Hi,
I have been looking for social networking service that would be fair: not abusing personal data, funded by community, respecting privacy, accepting anonymity, free/libre/ open source etc. Haven’t found many. The Diaspora* Project[1] is not moving forward very fast and the Mastodon[2] is more a microblogging service rather than a social network service.
Would it make sense for Wikimedia movement to build its own social network service?
In the "2017 Movement strategy” we state: “By 2030, Wikimedia will become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge”. If we consider discussions and information shared on social network services to be “knowledge”, I think we should have a role in here too.
We have 33 million registered users and fulfil all the requirements of being a “fair service”. A minimum list of features to make Wikimedia Social would be:
(1) Status updates (2) Comments (3) Likes (4)Groups maybe: (5) Events
I am pretty sure that by integrating this to other Wikimedia services (Commons etc.) we could achieve something awesome.
- Teemu
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software)
Why would we want to? How would it further the aims of the movement? How much would it cost? Who would run it? Cheers, Peter
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Leinonen Teemu Sent: 09 April 2018 09:46 To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Social: non-profit social networking service ?
Hi,
I have been looking for social networking service that would be fair: not abusing personal data, funded by community, respecting privacy, accepting anonymity, free/libre/ open source etc. Haven’t found many. The Diaspora* Project[1] is not moving forward very fast and the Mastodon[2] is more a microblogging service rather than a social network service.
Would it make sense for Wikimedia movement to build its own social network service?
In the "2017 Movement strategy” we state: “By 2030, Wikimedia will become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge”. If we consider discussions and information shared on social network services to be “knowledge”, I think we should have a role in here too.
We have 33 million registered users and fulfil all the requirements of being a “fair service”. A minimum list of features to make Wikimedia Social would be:
(1) Status updates (2) Comments (3) Likes (4)Groups maybe: (5) Events
I am pretty sure that by integrating this to other Wikimedia services (Commons etc.) we could achieve something awesome.
- Teemu
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: 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 9 Apr 2018, at 11.28, Peter Southwood <peter.southwood@telkomsa.netmailto:peter.southwood@telkomsa.net> wrote:
Why would we want to?
Because we want to "become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge”.
How would it further the aims of the movement?
Knowledge is dynamic. Today social media services are the most influential knowledge and belief creation services online. When Wikipedia was started, websites use to hold this position. With Wikimedia social media service, that would rely on the four last of the five pillars[1], I think we could really further the aims of the movement.
How much would it cost?
Hard to say.
Who would run it?
Us.
- Teemu
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Leinonen Teemu Sent: 09 April 2018 09:46 To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Social: non-profit social networking service ?
Hi,
I have been looking for social networking service that would be fair: not abusing personal data, funded by community, respecting privacy, accepting anonymity, free/libre/ open source etc. Haven’t found many. The Diaspora* Project[1] is not moving forward very fast and the Mastodon[2] is more a microblogging service rather than a social network service.
Would it make sense for Wikimedia movement to build its own social network service?
In the "2017 Movement strategy” we state: “By 2030, Wikimedia will become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge”. If we consider discussions and information shared on social network services to be “knowledge”, I think we should have a role in here too.
We have 33 million registered users and fulfil all the requirements of being a “fair service”. A minimum list of features to make Wikimedia Social would be:
(1) Status updates (2) Comments (3) Likes (4)Groups maybe: (5) Events
I am pretty sure that by integrating this to other Wikimedia services (Commons etc.) we could achieve something awesome.
- Teemu
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.orgmailto: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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How would this proposed social media service avoid the problems of existing social media in that they are generally not 'knowledge dissemination services', but spreaders of opinion, disinformation, and often complete rubbish, with a random sprinkling of knowledge scattered among the garbage?
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Leinonen Teemu Sent: Monday, April 9, 2018 9:25 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Social: non-profit social networking service ?
On 9 Apr 2018, at 11.28, Peter Southwood <peter.southwood@telkomsa.netmailto:peter.southwood@telkomsa.net> wrote:
Why would we want to?
Because we want to "become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge”.
How would it further the aims of the movement?
Knowledge is dynamic. Today social media services are the most influential knowledge and belief creation services online. When Wikipedia was started, websites use to hold this position. With Wikimedia social media service, that would rely on the four last of the five pillars[1], I think we could really further the aims of the movement.
How much would it cost?
Hard to say.
Who would run it?
Us.
- Teemu
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Leinonen Teemu Sent: 09 April 2018 09:46 To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Social: non-profit social networking service ?
Hi,
I have been looking for social networking service that would be fair: not abusing personal data, funded by community, respecting privacy, accepting anonymity, free/libre/ open source etc. Haven’t found many. The Diaspora* Project[1] is not moving forward very fast and the Mastodon[2] is more a microblogging service rather than a social network service.
Would it make sense for Wikimedia movement to build its own social network service?
In the "2017 Movement strategy” we state: “By 2030, Wikimedia will become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge”. If we consider discussions and information shared on social network services to be “knowledge”, I think we should have a role in here too.
We have 33 million registered users and fulfil all the requirements of being a “fair service”. A minimum list of features to make Wikimedia Social would be:
(1) Status updates (2) Comments (3) Likes (4)Groups maybe: (5) Events
I am pretty sure that by integrating this to other Wikimedia services (Commons etc.) we could achieve something awesome.
- Teemu
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.orgmailto: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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My kneejerk response was to reject this idea, but it's at least worth considering;
Working on wikimedia feels productive because permanent artefacts are produced - articles etc - but these are a direct product of the community around them. Better community tools will produce better outputs and happier contributors. You could even bind it tightly to the editing process, e.g. each article could have a canonical hashtag, and tagged activity could be viewed from a page similar to a talk page.
Also, reading articles is just one way of consuming knowledge; asking questions and receiving answers is another common one. A community of answerers that use wikimedia as their knowledge base could be a powerful way to provide knowledge-as-a-service, and potentially a very healthy counterpart to the existing editor community in terms of reader insights.
Publish/subscribe networks are quite malleable things - look at Quora as a social network with very different community norms - no reason why one couldn't be mission driven.
At the very least, a mastodon instance that could be linked to your wikimedia account might be a positive and realistic step towards this.
*Edward Saperia* Dean of Newspeak House http://www.nwspk.com newsletter http://www.tinyletter.com/edsaperia • facebook http://www.facebook.com/edsaperia • twitter http://www.twitter.com/edsaperia • 07796955572 133-135 Bethnal Green Road, E2 7DG
On 9 April 2018 at 20:25, Leinonen Teemu teemu.leinonen@aalto.fi wrote:
On 9 Apr 2018, at 11.28, Peter Southwood <peter.southwood@telkomsa.net< mailto:peter.southwood@telkomsa.net>> wrote:
Why would we want to?
Because we want to "become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge”.
How would it further the aims of the movement?
Knowledge is dynamic. Today social media services are the most influential knowledge and belief creation services online. When Wikipedia was started, websites use to hold this position. With Wikimedia social media service, that would rely on the four last of the five pillars[1], I think we could really further the aims of the movement.
How much would it cost?
Hard to say.
Who would run it?
Us.
- Teemu
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Leinonen Teemu Sent: 09 April 2018 09:46 To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Social: non-profit social networking service ?
Hi,
I have been looking for social networking service that would be fair: not abusing personal data, funded by community, respecting privacy, accepting anonymity, free/libre/ open source etc. Haven’t found many. The Diaspora* Project[1] is not moving forward very fast and the Mastodon[2] is more a microblogging service rather than a social network service.
Would it make sense for Wikimedia movement to build its own social network service?
In the "2017 Movement strategy” we state: “By 2030, Wikimedia will become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge”. If we consider discussions and information shared on social network services to be “knowledge”, I think we should have a role in here too.
We have 33 million registered users and fulfil all the requirements of being a “fair service”. A minimum list of features to make Wikimedia Social would be:
(1) Status updates (2) Comments (3) Likes (4)Groups maybe: (5) Events
I am pretty sure that by integrating this to other Wikimedia services (Commons etc.) we could achieve something awesome.
- Teemu
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.orgmailto: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 Mon, Apr 9, 2018 at 12:46 AM, Leinonen Teemu teemu.leinonen@aalto.fi wrote:
I have been looking for social networking service that would be fair: not abusing personal data, funded by community, respecting privacy, accepting anonymity, free/libre/ open source etc. Haven’t found many. The Diaspora* Project[1] is not moving forward very fast and the Mastodon[2] is more a microblogging service rather than a social network service.
Wikimedia projects are social networks, but they are purpose-driven social networks [1] where participants are more strongly connected through their overlapping interests than through pre-existing social connections. To the extent that Wikimedia should develop better social networking tools, they should IMO be along the lines of the ideas being prototyped by WikiProject X [2][3]. Improving other social tools routinely used in connection with Wikimedia work, such as IRC and mailing lists, likely would also have near term benefit.
I don't think that you can make a compelling argument that building general purpose social networking software (as in, share cat+baby pictures with friends) is in scope of Wikimedia's mission. But Wikimedia organizations do use general purpose social networks like Twitter and Facebook for outreach. I do think, given the Wikimedia's strong orientation towards open source and open standards, that_participating_ in open, decentralized communities like Mastodon would be an appropriate way to extend that presence on existing platforms. I personally think Diaspora can be safely ignored at this point, and am hoping a better open FB alternative will emerge.
Erik
[1] https://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/The_purpose-driven_soci... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_X [3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CollaborationKit
On 10 Apr 2018, at 7.02, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote: Wikimedia projects are social networks, but they are purpose-driven social networks [1] where participants are more strongly connected through their overlapping interests than through pre-existing social connections.
I agree. I however, see that if the movement is interested in to be _the_ ecosystem of free knowledge, a social media where the overlapping interest is actually the free knowledge itself and not some area of knowledge is not a bad idea.
To the extent that Wikimedia should develop better social networking tools, they should IMO be along the lines of the ideas being prototyped by WikiProject X [2][3]. Improving other social tools routinely used in connection with Wikimedia work, such as IRC and mailing lists, likely would also have near term benefit.
Thanks for the links. Better social tools to the Wikipedia / for the movement are definitely needed.
I guess I am not the only one who is worried that we may loose the interest of the general public on the movement, because we are not able to provide various kind of opportunities for people to contribute to the free knowledge movement (except to donate).
I see that Wikipedia is just one — although extremely important — offering of the movement aiming to advance the idea of free knowledge.
I don't think that you can make a compelling argument that building general purpose social networking software (as in, share cat+baby pictures with friends) is in scope of Wikimedia's mission.
Yes. The mode of operation should be aligned with the Wikipedia’s mission.
But it we want to address the challenge of “free knowledge” globally, a social media, that is not run by financial interest, but by the interest of the public, is badly needed. I think Wikimedia movement could play a role in here, too.
- Teemu
On 4/9/2018 11:14 PM, Leinonen Teemu wrote:
On 10 Apr 2018, at 7.02, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote: Wikimedia projects are social networks, but they are purpose-driven social networks [1] where participants are more strongly connected through their overlapping interests than through pre-existing social connections.
I agree. I however, see that if the movement is interested in to be _the_ ecosystem of free knowledge, a social media where the overlapping interest is actually the free knowledge itself and not some area of knowledge is not a bad idea.
I am wary of the idea that we would have interest in being _the_ ecosystem of free knowledge, certainly if as this implies, that's ecosystem of free knowledge in the singular. I believe we want to be a part of such an ecosystem, but hopefully a very diverse ecosystem, as is necessary to its success. We should be cautious not to monopolize it, intentionally or inadvertently. The undesirable byproducts of corporate-driven social media illustrate many of the perils all too well.
--Michael Snow
On 10 Apr 2018, at 9.58, Michael Snow wikipedia@frontier.com wrote:
On 4/9/2018 11:14 PM, Leinonen Teemu wrote:
On 10 Apr 2018, at 7.02, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote: Wikimedia projects are social networks, but they are purpose-driven social networks [1] where participants are more strongly connected through their overlapping interests than through pre-existing social connections.
I agree. I however, see that if the movement is interested in to be _the_ ecosystem of free knowledge, a social media where the overlapping interest is actually the free knowledge itself and not some area of knowledge is not a bad idea.
I am wary of the idea that we would have interest in being _the_ ecosystem of free knowledge, certainly if as this implies, that's ecosystem of free knowledge in the singular. I believe we want to be a part of such an ecosystem, but hopefully a very diverse ecosystem, as is necessary to its success.
Hear hear. I was also surprised about the expression "the ecosystem" in the WMF strategic direction. On the other hand, I am worried that there are not that many species in the “free knowledge” ecosystem, in addition to the projects, products and chapters of the Wikimedia. So, as relatively large (and powerful) movement (we cold do better, too), we could take a leadership in here and cherish these other species of the ecosystem. For this purpose a free knowledge social media service could be a smart move. :-)
- Teemu
Unlike Erik, I don't think an open alternative to Facebook will emerge, the inertia at this point is too big and you would need a huge critical mass of people (and organizations) to make it useful. Hard to attain. The only contender on the long run to FB could be reddit, because they seem to be moving in that direction with the new profiles and so on. They have almost all the features that make a (general purpose) social network attractive, the amount of users, and the content.
Regarding the question if the WMF should build a social network for the masses, I don't think it should. A general purpose social network is mainly used for sharing personal events, viral stories, cat pictures, and so on. It does not offer long-term cultural value. A more interesting approach could be a niche social network, like a *social **learning network*. It is related to open knowledge, it offers some cultural value and it doesn't attract the same kind of idiocy that general networks attract. A social learning network could be oriented to life-long self-learning where users would share stories about what are they discovering each day, groups, creation of materials, etc. It could be said that users are already discovering new knowledge in our sites, but they have to go to other websites to talk about it... (for instance /r/wikipedia)
Another possible kind of network, could be one geared towards *governance and public oversight*. This is perhaps more interesting for governments, institutions and organizations, but still in the realm of the Wikimedia movement, because we also need some kind of social governance to build understanding and consensus both ways bottom-up, and top-down, and inter-organization. Not that we don't do it already, but perhaps with specific tools it would be easier.
Regards, Micru
what i see is that developing a full FB type network is outside the current scope and capacity of the movement and will probably remain there. There is always room for further development of tools for user and talk pages the will enhance collaborative activities.
I also think that at some stage in the process of collating and sharing the sum of all knowledge we need to consider a project for the collection of the intangible knowledge, from the oral traditional knowledge of Indigenous communities to some limited firsthand experiences. Its these that bring life and understanding to the information adding a new complimentary dimension to the very masculine rigid structures we currently focus on.
On 10 April 2018 at 17:03, David Cuenca Tudela dacuetu@gmail.com wrote:
Unlike Erik, I don't think an open alternative to Facebook will emerge, the inertia at this point is too big and you would need a huge critical mass of people (and organizations) to make it useful. Hard to attain. The only contender on the long run to FB could be reddit, because they seem to be moving in that direction with the new profiles and so on. They have almost all the features that make a (general purpose) social network attractive, the amount of users, and the content.
Regarding the question if the WMF should build a social network for the masses, I don't think it should. A general purpose social network is mainly used for sharing personal events, viral stories, cat pictures, and so on. It does not offer long-term cultural value. A more interesting approach could be a niche social network, like a *social **learning network*. It is related to open knowledge, it offers some cultural value and it doesn't attract the same kind of idiocy that general networks attract. A social learning network could be oriented to life-long self-learning where users would share stories about what are they discovering each day, groups, creation of materials, etc. It could be said that users are already discovering new knowledge in our sites, but they have to go to other websites to talk about it... (for instance /r/wikipedia)
Another possible kind of network, could be one geared towards *governance and public oversight*. This is perhaps more interesting for governments, institutions and organizations, but still in the realm of the Wikimedia movement, because we also need some kind of social governance to build understanding and consensus both ways bottom-up, and top-down, and inter-organization. Not that we don't do it already, but perhaps with specific tools it would be easier.
Regards, Micru _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Le 10/04/2018 à 11:03, David Cuenca Tudela a écrit :
Regarding the question if the WMF should build a social network for the masses, I don't think it should. A general purpose social network is mainly used for sharing personal events, viral stories, cat pictures, and so on. It does not offer long-term cultural value.
While I think I understand your concern, however it seems to me that it doesn't take into account the value of this kind of "silly data", in serious research in fields like anthropology, sociology or linguistic, just to name a few.
If Wikimedia want to become an essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge, and let anyone who shares our vision able to join us, then we certainly must do something about the social networking topic. Integrating matching features in a dedicated platform would allow to promote path to other kind of contributions.
If the goal of this announced infrastructure is to enable to collect and use different forms of free, trusted knowledge, then starting with collecting data, and encouraging curation through gamification of services might be a path. All data which are not published under a free license right from the start will be harder to make relicensed under a free license latter, and all people which are feeding input into non-free platforms are basically sending them to oblivion as far as free knowledge is concerned, which won't help the "sum of all knowledge" goal. That is, rather than losing completely potential contributors because their habits do include silly inputs, especially when they are new comers, you can build them a landing space for silly stuffs and design paths toward more virtuous/prestigious contributions.
Cheers
(These are personal opinions based on my own personal interest in free and volunteer-driven social networks, not an opinion as a WMF member.)
On Mon, Apr 9, 2018 at 9:46 AM, Leinonen Teemu teemu.leinonen@aalto.fi wrote:
Hi,
I have been looking for social networking service that would be fair: not abusing personal data, funded by community, respecting privacy, accepting anonymity, free/libre/ open source etc. Haven’t found many. The Diaspora* Project[1] is not moving forward very fast and the Mastodon[2] is more a microblogging service rather than a social network service.
Can it be that the difference between "microblogging service" and "social network" might be too subtle and subjective to be noticed by the majority of their users? And for the problem you are presenting here?
Would it make sense for Wikimedia movement to build its own social network
service?
Depends on what you mean by "build". If you mean create the software for a new social network service, I don't think it makes sense. Providing support and development of multilingual wiki projects https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects to collect and develop educational content to empower and engage people around the world is already a daunting task in terms of software development, and there is so much to do.
If you mean to run the software developed by someone else, sure, why not experimenting. Thanks to free software licenses anyone can try, and thanks to Wikimedia trademarks licenses I am sure a decent solution could be found by whoever wants to run this experiment.
In the "2017 Movement strategy” we state: “By 2030, Wikimedia will become
the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge”. If we consider discussions and information shared on social network services to be “knowledge”, I think we should have a role in here too.
With some caveats and observations, I agree on the principle, just not on the implication that this means we need to create a free social network for us from scratch, starting with a first line of code. If we consider social networks useful, and free social networks the right and consistent thing to use in an ecosystem of free knowledge, then the first step can be as simple as opening a Mastodon instance. Dozens (hundreds) of volunteers (including amateur sysadmins) are doing just that without much discussion, just scratching their own itch, or for fun, or to learn, or to experiment...
We have 33 million registered users and fulfil all the requirements of
being a “fair service”. A minimum list of features to make Wikimedia Social would be:
(1) Status updates (2) Comments (3) Likes
This is provided by Mastodon, GNUSocial, etc today. They look like minimum features for a social network indeed.
(4)Groups
Mmm can you specify your use cases here? There is a chance, that the need for "groups" actually belongs to different use cases, and we don't need one "social network" tool to resolve everything.
One use case could be instant communication. We have seen Wikimedia groups in Telegram flourishing around events and perhaps more. Again, someone scratched their itches, they just did it, others followed.
Another use case could be more structured and specialized communication, which puts us closer to mailing lists, forums, and our very own Talk pages. For what is worth, some of us are experimenting around this use case with Discourse. Again, scratching own itches and experimenting. More at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T180853
maybe: (5) Events
Well, this is quite a beast on its own, and I believe not a simple one. A few days ago I unassigned https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T1035 to myself because I could not find enough time & focus to push this problem in some productive direction.
I am pretty sure that by integrating this to other Wikimedia services (Commons etc.) we could achieve something awesome.
I agree that there is potential in this area, but I would look more at using and supporting tools developed by others on their own mission, and then think of single-sign-ons and APIs to bridge.
- Teemu[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software)
Hello,
Following a discussion on a Wikisource Telegram group, I searched a bit about mastodon and Wikimedia, and I found back this current thread[1] as well as the following
- https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T198363 - pointing to https://mastodon.technology/@danielhglus/100278498498332671 - evoking a conversation on WP:VPIL, that is actually (most likely) refering to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(idea_lab)/Archive_25#M... - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Social_media - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Social_networking
I was initially looking for something able to do at least the same as Telegram groups, with at least the same cross-devices ease of use. With what I played so far on Mastodon, I don't think it would fulfill the same feature set as Telegram, but I was already suggested a few other solution to further this inquiry:
- Signal https://signal.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_%28software%29 - Ring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_%28software%29 - Wire https://wire.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_%28software%29 - Tox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tox_%28protocol%29 - Matrix http://matrix.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(communication_protocol) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_%28communication_protocol%29
My experience with the two former don't make feel like they could be used for the same purpose as Telegram. I still have to check the three later, but please be bold with any feedback and complementary ideas you might have on this topic.
Although Mastodon doesn't seem to be what I was looking for at start, I do think it would be great to launch a Wikimedia instance and completely in phase with the aim of becoming an essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge. So let me know if I can help in any way on this regard. :)
Cheers.
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2018-April/089977.html
Le 11/04/2018 à 11:17, Quim Gil a écrit :
(These are personal opinions based on my own personal interest in free and volunteer-driven social networks, not an opinion as a WMF member.)
On Mon, Apr 9, 2018 at 9:46 AM, Leinonen Teemu teemu.leinonen@aalto.fi wrote:
Hi,
I have been looking for social networking service that would be fair: not abusing personal data, funded by community, respecting privacy, accepting anonymity, free/libre/ open source etc. Haven’t found many. The Diaspora* Project[1] is not moving forward very fast and the Mastodon[2] is more a microblogging service rather than a social network service.
Can it be that the difference between "microblogging service" and "social network" might be too subtle and subjective to be noticed by the majority of their users? And for the problem you are presenting here?
Would it make sense for Wikimedia movement to build its own social network
service?
Depends on what you mean by "build". If you mean create the software for a new social network service, I don't think it makes sense. Providing support and development of multilingual wiki projects https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects to collect and develop educational content to empower and engage people around the world is already a daunting task in terms of software development, and there is so much to do.
If you mean to run the software developed by someone else, sure, why not experimenting. Thanks to free software licenses anyone can try, and thanks to Wikimedia trademarks licenses I am sure a decent solution could be found by whoever wants to run this experiment.
In the "2017 Movement strategy” we state: “By 2030, Wikimedia will become
the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge”. If we consider discussions and information shared on social network services to be “knowledge”, I think we should have a role in here too.
With some caveats and observations, I agree on the principle, just not on the implication that this means we need to create a free social network for us from scratch, starting with a first line of code. If we consider social networks useful, and free social networks the right and consistent thing to use in an ecosystem of free knowledge, then the first step can be as simple as opening a Mastodon instance. Dozens (hundreds) of volunteers (including amateur sysadmins) are doing just that without much discussion, just scratching their own itch, or for fun, or to learn, or to experiment...
We have 33 million registered users and fulfil all the requirements of
being a “fair service”. A minimum list of features to make Wikimedia Social would be:
(1) Status updates (2) Comments (3) Likes
This is provided by Mastodon, GNUSocial, etc today. They look like minimum features for a social network indeed.
(4)Groups
Mmm can you specify your use cases here? There is a chance, that the need for "groups" actually belongs to different use cases, and we don't need one "social network" tool to resolve everything.
One use case could be instant communication. We have seen Wikimedia groups in Telegram flourishing around events and perhaps more. Again, someone scratched their itches, they just did it, others followed.
Another use case could be more structured and specialized communication, which puts us closer to mailing lists, forums, and our very own Talk pages. For what is worth, some of us are experimenting around this use case with Discourse. Again, scratching own itches and experimenting. More at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T180853
maybe: (5) Events
Well, this is quite a beast on its own, and I believe not a simple one. A few days ago I unassigned https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T1035 to myself because I could not find enough time & focus to push this problem in some productive direction.
I am pretty sure that by integrating this to other Wikimedia services (Commons etc.) we could achieve something awesome.
I agree that there is potential in this area, but I would look more at using and supporting tools developed by others on their own mission, and then think of single-sign-ons and APIs to bridge.
- Teemu[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software)
On Thu, Aug 9, 2018 at 6:40 AM mathieu lovato stumpf guntz < psychoslave@culture-libre.org> wrote:
- Matrix http://matrix.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(communication_protocol) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_%28communication_protocol%29
My experience with the two former don't make feel like they could be used for the same purpose as Telegram. I still have to check the three later, but please be bold with any feedback and complementary ideas you might have on this topic.
You might be interested in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T186061 although it's not really related to the topic of this thread as Matrix is a chat network, not a social network (but then so is Telegram). The project could definitely use more testers.
You forgot Discord https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discord_(software)
that used to be a voice app but has a very nice text feauters also
masti
On 09.08.2018 06:40, mathieu lovato stumpf guntz wrote:
Hello,
Following a discussion on a Wikisource Telegram group, I searched a bit about mastodon and Wikimedia, and I found back this current thread[1] as well as the following
- pointing to https://mastodon.technology/@danielhglus/100278498498332671 - evoking a conversation on WP:VPIL, that is actually (most likely) refering to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(idea_lab)/Archive_25#M...
I was initially looking for something able to do at least the same as Telegram groups, with at least the same cross-devices ease of use. With what I played so far on Mastodon, I don't think it would fulfill the same feature set as Telegram, but I was already suggested a few other solution to further this inquiry:
- Signal https://signal.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_%28software%29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_%28software%29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_%28software%29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(communication_protocol) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_%28communication_protocol%29
My experience with the two former don't make feel like they could be used for the same purpose as Telegram. I still have to check the three later, but please be bold with any feedback and complementary ideas you might have on this topic.
Although Mastodon doesn't seem to be what I was looking for at start, I do think it would be great to launch a Wikimedia instance and completely in phase with the aim of becoming an essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge. So let me know if I can help in any way on this regard. :)
Cheers.
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2018-April/089977.html
Le 11/04/2018 à 11:17, Quim Gil a écrit :
(These are personal opinions based on my own personal interest in free and volunteer-driven social networks, not an opinion as a WMF member.)
On Mon, Apr 9, 2018 at 9:46 AM, Leinonen Teemu teemu.leinonen@aalto.fi wrote:
Hi,
I have been looking for social networking service that would be fair: not abusing personal data, funded by community, respecting privacy, accepting anonymity, free/libre/ open source etc. Haven’t found many. The Diaspora* Project[1] is not moving forward very fast and the Mastodon[2] is more a microblogging service rather than a social network service.
Can it be that the difference between "microblogging service" and "social network" might be too subtle and subjective to be noticed by the majority of their users? And for the problem you are presenting here?
Would it make sense for Wikimedia movement to build its own social network
service?
Depends on what you mean by "build". If you mean create the software for a new social network service, I don't think it makes sense. Providing support and development of multilingual wiki projects https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects to collect and develop educational content to empower and engage people around the world is already a daunting task in terms of software development, and there is so much to do.
If you mean to run the software developed by someone else, sure, why not experimenting. Thanks to free software licenses anyone can try, and thanks to Wikimedia trademarks licenses I am sure a decent solution could be found by whoever wants to run this experiment.
In the "2017 Movement strategy” we state: “By 2030, Wikimedia will become
the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge”. If we consider discussions and information shared on social network services to be “knowledge”, I think we should have a role in here too.
With some caveats and observations, I agree on the principle, just not on the implication that this means we need to create a free social network for us from scratch, starting with a first line of code. If we consider social networks useful, and free social networks the right and consistent thing to use in an ecosystem of free knowledge, then the first step can be as simple as opening a Mastodon instance. Dozens (hundreds) of volunteers (including amateur sysadmins) are doing just that without much discussion, just scratching their own itch, or for fun, or to learn, or to experiment...
We have 33 million registered users and fulfil all the requirements of
being a “fair service”. A minimum list of features to make Wikimedia Social would be:
(1) Status updates (2) Comments (3) Likes
This is provided by Mastodon, GNUSocial, etc today. They look like minimum features for a social network indeed.
(4)Groups
Mmm can you specify your use cases here? There is a chance, that the need for "groups" actually belongs to different use cases, and we don't need one "social network" tool to resolve everything.
One use case could be instant communication. We have seen Wikimedia groups in Telegram flourishing around events and perhaps more. Again, someone scratched their itches, they just did it, others followed.
Another use case could be more structured and specialized communication, which puts us closer to mailing lists, forums, and our very own Talk pages. For what is worth, some of us are experimenting around this use case with Discourse. Again, scratching own itches and experimenting. More at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T180853
maybe: (5) Events
Well, this is quite a beast on its own, and I believe not a simple one. A few days ago I unassigned https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T1035 to myself because I could not find enough time & focus to push this problem in some productive direction.
I am pretty sure that by integrating this to other Wikimedia services (Commons etc.) we could achieve something awesome.
I agree that there is potential in this area, but I would look more at using and supporting tools developed by others on their own mission, and then think of single-sign-ons and APIs to bridge.
- Teemu
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software)
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Mathieu, thank you for your research and for connecting so many dots.
On Thu, Aug 9, 2018 at 6:40 AM mathieu lovato stumpf guntz < psychoslave@culture-libre.org> wrote:
Although Mastodon doesn't seem to be what I was looking for at start, I do think it would be great to launch a Wikimedia instance and completely in phase with the aim of becoming an essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge. So let me know if I can help in any way on this regard. :)
In my professional role, I think it is worth considering the idea of approaching Wikimedia to the Fediverse as part of
Knowledge as a service: To serve our users, we will become a platform
that serves open knowledge to the world across interfaces and communities.
We will build tools for allies and partners to organize and exchange free
knowledge beyond Wikimedia. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Direction
In fact, I have started some very casual conversations about these ideas (equivalent to chats by the coffee machine, except that I'm remote and I don't drink coffee), partially motivated by this thread.
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T198363 is a good umbrella task. If someone wants to develop the idea of creating a Wikimedia instance in the Fediverse (official or not), then that would deserve its own discussion. Where to start this discussion? IdeaLab? Maybe it doesn't matter as long as we have one place well advertised.
There are at least three aspects to consider:
* Technical: Creating i.e. a Mastodon instance somewhere is technically simple, running that instance in Wikimedia production servers is another story. While there is no need to start with a service in production, it is useful to consider the scenario early on.
* Legal: Aiming for an official Wikimedia instance has implications of trademarks, legal requirements, and so on. While there is no need to start with an official instance, it is useful to consider the scenario early on.
* Social: While creating an instance would be simple, having a critical mass of Wikimedians aware of it and using it regularly is not. There is no lack of brilliant ideas that failed because the people didn't follow. And here you would be fighting against resistance to change e.g. from those believing that Wikimedians should focus on wikis only, from Wikimedians well invested in corporate social networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc) and of course with everyone being "too busy to join another channel". Whoever drives this initiative must be ready to work hard explaining, promoting, supporting...
Bottom line: this would be an initiative relatively simple to start, that has a clear risk of complications coming if it succeeds. Considering that the likely scenario for any new experiment is that it will close in less than a year, I think those complications caused by success is a problem the promoters of this initiative would want to have.
PS: In my personal time I am a Fediverse enthusiast and a Mastodon instance admin, and for this reason I am being cautious about bias / being too passionate. :)
Cheers.
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2018-April/089977.html
Le 11/04/2018 à 11:17, Quim Gil a écrit :
(These are personal opinions based on my own personal interest in free and volunteer-driven social networks, not an opinion as a WMF member.)
On Mon, Apr 9, 2018 at 9:46 AM, Leinonen Teemu teemu.leinonen@aalto.fi teemu.leinonen@aalto.fi wrote:
Hi,
I have been looking for social networking service that would be fair: not abusing personal data, funded by community, respecting privacy, accepting anonymity, free/libre/ open source etc. Haven’t found many. The Diaspora* Project[1] is not moving forward very fast and the Mastodon[2] is more a microblogging service rather than a social network service.
Can it be that the difference between "microblogging service" and "social network" might be too subtle and subjective to be noticed by the majority of their users? And for the problem you are presenting here?
Would it make sense for Wikimedia movement to build its own social network
service?
Depends on what you mean by "build". If you mean create the software for a new social network service, I don't think it makes sense. Providing support and development of multilingual wiki projectshttps://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects to collect and develop educational content to empower and engage people around the world is already a daunting task in terms of software development, and there is so much to do.
If you mean to run the software developed by someone else, sure, why not experimenting. Thanks to free software licenses anyone can try, and thanks to Wikimedia trademarks licenses I am sure a decent solution could be found by whoever wants to run this experiment.
In the "2017 Movement strategy” we state: “By 2030, Wikimedia will become
the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge”. If we consider discussions and information shared on social network services to be “knowledge”, I think we should have a role in here too.
With some caveats and observations, I agree on the principle, just not on the implication that this means we need to create a free social network for us from scratch, starting with a first line of code. If we consider social networks useful, and free social networks the right and consistent thing to use in an ecosystem of free knowledge, then the first step can be as simple as opening a Mastodon instance. Dozens (hundreds) of volunteers (including amateur sysadmins) are doing just that without much discussion, just scratching their own itch, or for fun, or to learn, or to experiment...
We have 33 million registered users and fulfil all the requirements of
being a “fair service”. A minimum list of features to make Wikimedia Social would be:
(1) Status updates (2) Comments (3) Likes
This is provided by Mastodon, GNUSocial, etc today. They look like minimum features for a social network indeed.
(4)Groups
Mmm can you specify your use cases here? There is a chance, that the need for "groups" actually belongs to different use cases, and we don't need one "social network" tool to resolve everything.
One use case could be instant communication. We have seen Wikimedia groups in Telegram flourishing around events and perhaps more. Again, someone scratched their itches, they just did it, others followed.
Another use case could be more structured and specialized communication, which puts us closer to mailing lists, forums, and our very own Talk pages. For what is worth, some of us are experimenting around this use case with Discourse. Again, scratching own itches and experimenting. More athttps://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T180853
maybe: (5) Events
Well, this is quite a beast on its own, and I believe not a simple one. A few days ago I unassigned https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T1035 to myself because I could not find enough time & focus to push this problem in some productive direction.
I am pretty sure that by integrating this to other Wikimedia services (Commons etc.) we could achieve something awesome.
I agree that there is potential in this area, but I would look more at using and supporting tools developed by others on their own mission, and then think of single-sign-ons and APIs to bridge.
- Teemu[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software)
Hello,
2018-08-10 11:19 GMT+02:00 Quim Gil qgil@wikimedia.org:
Mathieu, thank you for your research and for connecting so many dots.
On Thu, Aug 9, 2018 at 6:40 AM mathieu lovato stumpf guntz < psychoslave@culture-libre.org> wrote:
Although Mastodon doesn't seem to be what I was looking for at start, I
do
think it would be great to launch a Wikimedia instance and completely in phase with the aim of becoming an essential infrastructure of the
ecosystem
of free knowledge. So let me know if I can help in any way on this
regard.
:)
In my professional role, I think it is worth considering the idea of approaching Wikimedia to the Fediverse as part of
Knowledge as a service: To serve our users, we will become a platform
that serves open knowledge to the world across interfaces and communities.
We will build tools for allies and partners to organize and exchange free
knowledge beyond Wikimedia. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Direction
In fact, I have started some very casual conversations about these ideas (equivalent to chats by the coffee machine, except that I'm remote and I don't drink coffee), partially motivated by this thread.
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T198363 is a good umbrella task. If someone wants to develop the idea of creating a Wikimedia instance in the Fediverse (official or not), then that would deserve its own discussion. Where to start this discussion? IdeaLab? Maybe it doesn't matter as long as we have one place well advertised.
There are at least three aspects to consider:
- Technical: Creating i.e. a Mastodon instance somewhere is technically
simple, running that instance in Wikimedia production servers is another story. While there is no need to start with a service in production, it is useful to consider the scenario early on.
It may have changed since I last checked (a bit more than a year ago), but while it is easy to create an instance, migrating an account to another instance, or moving an entire instance to a new domain is not (I couldn't even find documentation on how to accomplish this. So if we start an instance that is supposed to become an official one, we need at the very least have the final domain name from the start. Depending on the one we want, we still might need official support (e.g., anyone can register wikimedians.social, but wikimedia.social is restricted to the WMF by a DPML Block.)
- Legal: Aiming for an official Wikimedia instance has implications of
trademarks, legal requirements, and so on. While there is no need to start with an official instance, it is useful to consider the scenario early on.
Do you know what these requirements are? Are some issues unsolvable (for example, if an official Wikimedia instance implies that no movie-based gifs can be posted (for copyright reasons), then this instance has basically no chance to gain a large user base. While this may not be a problem (a small instance with a small number of accounts posting things like #pictureOfTheDay to the whole Fediverse would still be valuable), this would change the scope of what we try to accomplish.
- Social: While creating an instance would be simple, having a critical
mass of Wikimedians aware of it and using it regularly is not. There is no lack of brilliant ideas that failed because the people didn't follow. And here you would be fighting against resistance to change e.g. from those believing that Wikimedians should focus on wikis only, from Wikimedians well invested in corporate social networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc) and of course with everyone being "too busy to join another channel". Whoever drives this initiative must be ready to work hard explaining, promoting, supporting...
In April 2017 when the Mastodon hype wave hit France, I had several people asking me if WMFr would create a Mastodon instance, so I'm not particularly worried about that (If we had created the instance back then, there would have several dozens of users creating their account). We may have lost that momentum, but OTOH the fact that the Fediverse is still very active is a good proof of resilience. And then again, even if there is not a critical mass joining the instance, as it would interact with the Fediverse, this does not mean that the few users there would be shouting in the void.
On a more personal note: I don't have enough time to lead this initiative myself, but I would happily give help with administrating the instance, or "explaining, promoting, supporting" it.
Cheers, Sylvain
Hi Sylvain!
(Let me add the disclaimer that opinions are mine and don't represent the views of the Foundation.)
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 4:33 PM Sylvain Boissel < sylvain.boissel@wikimedia.fr> wrote:
Hello,
It may have changed since I last checked (a bit more than a year ago), but while it is easy to create an instance, migrating an account to another instance, or moving an entire instance to a new domain is not (I couldn't even find documentation on how to accomplish this. So if we start an instance that is supposed to become an official one, we need at the very least have the final domain name from the start. Depending on the one we want, we still might need official support (e.g., anyone can register wikimedians.social, but wikimedia.social is restricted to the WMF by a DPML Block.)
This is a good point. Renaming Mastodon instances continues to be a pain -- see https://discourse.joinmastodon.org/t/domain-changes-and-aliases/671
This is a good reason to bet on a domain for the long run. However, let's not mix two different concepts: use of Wikimedia trademarks and official technical support (servers, maintenance). If the promoters of this initiative decide to propose a domain that use a Wikimedia trademark, they can request an authorization via https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Trademark_policy.
- Legal: Aiming for an official Wikimedia instance has implications of
trademarks, legal requirements, and so on. While there is no need to
start
with an official instance, it is useful to consider the scenario early
on.
Do you know what these requirements are? Are some issues unsolvable (for example, if an official Wikimedia instance implies that no movie-based gifs can be posted (for copyright reasons), then this instance has basically no chance to gain a large user base. While this may not be a problem (a small instance with a small number of accounts posting things like #pictureOfTheDay to the whole Fediverse would still be valuable), this would change the scope of what we try to accomplish.
Honestly, no idea. I am just applying the basic reasoning that the requirements and potential risks for content and user data will be more complex for the Wikimedia Foundation maintaining a service officially than for a group of individual volunteers doing the same independently as a hobby.
If you have a clear idea about what you want to accomplish, I'd recommend you to take the lightest steps that will lead you there. Iterations, experiments and changes are expected anyway, being this idea so new and different in the context of our movement. It is also an idea easy to implement and maintain (through a service like e.g. https://masto.host or self-hosted). And economically affordable.
I don't have technical expertise in this area, but I do think something chat-like has the most chance of success.
Telegram seems to be the most active platform now among non-technical users, especially used during conferences.
Perhaps a much better integration with IRC (with a Slack-like interface tied to SUL) might provide a good path forward, though I imagine it would require significant investment.
Thanks, Pharos
On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 10:38 AM, Quim Gil qgil@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi Sylvain!
(Let me add the disclaimer that opinions are mine and don't represent the views of the Foundation.)
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 4:33 PM Sylvain Boissel < sylvain.boissel@wikimedia.fr> wrote:
Hello,
It may have changed since I last checked (a bit more than a year ago),
but
while it is easy to create an instance, migrating an account to another instance, or moving an entire instance to a new domain is not (I couldn't even find documentation on how to accomplish this. So if we start an instance that is supposed to become an official one, we need at the very least have the final domain name from the start. Depending on the one we want, we still might need official support (e.g., anyone can register wikimedians.social, but wikimedia.social is restricted to the WMF by a
DPML
Block.)
This is a good point. Renaming Mastodon instances continues to be a pain -- see https://discourse.joinmastodon.org/t/domain-changes-and-aliases/671
This is a good reason to bet on a domain for the long run. However, let's not mix two different concepts: use of Wikimedia trademarks and official technical support (servers, maintenance). If the promoters of this initiative decide to propose a domain that use a Wikimedia trademark, they can request an authorization via https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Trademark_policy.
- Legal: Aiming for an official Wikimedia instance has implications of
trademarks, legal requirements, and so on. While there is no need to
start
with an official instance, it is useful to consider the scenario early
on.
Do you know what these requirements are? Are some issues unsolvable (for example, if an official Wikimedia instance implies that no movie-based
gifs
can be posted (for copyright reasons), then this instance has basically
no
chance to gain a large user base. While this may not be a problem (a
small
instance with a small number of accounts posting things like #pictureOfTheDay to the whole Fediverse would still be valuable), this would change the scope of what we try to accomplish.
Honestly, no idea. I am just applying the basic reasoning that the requirements and potential risks for content and user data will be more complex for the Wikimedia Foundation maintaining a service officially than for a group of individual volunteers doing the same independently as a hobby.
If you have a clear idea about what you want to accomplish, I'd recommend you to take the lightest steps that will lead you there. Iterations, experiments and changes are expected anyway, being this idea so new and different in the context of our movement. It is also an idea easy to implement and maintain (through a service like e.g. https://masto.host or self-hosted). And economically affordable.
-- Quim Gil Senior Manager of Community Relations @ Wikimedia Foundation https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Qgil-WMF _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: 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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