Good points. Which is why I suggest refocusing RCOM from trying to
address the rants of few malcontents about "too many surveys" (read:
more than 0) to doing something more useful for the research community
(and Wikipedia one). Reorganize research pages. Advertise the existence
of the reorganized site. Develop tools to make research into Wikipedia
easier, and/or pressure WMF to develop those tools (and once we have
such tools they can be used as a carrot to tempt people into registering
their research programs on meta or such).
--
Piotr Konieczny, PhD
http://hanyang.academia.edu/PiotrKoniecznyhttp://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gdV8_AEAAAAJhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Piotrus
On 7/18/2014 06:37, Jonathan Morgan wrote:
>
>
> First, I wanted to highlight the important issue that Heather raises
> here, because although it's a separate issue, it's an important one:
>
> On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 2:38 AM, Heather Ford <hfordsa(a)gmail.com
> <mailto:hfordsa@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> ...
>
> One immediate requirement that I've been talking to others about
> is finding ways of making the case to the WMF as a group of
> researchers for the anonymization of country level data, for
> example. I've spoken to a few researchers (and I myself made a
> request about a year ago that hasn't been responded to) and it
> seems like some work is required by the foundation to do this
> anonymisation but that there are a few of us who would be really
> keen to use this data to produce research very valuable to
> Wikipedia - especially from smaller language versions/developing
> countries. Having an official process that assesses how worthwhile
> this investment of time would be to the Foundation would be a
> great idea, I think, but right now there seems to be a general
> focus on the research that the Foundation does itself rather than
> enabling researchers outside. I know how busy Aaron and Dario (and
> others in the team) are so perhaps this requires a new position to
> coordinate between researchers and Foundation resources?
>
> Anyway, I think the big question right now is whether there are
> any plans for RCOM that have been made by the research team and
> the only people who can answer that are folks in the research team :)
>
> Best,
> Heather.
>
>
>
> As a community-run group, RCOM doesn't have any role in making
> non-public data available to researchers. However, Aaron and I are
> putting together a proposal for a workshop
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:CSCW15_workshop> that would
> address issues like this. That's work we're doing in an official
> capacity, as opposed to the RCOM work, which is volunteer.
>
> On RCOM more generally... I think clarifying the role of the
> committee, and getting a larger and more diverse set of people
> involved, might help make RCOM work. But as Aaron can attest, it is
> difficult to get people to agree on what RCOMs role should be, let
> alone get them to work for RCOM.
>
> I've been involved with RCOM for a while, albeit not very actively.
> Unfortunately, I think that the fact that the only people who "review"
> requests /happen to be*/ WMF staffers contributes to confusion about
> RCOM's role and it's authority. IMO, if RCOM or any other subject
> recruitment review process is to succeed, we need:
>
> * more wiki-researchers who are willing to regularly participate in
> both peer review /and/ in developing better process guidelines and
> standards (it's really just Aaron right now)
> * more /Wikipedians/ who are willing to do the same
> * some degree of buy-in from the Wikimedia community as a whole.
> RCOM needs legitimacy. But where, and from whom? Subject
> recruitment is a global concern, but the proposed subject
> recruitment process is focused on en-wiki (mostly because that's
> where most of the relevant research activities /that we are aware
> of/ are happening). How to make RCOM more global?
>
> RCOM is in a tough spot right now. We can't force researchers to
> submit their proposals, or abide by the
> suggestions/recommendations/decisions/whatever that result from their
> review. But because we /look like /an official body, it's easy to
> blame us for failing to prevent disruptive research (if you're a
> community member), for "rubber stamping" research that we like
> (ditto), or for drowning research in red tape (if you're a
> wiki-researcher).
>
>
> - J
>
> *we were wiki-researchers first!
>
>
> Heather Ford
> Oxford Internet Institute <http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk> Doctoral
> Programme
> EthnographyMatters <http://ethnographymatters.net> | Oxford
> Digital Ethnography Group
> <http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/projects/?id=115>
> http://hblog.org <http://hblog.org/> | @hfordsa
> <http://www.twitter.com/hfordsa>
>
>
>
>
> On 17 July 2014 08:49, Kerry Raymond <kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com
> <mailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Yes, I meant the community/communities of WMF. But the
> authority of the community derives from WMF, which chooses to
> delegate such matters. I think that “advise” is a good word to
> use.
>
> Kerry
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From:*Amir E. Aharoni [mailto:amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il
> <mailto:amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il>]
> *Sent:* Thursday, 17 July 2014 5:37 PM
> *To:* kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com
> <mailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com>; Research into Wikimedia
> content and communities
>
>
> *Subject:* Re: [Wiki-research-l] discussion about wikipedia
> surveys
>
> >WMF does not "own" me as a contributor; it does not decide who
> can and cannot recruit me for whatever purposes.
>
> I don't think that it really should be about WMF. The WMF
> shouldn't enforce anything. The community can formulate good
> practices for researchers and _advise_ community members not
> to cooperate with researchers who don't follow these
> practices. Not much more is needed.
>
>
>
> --
> Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> “We're living in pieces,
> I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
>
> 2014-07-17 8:24 GMT+03:00 Kerry Raymond
> <kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com <mailto:kerry.raymond@gmail.com>>:
>
> Just saying here what I already put on the Talk page:
>
> I am a little bothered by the opening sentence "This page
> documents the process that researchers must follow before
> asking Wikipedia contributors to participate in research
> studies such as surveys, interviews and experiments."
>
> WMF does not "own" me as a contributor; it does not decide
> who can and cannot recruit me for whatever purposes. What
> WMF does own is its communication channels to me as a
> contributor and WMF has a right to control what occurs on
> those channels. Also I think WMF probably should be
> concerned about both its readers and its contributors
> being recruited through its channels (as either might be
> being recruited). I think this distinction should be made,
> e.g.
>
> "This page documents the process that researchers must
> follow if they wish to use Wikipedia's (WMF's?)
> communication channels to recruit people to participate in
> research studies such as surveys, interviews and
> experiments. Communication channels include its mailing
> lists, its Project pages, Talk pages, and User Talk pages
> [and whatever else I've forgotten]."
>
> If researchers want to recruit WPians via non-WMF means, I
> don’t think it’s any business of WMF’s. An example might
> be a researcher who wanted to contact WPians via chapters
> or thorgs; I would leave it for the chapter/thorg to
> decide if they wanted to assist the researcher via their
> communication channels.
>
> Of course, the practical reality of it is that some
> researchers (oblivious of WMF’s concerns in relation to
> recruitment of WPians to research projects) will simply
> use WMF’s channels without asking nicely first. Obviously
> we can remove such requests on-wiki and follow up any
> email requests with the commentary that this was not an
> approved request. In my category of [whatever else I’ve
> forgotten], I guess there are things like Facebook groups
> and any other social media presence.
>
> Also to be practical, if WMF is to have a process to vet
> research surveys, I think it has to be sufficiently fast
> and not be overly demanding to avoid the possibility of
> the researcher giving up (“too hard to deal with these
> people”) and simply spamming email, project pages, social
> media in the hope of recruiting some participants
> regardless. That is, if we make it too slow/hard to do the
> right thing, we effectively encourage doing the wrong
> thing. Also, what value-add can we give them to reward
> those who do the right thing? It’s nice to have a carrot
> as well as a stick when it comes to onerous processes J
>
> Because of the criticism of “not giving back”, could we
> perhaps do things to try to make the researcher feel part
> of the community to make “giving back” more likely? For
> example, could we give them a slot every now and again to
> talk about their project in the R&D Showcase? Encourage
> them to be on this mailing list. Are we at a point where
> it might make sense to organise a Wikipedia research
> conference to help build a research community? Just
> thinking aloud here …
>
> Kerry
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From:*wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org
> <mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org>
> [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org
> <mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org>] *On
> Behalf Of *Aaron Halfaker
> *Sent:* Thursday, 17 July 2014 6:59 AM
> *To:* Research into Wikimedia content and communities
> *Subject:* Re: [Wiki-research-l] discussion about
> wikipedia surveys
>
> RCOM review is still alive and looking for new reviewers
> (really, coordinators). Researchers can be directed to me
> or Dario (dtaraborelli(a)wikimedia.org
> <mailto:dtaraborelli@wikimedia.org>) to be assigned a
> reviewer. There is also a proposed policy on enwiki that
> could use some eyeballs:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Research_recruitment
>
> On Wed, Jul 16, 2014 at 11:16 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo)
> <nemowiki(a)gmail.com <mailto:nemowiki@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> phoebe ayers, 16/07/2014 19:21:
>
> > (Personally, I think the answer should be to resuscitate
> RCOM, but
> > that's easy to say and harder to do!)
>
> IMHO in the meanwhile the most useful thing folks can do
> is subscribing
> to the feed of new research pages:
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NewPages&feed=atom&hid…>
> It's easier to build a functioning RCOM out of an active
> community of
> "reviewers", than the other way round.
>
> Nemo
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> <mailto:Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> <mailto:Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> <mailto:Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> <mailto:Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>
>
>
>
> --
> Jonathan T. Morgan
> Learning Strategist
> Wikimedia Foundation
> User:Jmorgan (WMF)
> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jmorgan_%28WMF%29>
> jmorgan(a)wikimedia.org <mailto:jmorgan@wikimedia.org>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
I can pretty much guarantee you that this will raise a huge stink on
commons. Apart from walls of text by lawyers and creative commons
themselves, this agreement is essentially "Non commercial" in spirit.
Good luck though, I'd really love to see this succeed. It would be a
tremendous benefit for Wikipedia and it users, and I cannot emphasize
enough how much I appreciate the efforts you gals and guys are putting into
this matter.
Best,
Daniel
On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 8:26 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemowiki(a)gmail.com>wrote:
> Forwarding (sorry for crossposting). The announce is also on Commons
> Village pump.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Dear all,
>
> Great news from Italy! After over one year of talks between Wikimedia
> Italia and MiBAC, the Italian Ministry of Cultural and Artistic Heritage
> (MiBAC is a quasi-acronym from its official Italian denomination "Ministero
> per i Beni e le Attività Culturali"), we have managed to sign an agreement
> which will allow us to participate to Wiki Loves Monuments in a much
> broader way that we could before. MiBAC explicitly states in the agreement
> that *«the Ministry considers particularly useful, in order to promote
> awareness of such goods [the ones managed by the Ministry - note that this
> is different from "owned by the Ministry", see below], the production of
> specific items about them on wikipedia.org, in all its languages, and the
> publication of images on Wikimedia Commons, at the site
> http://commons.wikimedia.org.» <http://commons.wikimedia.org.xn--yba/>* Moreover,
> it will explicitly ask to its local branches to give us the list of
> "lesser" monuments, those which are not usually known but are nonetheless
> beautiful... and poorly described in Wikipedia. Italian law however puts
> some constraints unrelated to copyright issues: this means that the
> pictures uploaded must bear the the template {{Italy-MiBAC-disclaimer}}[1].
> The text of the disclaimer is shown below; to understand what it actually
> means we put up this text, which provides a bit of context about the
> history of the agreement and the Italian law.
>
> As you know, Wiki Loves Monuments started in 2010, and went European in
> 2011. Wikimedia Italy wanted to participate to that edition, but we
> discovered a great obstacle to the project, a law called "Codice Urbani"[2].
>
> "Codice Urbani" is an Italian law which states, among other provisions,
> that to publish pictures of "cultural goods" (meaning in theory every
> cultural and artistical object/place) for commercial purposes it is
> mandatory to obtain an authorization from the local branch of the Ministry
> of Arts and Cultural Heritage, the "Soprintendenza"[3]. The Superintendence
> can require the payment of a fee; moreover, the authorization granted is
> will be for the requester only (usually a publishing company) and only for
> a given publication. Personal use and use for study and research are
> allowed without a request for authorization. You certainly noticed that
> Codice Urbani is problematic for a smooth realization of Wiki Loves
> Monuments. In fact, I can make pictures of monuments I can give up my
> copyright allowing others to copy my image without requiring my explicit
> permission; but the Codice Urbani says that if I want to publish those
> picture a fee can be requested to me, so anyway a third party can't make
> profit out of my picture without asking in advance an authorization to the
> Soprintendenza. This issue is completely independent from any issue
> regarding copyright: Coliseum and the Leaning Tower fall (no pun intended)
> under Codice Urbani. So we were in difficulty in organizing a photocampaign
> in Italy and asking people to (potentially) break the Italian law, since
> the unclear points where many.
>
> We started challenging this problems in Summer 2011: we contacted people
> from the Ministry, we set up a draft of the project, we met once in Rome to
> speak with high delegates. To make a long story short, we managed to obtain
> the promise of receiving the lists of the monuments which could be
> photographed: but then things slowed down, our contacts were moved to other
> offices, and the Ministry himself (who was aware of the project) was
> replaced or political reasons (unrelated to WLM, of course). Thus, we could
> not participate in WLM 2011.
>
> In December 2011 we started working out a new strategy: meanwhile, as you
> can imagine, endless discussions were made in our mailing lists. We
> contacted NEXA Center for Internet and Society[4a], an institution from the
> University of Turin which supports and promotes Creative Commons: they are
> actually the official contact for Creative Commons in Italy! We decided to
> allocate some resources and hired Deborah De Angelis[4b], a lawyer
> specialized in Creative Commons and cultural heritage. Deborah, who is
> based in Rome, started contacting again the (renewed) Ministry of Cultural
> Heritage, proposing a draft for an agreement between the Ministry and
> Wikimedia Italia. Several months of discussions and bouncing of documents
> followed.
>
> In January Wikimedia Italy also hired a Project Manager for Wiki Loves
> Monuments, Emma Tracanella. Emma started developing and pursuing another
> tactic developed by WMI to get permission for taking pictures of monuments:
> asking directly the authorization to specific municipalities and
> institutions. In fact, it is the "owners" of a monument who have the right
> to authorize pictures of it. It's Codice Urbani itself which gives them
> these rights, indeed.
>
> Thus, we had two strategies: one top-down, that is discussing with the
> MiBac to obtain an agreement clearly stating that we could organize Wiki
> Loves Monuments in Italy, and explaining which were the boundaries of the
> law (the dream here would have been to change the law itself, but we would
> have needed to bring the issue in Parliament, and more urged matters
> pressed); the other bottom-up, that is asking the permissions to the single
> institutions. Note that the bottom-up strategy meant having to deal with
> 8000+ different municipalities, endless cultural institutions, uncountable
> churches (every parish priest has the right for is own parish, unless this
> is in some special list from the Ministry). We let you imagine the
> complexity of the landscape that was opening in front of us: it was a
> nightmare, but at least it could give us some "free" monuments.
>
> Emma started making calls to everyone who could give us authorization for
> taking photo of monuments. We started spreading the word, calling friends
> of friends for help, starting a blog (our wikilovesmonuments.it), begging
> for authorization everywhere. We had a great ally in APT Services, the
> Tourist office for Emilia Romagna, with which we already partnered in the
> past for some Wikipedia-related projects; they organized meetings with
> mayors and regional politicians. In the end, we reached different regions
> and provinces, and several municipalities (here there is a list[5]). Our
> list of monuments counts in hundreds, and it's still improving everyday
> (here there is a map of the lists[6]). A drop in the ocean, if you think at
> the enormous Italian cultural heritage: but it is all we managed to get.
>
> This up to yesterday. Today, we had finally an answer from MiBAC, and it
> was positive. The Ministry signed an agreement with Wikimedia Italia saying
> that:
>
> - the Ministry, with the aim of promoting the knowledge of the Italian
> Cultural Heritage, finds useful that the monuments have an article on
> Wikipedia with photographs. (yes, it is *actually* saying that).
> - the Ministry will send an internal communication asking to every
> Soprintendenza to send us a list of the monuments they control, along with
> a permission to take photos of them. Pics of these monuments can be
> released in CC-BY-SA, in the sense that the maker of the photograph can
> relinquish his own rights; no fee is needed to be paid to the monuments'
> owners by the photographer if he does not want to use them for commercial
> purposes.
>
> As part of the agreement, we however have to add a disclaimer to the
> pictures; the one in {{Italy-MiBAC-disclaimer}}. The text of the advice is
> shown below:
> *This image reproduces a property belonging to the Italian cultural
> heritage as entrusted to the Italian government. Such images are regulated
> by Articles 106 et seq. of the Italian Code of Cultural Heritage and
> Landscape under Legislative Decree No. 42, dated January 22, 2004, and its
> subsequent amendments. These regulations, unrelated to copyright
> regulations, establish a system for the protection Italys historic and
> artistic heritage and its standards of dignity. Among other things, these
> regulations provide for the payment of a concession fee by those who intend
> to benefit economically from reproductions of property belonging to the
> Italian cultural heritage. Reproduction of this image is permitted for
> personal use or study. A further authorization by the Italian Ministry of
> Heritage and Culture is required for reproduction for any other purpose,
> and particularly for commercial use. Such commercial use includes, but is
> not limited to, use in (a) any form of advertising, and (b) any company
> name, logo, trademark, image, activity, or product.*
>
> Our lawyers (which are people from Creative Commons Italy) assure us that
> this license is compatible with CC-BY-SA, because the provisions of the
> license, which deals only with intellectual propriety, is saved and the
> limitation occurs on another, different, level. In other words, the
> photographer releases the picture in CC-BY-SA, the Ministry allows to put
> it on Commons waiving its own right to get a fee, but Codice Urbani keeps
> staying in force, protecting the pics from automatic commercial use by
> third parties. To be more explicit, please have a look the the section 5 of
> the Legal Code of Creative Commons CC-BY-SA-3.0 [7], which we are quoted
> below: boldface is ours.
> *5. Representations, Warranties and Disclaimer* *Unless otherwise
> mutually agreed to by the parties in writing, licensor offers the work
> as-is and makes no representations or warranties of any kind concerning the
> work, express, implied, statutory or otherwise, including, without
> limitation, warranties of title, merchantibility, fitness for a
> particular purpose, noninfringement, or the absence of latent or other
> defects, accuracy, or the presence of absence of errors, whether or not
> discoverable. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of implied
> warranties, so such exclusion may not apply to you*
>
> As you may see, it's true that the author of the photo cannot vouch for
> the merchantability of the images, since this is not a right of his/her;
> but CC-BY-SA explicitly takes into account that case.
>
> To the best of our knowledge, this agreement is the first one of its kind
> in Italy, and sees an official recognition of the existence of Creative
> Commons licenses; moreover, it is a necessary step towards new regulations
> recognizing the importance of the free dissemination of information about
> the cultural and artistic heritage, which cannot just be "museum stuff". We
> are thrilled to see what will come out, and how Italians will answer to
> this challenge. We are very proud to have obtained this.
>
> Feel free to ask us anything you think relevant, we'll do what we can to
> answer. We are also open to prepare some FAQ, if we see the need for them.
>
> Best regards,
> Cristian and Andrea
> on behalf of the Wiki Loves Monuments organizing committee in Italy
> References
>
> [1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Italy-MiBAC-disclaimer
>
> [2] http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codice_Urbani
>
> [3] http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soprintendenze
>
> [4a] http://nexa.polito.it/
>
> [4b] http://nexa.polito.it/fellows
>
> [5] http://www.wikilovesmonuments.it/istituzioni/
>
> [6] http://www.wikilovesmonuments.it/monumenti/lista-monumenti/ ; also on
> wiki at:
> http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progetto:Wiki_Loves_Monuments_2012/Monumenti
>
> [7] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
>
I believe that this sort of discussion would be more useful on a wiki talk
page (outreach?) rather than "locked up" in a listserv. Just my 2c, of
course. :-)
Happy holidays y'all!
Toni
---
Dr Toni Sant - Education Organiser, Wikimedia UK
toni.sant(a)wikimedia.org.uk +44 (0)7885 980 536
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered
Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT.
United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia
movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who
operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects).
*Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control
over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.*
On 16 December 2014 at 19:24, Leigh Thelmadatter <osamadre(a)hotmail.com>
wrote:
> Thanks for your input Alhen!
>
> I understand the biblio's point of view in that teachers should have have
> a minimum amount of wiki experience before assigning stuff to their
> students. I have been pushing this to my department and above. For this
> reason we have been holding lots of training sessions since last summer and
> just had two last week with the participation 15 or so. This gives teachers
> a good start in of what Wikipedia is about, but it does not generate a
> large number of teacher edits right away. One thing we have changed is that
> teachers must upload an article to complete training, generally a
> translation. You can see this in the course up right now in the tool
> https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Program:Tec_de_Monterrey,_Campus_Ci…
>
> On the other hand, I finally got admin interested in Wiki enough to back
> our program (called Wiki Learning), an incredibly important step as it
> makes teachers take the idea more seriously. So Im trying to balance
> es.wiki's needs along with the my school's (and the Ed Program's) desire to
> expand working with Wikipedia among students. While teachers will not be
> anywhere near as experienced as I am (or as my fellow project leaders
> Paolaricaurte and Lourdes Epstein), they do understand the very basics and
> have the support of experienced students working with Wiki in other
> capacities (servicio social, becarios, etc) to as in a capacity similar to
> Campus Ambassadors. As project leader for Wiki Learning, I am responsible
> for monitoring the teachers, as well as training people to eventually take
> over that capacity at campuses outside my own.
>
> If the biblios decide not to grant the tool, I simply means that I will be
> creating the classes and depending on what teachers decide (es.wiki or
> Commons) that can be 40 or more classes. In some ways, it is easier. I can
> create the classes using systematic names but it will be hell for me for
> the first week or so. (We never 100% know which classes we have until the
> first week of the semester, go figure.) Well not quite me alone
> as Jmvkrecords has already indicated that he will give it to Paolaricaurte.
>
>
> These are major growing pains and granted, a GOOD (as well as unexpected)
> problem to have.
>
> Leigh
>
> ------------------------------
> From: alhen.wiki(a)gmail.com
> Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 14:22:40 -0400
>
> To: education(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia Education] denied access to course extension
>
> I participated on such discussion about whether to give course coordinator
> flag to the teachers.
>
> The general idea is that they will need someone monitoring their work.
> Eswiki, as many others I guess, has a long history of students and teachers
> using the wiki without reading the policies. That said, I understand why
> they want to take the process as slow as possible. Please, don't take it
> personal.
>
> I recommend you get a biblio(sysop) involved so he can back you up and
> help you control the whole projecta and edits. I see the main problem here
> is that many users will come to edit on es.wiki with little or no
> experience, and the course coordinator will have the same experience of
> those who are participating for the first time. Feel free to correct me if
> I am missing anything.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Alhen
>
> @alhen_
> alhen at most places.
> Coordinator at Wikimedia Bolivia
> https://www.fb.com/w <https://www.fb.com/wikimediabolivia>ikimediabolivia
> <https://www.fb.com/wikimediabolivia>
> Thrive, live, and bloom.
>
> On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 1:03 PM, Leigh Thelmadatter <osamadre(a)hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Ive been told that they are placing the same requirements on the course
> coordinator flag as they do on all others.. a certain amount of online
> history with es.wiki. I have made the arguments that you suggest Samir and
> User:Jmvkrecords has said he will discuss it with other admins
> (bibliotecarios), but he has stated that the community has the final say.
>
> Question: why is this tool separated under the various language projects?
> First, this limits the monitoring/documenting to a single language (if
> students do projects in en.wiki and es.wiki, there needs to be two
> extensions) and who needs the tool is very different from the others. Why
> dont we have one course extension that can scrape the data from whatever
> project students are working on?
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
> Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 18:41:10 +0200
> From: selsharbaty(a)wikimedia.org
> To: education(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia Education] denied access to course extension
>
>
> Hi Leigh,
>
> To help with your question may I ask you first if there is a local policy
> for the use of the education extension user rights on the Spanish Wikipedia?
>
> If there is a policy that supports the admin's reply, then unfortunately
> there will be nothing to do with that.
>
> If the answer is no, then you can reapply on the same page or separately
> on other adimns talk pages relying on many factors:
>
> 1. The ed extension user rights help only with ed program pages and don't
> give any special rights on the article name space.
>
> 2. The use of the ed extension is to help the coordinators and volunteers
> of the program even if they don't have any edits on Wikipedia.
>
> 3. On Wikipedia in other languages, admins don't, usually, apply such
> requirements on ed user rights. (Please note that the policies of each wiki
> community may vary from another and they are the only authority on their
> policies and its application)
>
> I hope this helps with your issue.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Samir Elsharbaty
> Communications Intern, Wikipedia Education Program
> Wikimedia Foundation
> +2.011.200.696.77
> selsharbaty(a)wikimedia.org
> education.wikimedia.org
> On 15 Dec 2014 19:46, "Federico Leva (Nemo)" <nemowiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Leigh Thelmadatter, 13/12/2014 03:34:
>
>
> Basically the answer is no. They have to have editing experience and
> show that they at least have the ability to speak Spanish and show they
> can be good course coordinators.
>
>
> Did you try asking some more admins (on their talk page) to chime in?
> Often such request pages are only watched by a small "specialised" group.
>
> Nemo
>
> _______________________________________________
> Education mailing list
> Education(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
>
>
> _______________________________________________ Education mailing list
> Education(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Education(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
>
>
> _______________________________________________ Education mailing list
> Education(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
>
> _______________________________________________
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> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
>
>
I do think we are in agreement, as we both wish for more data. I would be
very interested in any survey results the Welsh community may have. In my
comment about your logic, I was referring to your comment that size
matters, because I think size is not at issue here. The true issue is the
language barrier, but not so much because of the "unfolding role of
Wikidata in relationship to the variety of languages" as much as the "unfolding
role of Wikidata in relationship to the community of engaged users"
On Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 4:03 PM, Fabian Tompsett <
fabian.tompsett(a)wikimedia.org.uk> wrote:
> Hi Jane,
>
> Thanks for that. My guesses maybe wrong, but that does not mean my logic
> is flawed. My point was precisely that different language Wikipedias will
> have their own characteristics, and that it is precisely because, as we
> agree, Welsh wikimedians also read English wikipedia that I made my point.
>
> I found the information you gave about the survey you did in Netherlands
> very interesting, but as this discussion focuses more on page creators, I
> wonder how well the data reflects such a more engaged group of people.
>
> Also I feel that the example of Dutch wikipedia is of course very
> important, bearing in mind it is the third largest wikipedia, even bigger
> than German wikipedia. However my concern is that we should also be
> considering a variety of circumstances:
>
> - Chinese <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language> (15th),
> - Norwegian (Bokmål)
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_%28Bokm%C3%A5l%29_language>
> (19th) and Norwegian (Nynorsk)
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_%28Nynorsk%29_language> (48th)
> - Swahili <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swahili_language> (93rd) an
> official language in three different countries
>
> If we are thinking in terms of more generic usability and the unfolding
> role of Wikidata in relationship to the variety of languages which will
> increasingly come to use it, then I feel we should be sketching out a
> broader picture.
>
> I hope that makes my thinking clearer.
>
> all the best
>
> Fabian Tompsett,
> Volunteer Support Organiser,
> Wikimedia UK,
> Address: 56-64 Leonard St,
> Shoreditch,
> London EC2A 4LT
> Phone:020 7065 0990
> *Mobile: *07840 455 746
>
>
> Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
> Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Registered
> Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT.
> United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a global Wikimedia
> movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who
> operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects).
>
> Visit http://www.wikimedia.org.uk/ and @wikimediauk
>
> On 29 January 2015 at 14:23, Jane Darnell <jane023(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Fabian,
>> I think your logic is flawed, as I believe most of the Welsh contributors
>> probably also read the English Wikipedia. This will be true for many
>> languages that are closely related, such as Dutch and Afrikaans, but there
>> is much less "cross reading" between English and languages that are located
>> far from English-speaking countries. Hungarian and other languages will
>> show less "cross reading". In the Netherlands, we held a user survey in
>> 2013 that was very enlightening as it showed us some interesting data that
>> we didn't know. One of the most surprising was that most people in the
>> Netherlands were unaware that Wikipedia is written by volunteers (we are
>> holding a PR campaign this year that just addresses this specific point).
>> The other very interesting and surprising thing we learned was that most
>> people were unaware that Wikipedia was an American invention. They assumed
>> it was Dutch. I personally infer from this the following two things:
>> 1) Dutch people are unaware that Wikipedia exists in other languages,
>> especially since Google's knowledge graph is able to give them enough meta
>> data in web searches such that they need to click on a Wikipedia page less
>> and less for basic information on any specific subject.
>> 2) Dutch people are unaware that the servers of the Dutch Wikipedia are
>> hosted in the U.S. and are therefore abiding by the rules in the U.S.
>> legislative territory.
>>
>> We know from earlier tests with users that "Donate buttons" and other
>> links appearing on the left seem to be invisible to most users. It is based
>> on all of these things that I made that comment. The click-through data on
>> the interwikis would be very interesting to see.
>> Best,
>> Jane
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 12:26 PM, Fabian Tompsett <
>> fabian.tompsett(a)wikimedia.org.uk> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> > I for one would bet that the number of page creators in any given
>>> Wikipedia that know enough to even look at the left side of the page is
>>> quite small. In my experience, most page creators are unaware that
>>> Wikipedia exists in any language but their own
>>>
>>> mmm, an interesting perspective, but do we have any data? As we are in
>>> to speculation here, I would hazard a guess that the smaller the Wikipedia
>>> the more likely it is that page creators are aware that there are
>>> wikipedias in other languages. So for example on Welsh Wicipedia
>>> <https://cy.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafan> I would guess something close to
>>> 100% of page creators are aware of English Wikipedia.
>>>
>>> <https://cy.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafan>
>>>
>>> all the best
>>>
>>> Fabian Tompsett,
>>> Volunteer Support Organiser,
>>> Wikimedia UK,
>>> Address: 56-64 Leonard St,
>>> Shoreditch,
>>> London EC2A 4LT
>>> Phone:020 7065 0990
>>> *Mobile: *07840 455 746
>>>
>>>
>>> Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
>>> Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513.
>>> Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street,
>>> London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of a
>>> global Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia
>>> Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects).
>>>
>>> Visit http://www.wikimedia.org.uk/ and @wikimediauk
>>>
>>> On 29 January 2015 at 11:00, Jane Darnell <jane023(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> +1 on collecting the click data! I for one would bet that the number of
>>>> page creators in any given Wikipedia that know enough to even look at the
>>>> left side of the page is quite small. In my experience, most page creators
>>>> are unaware that Wikipedia exists in any language but their own
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 11:49 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) <
>>>> nemowiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Daniel Kinzler, 29/01/2015 11:24:
>>>>> > As far as I recall, there is some very silly technical reason that
>>>>> this is not
>>>>> > easy to change at all. We tried to do this right when we introduced
>>>>> the other
>>>>> > widget, of course.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > I don't recall what exactly the problem was though, and it might
>>>>> have been fixed
>>>>> > since. Worth another look...
>>>>>
>>>>> I see. I said "should" (ought to?). :P Is there a phabricator ticket
>>>>> for this?
>>>>>
>>>>> Lydia Pintscher, 29/01/2015 11:31:
>>>>>
>>>>>> The issue with doing this when there are several sitelinks is that
>>>>>> people will unknowingly merge items this way that should not be
>>>>>> merged. That'd be a huge pita. We'll need to put some good thinking
>>>>>> into this still. I have no good solution right now.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> This is a non-issue IMHO, as soon as my suggestion at
>>>>> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T85776 /
>>>>> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/transactions/detail/PHID-
>>>>> XACT-TASK-zi2igyjlfqasknq/ is implemented.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> >This should be very easy to change. The dialog could then contain a
>>>>>>> link to
>>>>>>> >the Wikidata item for the case when one wants to edit or remove
>>>>>>> links, until
>>>>>>> >such a feature is added to the dialog itself.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> Showing the dialog and requiring people to click would probably annoy
>>>>>> people for having to click one additional time? Especially if their
>>>>>> intention is clear.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> There is already a generic Wikidata link in the sidebar which users
>>>>> can click; having two of them is a waste. Also, the drawback is much lower
>>>>> than the gain: if I'm forced to visit an entry in Wikidata to edit a
>>>>> sitelink, I have to spend X seconds to load the entry, then find the "add"
>>>>> button etc, spend additional N links; if I really want to go to the
>>>>> Wikidata entry, having to click in a dialog is just one click more and a
>>>>> fraction of second spent.
>>>>>
>>>>> If you really think the "add one link" case is minoritary for those
>>>>> who click the edit links button, I trust you, but we should have click
>>>>> tracking data to back this. Personally, I'd bet 85 % of users clicking the
>>>>> button just wants to add one link and expects to see the dialog they
>>>>> usually see to add links (when there are none).
>>>>>
>>>>> Nemo
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Wikidata-l mailing list
>>>>> Wikidata-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Wikidata-l mailing list
>>>> Wikidata-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> Wikidata-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l
>>>
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikidata-l mailing list
>> Wikidata-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Wikidata-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l
>
>
Thank you Dmitry! Well phrased and to the point!
As for "templating", that might be the worst of both worlds; without the
flexibility and over-time improvement of automatic descriptions, but making
it harder for people to enter (compared to "free-style" text). We have a
Visual Editor on Wikipedia for a reason :-)
On Wed, Aug 19, 2015 at 4:07 AM Dmitry Brant <dbrant(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> My thoughts, as ever(!), are as follows:
>
> - The tool that generates the descriptions deserves a lot more
> development. Magnus' tool is very much a prototype, and represents a tiny
> glimpse of what's possible. Looking at its current output is a straw man.
> - Auto-generated descriptions work for current articles, and *all future
> articles*. They automatically adapt to updated data. They automatically
> become more accurate as new data is added.
> - When you edit the descriptions yourself, you're not really making a
> meaningful contribution to the *data* that underpins the given Wikidata
> entry; i.e. you're not contributing any new information. You're simply
> paraphrasing the first sentence or two of the Wikipedia article. That can't
> possibly be a productive use of contributors' time.
>
> As for Brian's suggestion:
> It would be a step forward; we can even invent a whole template-type
> syntax for transcluding bits of actual data into the description. But IMO,
> that kind of effort would still be better spent on fully-automatic
> descriptions, because that's the ideal that semi-automatic descriptions can
> only approach.
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 10:36 PM, Brian Gerstle <bgerstle(a)wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Could there be a way to have our nicely curated description cake and eat
>> it too? For example, interpolating data into the description and/or marking
>> data points which are referenced in the description (so as to mark it as
>> outdated when they change)?
>>
>> I appreciate the potential benefits of generated descriptions (and other
>> things), but Monte's examples might have swayed me towards human
>> curated—when available.
>>
>> On Tuesday, August 18, 2015, Monte Hurd <mhurd(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Ok, so I just did what I proposed. I went to random enwiki articles and
>>> described the first ten I found which didn't already have descriptions:
>>>
>>>
>>> - "Courage Under Fire", *1996 film about a Gulf War friendly-fire
>>> incident*
>>>
>>> - "Pebasiconcha immanis", *largest known species of land snail, extinct*
>>>
>>> - "List of Kenyan writers", *notable Kenyan authors*
>>>
>>> - "Solar eclipse of December 14, 1917", *annular eclipse which lasted
>>> 77 seconds*
>>>
>>> - "Natchaug Forest Lumber Shed", *historic Civilian Conservation Corps
>>> post-and-beam building*
>>>
>>> - "Sun of Jamaica (album)", *debut 1980 studio album by Goombay Dance
>>> Band*
>>>
>>> - "E-1027", *modernist villa in France by architect Eileen Gray*
>>>
>>> - "Daingerfield State Park", *park in Morris County, Texas, USA,
>>> bordering Lake Daingerfield*
>>>
>>> - "Todo Lo Que Soy-En Vivo", *2014 Live album by Mexican pop singer Fey*
>>>
>>> - "2009 UEFA Regions' Cup", *6th UEFA Regions' Cup, won by Castile and
>>> Leon*
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> And here are the respective descriptions from Magnus' (quite excellent)
>>> autodesc.js:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> - "Courage Under Fire", *1996 film by Edward Zwick, produced by John
>>> Davis and David T. Friendly from United States of America*
>>>
>>> - "Pebasiconcha immanis", *species of Mollusca*
>>>
>>> - "List of Kenyan writers", *Wikimedia list article*
>>>
>>> - "Solar eclipse of December 14, 1917", *solar eclipse*
>>>
>>> - "Natchaug Forest Lumber Shed", *Construction in Connecticut, United
>>> States of America*
>>>
>>> - "Sun of Jamaica (album)", *album*
>>>
>>> - "E-1027", *villa in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France*
>>>
>>> - "Daingerfield State Park", *state park and state park of a state of
>>> the United States in Texas, United States of America*
>>>
>>> - "Todo Lo Que Soy-En Vivo", *live album by Fey*
>>>
>>> - "2009 UEFA Regions' Cup", *none*
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Thoughts?
>>>
>>> Just trying to make my own bold assertions falsifiable :)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 6:32 PM, Monte Hurd <mhurd(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> The whole human-vs-extracted descriptions quality question could be
>>>> fairly easy to test I think:
>>>>
>>>> - Pick, some number of articles at random.
>>>> - Run them through a description extraction script.
>>>> - Have a human describe the same articles with, say, the app interface
>>>> I demo'ed.
>>>>
>>>> If nothing else this exercise could perhaps make what's thus far been a
>>>> wildly abstract discussion more concrete.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 6:17 PM, Monte Hurd <mhurd(a)wikimedia.org>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> If having the most elegant description extraction mechanism was the
>>>>> goal I would totally agree ;)
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 5:19 PM, Dmitry Brant <dbrant(a)wikimedia.org>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> IMO, allowing the user to edit the description is a missed
>>>>>> opportunity to make the user edit the actual *data*, such that the
>>>>>> description is generated correctly.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 8:02 PM, Monte Hurd <mhurd(a)wikimedia.org>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> IMO, if the goal is quality, then human curated descriptions are
>>>>>>> superior until such time as the auto-generation script passes the Turing
>>>>>>> test ;)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I see these empty descriptions as an amazing opportunity to give
>>>>>>> *everyone* an easy new way to edit. I whipped an app editing interface up
>>>>>>> at the Lyon hackathon:
>>>>>>> bluetooth720 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VblyGhf_c8>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I used it to add a couple hundred descriptions in a single day just
>>>>>>> by hitting "random" then adding descriptions for articles which didn't have
>>>>>>> them.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I'd love to try a limited test of this in production to get a sense
>>>>>>> for how effective human curation can be if the interface is easy to use...
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 1:25 PM, Jan Ainali <jan.ainali(a)wikimedia.se
>>>>>>> > wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Nice one!
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Does not appear to work on svwiki though. Does it have something to
>>>>>>>> do with that the wiki in question does not display that tagline?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> *Med vänliga hälsningar,Jan Ainali*
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Verksamhetschef, Wikimedia Sverige <http://wikimedia.se>
>>>>>>>> 0729 - 67 29 48
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> *Tänk dig en värld där varje människa har fri tillgång till
>>>>>>>> mänsklighetens samlade kunskap. Det är det vi gör.*
>>>>>>>> Bli medlem. <http://blimedlem.wikimedia.se>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> 2015-08-18 17:23 GMT+02:00 Magnus Manske <
>>>>>>>> magnusmanske(a)googlemail.com>:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Show automatic description underneath "From Wikipedia...":
>>>>>>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Magnus_Manske/autodesc.js
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> To use, add:
>>>>>>>>> importScript ( 'User:Magnus_Manske/autodesc.js' ) ;
>>>>>>>>> to your common.js
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 9:47 AM Jane Darnell <jane023(a)gmail.com>
>>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> It would be even better if this (short: 3 field max)
>>>>>>>>>> pipe-separated list was available as a gadget to wikidatans on Wikipedia
>>>>>>>>>> (like me). I can't see if a page I am on has an "instance of" (though it
>>>>>>>>>> should) and I can see the description thanks to another gadget (sorry no
>>>>>>>>>> idea which one that is). Often I will update empty descriptions, but if I
>>>>>>>>>> was served basic fields (so for a painting, the creator field), I would
>>>>>>>>>> click through to update that too.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 9:58 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) <
>>>>>>>>>> nemowiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Jane Darnell, 15/08/2015 08:53:
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> Yes but even if the descriptions were just the contents of
>>>>>>>>>>>> fields
>>>>>>>>>>>> separated by a pipe it would be better than nothing.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> +1, item descriptions are mostly useless in my experience.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> As for "get into production on Wikipedia" I don't know what it
>>>>>>>>>>> means, I certainly don't like 1) mobile-specific features, 2) overriding
>>>>>>>>>>> existing manually curated content; but it's good to 3) fill gaps. Mobile
>>>>>>>>>>> folks often do (1) and (2), if they *instead* did (3) I'd be very happy. :)
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Nemo
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>>>> Mobile-l mailing list
>>>>>>>>>> Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>>>>>>>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>>> Mobile-l mailing list
>>>>>>>>> Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>>>>>>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>> Mobile-l mailing list
>>>>>>>> Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>>>>>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> Mobile-l mailing list
>>>>>>> Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>>>>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Dmitry Brant
>>>>>> Mobile Apps Team (Android)
>>>>>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>>>>> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_mobile_engineering
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>> --
>> EN Wikipedia user page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Brian.gerstle
>> IRC: bgerstle
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Dmitry Brant
> Mobile Apps Team (Android)
> Wikimedia Foundation
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_mobile_engineering
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 10:36 PM, Brian Gerstle <bgerstle(a)wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Could there be a way to have our nicely curated description cake and eat
>> it too? For example, interpolating data into the description and/or marking
>> data points which are referenced in the description (so as to mark it as
>> outdated when they change)?
>>
>> I appreciate the potential benefits of generated descriptions (and other
>> things), but Monte's examples might have swayed me towards human
>> curated—when available.
>>
>> On Tuesday, August 18, 2015, Monte Hurd <mhurd(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Ok, so I just did what I proposed. I went to random enwiki articles and
>>> described the first ten I found which didn't already have descriptions:
>>>
>>>
>>> - "Courage Under Fire", *1996 film about a Gulf War friendly-fire
>>> incident*
>>>
>>> - "Pebasiconcha immanis", *largest known species of land snail, extinct*
>>>
>>> - "List of Kenyan writers", *notable Kenyan authors*
>>>
>>> - "Solar eclipse of December 14, 1917", *annular eclipse which lasted
>>> 77 seconds*
>>>
>>> - "Natchaug Forest Lumber Shed", *historic Civilian Conservation Corps
>>> post-and-beam building*
>>>
>>> - "Sun of Jamaica (album)", *debut 1980 studio album by Goombay Dance
>>> Band*
>>>
>>> - "E-1027", *modernist villa in France by architect Eileen Gray*
>>>
>>> - "Daingerfield State Park", *park in Morris County, Texas, USA,
>>> bordering Lake Daingerfield*
>>>
>>> - "Todo Lo Que Soy-En Vivo", *2014 Live album by Mexican pop singer Fey*
>>>
>>> - "2009 UEFA Regions' Cup", *6th UEFA Regions' Cup, won by Castile and
>>> Leon*
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> And here are the respective descriptions from Magnus' (quite excellent)
>>> autodesc.js:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> - "Courage Under Fire", *1996 film by Edward Zwick, produced by John
>>> Davis and David T. Friendly from United States of America*
>>>
>>> - "Pebasiconcha immanis", *species of Mollusca*
>>>
>>> - "List of Kenyan writers", *Wikimedia list article*
>>>
>>> - "Solar eclipse of December 14, 1917", *solar eclipse*
>>>
>>> - "Natchaug Forest Lumber Shed", *Construction in Connecticut, United
>>> States of America*
>>>
>>> - "Sun of Jamaica (album)", *album*
>>>
>>> - "E-1027", *villa in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France*
>>>
>>> - "Daingerfield State Park", *state park and state park of a state of
>>> the United States in Texas, United States of America*
>>>
>>> - "Todo Lo Que Soy-En Vivo", *live album by Fey*
>>>
>>> - "2009 UEFA Regions' Cup", *none*
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Thoughts?
>>>
>>> Just trying to make my own bold assertions falsifiable :)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 6:32 PM, Monte Hurd <mhurd(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> The whole human-vs-extracted descriptions quality question could be
>>>> fairly easy to test I think:
>>>>
>>>> - Pick, some number of articles at random.
>>>> - Run them through a description extraction script.
>>>> - Have a human describe the same articles with, say, the app interface
>>>> I demo'ed.
>>>>
>>>> If nothing else this exercise could perhaps make what's thus far been a
>>>> wildly abstract discussion more concrete.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 6:17 PM, Monte Hurd <mhurd(a)wikimedia.org>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> If having the most elegant description extraction mechanism was the
>>>>> goal I would totally agree ;)
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 5:19 PM, Dmitry Brant <dbrant(a)wikimedia.org>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> IMO, allowing the user to edit the description is a missed
>>>>>> opportunity to make the user edit the actual *data*, such that the
>>>>>> description is generated correctly.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 8:02 PM, Monte Hurd <mhurd(a)wikimedia.org>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> IMO, if the goal is quality, then human curated descriptions are
>>>>>>> superior until such time as the auto-generation script passes the Turing
>>>>>>> test ;)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I see these empty descriptions as an amazing opportunity to give
>>>>>>> *everyone* an easy new way to edit. I whipped an app editing interface up
>>>>>>> at the Lyon hackathon:
>>>>>>> bluetooth720 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VblyGhf_c8>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I used it to add a couple hundred descriptions in a single day just
>>>>>>> by hitting "random" then adding descriptions for articles which didn't have
>>>>>>> them.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I'd love to try a limited test of this in production to get a sense
>>>>>>> for how effective human curation can be if the interface is easy to use...
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 1:25 PM, Jan Ainali <jan.ainali(a)wikimedia.se
>>>>>>> > wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Nice one!
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Does not appear to work on svwiki though. Does it have something to
>>>>>>>> do with that the wiki in question does not display that tagline?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> *Med vänliga hälsningar,Jan Ainali*
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Verksamhetschef, Wikimedia Sverige <http://wikimedia.se>
>>>>>>>> 0729 - 67 29 48
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> *Tänk dig en värld där varje människa har fri tillgång till
>>>>>>>> mänsklighetens samlade kunskap. Det är det vi gör.*
>>>>>>>> Bli medlem. <http://blimedlem.wikimedia.se>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> 2015-08-18 17:23 GMT+02:00 Magnus Manske <
>>>>>>>> magnusmanske(a)googlemail.com>:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Show automatic description underneath "From Wikipedia...":
>>>>>>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Magnus_Manske/autodesc.js
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> To use, add:
>>>>>>>>> importScript ( 'User:Magnus_Manske/autodesc.js' ) ;
>>>>>>>>> to your common.js
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 9:47 AM Jane Darnell <jane023(a)gmail.com>
>>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> It would be even better if this (short: 3 field max)
>>>>>>>>>> pipe-separated list was available as a gadget to wikidatans on Wikipedia
>>>>>>>>>> (like me). I can't see if a page I am on has an "instance of" (though it
>>>>>>>>>> should) and I can see the description thanks to another gadget (sorry no
>>>>>>>>>> idea which one that is). Often I will update empty descriptions, but if I
>>>>>>>>>> was served basic fields (so for a painting, the creator field), I would
>>>>>>>>>> click through to update that too.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 9:58 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) <
>>>>>>>>>> nemowiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Jane Darnell, 15/08/2015 08:53:
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> Yes but even if the descriptions were just the contents of
>>>>>>>>>>>> fields
>>>>>>>>>>>> separated by a pipe it would be better than nothing.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> +1, item descriptions are mostly useless in my experience.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> As for "get into production on Wikipedia" I don't know what it
>>>>>>>>>>> means, I certainly don't like 1) mobile-specific features, 2) overriding
>>>>>>>>>>> existing manually curated content; but it's good to 3) fill gaps. Mobile
>>>>>>>>>>> folks often do (1) and (2), if they *instead* did (3) I'd be very happy. :)
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Nemo
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>>>> Mobile-l mailing list
>>>>>>>>>> Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>>>>>>>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>>> Mobile-l mailing list
>>>>>>>>> Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>>>>>>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>> Mobile-l mailing list
>>>>>>>> Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>>>>>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> Mobile-l mailing list
>>>>>>> Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>>>>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Dmitry Brant
>>>>>> Mobile Apps Team (Android)
>>>>>> Wikimedia Foundation
>>>>>> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_mobile_engineering
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>> --
>> EN Wikipedia user page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Brian.gerstle
>> IRC: bgerstle
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Dmitry Brant
> Mobile Apps Team (Android)
> Wikimedia Foundation
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_mobile_engineering
>
> _______________________________________________
> Mobile-l mailing list
> Mobile-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
>
Just as a postscript to the Belfer Center affair, regular readers will
remember that Russavia wrote in March 2014[1] that –
*The Stanton Foundation has been a long-term donor to the Wikimedia
Foundation [...] Stanton has no website, and apart from several
high-profile grants to the Wikimedia Foundation, it has made grants to the
Council on Foreign Relations, MIT's Department of Political Science, the
Rand Corporation, and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in
addition to the Belfer Center. All of these organisations operate in the
arena of international relations.*
*The trustee of Stanton and contact point for the Wikimedia Foundation is
Elisabeth (Liz) K. Allison [...] From the outset, it should be noted that
Liz Allison (Stanton) is married to Graham Allison (Belfer).*
In December 2014, the $500,000 award Jimmy Wales received from the UAE
government proved controversial among Wikipedians; see for example William
Beutler's summary titled "Jimmy Wales and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good,
Very Bad Prize Money", published on his blog, "The Wikipedian"[2].
In the wake of the UAE award, it transpired that Wales had previously been
reported[3] on the World Economic Forum website to have contributed to a
"Guide to Good Government and Trust-Building" compiled "in cooperation and
with the support of the Government of the United Arab Emirates".
When Wales was pointed to the UAE government's human rights violations and
asked why he had lent his name to the effort, given the UAE government's
signal lack of credentials in this field, Wales said that he had been asked
to contribute by Prof. Nye of Harvard.[4] According to the Harvard website,
Prof. Nye, too, works at the Belfer Center.[5]
Some Wikipedians also raised Wales' 2011 "Wikipedian of the Year" award for
the Kazakh WikiBilim organisation in the discussion of the UAE award.[6][7]
William Beutler referred to this part of the discussion in his piece,
saying that the "Kazakh situation [had] always struck [him] like a misstep
on the part of the Wikimedia Foundation and Wales both—seemingly a
partnership entered into without a clear understanding of the situation".[2]
Jimmy Wales commented in a 2013 discussion, "As far as I know, the
Wikibilim organization is not politicized." This always struck me as
strange. Quite apart from WikiBilim's state financing, the Kazakh Prime
Minister's photograph appears on every page of WikiBilim's website, which
says that "In order to increase the attention of society and especially
young generation of internet users Wikibilim started to administrate Kazakh
Wikipedia."[7]
Just to put this in perspective: does it not seem inconceivable that Jimmy
Wales would give a "Wikipedian of the Year" award to a Russian Wikipedia
organisation that had Putin's or Medvedev's face on every page of its
website, where it claimed to "administrate" the Russian Wikipedia? How is
Kazakhstan different? I still do not understand it.
It came to my attention some weeks ago that Graham Allison, the Belfer
Center's director, is not just the husband of the Stanton Foundation's Liz
Allison, but also a past recipient of a special medal of friendship from
Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev, for his "contribution to
strengthening friendship and cooperation between Kazakhstan and the United
States."[9]
Allison also authored the introduction to President Nazarbayev's book,
"Epicenter of Peace".[9]
Given the above past instances of Wikimedia Foundation leaders obliging
Belfer Center staff by acceding to their requests, do people think that
this reported friendship between the Belfer Center's Director and the
Kazakh government may in some way have influenced dealings between
Wikimedia Foundation board members and WikiBilim?
I would further recall here that in July 2012, Kazakh media reported that
Jimmy Wales had "thanked the Kazakh government for creating conditions for
significant achievements in the development of the Kazakh language
Wikipedia".[10] This was half a year after "A [Kazakh] law that took effect
in January 2012 required owners of internet cafés to obtain users’ names
and monitor and record their activity, and to share their information with
the security services if requested," as noted by Freedom House in its 2013
report on freedom of the press in Kazakhstan, among many other issues.[11]
If the quote in the Kazakh media report is accurate, wasn't this a strange
statement to make for a self-declared champion of free speech? How does it
fit with the movement's goals and values?
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-March/070665.html
[2] http://thewikipedian.net/2014/12/26/uae-prize-money-human-rights/
[3]
http://www.weforum.org/news/global-agenda-council-launches-guide-good-gover…
[4] https://archive.today/Ui7PK
[5] http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/experts/3/joseph_s_nye.html
[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_179#Congratulat…
[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2014-12-17/In_th…
[8] http://wikibilim.kz/index.php/english/about-foundtion
[9]
http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/19468/graham_allison_awarde…
[10]
https://web.archive.org/web/20130114222103/http:/caspionet.kz/eng/general/K…
[11] https://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2013/kazakhstan
On Tue, Jan 27, 2015 at 5:39 AM, Pete Forsyth <peteforsyth(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Lila, and all,
>
> I am glad to hear this will be revived. I read your message with interest
> and appreciation, up to the final paragraph: in this instance, WMF is in a
> very poor position to chide anybody for snark. Nemo's "snark" was
> lighthearted and minimal, and doesn't even register next to the WMF's
> damaging and disrespectful actions on this issue now spanning more than
> three years. Let me be direct, though -- I'll take care to lay things out
> in a snark-free manner here.
>
> Last spring, WMF found itself in a bit of a bind, of its own making: this
> list, the blogosphere, etc. were making a lot of noise about how the WMF
> had actively undermined the efforts of Wikipedians to guide organizations
> in ethical engagement with the project. One action above all others served
> to quiet that noise: the announcement of specific reforms quoted by Nemo
> above.
>
> Now, many months overdue and apparently forgotten, it appears that the
> announcement was made *for the purpose* of quieting the noise, as opposed
> to being made out of actual concern for how universities interact with
> Wikipedia, or how the WMF interacts with knowledgeable members of the
> Wikimedia movement. An oversight, in general, is understandable and human.
> But overlooking something that was *specifically undertaken to correct past
> mistakes* is something different. That kind of oversight, I contend,
> provides a clear view of the level of interest the organization actually
> has in addressing the problems under discussion. The WMF is clearly not
> very interested in undoing the damage it wrought.
>
> The Wikimedia movement, and English Wikipedia, have worked hard over many
> years to establish guidelines and policies that frame an ethical approach
> and guide volunteers toward producing high quality and consistent content.
> The GLAM sub-movement in particular has worked to bridge that framework and
> the operations of mission-aligned organizations like museums and
> universities. But that work -- which the WMF enjoys talking about in its
> annual reports, etc. -- was ignored by the WMF the moment it became
> inconvenient. The moment it interfered with a grant. At precisely the
> moment when the WMF had a chance to positively influence a leading
> university, it instead gave that university license to disregard the
> relevant ethical concerns.
>
> Making all of that right, the WMF told us last year, was a priority. But
> apparently it was not.
>
> I am glad to learn that the remedies then under discussion will be picked
> back up. The WMF will be a healthier organization because of it. But I
> emphatically request that you refrain from scolding those of us who are
> frustrated by the need for non-WMF staff to repeatedly, over a span of over
> three years, remind the WMF that important things need doing.
>
> A little snark, in this case, should be the very least of your concerns.
> Pete
> --
> Pete Forsyth
> [[User:Peteforsyth]]
>
> On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 5:27 PM, Lila Tretikov <lila(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> > Hi Nemo,
> >
> > Thanks for bringing this to my attention. You are correct -- this did not
> > make my "to do" list, but I believe honoring commitments made by the WMF
> is
> > important and therefor I've been looking this issue. Here is what I found
> > and what we will do:
> >
> >
> > - This issue was a clear oversight error.
> > - To prevent issues like these in the future two paths are important:
> > 1. ability to highlight issues through escalation
> > 2. improved clarity on which programs or grants qualify for funding
> > (through training) and the process by which that is done
> > - The first point will be addressed this quarter by HR in the employee
> > handbook through the modified escalation policy and escalation
> channel.
> > - The second will be addressed through changes to grantmaking program,
> > which we proposed to open for discussion this spring/summer (Q4/Q1)
> > starting with the FDC-level grants
> > <
> >
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Funds_Dissemination_Committee/Ad…
> > >.
> > In short, we are looking to be very clear on goals, parameters, and
> > focus
> > of grants we distribute to ensure they are handled and validated
> > consistently and accurately.
> >
> >
> > The two aspects together should help avoid these types of issues. I am
> also
> > asking to include some "'guardrail" items in employee training. No system
> > is perfect however, and we will continue to tune it to avoid problems.
> >
> > Finally, while I sincerely appreciate you bringing up the issue, I would
> > also appreciate if this is done without snark or disparagement in the
> > future. This would ensure everyone is more productive in their solutions.
> > We will respond in kind.
> >
> > Thank you,
> > Lila
> >
> > On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 4:23 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) <
> nemowiki(a)gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Sue Gardner, 01/04/2014 05:23:
> > >
> > >> On 21 March 2014 13:23, Erik Moeller <erik(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> > >>
> > >>> We will update the wiki page at
> > >>> https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_
> > >>> Residence/Harvard_University_assessment
> > >>> with more information and details. I encourage others to participate
> > >>> in this as a collaborative process.
> > >>>
> > >>
> > >> Thanks Erik.
> > >>
> > >> For everyone: following up on Erik's e-mail, the WMF has done a
> > >> postmortem of the Belfer situation, which I've just posted at the link
> > >> from Erik above.
> > >>
> > >
> > > https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Assessment_of_Belfer_
> > > Center_Wikipedian_in_Residence_program#Decisions_made said:
> > > > The ED plans, with the C-level team, to develop a better process for
> > > > staff to escalate and express concerns about any WMF activities that
> > > > staff think may in tension with, or in violation of, community
> > > > policies or best practices. It will take some time to develop a
> > > > simple, robust process: we aim to have it done by 1 May 2014.
> > >
> > > I think we're well past the deadline–unless "2014" was a typo for
> "2015",
> > > or "ED" a typo for "Sue Gardner in her spare time". Any updates?
> > >
> > > Nemo
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/
> > > wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
> > > Wikimedia-l(a)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(a)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(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
> <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
>
I started writing a longer email, but then realized that it's better
to stick with the most important points, as everything is anyway
enough complex. Thus, just metrics and its applications, not anything
else.
While I was reloading a year ago my few years old idea to open
Wikipedia in 3000 more languages, I realized that we have substantial
problem. The most numerous communities have ~100 active (thus 5+
edits/month) editors per million of speakers. As my hypothesis was
that we could have Wikipedias in languages spoken by more than 10,000
people, that would mean that at the best they would have 1 (one)
active editor. Thus, something else has to be done... But before that,
we have to gather data and have the idea what's that "something".
My first idea -- something of a kind between a desperate one and "we
should try something" -- was to ask people from Wikimedia Estonia,
Wikimedia Finland and Wikimedia UK to try to reach as many as possible
new active users on particular projects. The point is that Scottish
Gaelic, Estonian and Finish are among the top in active users per
million of speakers.
A year later, Estonians are doing a very good job (others are good, as
well). They are above 100 active users per million of speakers and in
a couple of years they could reach even a couple of hundreds.
But, there is an obvious flaw in this kind of reasoning and I was
aware of it from the beginning: It's about languages spoken i rich
countries, while we'll be dealing with the communities on the opposite
end of wealth. However, at least it's possible to increase relative
number of active users in "ideal" situations, which means that ~100
active users per million of speakers is not a kind of realistic
maximum.
Thanks to the project Wiktionary meets Matica srpska, I am getting now
more precise insights into Ethnologue data (don't ask me what's the
relation, it was a couple of paragraphs long explanation inside of the
email I didn't send).
So, a month ago or so I got the first data and the news were very
good: more than 5000 languages won't die during the next 100 years.
More than 2500 languages are in very good shape. If we take for
granted that Ethnologue's data are about languages.
In the meantime, Sylvian mentioned on Languages list that he is
working on Kichwa Wikipedia. And he noted one important thing: if we
are going to have Wikipedias in languages like Kichwa is -- and that's
likely the prototype for the most of the languages which we will meet
in the future -- we have to adapt to them, not to impose unrealistic
expectations to them. That's connected to the data, as I want to know
what we could expect from them. (A note to self: literacy rate is very
important parameter, as well.)
It is also important to be able to follow numerically the development
of particular community and give them know-how based on previous
successful experiences.
As we got more results from Ethnologue data, my ambitions raised. Of
course I wanted to get number of articles per speaker. I got an
approximate correlation between Wikipedia editions and Ethnologue
data. Yes, of course, I knew that there are Wikipedia editions with a
lot of bot-generated articles. So, I've cut data to languages with 5
or more on Ethnologue language vitality scale and with the condition
that the language has to have native speakers and I've got pretty sane
results. Yes, Dutch and Swedish Wikipedias include a lot of
bot-generated articles, but the number of articles in those langauges
are quite fine in comparison with the rest of the projects.
There are few arguments in favor of counting (even bot-generated) articles:
* First, the most important flaw in analyzing such data is taking
their synchrony, not the development. But synchrony is the starting
point. By looking into development, we could monitor the number of new
articles per month and we could easily conclude what's the normal
state of the community and what's not.
* Then it doesn't take a lot of efforts to create legitimate
information on some of the topics by using bots. If legitimate
articles, that gives us a clue about the capacity of particular
community to create articles and thus spread free knowledge.
* For example, if organized properly, it's not hard to create sane
articles based on English (or Spanish or whichever) Wikipedia
templates about actors and movies. That means that English (or Spanish
or whichever) Wikipedia raises capacity of other Wikipedia editions,
which is legitimate and quite relevant. It's relevant in the sense
that we should particularly care about languages with large number of
L2 speakers and languages used as international or regional lingua
franca. In reverse note, we could conclude which languages have
potential to create a lot of articles thanks to the fact that the
speakers of that language are fluent in one of the big languages.
That's also quite relevant for "gross capacity" to share knowledge in
their own language.
* The number of possible articles will always raise. Even for
bot-generated articles. (Take as an example newly discovered planets
outside of our solar system. For monolinguals, it's relevant to have
that kind of information in their native language.) Thus,
possibilities will raise and it's important to monitor capacities of
the communities. Having a programmer raises capacity, obviously.
Having a dexterous community member, capable to find a programmer
inside of the movement willing to help creating a bot also counts.
I've seen projects with a lot of edits and disproportionally small
number of articles. From my perspective, it's better to have more
articles than to have a lot of rollbacks and a lot of talk. Although
the community itself is our most important value, our main task is to
create articles, not to argue. Besides the fact that it could be a
sign of bad community health.
But there are many other possible indicators, which could work in the
most of the cases. For example, edit count. From the first five
projects by the number of articles, we could easily conclude that the
ranks are: (1) English, (2) German, (3) French, (4) Dutch, (5)
Swedish, not (1) English, (2) Swedish, (3) Dutch, (4) German, (5)
French. (By taking a look into the other Wikipedias, we could see that
even Chinese on 15th place is stronger than the Swedish Wikipedia on
2nd one.)
Not counting English as world's primary lingua franca, It's also
interesting to see that the edits per German and French speaker is
roughly 1.5, while 0.6 in Russian case. Danish is ~1.7, Polish is
~1.05, Serbian is ~1.2, but Japanese is ~0.4 and Swahili ~0.05. (I
made approximations without a calculator, thus error range is likely
+-10% :) ) Thus, GDP/PPP per capita doesn't need to be that important
factor (in the sense "if you reach particular GDP/PPP per capita, it's
not anymore important factor"), while other things could be.
It's also important to have in mind that various data are likely
exposing various issues. And every issue has to be analyzed from
socio-economic perspective (obviously, Japanese Wikipedia is not
relatively weak because of the same reason as Russian or Swahili
Wikipedia are).
I will include as many parameters as possible in the future analysis.
As I have now the number of speakers of particular language per
country, it is possible now to correlate economic development with
particular language.
On Jun 13, 2015 09:38, "Federico Leva (Nemo)" <nemowiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Asaf Bartov, 13/06/2015 02:42:
>>
>> The (already existing) metric of active-editors-per-million-speakers is,
>> it seems to me, a far more robust metric. Erik Z.'s stats.wikimedia.org
>> <http://stats.wikimedia.org> is offering that metric.
>
>
> I personally agree on this in general, but Millosh is trying something different in his current quest, i.e. content ingestion and content coverage assessment, also for missing language subdomains. (By the way, I created the category, please add stuff: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Content_coverage .)
>
> Mere article count tells us very little and he acknowledged it. As you added analytics: maybe when https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T44259 is fixed we can also do fancy things like join various tables and count (countable) articles above a minimum threshold of hits, or something like that.
>
> Oh, and the total number of internal links in a wiki is also an interesting metric in many cases: they're often a good indicator of how curated a wiki globally is, while bot-created articles are often orphan. (Locally there might be overlinking but that's rarely a wiki-wide issue.) I don't remember how reliable the WikiStats numbers are, but they often give a good clue already.
>
> Nemo
>
> _______________________________________________
> Languages mailing list
> Languages(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/languages
I started writing a longer email, but then realized that it's better
to stick with the most important points, as everything is anyway
enough complex. Thus, just metrics and its applications, not anything
else.
While I was reloading a year ago my few years old idea to open
Wikipedia in 3000 more languages, I realized that we have substantial
problem. The most numerous communities have ~100 active (thus 5+
edits/month) editors per million of speakers. As my hypothesis was
that we could have Wikipedias in languages spoken by more than 10,000
people, that would mean that at the best they would have 1 (one)
active editor. Thus, something else has to be done... But before that,
we have to gather data and have the idea what's that "something".
My first idea -- something of a kind between a desperate one and "we
should try something" -- was to ask people from Wikimedia Estonia,
Wikimedia Finland and Wikimedia UK to try to reach as many as possible
new active users on particular projects. The point is that Scottish
Gaelic, Estonian and Finish are among the top in active users per
million of speakers.
A year later, Estonians are doing a very good job (others are good, as
well). They are above 100 active users per million of speakers and in
a couple of years they could reach even a couple of hundreds.
But, there is an obvious flaw in this kind of reasoning and I was
aware of it from the beginning: It's about languages spoken i rich
countries, while we'll be dealing with the communities on the opposite
end of wealth. However, at least it's possible to increase relative
number of active users in "ideal" situations, which means that ~100
active users per million of speakers is not a kind of realistic
maximum.
Thanks to the project Wiktionary meets Matica srpska, I am getting now
more precise insights into Ethnologue data (don't ask me what's the
relation, it was a couple of paragraphs long explanation inside of the
email I didn't send).
So, a month ago or so I got the first data and the news were very
good: more than 5000 languages won't die during the next 100 years.
More than 2500 languages are in very good shape. If we take for
granted that Ethnologue's data are about languages.
In the meantime, Sylvian mentioned on Languages list that he is
working on Kichwa Wikipedia. And he noted one important thing: if we
are going to have Wikipedias in languages like Kichwa is -- and that's
likely the prototype for the most of the languages which we will meet
in the future -- we have to adapt to them, not to impose unrealistic
expectations to them. That's connected to the data, as I want to know
what we could expect from them. (A note to self: literacy rate is very
important parameter, as well.)
It is also important to be able to follow numerically the development
of particular community and give them know-how based on previous
successful experiences.
As we got more results from Ethnologue data, my ambitions raised. Of
course I wanted to get number of articles per speaker. I got an
approximate correlation between Wikipedia editions and Ethnologue
data. Yes, of course, I knew that there are Wikipedia editions with a
lot of bot-generated articles. So, I've cut data to languages with 5
or more on Ethnologue language vitality scale and with the condition
that the language has to have native speakers and I've got pretty sane
results. Yes, Dutch and Swedish Wikipedias include a lot of
bot-generated articles, but the number of articles in those langauges
are quite fine in comparison with the rest of the projects.
There are few arguments in favor of counting (even bot-generated) articles:
* First, the most important flaw in analyzing such data is taking
their synchrony, not the development. But synchrony is the starting
point. By looking into development, we could monitor the number of new
articles per month and we could easily conclude what's the normal
state of the community and what's not.
* Then it doesn't take a lot of efforts to create legitimate
information on some of the topics by using bots. If legitimate
articles, that gives us a clue about the capacity of particular
community to create articles and thus spread free knowledge.
* For example, if organized properly, it's not hard to create sane
articles based on English (or Spanish or whichever) Wikipedia
templates about actors and movies. That means that English (or Spanish
or whichever) Wikipedia raises capacity of other Wikipedia editions,
which is legitimate and quite relevant. It's relevant in the sense
that we should particularly care about languages with large number of
L2 speakers and languages used as international or regional lingua
franca. In reverse note, we could conclude which languages have
potential to create a lot of articles thanks to the fact that the
speakers of that language are fluent in one of the big languages.
That's also quite relevant for "gross capacity" to share knowledge in
their own language.
* The number of possible articles will always raise. Even for
bot-generated articles. (Take as an example newly discovered planets
outside of our solar system. For monolinguals, it's relevant to have
that kind of information in their native language.) Thus,
possibilities will raise and it's important to monitor capacities of
the communities. Having a programmer raises capacity, obviously.
Having a dexterous community member, capable to find a programmer
inside of the movement willing to help creating a bot also counts.
I've seen projects with a lot of edits and disproportionally small
number of articles. From my perspective, it's better to have more
articles than to have a lot of rollbacks and a lot of talk. Although
the community itself is our most important value, our main task is to
create articles, not to argue. Besides the fact that it could be a
sign of bad community health.
But there are many other possible indicators, which could work in the
most of the cases. For example, edit count. From the first five
projects by the number of articles, we could easily conclude that the
ranks are: (1) English, (2) German, (3) French, (4) Dutch, (5)
Swedish, not (1) English, (2) Swedish, (3) Dutch, (4) German, (5)
French. (By taking a look into the other Wikipedias, we could see that
even Chinese on 15th place is stronger than the Swedish Wikipedia on
2nd one.)
Not counting English as world's primary lingua franca, It's also
interesting to see that the edits per German and French speaker is
roughly 1.5, while 0.6 in Russian case. Danish is ~1.7, Polish is
~1.05, Serbian is ~1.2, but Japanese is ~0.4 and Swahili ~0.05. (I
made approximations without a calculator, thus error range is likely
+-10% :) ) Thus, GDP/PPP per capita doesn't need to be that important
factor (in the sense "if you reach particular GDP/PPP per capita, it's
not anymore important factor"), while other things could be.
It's also important to have in mind that various data are likely
exposing various issues. And every issue has to be analyzed from
socio-economic perspective (obviously, Japanese Wikipedia is not
relatively weak because of the same reason as Russian or Swahili
Wikipedia are).
I will include as many parameters as possible in the future analysis.
As I have now the number of speakers of particular language per
country, it is possible now to correlate economic development with
particular language.
On Jun 13, 2015 09:38, "Federico Leva (Nemo)" <nemowiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Asaf Bartov, 13/06/2015 02:42:
>>
>> The (already existing) metric of active-editors-per-million-speakers is,
>> it seems to me, a far more robust metric. Erik Z.'s stats.wikimedia.org
>> <http://stats.wikimedia.org> is offering that metric.
>
>
> I personally agree on this in general, but Millosh is trying something different in his current quest, i.e. content ingestion and content coverage assessment, also for missing language subdomains. (By the way, I created the category, please add stuff: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Content_coverage .)
>
> Mere article count tells us very little and he acknowledged it. As you added analytics: maybe when https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T44259 is fixed we can also do fancy things like join various tables and count (countable) articles above a minimum threshold of hits, or something like that.
>
> Oh, and the total number of internal links in a wiki is also an interesting metric in many cases: they're often a good indicator of how curated a wiki globally is, while bot-created articles are often orphan. (Locally there might be overlinking but that's rarely a wiki-wide issue.) I don't remember how reliable the WikiStats numbers are, but they often give a good clue already.
>
> Nemo
>
> _______________________________________________
> Languages mailing list
> Languages(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/languages
Some of the findings there seem slightly ..off. Yes, IPs are more likely to
show up on the talk pages of semi-protected articles - because all of their
article edits have to be cleared through there.
On Tuesday, 16 December 2014, Mathieu ONeil <mathieu.oneil(a)anu.edu.au>
wrote:
> Hi
>
> On the question of location of disputes I wrote a blog post a few years
> ago:
>
> "Auray et al. identify several factors which contribute to conflictuality,
> such as the number of participants, the location of disputes, and the
> identity choices of participants. The larger the number of contributors,
> the more likely discussion is; the threshold number seems to be eight. When
> there are more than ten participants, discussion increasingly moves to the
> talk pages of users, and is more likely to degenerate into insults. A
> surefire indicator of fights are references to policy pages. These can be
> statistically measured: research by Kriplean and Beschastnikh has shown
> that pages with more than 250 posts had 51% of the links towards policy
> pages.
> There are two main types of articles where conflicts erupt: first, the
> usual suspects are topics with burning current affairs value involving
> inter-ethnic or inter-faith conflicts; second, “scientific” categories with
> low academic legitimacy such as homeopathy and chiropraxy are strong
> conflict zones. Suspected “sock-puppetry” (fake identity) is also a source
> of conflict; an attenuated version of this being the lack of regard for
> people who have not registered on the site and instead just use an IP
> address: more than half of the text inserted by “IPs” is deleted, and they
> are more likely to be present in semi-protected articles which is where
> disputes and insults typically occur. IPs are also more likely to insult
> others, so there are suspicions that IPs are registereds users who use
> “socks” to engage in insulting behaviour which they would not dare to do
> under their registered identities."
> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/wikipedia-and-conflict/2009/07/07
>
> cheers
>
> Mathieu
> ________________________________________
> From: wiki-research-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org <javascript:;> <
> wiki-research-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org <javascript:;>> on behalf of
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> wiki-research-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org <javascript:;>>
> Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2014 23:01
> To: wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org <javascript:;>
> Subject: Wiki-research-l Digest, Vol 112, Issue 24
>
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> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Re: commentary on Wikipedia's community behaviour (Aaron gets
> a quote) (mjn)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 05:28:30 +0100
> From: mjn <mjn(a)anadrome.org <javascript:;>>
> To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities
> <wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org <javascript:;>>
> Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] commentary on Wikipedia's community
> behaviour (Aaron gets a quote)
> Message-ID: <87k31si55a.fsf(a)mjn.anadrome.org <javascript:;>>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
>
> Perhaps it depends on what part of the encyclopedia? Has anyone
> attempted to characterize how the editing environment varies with
> different subject matter? I often run across descriptions that don't
> comport with either my experience, or that of people I've interviewed,
> but it's hard to tell precisely why. I've encountered quite different
> beliefs about what the en.wikipedia community is like, even among people
> who to me seem to otherwise have a similar background.
>
> Entirely anecdotally, areas of interest seem to be one correlated
> factor. For example, writing an article on an archaeological site (one
> thing I've mentored new editors in doing) is by and large trouble-free
> and friendly, in my experience. But some other areas are not. I haven't
> attempted to characterize that factor in any detail.
>
> -Mark
>
> WereSpielChequers <werespielchequers(a)gmail.com <javascript:;>> writes:
>
> > We have problems, I don't dispute that. But "ugly and bitter as 4chan"?
> That has to be an exaggeration.
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > Jonathan Cardy
> >
> >
> >> On 13 Dec 2014, at 01:03, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih(a)gmail.com
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >>
> >> I certainly hope you're right Sydney. What a horrible mess.
> >>
> >>
> >>> On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 5:53 PM, Sydney Poore <sydney.poore(a)gmail.com
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >>> I think feminists, especially those who take an interest in STEM, will
> pass this article around.
> >>>
> >>> Sydney
> >>>
> >>>> On Dec 12, 2014 5:35 PM, "Andrew Lih" <andrew.lih(a)gmail.com
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >>>> It's a good piece, but honestly I think only the dedicated tech
> reader will make it through the entire story. There's a lot of jargon and
> insider intrigue such that I could imagine most people never making past
> the typewriter barf of "BLP, AGF, NOR" :)
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 5:26 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak <
> darekj(a)alk.edu.pl <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >>>>> While I agree that the article is overly negative (likely because of
> the individual experience), I think it still points to an important
> problem. I don't perceive this article as really problematic in terms of
> image. Maybe naively, I imagine that people will not stop donating because
> the community is not ideal.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> pundit
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 11:16 PM, Kerry Raymond <
> kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >>>>>> There’s a saying that everyone likes to eat sausages but nobody
> likes to know how they are made. It is not good to have negative publicity
> like that during the annual donation campaign (irrespective of the
> motivations of the journalist and/or the rights/wrongs of the issue being
> reported, neither of which I intend to debate here). As a donation-funded
> organisation, public perception matters a lot.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Kerry
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> From: Jonathan Morgan [mailto:jmorgan@wikimedia.org <javascript:;>]
> >>>>>> Sent: Saturday, 13 December 2014 6:43 AM
> >>>>>> To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities
> >>>>>> Cc: Kerry Raymond
> >>>>>> Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] commentary on Wikipedia's community
> behaviour (Aaron gets a quote)
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> I mostly agree. On one hand, it's always nice to see a detailed
> description of how wiki-sausage gets made in a major venue. On the other,
> this journalist clearly has a personal axe to grind, and used his bully
> pulpit to grind it in public.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> - J
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 1:39 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) <
> nemowiki(a)gmail.com <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> 1000th addition to the inconsequential rant genre.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Nemo
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> >>>>>> Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org <javascript:;>
> >>>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> --
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Jonathan T. Morgan
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Community Research Lead
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Wikimedia Foundation
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> User:Jmorgan (WMF)
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> jmorgan(a)wikimedia.org <javascript:;>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> >>>>>> Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org <javascript:;>
> >>>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> --
> >>>>>
> >>>>> __________________________
> >>>>> prof. dr hab. Dariusz Jemielniak
> >>>>> kierownik katedry Zarządzania Międzynarodowego
> >>>>> i centrum badawczego CROW
> >>>>> Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego
> >>>>> http://www.crow.alk.edu.pl
> >>>>>
> >>>>> członek Akademii Młodych Uczonych Polskiej Akademii Nauk
> >>>>> członek Komitetu Polityki Naukowej MNiSW
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Wyszła pierwsza na świecie etnografia Wikipedii "Common Knowledge?
> An Ethnography of Wikipedia" (2014, Stanford University Press) mojego
> autorstwa http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=24010
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Recenzje
> >>>>> Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml
> >>>>> Pacific Standard:
> http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/killed-wikipedia-93777/
> >>>>> Motherboard:
> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/an-ethnography-of-wikipedia
> >>>>> The Wikipedian:
> http://thewikipedian.net/2014/10/10/dariusz-jemielniak-common-knowledge
> >>>>>
> >>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> >>>>> Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org <javascript:;>
> >>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> >>>> Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org <javascript:;>
> >>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> >>> Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org <javascript:;>
> >>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> >> Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org <javascript:;>
> >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wiki-research-l mailing list
> > Wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org <javascript:;>
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>
> --
> Sent with my mu4e
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
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> End of Wiki-research-l Digest, Vol 112, Issue 24
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--
Sent from my mobile computing device of Lovecraftian complexity and horror.
To follow up on Peter's comment:
Does "we're not fundraising in Russia right now" mean that the WMF isn't
proactively seeking donations with a fundraising campaign visible on the
Russian language Wikipedia, or, does it mean that the WMF is
disallowing/refusing donations coming from Russia/in Roubles?
IF it is the first option, then that's the WMF's choice :-)
IF it is the second option, then why wasn't the local community/chapter
informed or some Russian-language documentation prepared in advance?
-Liam
On Thursday, 13 November 2014, Peter Southwood <peter.southwood(a)telkomsa.net>
wrote:
> Are you accepting donations from Russia at present?
>
> Peter Southwood
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikimedia-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org <javascript:;> [mailto:
> wikimedia-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org <javascript:;>] On Behalf Of Lisa
> Gruwell
> Sent: 13 November 2014 05:46 AM
> To: Wikimedia Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] [Fundraiser] fundraising blocked in Russia
>
> Hello rubin16,
>
> We are not running fundraising in Russia at this time, but I want to
> assure you that this was not a decision motivated by politics.
>
> We take compliance with appropriate laws very seriously in everything we
> do. Out of an abundance of caution, we're not fundraising in Russia right
> now.
>
> Of course, the fact that we are not fundraising in Russia does and will
> not have any impact at all on how the WMF continues to support the Russian
> language Wikipedia, its sister projects, and the Russian Wikimedian
> community.
>
> Thank you,
> Lisa Gruwell
>
> On Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 7:44 PM, rubin.happy <rubin.happy(a)gmail.com
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
>
> > There were no recent changes in sanctions and I don't understand why
> > this turn off in donations happened just now.
> >
> > Ideas about SWIFT kick out are not relevant here, as it was just a
> > discussion some months ago but no such action happened.
> >
> > Furthermore, the sanctions were placed on particular companies and
> > individuals, there were no prohibitions against all financial relations.
> > So, I could understand if donations weren't accepted when they were
> > sent via a couple of banks under sanctions, but I want to repeat that
> > there is, for example, no prohibition to receive money from Russians.
> >
> > rubin16
> > 13 нояб. 2014 г. 4:01 пользователь "David Gerard" <dgerard(a)gmail.com
> <javascript:;>>
> > написал:
> >
> > > I'm presuming this is sanctions against Russia kicking in; all sorts
> > > of business has been stopped dead in its tracks, not just charity
> > > donations. There's even serious moves to kick Russia out of the
> > > SWIFT
> > > network:
> > >
> > http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-09-04/ultimate-sanction-barr
> > ing-russian-banks-from-swift-money-system
> > > It strikes me as quite unlikely that there's anything at all WMF can
> > > actually do about this. Possibly it could have been handled better,
> > > but that won't change the fact.
> > >
> > > On 13 November 2014 00:12, Craig Franklin
> > > <cfranklin(a)halonetwork.net <javascript:;>>
> > > wrote:
> > > > I'm sure that you're correct here Joseph, but this is another
> > > > example I think where the Foundation should have notified the
> > > > relevant chapter
> > > > *before* taking the action, so that they would be ready when the
> > > questions
> > > > started rolling in.
> > > >
> > > > Unfortunately, I think we're getting back to the bad old days of
> > chapter
> > > > and user group press contacts being the last people to find out
> > > > about potentially controversial issues like this.
> > > >
> > > > Regards,
> > > > Craig Franklin
> > > > (personal view only)
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > On 13 November 2014 10:07, Joseph Seddon <josephseddon(a)gmail.com
> <javascript:;>>
> > wrote:
> > > >
> > > >> I would hate to preclude any answer from the foundation. However
> > > >> the
> > > laws
> > > >> that govern the foundation are that of the US. Given the previous
> > > >> and renewed ongoing palaver with Ukraine and the presence of
> > > >> economic
> > > sanctions
> > > >> and the increasing likelihood of on top of what is already
> > > >> present, I imagine this related to that.
> > > >>
> > > >> Im not sure of what legal risks accepting such donations would
> > > >> expose
> > > the
> > > >> foundation to. However such precautions have been made in the
> > > >> past
> > > relating
> > > >> to unrest.
> > > >>
> > > >> Its no slight on the country or its individuals, just a
> > > >> precautionary measure.
> > > >>
> > > >> Seddon
> > > >> On 12 Nov 2014 19:48, "Federico Leva (Nemo)"
> > > >> <nemowiki(a)gmail.com <javascript:;>>
> > > wrote:
> > > >>
> > > >>> rubin.happy, 12/11/2014 18:48:
> > > >>>
> > > >>>> We received some alerts from our users that donations are now
> > blocked
> > > >>>> when user is from Russia:
> > > >>>>
> > > http://habrastorage.org/files/31b/b1f/ec9/31bb1fec9b9e45abb6ac4babcc
> > > 2371
> > > >>>> 84.png
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>
> > > >>> Thanks for the information. Everyone can see the same warning by
> > > clicking
> > > >>> the "Russia" link in
> > https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Ways_to_Give
> > > >>> Through what channels are donations blocked? Did anyone try
> > > >>> sending a wire to the EU (SEPA) account (IBAN
> > > >>> GB54CHAS60924241034640), or a
> > > PayPal
> > > >>> donation?
> > > >>>
> > > >>> Nemo
> > > >>>
> > > >>> P.s.: ROTFLOL "Please email donate(a)wikimedia.org <javascript:;>
> for more
> > information
> > > on
> > > >>> how to make a bank transfer to the Wikimedia Foundation." In
> > > >>> case
> > > someone
> > > >>> forgets there is an ocean between Europe and USA.
> > > >>>
> > > >>> _______________________________________________
> > > >>> Fundraiser mailing list
> > > >>> Fundraiser(a)lists.wikimedia.org <javascript:;>
> > > >>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/fundraiser
> > > >>>
> > > >>
> > > >> _______________________________________________
> > > >> Fundraiser mailing list
> > > >> Fundraiser(a)lists.wikimedia.org <javascript:;>
> > > >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/fundraiser
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
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