Wikipedia-l June 2006

wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org

74 participants
42 discussions

Re: [Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] the easy way or the less easy way
by SJ 16 Jun '06

16 Jun '06

FYI; part of a long thread on foundation governance and structure. Those interested in discussions about foundation membership, the meta-organization of the projects, and the future of the foundation : you may want to join or browse foundation-l. I don't know where these conversations will take place in the future, but at present they seem to be gathering in frequency and length on that list, and long-ranging decisions are being made over the next few months. SJ ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 11:00:12 -0400 (EDT) From: Samuel Klein <meta.sj(a)gmail.com> Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] the easy way or the less easy way Hiya, Thanks for the long and insightful posts to this list recently. Some quick thoughts. > ARTICLE III - MEMBERSHIP > The Foundation shall have no members. Opt-in membership is useful; I always liked the idea, regardless of whether or how dues were set up. > ARTICLE II > Section 4. Community. > The Foundation acknowledges the valuable contributions of volunteers > throughout the world for their dedication and tremendous work. The > Foundation defines as one of its purposes the enhancement of the various > Wikimedia communities throughout the world in their respective languages. This would be an unfortunate first sentence. Foundations do not usually acknowledge the contributions of projects they support. The contributions of donors, perhaps... More generally : I am surprised to see the term "volunteer" has come to be used in these discussions as a way of distinguishing some contributors form the Foundation; at times in a lightly patronizing context ('volunteer' as opposed to 'professional' / 'expert' / 'dedicated')... similar to the way "amateur" has come to mean "dilletante" or "unpaid" rather than "connoisseur". I expect that Wikipedians of all people have a sense of generativity, active creation, and public responsibility which transcends the notion of 'volunteering' for a cause. When one returns home to fix the plumbing in a parents' house, does one call it "volunteering"? No. Participating in a barn-raising for a neighbor, or rebuilding one's own community after a storm? Likewise no. Neither is it "volunteering" to create part of a public art project, tend a community garden, write the biography of a hero, or spending an evening in language-exchange. Wikipedians "contributing" to the public store of knowledge are simply doing for their own global community what most people on the planet should come to do -- sharing what they know, and helping others do the same. On Fri, 16 Jun 2006, Anthere wrote: > Hence my trying to turn toward you. > How many editors work on the projects ? thousands [over 100,000] > How many people are registered to this list ? a few hundred [only? when was the last time a call for sign-ups went out?] > How many people are active on this list ? A couple dozens > How many people from wikitech commented on the Apache model ? 0 > How many people from this list commented on the Apache model ? less than 5 [more coming...] This model was fascinating, though a lot to digest. (It would be even more fascinating to see one or two other models, and hear details of how and why they were set up.) > ---------- > Roughly, this model would be what I would qualify as a Private > Foundation. Or Business Foundation. It is a Foundation which focus a lot > on the efficiency of business (except that there is no business A pity, for a foundation with as much promise as this one has to change the world. > The Apache model is entirely different. I would call it a public > Foundation or a Community Foundation. Majority of members would be > garanteed from the community. There would be term limits. It would be a Right. > ---------- > Which model would be better in our case ? > > One model insists more on business. It would certainly be more business > efficient in the long run. It will certainly be more stable and more > reliable (only limited turnover in the board). Likely more professional. > I can envision a group of famous people seating on its board, with 3-4 > meetings per year. Some staying there forever because that looks good on > their business card, even though they do nothing at all (this is already > the case of one of our member). A big and well-paid staff to run the > business. And little by little, disinterest by the community. > > But this might be the best choice to create bonds with the big firms, > the big NGOs, as that Foundation will appear more solid and trustworthy. > More money... could mean better support of the projects and of our goals. I don't know. The best support of the projects and goals that I can imagine doesn't stem directly from money, but from an ever-increasing community participation; something which Wikipedia and other projects have enjoyed to date. > The second model will be more lively. A bazaar of some sorts. We could > expect the board to get more involved in every-day running. More > volunteer work probably. It will be much more difficult to organise, > because of the noises of campaigning from new candidates, of the public > discussions. It will be more of a social construction. Less stable due > to turn-over of board members. We would not have such a good image in US > business, but we might be loved by free-movement organizations and > citizens all over the world. > I suppose we'll have less money... but we may have more ideas because of > the boiling culture. I wouldn't say "by free-movement organizations and citizens" -- but simply "by individuals" all over the world. Many people who don't get 'free culture' or 'FOSS' at all, and don't care, get Wikipedia (great project) -- and get *really* interested when they find out the extent to which it is guided by a broad and milling community. Tangentially, it's not at all clear to me that this would mean less money in the long run; more to the point, goals of generating and distributing content may be better served without that intermediary. > If we pick up the second model, it will be much more painful. The Also a chance for community members to reflect on the best that they have gotten from the projects, and the best that they have seen in the world; regardless of which model is picked, it would be better if a few hundred community members took this analysis and brainstorming seriously so that it was a considered choice and not a default one based on what is easiest. > I thought it over and over. I am not sure which one of the two models > would be best for the goals of the Foundation. According to our habits, > we would say "first option". But are we not precisely amongst those who > proved that a decentralized, transparent model, largely based on > volunteer work and using the goodwill of non-expert people may be > successful ? Not only successful. Exuberantly, outrageously successful, orders of magnitude beyond the dreams of the initial participants. There are subtleties in what has worked here that have never before been effectively explored. Some are still mysterious, which is why small groups of editors / meta-editors / policy writers often have trouble tapping them as needed to work on specific projects. > I have little interest in the first model as an *individual*. Do you think it has value for the general good? > -------- > between community and Foundation are disorganised. We'll soon have new > appointed board members. I do not expect new appointments to help > reducing the lack of communication. > > But this is a broken system. Balancing between the Business Foundation > and the Community Foundation, so that no one knows where to put his ass. > > At this point, in large part, this now depends on you. If you want to do > a more Community Foundation, we need bylaws which reflect this. We need It is hard to get feedback on newly drafted bylaws when they are not public. How could the community help draft new bylaws that were different from what has been written? > Sorry for the long rant. > I hope it clarifies the current situation. > > Anthere Thanks again. Catching up on email, SJ _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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Dutch moderators destroy evidence of checkuser abuse
by Walter van Kalken 15 Jun '06

15 Jun '06

Have it translated by your favourite Dutch person: ==De moderatoren vernietigen het bewijs van hun machtsmisbruik== Dit haalde [[Gebruiker:Dolledre]] zojuist uit de kroeg, het bewijs dat men oneigenlijke middelen gebruikt en de privacy van gebruikers ten grabbel gooit: === Misbruikmaken chekuser en inbreuk op de privacy === Zojuist heeft [[gebruiker:Walter]] gebruik gemaakt van de tool checkuser. Dit is een tool die ter beschikking staat aan de stewards en slechts in een uiterst noodgeval gebruikt mag worden. Namelijk als iemand erg vandalisme pleegt om zijn IP op te kunnen sporen. Dit deed ik niet en toch heeft Walter checkuser gebruikt. Tegen alle richtlijnen daaromtrent in. Hoe weet ik dat Walter dit deed? Heel eenvoudig hij blokkeerde zojuist het IPadres waaronder ik werkte. Dat kan hij alleen geweten hebben als hij checkuser gebruikte. Niet alleen is dit een schending van onze privacyregels. Maar ook nog eens een schending van het feit dat dit alleen in een noodgeval gebruikt mag worden. En dan alleen nog als er meerdere mensen mee instemmen Daarnaast stuurde Walter mij ook nog eens een dreigemail vandaag dat ik voor altijd geblokkeerd ga worden en dat hij mij alleen ''kan redden'' als ik braaf ben en allen als waerth edit. Tja als dat editten me onmogelijk wordt gemaakt ....... Dit is: A) Schending van iemands privacy ... er is een reden dat men onder een naam edit. B) Bedreiging C) Oneigenlijk gebruik van machtsmiddelen. Ik vraag [[Gebruiker:Walter]] zelf de conclusie te verbinden aan deze 3 zeer ernstige feiten! WAERTH (die zijn computer opnieuw op heeft moeten starten)

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Re: [Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] moving forward on article validation
by SJ 15 Jun '06

15 Jun '06

Note that the "Wikipedia 0.5" WikiProject on en:wp is tackling this issue with some energy, and could use more input and nominations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_0.5_Nominations On 6/13/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia(a)earthlink.net> wrote: > Delirium wrote: > > > We've discussed on and off that it'd be nice to vet specific revisions > > of Wikipedia articles so readers can either choose to read only > > quality articles, or at least have an indication of how good an > > article is. This is an obvious prerequisite for a Wikipedia 1.0 print > > edition, and would be nice on the website as well. > > > > There is a lengthy list of proposals here: > > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Article_validation_proposals > > > > I wanted to try to rekindle the process by summarizing some of the > > proposals, which I think can be grouped into three main types, and > > then suggest some ideas on where to go from there. > > Thank you for taking the time to address this. Ditto. > > Proposal #1: Fork or freeze, then bring up to our quality standards. < > > Some cons: Either disrupts normal editing through a freeze, or results > > in duplicated effort with a fork. Also is likely to result in a > > fairly slow process, so the reviewed version of each article may be > > replaced with an updated version quite infrequently; most articles > > will have no reviewed version, so doesn't do much for increasing the > > typical quality of presentation on the website. Duplication of effort is bad. Branching, rather than forking, for a very limited time duration, makes sense for various end uses. For instance, a single good revision of an article might support a dozen branches each of which pared it down to a different length. We will need a better notion of 'article revision history' that supports branching, or non-linear revisions, to properly allow for this. I believe there is some theoretical work being done on distributed version control for text... Michael Snow writes: > This option would work well, I think, for two possible uses. One is for > offline distribution, since there's less point in creating a fork that > will just be another online variation on the same theme. It will be helpful to distinguish between branching (which ends after a point and either remerges with the main trunk or is at least never modified again) and forking (starting a separate revision history with different end goals, to continue indefinitely). Each offline copy gets modified slightly for format reasons, anyway. The question is whether to provide for such branching within a central wikipedia database. < The second possibility I think we would benefit from is the "freeze" option of > presenting stable, reviewed versions by default to users who do not log in. This seems a poor and less-scalable way to present stable versions to users; see other methods below. Delirium: > > Proposal #2: Institute a rating and trust-metric system > > --- > > Wikipedians rate revisions, perhaps on some scale from "complete crap" > > to "I'm an expert in this field and am confident of its accuracy and Naive, single-scale ratings have many problems that I don't see being overcome. (The advogato suggestions are no panacaea.) Allowing groups of editors (self-selecting, auto-selected by user properties) to provide revision metadata that others can choose to see or not see as they please would be more scalable and less gameable. Some of these groups could provide metadata of the form 'decent and not vandalized content'. > > Proposal #3: Extend a feature-article-like process I'm not sure what you meant by your example -- for instance by 'work on revisions rather than articles', as the goal is still a better article (you can't change a historical revision) -- but this is effectively what the en:wp validation effort is attempting. This scales in that it can be split up among topic-centered WikiProjects. See for instance this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/WikiProje… Avoiding hard-coded metrics for quality, and encouraging editors active within a topic to work together to reach quality decisions, seems in line with how editing has evolved. This is like peer review and FAC review that already takes place, but can be applied to a wider spectrum of quality. --SJ

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moving forward on article validation
by Titoxd＠Wikimedia 14 Jun '06

14 Jun '06

Well, there already is a backbone system developed to fill some of those needs. At [[WP:1.0/I]], a few WikiProjects rate articles on basis of quality, which is fed to a category, and then is picked up by a bot to have a record of which articles are assessed and when. Also, it provides a revision which can be used to check future edits against. One example of such a page would be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Tropical_c yclone_articles_by_quality/1. Titoxd.

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moving forward on article validation
by Delirium 14 Jun '06

14 Jun '06

(Mainly concerning wikipedia, but cross-posting to foundation-l because of some discussion of committees; see the end.) We've discussed on and off that it'd be nice to vet specific revisions of Wikipedia articles so readers can either choose to read only quality articles, or at least have an indication of how good an article is. This is an obvious prerequisite for a Wikipedia 1.0 print edition, and would be nice on the website as well. There is a lengthy list of proposals here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Article_validation_proposals I wanted to try to rekindle the process by summarizing some of the proposals, which I think can be grouped into three main types, and then suggest some ideas on where to go from there. Proposal #1: Fork or freeze, then bring up to our quality standards. --- Wikipedians would look around for articles that look reasonably good (perhaps starting with feature articles) and nominate them to be worked on. Then either freeze them (by placing a notice or some sort of technical measure), or else fork them off to a copy. The articles would then be checked for referencing, accuracy, grammar, and so on, possibly only by users who've met some bar for participation in the clean-up process, resulting in an article suitable for publication. Forking or freezing is to ensure the cleanup process actually terminates rather than trying to clean up a moving target; there are of course pros and cons to forking vs. freezing. Some pros: Fairly straightforward; follows successful methods of "stable release" management in the software-development world; allows a certain amount of editorial work not normally suitable for an in-progress encyclopedia (like cutting out an entire section because it's too far from being done to go in the print version); is easy to integrate "expert review" into as a last vetting step before it goes out the door. Some cons: Either disrupts normal editing through a freeze, or results in duplicated effort with a fork. Also is likely to result in a fairly slow process, so the reviewed version of each article may be replaced with an updated version quite infrequently; most articles will have no reviewed version, so doesn't do much for increasing the typical quality of presentation on the website. Proposal #2: Institute a rating and trust-metric system --- Wikipedians rate revisions, perhaps on some scale from "complete crap" to "I'm an expert in this field and am confident of its accuracy and high quality". Then there is some way of coming up with a score for that revision, perhaps based on the trustworthiness of the raters themselves (determined through some method). Once that's done, the interface can do things like display the last version of an article over some score, if any, or a big warning that the article sucks otherwise (and so on). Some pros: Distributed; no duplicated effort; good revisions are marked good as soon as enough people have vetted them; humans review the articles, but the "process" itself is done automatically; most articles will have some information about their quality to present to a reader Some cons: Gameing-proof trust metric systems are notoriously hard to design. Proposal #3: Extend a feature-article-like process --- Extend a feature-article type process to work on revisions rather than articles. For example, nominate revision X of an article as a featured article; improve it during the process until it gets to a revision Y that people agree is good. Then sometime later, nominate a new revision Z, explain what the differences are, and discuss whether this should supercede the old featured version. Can also have sub-featured statuses like "good" or "mediocre, but at least nothing is outright wrong". In principle can be done with no code changes, though there are some that could ease things along greatly. Some pros: Gets at the effect of proposal #2 but with a flexible human-run system instead of an automatic system, and therefore less likely to be brittle. Some cons: Will need carefully-designed software assistance to keep all the information and discussion manageable and avoid descending into a morass of thousands upon thousands of messy talk pages --- These are not necessarily mutually exclusive. In my opinion, something like #3 would be best suited to marking quality of revisions on the website, and then the best of these could feed into a process like #1 that would do final vetting and cleanup before a print publication (in addition to print-specific things like editing for space, formatting, image resolution, etc.). In any case, obviously proposals can come and go forever. None are implemented, but that's partly because nobody wants to sink a bunch of time into implementing a system when there's no guarantee it will even be used. My hope is to condense the discussion so we choose some high-level ideas on how to proceed before moving on to the inevitable details, and then move to implementation once we've agreed what we actually want. On an organizational level, it may be useful to have a working group sorting this out to focus the process. It may be useful, in my opinion, for the Foundation to make it an official committee of sorts and indicate at least informally that it'll support getting its recommendations enacted (e.g. paying another developer if development resources are the bottleneck). I would be willing to devote a significant amount of time to such a committee, since I think this is the single biggest problem holding back Wikipedia's usefulness to the general public, and I'm sure there are at least several other people with ideas and expertise in this area who would be willing to do so as well. Thoughts? -Mark

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First Swiss Wikipedia Day
by Michael Bimmler 12 Jun '06

12 Jun '06

Press release: First Wikipedia Day at ETH Zurich Zurich, June 12th 2006 - Even though it exists just since five years the free online encyclopedia "Wikipedia" is known to many internet users throughout the world. These days there will be a presentation to the interested public in Switzerland. Talks and Workshops will be offered at the Wikipedia Day Saturday, June 17th from 10 AM to 6 PM at the ETH Zurich. Especially people with non-IT-background and occassional internet users are invited. The GEP pavillon at the top station of the Polybahn is open all day for people who would like to learn more about the Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. One subject will be the usage of Wikipedia in school and science. Prof. Dr. Betrand Meyer (Referent of Software Development at ETH Zurich) and Prof. Dr. Beat Döbeli Honegger (Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz) will hold talks on this. Additionally to further talks there will take place a panel discussion about Free Knowledge on the programme. All visitors are invited to make their first edits at the free encyclopedia. The best article will be awarded at the Writing Contest. This first public event is organised by Wikimedia CH, Association for the Advancement of Free Knowledge - which was found at May 14th at Olten and is under the patronage of VIS - Verein der Informatik-Studierenden der ETH Zürich. This is also the first Wikipedia event in Switzerland, at the same day Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. hosts at Goettingen the "Wikipedia Academy". For further information look at http://wikimedia.ch/wikipedia-day-2006/lang-pref/en/ . -- Regards Michael Bimmler Wikimedia CH - Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens Wikimedia CH - Association for the advancement of free knowledge www.wikimedia.ch

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Wikis in Enterprises (Survey)
by Tim 'avatar' Bartel 12 Jun '06

12 Jun '06

Hi, one and a half month ago I started an online survey "Wikis in Unternehmen" (Wikis in Enterprises) in German language. Until today more than 200 people took the German survey but I was often asked to translate it to English to open it up to an international audience. I needed some time (my english is awfull...), but it is done now: the English online survey "Wikis in Enterprises" can be found here: http://wikipedistik.de/survey/ This survey is part of the study "Wikis in Enterprises" by the Department of Personnel Economics and Human Resource Management of the University of Cologne. I'm writing my diploma thesis about this subject. The survey adresses enterprises of any size and also enterprises not using a wiki. It is held short on purpose and answering it will take only 5-10 minutes at most. Aim of the survey "Wikis in Enterprises" is the examination of the factors which work in favor or disfavor for the use of wikis in enterprises. These factors can for example be the affiliation to a business sector, the size of an enterprise, the listing or the outsourcing of IT activities. Dependencies between these factors may also lead to interesting conclusions. Why should you participate? * The survey is answered in only a few minutes. * Only with a large group of participants a big data pool can be generated which allows valid results and cognitions and recommendations. * The participans get noticed about the results. * You support "Wikimetrics"... Thank you! Feel free to blog it :-) The German survey was named in two printed magazines, but most participants came through the blogosphere. Bye, Tim 'avatar' Bartel. -- http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Avatar

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My first message
by mboverload 10 Jun '06

10 Jun '06

I'm just going to be the noob and let you all know I just joined...so hi =) I'm User:mboverload on en.wikipedia

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Wikia's new CEO
by Andrew Lih 09 Jun '06

09 Jun '06

FYI, Wikia taps eBay exec as CEO San Francisco Business Times - 2:41 PM PDT Monday Wikia Inc., a for-profit company founded 18 months ago by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, hired Gil Penchina as its CEO on Monday. Penchina was vice president and general manager at eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY). Wales and Angela Beesley started Menlo Park-based Wikia to allow for subscription and advertising supported "wikis" or user-created communities similar to Wikipedia, which is based in St. Petersburg, Fla. Popular communities created on the site include several devoted to analyzing and discussing television shows, particularly those with Byzantine plots like ABC's "Lost." Wikia has about eight employees and raised $4 million from Bessemer Venture Partners in March. Jeremy Levine of Bessemer sits on the company's board. http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2006/06/05/daily9.…

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Re: [Wikipedia-l] sanger on 'open meritocracies'
by Michael Snow 09 Jun '06

09 Jun '06

Anthony DiPierro wrote: > So Larry Sanger is complaining about Wikipedia being too anarchistic > and Nicholas Carr is complaining about it being too hierarchical. You > guys must be doing something right :). > > I thought the most insightful part of the article was this: > > "I think that the Wikipedia community made a mistake when it decided > that it's the wiki part that explained Wikipedia's success. They > proceeded to apply the same software and content development system, > which happened to work (more or less) for an encyclopedia, to develop > very different kinds of projects: a dictionary, news articles, editing > public domain books, writing new books from scratch, and several more > things. It seems they found they had a whopping good hammer and > suddenly everything looked like a nail." > > I think I've fallen into that trap myself a few times. One of his useful observations, yes. Although it could be pointed out that plenty of people in the community support the principle that being a wiki is secondary to producing an encyclopedia (though certainly still a free and collaborative encyclopedia). That would be why we make adjustments of the kind that prompted Carr's pronouncement. And for the other projects, a wiki is sometimes far from ideal, true enough. That's been recognized for some time, which is why there are ongoing efforts to adapt or extend the software to better serve those objectives. In the meantime, the wiki is the tool we've got. Tired cliches aside, I'm sure better ones would be welcomed if somebody cares to offer us more tools. --Michael Snow

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Wikipedia-l June 2006