the help page above, as well as the tech talk that Nik gave earlier today on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FubXExbAvOA
Capabilities that exist today with the new search include template-based "boosting" of results, a feature that's already enabled on Commons and which will boost quality content in search results: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Cirrussearch-boost...
ElasticSearch has support for faceting (see http://www.elasticsearch.org/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/search... ), which might come in handy for creating a breakdown of search results.
However, keep in mind that unless you collapse each facet by default, you're still going to show explicit thumbs -- and collapsing results by default could compromise usability to an unacceptable degree for the common use case. The more complex suggestions that include taking the full category tree into account also seem fairly complex/expensive (ElasticSearch has no awareness of the actual category tree structure, which is a complex structure to traverse) and a faceted search that only operates on the specific categories associated with a given file might not be very useful due to the high degree of granularity that exists in the category structure.
I'd encourage Nik and Chad (search engineers) to weigh in here & on the bug as they see fit, as well as correct me if I'm misrepresenting anything in the above.
Cheers, Erik
I should state that I haven't fully kept up to date on this thread; I managed to give myself a concussion this week and have been limiting the amount of time spent on activities that are mentally intensive. I decided to pop in and check on how it was going though, and after seeing Russavia's friendly there-are-no-problems-with-commons-culture tone in his last post, I figured I'd pop in and ask a question of Russavia (which he refused to answer on-wiki.)
Russavia: one of your recent comments at a deletion discussion (here: [1]) looks an awful lot like you think that labelling a group of identifiable, living people as engaged in prostitution related activities with no evidence other than their location is perfectly acceptable and not a violation of [[COM:IDENT]] or the board BLP resolution. To me, labelling a group of identifiable, living people as engaged in prostitution related activities with no evidence other than their location is a strong violation of both COM:IDENT, and the board's BLP resolution. Most of the other Wikimedians I've shown your comment to have interpreted it in the same way I have. (You said that labelling a group of identifiable, living people as engaged in prostitution related activities was "apt" because they were in an area known to have a lot of sex work. Given my understanding of the word, that means you thought it was appropriate/suitable - "apt" is definitely not a word I'd use to describe a BLP violation. Just in case I'd misunderstood what the word meant, I took a look at MW and the OED, both of which indicated that no,I really hadnt.)
a) Have I accurately interpreted your comment? If I haven't, would you mind clarifying your intent as you refused to do on-wiki so those confused about what you meant are able to understand what you meant? b) Do you believe that walking away from an active on-wiki discussion refusing to explain what you meant by a comment some took as highly questionable is in line with what should be expected of sysops on major projects?
Here's the comment in question reproduced for those who don't want to click through: "Carrer de Sant Ramon in El Raval, Barcelona is notorious for being one of the worst places in Barcelona for street prostitution, and this is also acknowledged in local Catalan press. The uploader has done the right thing in applying cover to the eyes of the people, and no individual person is being "named" as a prostitute, but given that this street is known for daylight prostitution, the name of the file and its description is apt. However, prostitutes in the street do not generally like their photographs to be taken. I am not opining delete on the basis of the nomination but rather for very different reasons. Inline withCommons:Country_specific_consent_requirements, in Spain one requires permission to both take a photograph and publish the photograph when it is taken in a public place, and there is no evidence that this was obtained by the uploader. So on that basis, and that basis alone, it's a firm delete."
----- Kevin Gorman (Since I cut/pasted Russavia's comment directly, one of the links to Youtube he posted may attach to this email, and I don't currently see the right button to turn that off.)
On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 10:58 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 10:03 PM, John Mark Vandenberg jayvdb@gmail.com wrote:
We're getting a long way off topic of the still frame on MOTD, but I agree, and wish that the WMF would make this a priority for their multimedia and search team. Many improvements have been suggested by the community, and both sides of the fence have even agreed on some of them, such as clustered search results:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Controversial_content/Brainstorming#Clusteri...
First, as general background, WMF recently started migrating its search infrastructure over to ElasticSearch. See:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Search https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:CirrusSearch
The new search is available on Commons as a BetaFeature. It's worth looking at search results that are viewed as problematic through the new search and compare. For example, the results for "Asian" are markedly different in the new search.
I would caution against a simplistic characterization of technology as a solution for what's inherently a complex socio-technical problem. That was a core issue with the image filter proposal and it's a similar issue here. If people insist on uploading pictures of masturbation with toothbrushes, those pictures will come up in searches. If we insist on not having a distinction between explicit and non-explicit materials in file metadata, search results won't have it either. We can point the finger at technology because that's easy, but it's not magical pixie dust.
To get a feel for ElasticSearch's capabilities, please see the help page above, as well as the tech talk that Nik gave earlier today on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FubXExbAvOA
Capabilities that exist today with the new search include template-based "boosting" of results, a feature that's already enabled on Commons and which will boost quality content in search results:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Cirrussearch-boost...
ElasticSearch has support for faceting (see
http://www.elasticsearch.org/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/search... ), which might come in handy for creating a breakdown of search results.
However, keep in mind that unless you collapse each facet by default, you're still going to show explicit thumbs -- and collapsing results by default could compromise usability to an unacceptable degree for the common use case. The more complex suggestions that include taking the full category tree into account also seem fairly complex/expensive (ElasticSearch has no awareness of the actual category tree structure, which is a complex structure to traverse) and a faceted search that only operates on the specific categories associated with a given file might not be very useful due to the high degree of granularity that exists in the category structure.
I'd encourage Nik and Chad (search engineers) to weigh in here & on the bug as they see fit, as well as correct me if I'm misrepresenting anything in the above.
Cheers, Erik -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
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Kevin,
Let me know when you have recovered from the concussion you have incurred, which I hope is soon and I hope you are getting better, and then I would urge you to re-look at the issues and re-present them, and I would be more than happy to discuss publicly right here.
It would be unfair of you to expect me to be able to comment frankly (which is my preferred way) right now, when what you are writing here, on Commons, and in the comments section of Pete's blog post may not be Kevin Gorman, Wikipedian-in-Residence at UC Berkeley, but Kevin Gorman, the guy who has received a nasty knock to the head.
Until then, I would prefer not to comment further.
Cheers,
Russavia
Russavia -
It would be pretty easy to go "No, I didn't mean to imply that it was okay to label a group of identifiable living people as prostitutes based on the street they happened to be standing on," which, for some odd reason, you've refused to do both on and off-wiki. This has obviously gotten significantly away from the topic of the original thread, but would it comfort you if I asked one of the non-concussed people who interpreted your comment in the exact same way I did to pose the same question to you here?
It doesn't exactly look awesome to make what is, charitably, an easy to misinterpret statement, and then refuse to clarify the intent of your statement on a project you're a sysop on.
---- Kevin Gorman
On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 1:12 AM, Russavia russavia.wikipedia@gmail.comwrote:
Kevin,
Let me know when you have recovered from the concussion you have incurred, which I hope is soon and I hope you are getting better, and then I would urge you to re-look at the issues and re-present them, and I would be more than happy to discuss publicly right here.
It would be unfair of you to expect me to be able to comment frankly (which is my preferred way) right now, when what you are writing here, on Commons, and in the comments section of Pete's blog post may not be Kevin Gorman, Wikipedian-in-Residence at UC Berkeley, but Kevin Gorman, the guy who has received a nasty knock to the head.
Until then, I would prefer not to comment further.
Cheers,
Russavia
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Kevin,
Feel free to have one of the people who don't have a nasty head injury ask me the question. That would be fine, and I would actually prefer it. Given your head injury, I'm actually a little surprised that your friends did think of asking me themselves under the circumstances.
Cheers
Russavia
On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 9:43 AM, Russavia russavia.wikipedia@gmail.comwrote:
Kevin,
Feel free to have one of the people who don't have a nasty head injury ask me the question. That would be fine, and I would actually prefer it. Given your head injury, I'm actually a little surprised that your friends did think of asking me themselves under the circumstances.
Cheers
Russavia
Cutting to the chase, bearing in mind the location and other visual cues, I personally would also assume that the description was indeed apt. In other words, if I saw those women standing there, I'd assume they were prostitutes too.
However, assumptions can be wrong. It would be wise for Commons to err on the side of caution, and not label potentially identifiable women as prostitutes on the basis of an unknown individual's upload to Commons.
This is a good example:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Street_prostitute_EP_Blvd_02_Memphis...
She might well be a prostitute. She might also (for example) just have had a tiff with her ex-boyfriend, who snapped this picture. To be wrong in one out of a hundred cases like that is one time too many.
In topic areas like that, I'd be far more comfortable relying on an image from a verifiable source like the one you mentioned in the deletion discussion:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:9.000919_Pattaya_streetscene5.jpg
That reminds me again of a really cool Guardian ad that ran on UK TV years back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SsccRkLLzU
It's a good illustration of how assumptions can be wrong, and how framing can predispose you. (Captioning and file naming are part of that, of course.)
On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 8:11 PM, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 9:43 AM, Russavia russavia.wikipedia@gmail.comwrote:
Kevin,
Feel free to have one of the people who don't have a nasty head injury ask me the question. That would be fine, and I would actually prefer it. Given your head injury, I'm actually a little surprised that your friends did think of asking me themselves under the circumstances.
Cheers
Russavia
Cutting to the chase, bearing in mind the location and other visual cues, I personally would also assume that the description was indeed apt. In other words, if I saw those women standing there, I'd assume they were prostitutes too.
However, assumptions can be wrong. It would be wise for Commons to err on the side of caution, and not label potentially identifiable women as prostitutes on the basis of an unknown individual's upload to Commons.
This is a good example:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Street_prostitute_EP_Blvd_02_Memphis...
She might well be a prostitute. She might also (for example) just have had a tiff with her ex-boyfriend, who snapped this picture. To be wrong in one out of a hundred cases like that is one time too many.
In topic areas like that, I'd be far more comfortable relying on an image from a verifiable source like the one you mentioned in the deletion discussion:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:9.000919_Pattaya_streetscene5.jpg
On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 10:58 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
I would caution against a simplistic characterization of technology as a solution for what's inherently a complex socio-technical problem.
Please forgive a sentimental moment -- I am so happy to hear this clearly acknowledged by somebody in a position like yours. It is amazing to me how little attention this simple and obvious point has gotten in the years of discussion we have had on these topics! It seems that somehow, our discussions often seem to ignore that free speech, varying cultural values and editorial objectives, and individual rights have ALWAYS led to drama and problem, starting many centuries before Wikimedia ever came on the scene. It is really astonishing to me how much currency the "XYZ group is ethically challenged" frame gains in our discussion -- whether that group is "those guys at Commons," or "those guys at WMF," or whatever.
These problems are fundamentally difficult. Yes. That is the appropriate starting point for these discussions, and we should all keep our shared value to "assume good faith" in mind as we dig into the next layer.
All that said, I have long argued that there is a very simple solution to 90+% of the problem, and I'm curious whether this has ever been pursued.
A quick visit to stats.grok.se indicates that the "Search" feature of English Wikipedia was used 63 million times last month, while the "Search" feature of Commons was used 18,000 times in the same month. Of course, most of the Wikipedia searches were for text, but at least *some* of them would have involved the "multimedia" tab, which returns almost exactly the same results whether you are on Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons. (If there's a way to quantify this, I don't know it.)
So my question is this: does a reader searching for images on Wikipedia automatically want the same kind of results as a reader searching for images on Wikimedia Commons? Does the Wikipedia reader *expect* to find images from a *related* site? I think the clear answer is "no." (Of course this could be tested, but to do so is beyond my resources.)
I think it is much more likely that a Wikipedia reader would expect to find those images *used in Wikipedia articles* than a massive collection of stuff that is somehow tangentially related to Wikipedia in a way that they don't fully understand.
So why on earth does the main "multimedia" search link on Wikipedia automatically return unused results from Commons to begin with? Is that really the right way to go?
I think a better way for the Wikipedia multimedia "Search" feature to work would be if it returned for "electric toothbrush" ONLY the images (from Wikipedia and from Commons) that are *actually* used in Wikipedia articles. There could also be a link there, "Would you like to search the media repository Wikimedia Commons, a sister site to Wikipedia?" But that could be a secondary step, thereby preventing lots of people (who found the electric toothbrush image they wanted already) from ever seeing the horrific masturbation photo.
Is there a good reason not to have the "Search" feature work this way? I'm not the most technical person, but this doesn't seem like a hugely challenging project. Could it be accomplished for (say) $10,000? And if so, is there a good reason not to do so, and eliminate a large portion of the astonished users who get surprised by something like a toothbrush being put to an unexpected use?
Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 10:58 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Capabilities that exist today with the new search include template-based "boosting" of results, a feature that's already enabled on Commons and which will boost quality content in search results: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Cirrussearch-boost...
For the record, negative boosting is possible as well. So if folks wanted to add {{NSFW}} to media files that should appear lower in search results and then apply a <100% boost to that template, that would put those results further down. Of course that would likely have unintended consequences, and also take us down the familiar road of having to figure out what to label / not label.
Erik (with cc to Chad, no email for Nik), et al
Brian Wolff posted to the multimedia list[1] pretty much the same thing as yourself (but earlier), except the endgame part. Brian suggests that going down the road which you state would have unintended consequences would be opening up a "flamewar". I can only concur with Brian in this regard, for I could only see months of animosity which will end in stalemate, and that is going to do no-one any good. We already have a NSFW template on Commons[2], but it is only for use in Featured Picture Candidates; there is zero consensus, nor even request amongst the Commons community for this to be used in filespace. No. Let's just not go there.
What is important is that we have the infrastructure available so that we safely discard going down the road you mentioned. I'm not a techgeek AT ALL, so I am open to any corrections on anything I write below in that regard, but I do hope the intent of my words is clear.
I understand the new search is currently being worked on and refined, and will obviously be rolled out across all projects in a timeframe I am not too sure of. Can we get that timeframe/update on where this project is at, and when those working on it expect it to be "stable".
Once new search is working, the first enhancement to the search should be a clustering feature.[3] Wouldn't such a feature pretty much solve the problem that we currently have with search, and which won't be solved by the "out-of-the-box" search that is being worked on now.
John provided a link to Bugzilla[4] at which Chad has stated it would be a great feature, and it would be even more awesome to have the "Assigned to" change from "Nobody - You can work on this!" to "WMF Platform Team". The WMF has the coin, it has the tech talent, now we as a community need that solution.
Apart from everyone going to the Bugzilla report and adding their support for this feature (which they should do), how can we go about ensuring that such a feature is treated as a priority by the WMF?
Cheers
Russavia http://i.imgur.com/VdIqCkQ.png
[1] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/multimedia/2014-May/000517.html [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Nsfw [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Controversial_content/Brainstorming#Clusteri... [4] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35701
On Sat, May 17, 2014 at 7:08 PM, Russavia russavia.wikipedia@gmail.comwrote:
I understand the new search is currently being worked on and refined, and will obviously be rolled out across all projects in a timeframe I am not too sure of. Can we get that timeframe/update on where this project is at, and when those working on it expect it to be "stable".
Once new search is working, the first enhancement to the search should be a clustering feature.[3] Wouldn't such a feature pretty much solve the problem that we currently have with search, and which won't be solved by the "out-of-the-box" search that is being worked on now.
Just for a quick status update on the search project for those who might not be following it.
We're currently live on all non-Wikipedias, non-Commons, non-Meta and non-Incubator as the primary search engine and have been for a little while now. The Wikipedias and the 3 misc. projects I mentioned above all have the new search available as a Beta Feature. We've had many thousands of users trying things out and the feedback has been very positive thus far.
(shameless plug to please give feedback on [[mw:Talk:Search]] or Bugzilla. Nothing helps us find bugs and get them fixed faster than user feedback)
We could probably swap the remaining non-English Wikipedias, Meta and Incubator into having the new search engine as their primary without worrying about performance. Commons too, possibly, but we'd have to keep an eye on things. enwiki we know we can't quite handle yet but we're working on it.
Vague timelines suck I know, but trying to get the performance we need out of Elasticsearch is a multifaceted problem and we've been trying to roll this out with the minimal amount of disruption to everyone as possible.
-Chad
On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 3:08 AM, Russavia russavia.wikipedia@gmail.comwrote:
Once new search is working, the first enhancement to the search should be a clustering feature.[3] Wouldn't such a feature pretty much solve the problem that we currently have with search, and which won't be solved by the "out-of-the-box" search that is being worked on now.
John provided a link to Bugzilla[4] at which Chad has stated it would be a great feature, and it would be even more awesome to have the "Assigned to" change from "Nobody - You can work on this!" to "WMF Platform Team". The WMF has the coin, it has the tech talent, now we as a community need that solution.
Apart from everyone going to the Bugzilla report and adding their support for this feature (which they should do), how can we go about ensuring that such a feature is treated as a priority by the WMF?
Cheers
Russavia http://i.imgur.com/VdIqCkQ.png
[1] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/multimedia/2014-May/000517.html [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Nsfw [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Controversial_content/Brainstorming#Clusteri... [4] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35701
I second this.
Niabot's clustering idea was the most sensible proposal to come out of all the brainstorming effort that went on at the time. No tagging, no censorship concerns, yet elegantly solves the problem of isolated NSFW results appearing out of the blue.
This would be a good thing to work on.
On 19 May 2014 18:59, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 3:08 AM, Russavia <russavia.wikipedia@gmail.com
wrote:
Once new search is working, the first enhancement to the search should be a clustering feature.[3] Wouldn't such a feature pretty much solve the problem that we currently have with search, and which won't be solved by the "out-of-the-box" search that is being worked on now.
John provided a link to Bugzilla[4] at which Chad has stated it would be a great feature, and it would be even more awesome to have the "Assigned to" change from "Nobody - You can work on this!" to "WMF Platform Team". The WMF has the coin, it has the tech talent, now we as a community need that solution.
Apart from everyone going to the Bugzilla report and adding their support for this feature (which they should do), how can we go about ensuring that such a feature is treated as a priority by the WMF?
Cheers
Russavia http://i.imgur.com/VdIqCkQ.png
[1] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/multimedia/2014-May/000517.html [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Nsfw [3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Controversial_content/Brainstorming#Clusteri...
I second this.
Niabot's clustering idea was the most sensible proposal to come out of all the brainstorming effort that went on at the time. No tagging, no censorship concerns, yet elegantly solves the problem of isolated NSFW results appearing out of the blue.
This would be a good thing to work on. _______________________________________________
While all of these proposals for improving search are really good ideas, it still does not address the root cause of the "masturbating with electric toothbrush" image - which is improper categorization in the first place. This is entirely within the human realm, and no software is going to filter that image out of any search for "electric toothbrush" as long as it's categorized as an "electric toothbrush" image.
Russavia's post directed to me earlier in this thread managed in one stroke to confirm just about everything that I said: that comments from those who aren't regular participants on Commons are to be belittled and ignored, that even a benign suggestion such as improving the categorization of an image will be met with cries of censorship, and that Commons does not have any desire or intention to change without the heavy hand of the WMF forcing it to do so.
It's very sad.
Risker/Anne
On 20 May 2014 00:05, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Russavia's post directed to me earlier in this thread managed in one stroke to confirm just about everything that I said: that comments from those who aren't regular participants on Commons are to be belittled and ignored, that even a benign suggestion such as improving the categorization of an image will be met with cries of censorship, and that Commons does not have any desire or intention to change without the heavy hand of the WMF forcing it to do so. It's very sad.
What is your plan of action as an aspiring steward?
- d.
On 19 May 2014 19:08, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 20 May 2014 00:05, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Russavia's post directed to me earlier in this thread managed in one
stroke
to confirm just about everything that I said: that comments from those
who
aren't regular participants on Commons are to be belittled and ignored, that even a benign suggestion such as improving the categorization of an image will be met with cries of censorship, and that Commons does not
have
any desire or intention to change without the heavy hand of the WMF
forcing
it to do so. It's very sad.
What is your plan of action as an aspiring steward?
Oh David, how sweet of you to remember! No intention to run again on my part, though. Been there, done that.
I did give serious consideration to going and properly categorizing the image, but given the underlying threat from Russavia, and my disinclination to be blocked, I'll leave it to someone who finds the Commons experience less threatening. You perhaps, David? One would think you would see that "improvised vibrators" would be a much, much more likely search term for that image than "electric toothbrush".
Risker/Anne
On 20 May 2014 00:14, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
I did give serious consideration to going and properly categorizing the image, but given the underlying threat from Russavia, and my disinclination to be blocked, I'll leave it to someone who finds the Commons experience less threatening. You perhaps, David? One would think you would see that "improvised vibrators" would be a much, much more likely search term for that image than "electric toothbrush".
I'll be leaving Commons categorisation until it's tags rather than ridiculously specific subcategories.
- d.
On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 8:12 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 20 May 2014 00:14, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
I did give serious consideration to going and properly categorizing the image, but given the underlying threat from Russavia, and my
disinclination
to be blocked, I'll leave it to someone who finds the Commons experience less threatening. You perhaps, David? One would think you would see
that
"improvised vibrators" would be a much, much more likely search term for that image than "electric toothbrush".
I'll be leaving Commons categorisation until it's tags rather than ridiculously specific subcategories.
- d.
Come on David, keyword tagging is a bit too Web 2.0. Let's try to stick to realistic expectations only...
On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 12:05 AM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
On 19 May 2014 18:59, Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, May 18, 2014 at 3:08 AM, Russavia <russavia.wikipedia@gmail.com
wrote:
Once new search is working, the first enhancement to the search should be a clustering feature.[3] Wouldn't such a feature pretty much solve the problem that we currently have with search, and which won't be solved by the "out-of-the-box" search that is being worked on now.
John provided a link to Bugzilla[4] at which Chad has stated it would be a great feature, and it would be even more awesome to have the "Assigned to" change from "Nobody - You can work on this!" to "WMF Platform Team". The WMF has the coin, it has the tech talent, now we as a community need that solution.
Apart from everyone going to the Bugzilla report and adding their support for this feature (which they should do), how can we go about ensuring that such a feature is treated as a priority by the WMF?
Cheers
Russavia http://i.imgur.com/VdIqCkQ.png
[1]
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/multimedia/2014-May/000517.html
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Controversial_content/Brainstorming#Clusteri...
I second this.
Niabot's clustering idea was the most sensible proposal to come out of
all
the brainstorming effort that went on at the time. No tagging, no censorship concerns, yet elegantly solves the problem of isolated NSFW results appearing out of the blue.
This would be a good thing to work on. _______________________________________________
While all of these proposals for improving search are really good ideas, it still does not address the root cause of the "masturbating with electric toothbrush" image - which is improper categorization in the first place. This is entirely within the human realm, and no software is going to filter that image out of any search for "electric toothbrush" as long as it's categorized as an "electric toothbrush" image.
Russavia's post directed to me earlier in this thread managed in one stroke to confirm just about everything that I said: that comments from those who aren't regular participants on Commons are to be belittled and ignored, that even a benign suggestion such as improving the categorization of an image will be met with cries of censorship, and that Commons does not have any desire or intention to change without the heavy hand of the WMF forcing it to do so.
It's very sad.
Risker/Anne
Anne,
I believe categorisation isn't the key factor here.
As far as I can tell from looking at search listings:
1. Searches privilege filenames first of all. Note that there is still a redirect under the old filename, which included the word "toothbrush":
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Masturbating_with_a_too...
2. Next, search picks up on other page content such as the image description (and quite possibly any categories). The image description of this file contains the words "electric toothbrush", and it's the words from the image description that are shown in bold in the search results page, not any category label.
3. If you run a Multimedia search for "Zahnbürste"/"elektrische Zahnbürste", the German translation of "(electric) toothbrush", you'll find you also get the image in fifth place. This is solely due to the fact that "elektrische Zahnbürste" occurs in the German image description (even when you look at Commons with German as the interface language, the categories stay English).
Deletion of the old-name redirect *might* put this particular image lower. But as long as the words "electric toothbrush" (and "elektrische Zahnbürste") are contained in the image description, the image will show up much as it does now. (Clustered search would address this in almost all cases, by keeping categories with few files collapsed at first.)
Andreas
FWIW, the still caught my eye (uncommon for the media section of the page) and I read the caption, which does give context.
The main product of Buchenwald and other camps was death. Why do we want to cover that up? I saw nothing wrong with it, just as there was nothing wrong with all the photographs of the dead I saw in school hallways as part of Holocaust remembrances.
Offensive is gore for the sake of gore. Obviously, this is not the case here.
Date: Fri, 9 May 2014 12:11:49 -0700 From: kgorman@gmail.com To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons' frontpage probably shouldn't prominently feature a decontextualised stack of corpses.
Pine: besides the unusually high effect Commons has on other projects (most projects are essentially forced to use Commons,) Commons' lack of a local canvassing policy, and the general unenforceability of canvassing policies on mailing lists anyway, when a local project has a low population of active editors and is pretty consistently making poor decisions that impact all projects, I see absolutely nothing wrong with raising the discussion at a higher-than-local level, and don't think that raising a discussion at a higher-than-local level needs to be done in a neutral fashion. I think that Commons' not uncommonly acts in a way that is actively detrimental to every other project (and a way that is certainly actively detrimental to building relationships with edu and GLAM institutions,) and given that there's not a large local population on Commons, think a non-neutral posting to a broader audience is absolutely appropriate. Discussion of issues with the Acehnese Wikipedia years ago wasn't confined to the Acehnese Wikipedia, and in recent years issues with the Kazakh Wikipedia and at least a couple of other projects have been brought up on a meta level as well. (The fact that the decision to put a piece of content like this on Common's frontpage was made by *two people* highlights an issue as well..)
I'm not upset about the fact that we have a video of the aftermath of the liberation of Buchenwald on Commons - if we didn't, I'd go find one and upload it. It's an event (and a video) of enormous historic significance, and not one that should ever be forgotten. I'm not even opposed to featuring it on Commons' frontpage - in a way that adheres to the principle of least astonishment and provides viewers with context. That's not what was done here. A still image featuring a pile of corpses was put on Commons' frontpage with any context whatsoever only provided for viewers of five languages - and we run projects in 287 different languages. More than that, since Commons only supports open video formats, a sizable majority of people who use Wikimedia projects are literally incapable of actually playing the video in question. Is there enough journalistic or educational value in displaying a still photo of a pile of corpses that links to a video that cannot be played by most people that provides after the fact context in only 5 of the 287 languages we run projects in to justify putting it on Commons front page? I'm gonna go with no.
FWIW: I would explicitly support featuring this video (or an article about Buchenwald, etc,) albeit with a different freezeframe and appropriate context provided, on the frontpage of the English Wikipedia or any other project where it was actually possible to provide appropriate context to the viewership of the project. ENWP's article about Buchenwald - quite rightly - contains numerous images more graphic than the one that was on Commons front page yesterday. They add significant educational value to the article - and they also only appear past the lede of the article, at a point when anyone reading the article will be fully aware what the article is about and will have intentionally sought the article out - rather than, say, going to Commons to look up an image of a horse and being confronted with a freezeframe of a stack of bodies from a video your browser cannot play with context provided only in languages you do not speak.
Kevin Gorman Wikipedian-in-Residence American Cultures Program UC Berkeley
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 10:48 AM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 1:30 PM, Jeevan Jose jkadavoor@gmail.com wrote:
See the comment by Pristurus< https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pristurus%3E at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page#Dead_bodies.3F
Regards, Jee
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 10:57 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 1:19 PM, Jeevan Jose jkadavoor@gmail.com
wrote:
Already answered on the talk page by the editor who had chosen it.
Comment
there if you really want to help us. Continue the comments here if
other
interests. ;)
Regards, Jee
Ah, thanks. Amazing how handy links are. I was a little surprised to see that even on that talkpage, you asked people to move the discussion to yet a different page. I asked that question because a debate on the merits might be somewhat moot if the still was selected randomly or by software, it's interesting to see that it wasn't.
In any case, Pristurus has a good point and one that it would be hard to craft a policy around. Least astonishment is a useful principle, but it doesn't beat out journalistic and/or educational value. Newspapers, magazines, textbooks and other sources of educational material often pick striking images of tragic or shocking circumstances. The point is precisely to draw attention, to disrupt the consciousness of the viewer so that the meaning behind the image and any accompanying material sinks in and the message is imparted strongly. Good sources of knowledge do this rarely but well; shock sites do it constantly and for no particular reason.
Many Pulitzer prize winning photographs feature dead people, people who have been shot, dismembered, even people in the midst of burning alive. They win prizes because they have extraordinary communicative power and meaningfully illustrate very important subjects. Would anyone truly argue that such images should never be used on the main page of any project? _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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All, I'd like to address this issue as a frequent Commons contributor, and as somebody who actually got heavily involved with Commons a few years ago due to an issue much like this one.
There are often front-page images on Commons that are questionable, because they offend somebody's sensibilities, or -- in my view, worse -- because they are placed there more for self-promotion, than to advance our educational mission.
When this happens, there is a natural assumption -- one that I made myself a few years ago[1]:
* There is a process for choosing the Picture (or Media) of the Day, and that process is not working right.
But that assumption is incorrect! Instead, the sad truth is essentially this:
* THERE IS NO PROCESS FOR CHOOSING THE PICTURE OF THE DAY.[2]
Anybody can select an upcoming picture of the day; and although these selections are visible ahead of time, there is no active editorial community poring over them and making decisions. So all it takes is ONE person's error in judgment, or unabashed self-promotion, for GARBAGE to appear on the front page of Wikimedia Commons *and* all the projects that automatically pull Commons' POTD for their own POTD.
Coming from the perspective of English Wikipedia, which has a huge community of people making editorial decisions about all kinds of things, this is not an easy concept to get used to. And if we really want to talk about a general solution (I do!), it will require addressing a very different state of affairs than we usually find on English Wikipedia.
Pharos suggests we should have "more process" and Andrew Lih points out that, prior to this email list discussion, there was no on-wiki discussion to fork. These are important points to consider! How can you create effective processes and discussions, when there is no coherent group standing ready to implement them?
It's easy to shake our fists at the state of things. Actually creating something that will avoid future problems, though, will take a lot of work from a lot of people. How can we make that happen?
-Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Peteforsyth/PotD [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_day/Instructions
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 12:26 PM, Leigh Thelmadatter osamadre@hotmail.comwrote:
FWIW, the still caught my eye (uncommon for the media section of the page) and I read the caption, which does give context.
The main product of Buchenwald and other camps was death. Why do we want to cover that up? I saw nothing wrong with it, just as there was nothing wrong with all the photographs of the dead I saw in school hallways as part of Holocaust remembrances.
Offensive is gore for the sake of gore. Obviously, this is not the case here.
Date: Fri, 9 May 2014 12:11:49 -0700 From: kgorman@gmail.com To: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Commons' frontpage probably shouldn't
prominently feature a decontextualised stack of corpses.
Pine: besides the unusually high effect Commons has on other projects
(most
projects are essentially forced to use Commons,) Commons' lack of a local canvassing policy, and the general unenforceability of canvassing
policies
on mailing lists anyway, when a local project has a low population of active editors and is pretty consistently making poor decisions that
impact
all projects, I see absolutely nothing wrong with raising the discussion
at
a higher-than-local level, and don't think that raising a discussion at a higher-than-local level needs to be done in a neutral fashion. I think that Commons' not uncommonly acts in a way that is actively detrimental
to
every other project (and a way that is certainly actively detrimental to building relationships with edu and GLAM institutions,) and given that there's not a large local population on Commons, think a non-neutral posting to a broader audience is absolutely appropriate. Discussion of issues with the Acehnese Wikipedia years ago wasn't confined to the Acehnese Wikipedia, and in recent years issues with the Kazakh Wikipedia and at least a couple of other projects have been brought up on a meta level as well. (The fact that the decision to put a piece of content like this on Common's frontpage was made by *two people* highlights an issue
as
well..)
I'm not upset about the fact that we have a video of the aftermath of the liberation of Buchenwald on Commons - if we didn't, I'd go find one and upload it. It's an event (and a video) of enormous historic
significance,
and not one that should ever be forgotten. I'm not even opposed to featuring it on Commons' frontpage - in a way that adheres to the
principle
of least astonishment and provides viewers with context. That's not what was done here. A still image featuring a pile of corpses was put on Commons' frontpage with any context whatsoever only provided for viewers
of
five languages - and we run projects in 287 different languages. More
than
that, since Commons only supports open video formats, a sizable majority
of
people who use Wikimedia projects are literally incapable of actually playing the video in question. Is there enough journalistic or
educational
value in displaying a still photo of a pile of corpses that links to a video that cannot be played by most people that provides after the fact context in only 5 of the 287 languages we run projects in to justify putting it on Commons front page? I'm gonna go with no.
FWIW: I would explicitly support featuring this video (or an article
about
Buchenwald, etc,) albeit with a different freezeframe and appropriate context provided, on the frontpage of the English Wikipedia or any other project where it was actually possible to provide appropriate context to the viewership of the project. ENWP's article about Buchenwald - quite rightly - contains numerous images more graphic than the one that was on Commons front page yesterday. They add significant educational value to the article - and they also only appear past the lede of the article, at
a
point when anyone reading the article will be fully aware what the
article
is about and will have intentionally sought the article out - rather
than,
say, going to Commons to look up an image of a horse and being confronted with a freezeframe of a stack of bodies from a video your browser cannot play with context provided only in languages you do not speak.
Kevin Gorman Wikipedian-in-Residence American Cultures Program UC Berkeley
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 10:48 AM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 1:30 PM, Jeevan Jose jkadavoor@gmail.com
wrote:
See the comment by Pristurus< https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pristurus%3E at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page#Dead_bodies.3F
Regards, Jee
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 10:57 PM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 1:19 PM, Jeevan Jose jkadavoor@gmail.com
wrote:
Already answered on the talk page by the editor who had chosen
it.
Comment
there if you really want to help us. Continue the comments here
if
other
interests. ;)
Regards, Jee
Ah, thanks. Amazing how handy links are. I was a little surprised to
see
that even on that talkpage, you asked people to move the discussion to
yet
a different page. I asked that question because a debate on the merits might be somewhat moot if the still was selected randomly or by
software,
it's interesting to see that it wasn't.
In any case, Pristurus has a good point and one that it would be hard
to
craft a policy around. Least astonishment is a useful principle, but it doesn't beat out journalistic and/or educational value. Newspapers, magazines, textbooks and other sources of educational material often
pick
striking images of tragic or shocking circumstances. The point is
precisely
to draw attention, to disrupt the consciousness of the viewer so that
the
meaning behind the image and any accompanying material sinks in and the message is imparted strongly. Good sources of knowledge do this rarely
but
well; shock sites do it constantly and for no particular reason.
Many Pulitzer prize winning photographs feature dead people, people who have been shot, dismembered, even people in the midst of burning alive. They win prizes because they have extraordinary communicative power and meaningfully illustrate very important subjects. Would anyone truly
argue
that such images should never be used on the main page of any project? _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
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On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 12:11 PM, Kevin Gorman kgorman@gmail.com wrote:
a sizable majority of people who use Wikimedia projects are literally incapable of actually playing the video in question.
Kevin -- it's neither a majority, much less a sizable majority, of readers who are incapable of viewing videos. There are of course some platforms that don't permit the viewing of free video formats, and that is of course a cause for legitimate concern. But there's nothing to be (legitimately) gained by overstating it.
Pete [[User:Peteforsyth]]
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org