body:
On 6/13/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> I find it strange that you excuse the Foundation for not doing it
> because "things take time", but this fact is insufficient to explain why
> the community, despite expending some efforts, has not finished doing it.

Fundamentally I can forgive the Foundation because it hasn't tried to
solve this problem.  Also, the things that the foundation would need
to do are fundamentally different from the work being done by the
'community': Raising money to hire people to do this work when the
'community' is objecting and claiming that they have it under control.

Exactly how is the community working to solve the problem of new
articles being created which are never reviewed by anyone involved
with the project?

Even things as simple as garbage being added to articles could be
improved right away. For example, Article gets moved to
Article/development. A copy is made back to article, a template added,
page protected. Sitewide JS hacks fix up edit links for most browsers.
Done. It's not perfect... but if successful mediawiki could be easily
enhanced to support the model. We've been arguing and blowing hot air
for at least a *year* on how to solve that problem, yet we've taken
nearly no action. No one has come up with a perfect system, or at
least if someone has no one has implemented it yet.  It's probably no
possible to come up with a solution the the community can agree is
good because our deadlock prevents us from building the experience
needed to build a good solution or even evaluate the qualities of a
proposal...   In some cases the community is simply terrible at
decision making, someone long winded noncontributing naysayer able to
come in and disrupt progress.

And I see that I am becoming long winded myself. My apologies, this is
my last post to the litst today.


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Foundation-l] Would you consider being on the Board?


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 6/13/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/13/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Sure, there are systematic problems with building something of high
> > quality using a wiki.
>
> It's not a fault of wiki
>
So the fact that anyone can come along and screw up anything in
Wikipedia doesn't have anything to do with the fact that some parts of
it are screwed up?

> > But do you really think the board can do
> > anything to fix them?  Moreover, do you think a different board would
> > have fixed the problem you've pointed out by now?
>
> The foundation can help, yes. For example, we could direct our paid
> developers to create simple tools which help users review. Things like
> the ill fated 'reviewed revision' which actually work.  If the
> community is unwilling to do this work even when made as easy and
> efficient as possible, which I expect, then we need to staff up for
> it.
>
> I don't fault the current board for not doing this yet. I was
> specifically addressing the claim that the projects correctly manage
> themselves. They don't.
>
> I have no clue why you attempted that blame the board angle here,
> because my post had nothing to do with that...
>
My fault, I was confused as to your argument.  You're saying it's the
community's fault.

Not that I see how the community is in any better of a situation to
fix the problem, unless you consider the vandals part of the
community.

> > After seeing Wikipedia in action for so long people tend to forget
> > just how amazing it is.  Pretty much anyone can edit pretty much any
> > part of it at any time.  It's remarkable that the idea works in the
> > first place.
>
> That has nothing to do with Wikipedia and everything to do with human
> nature. I was mistaken about this at one point, but SJ clued reminded
> me of one of the lines Jimbo used to repeat a lot "People are
> basically good". This why you can park your car on a public street day
> in and day out and not come out and find it keyed or vandalized every
> single day.
>
> So basically we've managed to do about as well as human nature would
> cause us to do as a default. ... and now we sit in awe of our success,
> and I think thats pretty broken.

People are basically good.  And Wikipedia is basically good.  If
anything's broken, it's the expectation.

Anthony


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [Wikipedia-l] moving forward on article validation

body:
On 6/13/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> (Mainly concerning wikipedia, but cross-posting to foundation-l because
> of some discussion of committees; see the end.)
>
> We've discussed on and off that it'd be nice to vet specific revisions
> of Wikipedia articles so readers can either choose to read only quality
> articles, or at least have an indication of how good an article is.
> This is an obvious prerequisite for a Wikipedia 1.0 print edition, and
> would be nice on the website as well.
>
> There is a lengthy list of proposals here:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Article_validation_proposals
>
> I wanted to try to rekindle the process by summarizing some of the
> proposals, which I think can be grouped into three main types, and then
> suggest some ideas on where to go from there.

.... <snipping out longish section so my puny reply doesn't look so bad>

> On an organizational level, it may be useful to have a working group
> sorting this out to focus the process. It may be useful, in my opinion,
> for the Foundation to make it an official committee of sorts and
> indicate at least informally that it'll support getting its
> recommendations enacted (e.g. paying another developer if development
> resources are the bottleneck). I would be willing to devote a
> significant amount of time to such a committee, since I think this is
> the single biggest problem holding back Wikipedia's usefulness to the
> general public, and I'm sure there are at least several other people
> with ideas and expertise in this area who would be willing to do so as well.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> -Mark

We should go all-ahead on #2, as fast as possible. It doesn't disrupt
our current system, and requires minimal effort (any system
contemplated for #1 or #3 intrinsically involve non-trivial effort and
modifications to software and systems and processes). While we hash
out 1 or 3, #2 could be cooking along nicely, and best of all, it
complements not supplants the others.  And it's a considerable
improvement over our ad-hoc system of warning readers of quality
issues through the many obscure improvement templates.

And of course, it could have side benefits; suppose each vote came
with an optional  edit-summary size box, where you could add a
comment? This would drastically lower the cost of getting feedback
(and since we're all wiki partisans here, we know exactly why lowering
costs of contributing is a very good thing), allowing people who would
never dream of adding to these weird and obscure "discussion" or
"talk" pages to give their feedback and quickly and easily point out
little things or problems. Are there any bugs requests for
voting/rating systems that I could add
this suggestion to?

But w/r/t gaming; I don't think we should worry about this too much.
One vote per IP/account per week (or arbitrary number of edits to an
article to allow for improvements or degradation) would take care of
80% of the problem, and unless we start a totally automatic Wikipedia
1.0 system based on blindly trusting the rating, there wouldn't seem
to be any incentive to game it; or to put it another way, if you can
game the ratings, then you could as well game other things, like being
a user or article content (which generally matter far more to
ne'er-do-wells than per-article ratings).

Of course, rating probably isn't the final, end-all be-all solution,
but we should nevertheless do something. (After all, [[Worse is
Better]], and we don't want Wikipedia 1.0 or whatever it is going by
to become the next [[GNU Hurd]]).

~maru


body:
On 6/13/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Exactly how is the community working to solve the problem of new
> articles being created which are never reviewed by anyone involved
> with the project?
>
Most of the solutions require developer support.  Mediawiki
development is rather hierarchical compared to the rest of Wikipedia,
and there's not a whole lot that most of the community *can* do.

I suppose community members could spend lots of time writing patches
to the Mediawiki code and take a chance that their patches will be
ignored like some of the ones that came before them.  But that's
asking a whole lot of people.

> Even things as simple as garbage being added to articles could be
> improved right away. For example, Article gets moved to
> Article/development. A copy is made back to article, a template added,
> page protected. Sitewide JS hacks fix up edit links for most browsers.
> Done. It's not perfect... but if successful mediawiki could be easily
> enhanced to support the model. We've been arguing and blowing hot air
> for at least a *year* on how to solve that problem, yet we've taken
> nearly no action. No one has come up with a perfect system, or at
> least if someone has no one has implemented it yet.  It's probably no
> possible to come up with a solution the the community can agree is
> good because our deadlock prevents us from building the experience
> needed to build a good solution or even evaluate the qualities of a
> proposal...   In some cases the community is simply terrible at
> decision making, someone long winded noncontributing naysayer able to
> come in and disrupt progress.
>
Ultimately it's up to the people who run the servers to decide what
solution they want.  Again, I don't see how more than a handful of
members of the community can help with making this decision.

Anthony


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [Wikitech-l] Transclusion of formatting templates (again?)

body:
On 6/13/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> There is one reason why it's a good idea:
> * Transclusion is "CPU-intensive"

Making thousands upon thousands of utterly trivial edits is also
resource intensive, but that seems to be forgotten.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [Foundation-l] moving forward on article validation

body:
On 6/13/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Thoughts?

I think before we even start thinking about ensuring that our articles
are "high quality" we need to first establish mechanisms to ensure
that our articles are free of legal encumbrances.  Let's get that out
of the way first, eh?

Kelly


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed

body:
Michael R. Irwin schrieb:

> I have wasted more time than I care to remember wandering around meta
> and various mailing lists looking for agendas, results of votes,
> minutes, budgets, audit reports, expenditures, etc.   All the typical
> data that an organization should routinely produce and publish in a
> timely manner to operate efficiently.
>
> Little to none of it is published in an organized meaningful manner for
> the simple fundamental reason that we have a stacked Board and what
> matters is what Jimbo decides.  In organizations where meaningul
> delegation is the rule the data gets produced because everybody needs
> it!  Nobody needs it at the Wikimedia Foundation because only Jimbo's
> opinion or stated position has any final standing on anything.  So it
> does not get routinely produced and posted publicly.

Sorry, this is nonsense. The data is not produced because we rely almost
entirely on volunteers and reporting is not an especially fascinating or
rewarding activity.

I admire for example how Walter produces a wikizine edition week after
week so reliably - but how many people are willing to pick such a task?
Look at the english signpost which consists now mostly of regular
columns filled automatically ("Seven users were granted admin status
last week") instead of original news reports.
 > Your committees and people participating in the process are to a large
> extent hand picked from the select group are known to get along with you
> on the mailing lists.

Yes, they are hand picked - as soon as I have found someone suitable and
volunteering for a task, I grab him and don't let him go anymore ;-)
Most other people in the foundation act similarly (Anthere dragged
Delphine into the Wikimania organization team when she was just three
weeks with Wikipedia)

> When those volunteers get interested in a topic and go looking for the
> information and cannot find it without querying a wide range of poorly
> organized sources the organization does indeed look "opaque".

I agree but this is hardly the board's fault. Did I hear you
volunteering for the task of cleaning up Meta?

greetings,
elian


subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed


list: wikien-l

from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright status of drawings based on photos

body:
George Herbert wrote:

>On 6/12/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Usually the courts give a lot of leeway to derivative works which do a
>>lot of transformation, especially when pitted up against claims from
>>works which don't do a lot of transformation.
>>
>>
>
>Good example here is
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_v._Koons
>
>Koons turned Rogers' photographic postcard into a sculpture, with a
>couple of tiny details changed, but the other details intentionally as
>close as possible.  Courts held it to be copyright violation.
>
>In the case of the inspired drawing, the details are intentionally as
>far as possible, given the reinterpretation in .. charcoal?   The only
>carried over elements are compositional, and it's pretty transformed.
>
>The lack of any commercial value of the derived product also makes it
>more likely to pass muster.
>
>I would say, no worries, for using it on WP.  It might be a marginal
>concern for commercial use of that drawing, but not for noncommercial
>use.
>
>
Provided we use it under fair use, I presume? Non-commercial-use only
works have been verboten for quite some time.

John


from_name: Fastfission

body:
He just means that as a fair use claim, it would probably be totally
safe when used in non-commercial circumstances, not that it is
licensed under a non-commercial-use-only license. It would probably be
safe in a number of for-profit circumstances as well, but our policy
on that for a long time has been that in the case of fair use, it is
up to the re-user to sort out their own circumstances.

FF

On 6/13/06, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
> George Herbert wrote:
>
> >On 6/12/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Usually the courts give a lot of leeway to derivative works which do a
> >>lot of transformation, especially when pitted up against claims from
> >>works which don't do a lot of transformation.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Good example here is
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_v._Koons
> >
> >Koons turned Rogers' photographic postcard into a sculpture, with a
> >couple of tiny details changed, but the other details intentionally as
> >close as possible.  Courts held it to be copyright violation.
> >
> >In the case of the inspired drawing, the details are intentionally as
> >far as possible, given the reinterpretation in .. charcoal?   The only
> >carried over elements are compositional, and it's pretty transformed.
> >
> >The lack of any commercial value of the derived product also makes it
> >more likely to pass muster.
> >
> >I would say, no worries, for using it on WP.  It might be a marginal
> >concern for commercial use of that drawing, but not for noncommercial
> >use.
> >
> >
> Provided we use it under fair use, I presume? Non-commercial-use only
> works have been verboten for quite some time.
>
> John
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising ideas - bursting the bubble

body:
On 6/13/06, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Giving people gifts for donating would complicate that equation. The current system simply can't
> handle that can of tracking. Something I'd like the fundcom to tackle. We need people familiar
> with php, HTML and/or MySQL to work that out.

There are several good software packages out there for donor
management.  Unfortunately, none of them are open source.  There are
no such packages in the open source world (while there is a
rudimentary open source CRM solution, it is primitive at best and is
not specifically designed for the needs of a non-profit).  Our problem
is that we need a solution now, today, not in the two to three years
(if ever) it would take for the open source community to develop such
a package.

Perhaps the Foundation would care to hire a few developers to write
such a package; if they're not up for that, I'd strongly urge them to
consider using one of the commercial packages, ideological differences
about nonfree software aside.  (Hey, we use Cisco hardware, which runs
on the very proprietary IOS, and I suspect you'll find that a majority
of Wikimedia contributors run either MacOS or Windows, neither of
which is free either.  We have no real claim to ideological purity.)

Kelly


list: textbook-l

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Textbook-l] Fwd: Research related to Wikibooks

body:
FYI

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Suthiporn Sajjapanroj" <ssajjapa at indiana.edu>
To: <wiki-research-l-owner at Wikimedia.org>
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 11:09:58 -0400
Subject: Research related to Wikibooks

Hello,

My following email was rejected from the Wiki Research mailing list
(wiki-research-l at wikimedia.org). Actually, I was suggested by Phoebe
Ayers to send this invitation to the mailing list. As you can see
below, I am working on a research related to Wikibooks. If you might
be able to help sending the bellowed invitation to the target group,
it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much,

Suthiporn

*******************

Hello,

My name is Suthiporn Sajjapanroj. I am a second-year doctoral student
at the Department of Education in Indiana University, Bloomington. My
professor, Dr. Curtis J. Bonk, and I are conducting a research related
to a Wikibook. The purpose of this study is to find the potential of
an instructional strategy, the creation of a Wikibook, to support
learning collaboration and social interactions across classrooms in
different educational institutions. You are invited to participate in
this research study. Your responses will help us understand online
collaboration in the creation of a Wikibook. This survey consists of
35 questions and will take you about 15 minutes to complete. Please
answer these questions to the best of your knowledge. Thank you very
much. Your participation is greatly appreciated. The survey can be
found at:

http://www.surveyshare.com/survey/take/?sid=36753

(If you are unable to click on the link, copy and paste it into your
Web browser.)

This survey will be collected anonymously on a secure server provided
by SurveyShare. Your survey responses will be kept confidential.  Any
questions or problems can be sent to ssajjapa at indiana.edu.

Suthiporn Sajjapanroj

Ph.D. Student in Curriculum and Instruction

Indiana University

800 N.Union Street,

Bloomington, Indiana 47408

812-857-0009

Curtis J. Bonk, Professor

Indiana University

Instructional Systems Technology Department

School of Education: Room 2220

Bloomington, IN 47405-1006

(812) 856-8353 (work); 322-curt (cell)

E-mail: CJBonk at indiana.edu

812-856-8353

http://mypage.iu.edu/~cjbonk/

***********************


from_name: Joseph Hiegel

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
FWIW (and I agree with Sean that, were I involved in a situation ? la Phil's, I'd not want my fellow Wikipedians to attempt to insinuate themselves into my life; I imagine that most are similarly disposed), there is a profound difference, at least in the United States, between that which inflicts emotional distress and that which is criminally prosecutable as stalking/harassment (as well, for reasons of, you know, free speech, there ought to be).  The psychological trauma of certain forms of harassment may be real, but not all of those forms of harassment are criminally proscribed (or even civilly actionable), and there is nothing at all wrong, IMHO, with our telling contributors who are disinclined to endure "harassment" that perhaps they ought to edit elsewhere; even as the project might lose certain valuable users, the loss of the disruption concomitant to those users and their expressions of woe over harassment would likely outweigh the former (pace Phil, Wikipedia
 isn't obligating users to endure harassment; at worst, we are saying that one may edit Wikipedia and open himself to harassment or elect not to edit and forgo harassment; I'm not at all uncomfortable with that).  In any event, as to the meta-question, I can't abide the suggestion that Brandt has done anything morally wrong; if he is able to coerce Wikipedians into arguing for the deletion of his article, he ought to essay such coercion.  In Phil's case, his quarrel ought to be with law enforcement, who may have violated his civil rights (or who, in any event, surely acted untowardly and ought to be reprimanded, even as there may be no legal means by which to compel such reprimanding), not with Brandt, et al., who acted simply to disseminate quasi-public information.  The question, of course, is whether the project ought to subjugate encyclopedic concerns to (at best) tangentially encyclopedic concerns.  We must weigh, I think, the potential loss of editors/sysops to the
 potential loss of encyclopedic content, and I think we must err on the side of preserving encyclopedic content.  As I noted at [[Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 May 10#Template:HurricaneWarning]], the loss of a few readers--or even excellent contributors--is likely to have only a de minimis deleterious effect on the project.  I am eminently confident that, even as longtime editors might be intimated off-wiki, other users will arrive to fill the vacated roles.  Many, in other contexts (e.g., userbox debates), often note that the community aspect of our project exists only to further encyclopedic goals; we ought not to forget that.  Just as we're not (or shouldn't be) concerned with the external consequences of our editing (we are, after all, disinterested encyclopedists, not harm-limiting journalists), so too ought not we to be concerned for the extra-Wiki harms that befall individual contributors, until the loss of contributors becomes so great that the project
 cannot survive; I do not believe our loss will ever reach that level.

  Cordially,

  Joe Hiegel
  [[User:Jahiegel]]

poore5 at adelphia.net wrote:

> I made my name and my information publically viewable because I don't
> believe that these people can actually hurt me in any concrete way. Maybe
> that was naive but I still can't think of how. They can be annoying and
> harassing, but if I don't let it get to me, it won't. Part of administrative
> responsibility is having the force of will to brush aside the people who
> don't deserve the recognition that giving a damn about them or what they do
> gives them.
>
> Ryan

Ryan,

Harassment and stalking are crimes for a reason. Though you probably don't mean to be dismissive of victims of these crimes, you come across that way when you say that you "don't let it get to you". The psychological trauma from harassment and stalking is real. Wikipedia needs to do a better job identifying the people that have harmed by this abuse and supporting them through the experience. This is a wise course of action for many reasons.

Sydney

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [Textbook-l] Power to dictate policy (Was: Game Guides)

body:
On 6/13/06, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:

> To clarify, I meant that the setting (or "dictation") of policy by
> Jimbo is limited to extreme circumstances - ie., as I said, in cases
> where he sees that projects are veering significantly from their
> mandate or that of the Wikimedia Foundation. This has always been the
> case - but I don't seem to be able to give you a good reference - the
> best I can do is this page:
> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Governance>, in which he
> says: "Final policy decisions are up to me, as always" (10th April,
> 2002) - ie., Jimbo is Wikipedia's equivalent of a 'benevolent
> dictator' or 'GodKing' (both of which terms he doesn't like, as far as
> I know). As I said, though, I don't know how many times he has
> actually stepped in to set policy on any project.

Yes, though it's not clear how this applies to other projects, or
other languages. The "God-King" role derives largely from the fact
that Jimmy co-created and funded Wikipedia. The other projects were
started from within the community, some of them through elaborate
processes which involved the Board's final approval. In effect, unless
Jimmy chooses to invoke his position as Wikimedia President (which
would imply that all his actions are reviewed by the whole Board), the
only authority he has on Wikibooks is the one granted to him by the
Wikibooks community.

I think it would be foolish to make it a requirement within the
Wikimedia Foundation that any new project that is launched has to
accept Jimmy as its benevolent God-King for life. There are good
reasons we have a Board, however "stacked" it may be, for strategic
decisions. And there are reasons Board members typically recuse
themselves from decisions where there is a potential conflict of
interest (and I would argue that Wikia hosting resources which are to
be removed from Wikibooks represents a potential conflict of
interest).

Jimmy might disagree that he used any special authority; however, do
note that he asked Danny to make him a bureaucrat on Wikibooks outside
regular processes in November 2005. He then made _himself_ a sysop to
delete the Jokebook and some other materials. While I agree with the
deletions, I (and many folks on Wikibooks) disagree with the process.
Jimmy has 48 edits on Wikibooks, so he is clearly acting not as a
regular editor and contributor. Any regular editor -- even one
involved in Wikimedia Foundation matters -- making policy statements
of the same nature would probably be ignored, and certainly not get
speedy deletion rights.

The desire to provide a clear focus for Wikibooks on textbooks --
we're discussing this on a mailing list called textbook-l -- is
entirely legitimate. But this is an initiative that should clearly
come from the Board, not from Jimmy alone, possibly through a
Resolution. As for Howtos, I believe they should remain on Wikibooks,
or we should talk about creating a dedicated how-to project within the
Wikimedia Foundation. The latter would be a worthwhile effort,
especially if we involve the open source community, which has a great
need for such a resource.

Erik


body:
On 6/13/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> The desire to provide a clear focus for Wikibooks on textbooks --
> we're discussing this on a mailing list called textbook-l -- is
> entirely legitimate.

I'd like to add that one question opened up by this is how specialized
the project should be. Textbooks are useful as materials complementing
regular education in schools and universities, but they are of limited
value in distance learning (using eLearning software or not).
Similarly, there are many other educational resources, such as
audio-based education or interactive education, which are not
textbooks.

If we do end up creating Wikiversity, it would be somewhat awkward if
all educational resources but one (textbooks) were created there. I
think we should have one wiki dedicated to developing resources that
directly target an educational context, not multiple ones.

This, to me, indicates that this whole question needs much more
discussion at a higher level, rather than just some statements of
policy from the top.

Erik


list: commons-l

from_name: Essjay

subject: [Commons-l] some statistics

body:
<snip>Wonderful things that I'm so excited happened </snip>

Magnus: A giant hug, a bottle of whatever you like to drink, and the
firstborn child of someone who has children. You're awesome!

Could someone catch me up on exactly where we are with this? I've been
gone since Saturday (my last post here was the last thing I did) and
there has obviously been great progress while I was away. Could someone
send me a summary of exactly where we are (especially, where and how to
use Magnus' tool)? Offlist is fine, though it might be helpful to have
an on-list post to point people to as well. I'd greatly appreciate it,
and I promise, as soon as I know how to use what Magnus has coded, I'll
delete those 1000 images I promised to nuke. :D

Essjay

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/


from_name: Michael R. Irwin

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>On 6/14/06, Michael R. Irwin <michael_irwin at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Instead he announced he would stack the Board to protect the project
>>from the feared arrival of the unwashed masses (can not lock them out
>>after all .... most of them know some stuff we want them to give us to
>>publish freely) and proceeded to put two handpicked trustees/employees
>>along with himself and designated two slots to be elected by count of
>>active handles or sock puppets.
>>
>>
>
>Are you saying that the election of Anthere and Angela was not
>legitimate ("active handles or sock puppets")?
>
I declined to vote for them for two reasons:
1.  There was and currently is no precise method to count a legitimate
one person one vote election.   If others choose to participate and view
this as legitimate "democratic" elections, that is their business.
2.  The entire Wikimedia structure was setup unilaterally and stacked.
What point in voting for the guaranteed losing faction should any
controversial issue arise?   Consider me a concientious objector.  I
simply abstained and attempt occasionally to influence policy, methods,
or ideas in circulation via available communications channels.

>I would beg to differ
>on that point. While I sympathize with Tim Starling's point that
>membership would be a reasonable method to guarantee the
>organization's long term independence, I think the elections that took
>place were unquestionably fair and open, and reasonable measures were
>taken to deal with manipulation.
>
>
Interesting.   I guess I should review the technical measures utilized
if they are published somewhere.  I might learn something.  I was under
the impression that with a little forethought there were some gaping
holes in our ability to associate a specific person uniquely with a
specific handle.

>Again, I would also like to remind you that wikipedia.org is
>wikipedia.ORG today. We take this for granted today, but it was by no
>means a guaranteed outcome, especially for a project created by an Ayn
>Rand objectivist. ;-) I would even go so far to say that Wikipedia
>could be _very_ successful (not as successful as it is, but still)
>while being proprietary. And it could have made Jimmy _lots_ of money.
>Instead he put a lot of his own money into Nupedia and Wikipedia, and
>is unlikely to get much, if any, of it back. As often as I may
>disagree with him, it is absurd to assume greed as a factor in his
>principal actions. If Jimmy wanted to be "filthy rich" (rather than
>independently wealthy), he would already _be_ filthy rich, and
>Wikipedia would be Wikipedia.COM.
>
>
I think you are dreaming.  The dot.com changed to dot.org after some
serious business planning got started by a few members of the
"community" at large and with some steady pressure from other long time
valued contributors.   A potential threat emerged to Jimbo's iron fisted
control via paying the bills for the bandwidth and servers and he moved
quickly to quash it via unilateral organization of the non profit and
design of the charter for retained long term god-king status, or if
assume good faith this was merely coincidental timing.

If wikipedia.com had not previously embraced the FDL and then made some
committments regarding advertisement free long term free access it might
very well gone the way of Nupedia.   Jimbo kept his options open as long
as possible and then moved like a good entrepreneur to succeed and
salvage what value he could.  The fame, honorariums, and name
recognition might yet make him a fortune or at least a high salary or
return via Wikia, speaking engagements, or executive level consulting
but probably not until he "over delivers" on some fairly lofty
advertised goals.

Perhaps he has already "over delivered" adequately.  Perhaps not.  There
seem to be a lot of people on this list making valid points regarding
the maintenance or improvement of the overall quality of the aggregate
data you folks currently have in Wikipedia.   It appears to be steadily
improving to me, but I do not do any systematic sampling.  Most of the
stuff I am interested in for research background is fairly concrete data
and well frequented.

>That is not to say that there aren't conflicts of interest. Certainly
>Jimmy wants to make Wikia succeed, and it is important for the
>organization to be set up and run in such a way that people associated
>with Wikia (Michael, Angela and Jimmy) can (yes, _can_) recuse
>themselves when there is an obvious COI. The fact that 3 out of 5
>Board members are associated with a for-profit that stands to benefit
>from certain actions of the non-profit they lead does of course lend a
>lot of weight to arguments for a larger and more diverse Board, and
>more community involvement in the executive body. But these arguments
>should be made under the full assumption of good faith of everyone
>involved.
>
>
We assume good faith by policy but start to decide on an individual or
community basis that people are trolls or undesirable after a certain time.

 It is ludicrous to set up a board that in the longterm needs to recuse
up to four fifths of its membership regarding much of its
responsibility.   You are welcome to assume good faith as long as you
like.   This is an amateurish setup that should never have been
established when dealing with publicly donated funds.  It should be
fixed as soon as feasible with some style and grace.  The current board
could establish some appropriate useful policy for future board members
regarding conflicts of interest and independence whether elected or
appointed and then the people with conflicts should ease themselves off
the board at completion of their terms or divest their conflicting
investments.   Everybody gets their ticket punched so they can put on
their resume they were Founding Board Members or Trustees of the
prestigious Wikimedia Foundation and the conflicts go away in the next
round of elections or appointments.  It may not be much for their hard
work on our behalf but at least it some recognition for their efforts.

So in answer to the original question.   No.  I would not consider being
on this Board until the incoming legal experts have time to revise some
things appropriately.   Besides the largest project I ever managed was
only valued at about $14 million dollars and I only had to design and
staff two departments of 12 to 14 IT professionals each for the software
development and transition of data processing systems into operations.
Clearly any expertise or mere knowledge I might have is invalidated by
the shift from super minis to pc blade servers.  Different chipsets and
protocols to yack at the people doing the real work about.  Obsolete.
8)  Perhaps I could claim experience with "volunteers" since they were
all government or contractor personnel and had to be managed with
appropriate delicacy and incentives.   Alas all my more recent
experience is with direct paid suborbinates of my own company.   Nothing
voluntary there.  Although everyone was required to track their own time
and fill out their own time sheet on their own.   None of that time
clock or me having to be there to count their actual time every day on
my toes bullshit.  Although, flextime was tricky in hunting season.
Getting them in on critical or emergency tasks in hunting season might
be considered applicable experience with "volunteers".

Besides, we need lawyers, accountants and business managers.
Organizational people.   Payroll and position descriptions.   Benefit
package negotiators.  Cash flow projections and budgets.   Fund raising
celebs.  Yeah! Fun stuff.  The computers and software development seem
to working out ok.  The Board can send simply send an email to Brion,
you, or one of the other development gurus should any non organizational
issues ever arise .... or perhaps one of the excellent developers would
like his ticket punched so he can raise his consulting fees in a  year
or year?

Should be an interesting election or appointment season for us
interested bystanders.

regards,
lazyquasar


body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>On 6/13/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>
>
> No one has come up with a perfect system, or at
>least if someone has no one has implemented it yet.  It's probably no
>possible to come up with a solution the the community can agree is
>good because our deadlock prevents us from building the experience
>needed to build a good solution or even evaluate the qualities of a
>proposal...   In some cases the community is simply terrible at
>decision making, someone long winded noncontributing naysayer able to
>come in and disrupt progress.
>
>And I see that I am becoming long winded myself. My apologies, this is
>my last post to the litst today.
>
>
>
Too bad.  Some good information forthcoming.

It seems most people agree that there are many approaches and none of
them are totally perfect.  Thus our deadlocked discussions.

When we deadlocked in this fashion where I used to work as a project
manager we often prototyped several approaches and tried them.   We did
this even for private sector customers.  Then we picked the best
selection, combination or threw our hands up and promised to start over
in the morning.

Perhaps we should do some prototyping and testing.   We may find
different groups prefer different methods in different sections of the
database with some flash over points that could be defined.

regards,
lazyquasar


body:
Kelly Martin wrote:

>On 6/13/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>
>>Thoughts?
>>
>>
>
>I think before we even start thinking about ensuring that our articles
>are "high quality" we need to first establish mechanisms to ensure
>that our articles are free of legal encumbrances.  Let's get that out
>of the way first, eh?
>
>
>
Some approaches might allow us to efficiently fix or tag several
problems on a single pass if we predefine or preprogram our methods.

Two or three or four passes times over a million in English and counting
up.

I think maybe we need methods easy for occasional users like me to learn
and then help apply or this "problem" might be growing faster than a
small dedicated team can fix it.

Anybody know how the German DVD tackled this issue?

regards,
lazyquasar


body:
On 6/13/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> What are examples of things a hypothetically ideal management would do
> *right* that the present management is not?
>
> I suspect this would be a much more productive discussion than constantly
> claiming the board is "stacked" -- which of course it is, intentionally and
> openly so.

I agree that constantly pointing out the fact that the Board is
"stacked" is unproductive. As Anthere has pointed out, Michael Davis
is now doing a lot of good work for Wikimedia, and it seems unlikely
to me that he would vote in whichever way Jimmy wanted him to. As for
Tim, we've been through that -- he will probably leave soon. Jimmy's
initial decision to install two business associates as Board members
without much discussion was regrettable, but there's no reason to
dwell on it forever.

My only wish would be for Michael to more frequently participate in
open discussions, so that the community gets to know him a little bit
better. The same is true for Brad now that he serves in two very
important official capacities.

What could be done better? I've already written a long response in
that direction in the InstantCommons thread, and I don't want to a)
provoke people unnecessarily, b) repeat myself all the time. Besides,
Anthere only responded with a two-line comment that this was my Board
candidacy propaganda. :-)

I will only say briefly that I think Wikimedia is now making the
transition from "college club" to "corporate structure with volunteer
support". This is good in many ways: a new level of professionalism in
dealing with communications, partnerships, and so on is badly needed.
In that respect, I welcome the appointment of Brad as legal counsel,
and the search for an Executive Director (even though I would prefer
the term "Administrative" for reasons I already stated).

This new corporate structure, with some tweaks, will hopefully help us
to keep the projects running and let the communities evolve. One thing
I frequently say when talking about Wikipedia is that the project is
"doomed to succeed". It is very difficult to mismanage it in such a
way that it will literally collapse. Our community grows
exponentially. Our policies evolve naturally. When our servers get
slow, the goodwill increases -- even in the worst case, a corporation
will approach us and offer us charitable support with few strings
attached ("show our logo!"). Not to mention that "we" are _not_
mismanaging the project on the technical level: you and the other
people administering the servers are doing fantastic work.

Having a corporate structure to maintain our existing resources,
acquire funds, hire personnel, deal with legal issues, comply with
regulatory requirements, and establish a few strategic partnerships is
excellent. If all we want to do is keep our projects running and let
the community do the rest, this is the way to go.

Wikimedia, has, however the stated mission to bring free knowledge to
every single human being on the planet. This requires a renewed focus
on quality control and distribution. But Wikimedia is not just
Wikipedia. It is also Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikiquote, Wikisource,
Wikicommons, Wiktionary, and Wikispecies. Taking on each of these
projects brings with it a responsibility to help them succeed wherever
we can. And each of them is a unique challenge, each of them requires
us to think deeply and strategically about how to make it work.

If we stay within the current corporate structure, I predict that most
major innovations around these projects will be driven by volunteers,
and these will increasingly group together in outside organizations.
Moreover, there will be an increasing number of outside projects (some
of them forks) competing with us in delivering functionality and
content. Not all of them will be non-profit, not all of them will be
free content, most of them will not benefit from the huge potential
for reaching a gigantic number of volunteers that Wikimedia has, and
many of them will not be able to deal with their organizational
requirements. Quite a few of them will be Google, Yahoo! or Microsoft
projects. Their goal is not to deliver free knowledge, their goal is
to monetize the work of volunteers in the most efficient fashion.

Of course, competition is a good thing. That is, unless you _lose_ to
the competition. Then it's pretty annoying. At the moment we are not
able to compete well when it comes to innovation. As a non-profit, I
believe we need to do more than just continuing to provide what is
there. We need to constantly innovate and keep reinventing ourselves.
We need strategic leadership at the top which takes our long term
goals into account, and which makes decisions -- in terms of funding,
organization, partnerships, etc. -- in order to further our goals.

This is not something where the corporate structure is very strong.
AOL may be a profitable company, but it innovates primarily by
acquiring new assets. Wikimedia does not assimilate existing
resources, so it is even less competitive. The community alone can
drive innovation to a certain degree, but if you take a large
undertaking like WiktionaryZ, it quickly becomes apparent that the
many partnerships which are possible there -- from the European Union
to the United Nations to US federal educational and scientific
institutions -- cannot be managed through complex bureaucratic
processes. Yet they _need_ an organizational framework: You cannot
establish a partnership with the EU as "Erik M?ller, Freelance
Developer".

One of the Board's roles, in my view, is to recognize those projects
which deserve our focus and attention, and to drive community and
organization towards them. The organization needs to be (re-)built in
such a way that individuals working towards particular projects can
pursue new collaborations with outside organizations and companies
effectively and efficiently to meet our needs.

With all due respect to the current Board members, at the moment there
is very little explicit vision and strategic leadership from the top
aside from the expression of broad, highly ambitious goals. In part,
this is because just keeping things running smoothly has been a
challenge given limited volunteer resources: Anthere and Angela are at
their limits as unpaid volunteers. In part, this is because our Board
is exceptionally small, especially for a non-profit of our scope. We
have 5 Board members. Creative Commons, which is _not_ in the role of
operating the largest encyclopedia in history, has 11. We have no
Executive Committee that makes day-to-day decisions to drive our
visions and our projects forward. There is no technologist or
researcher involved in such decisions -- and that for an
Internet-based project that only exists _because_ of its technology.

In short, what I think we need to focus on now that our corporate
structure is beginning to stabilize a bit, is to actually match the
ambition that the Wikimedia Foundation was founded upon with strategic
leadership and an increased effort to involve volunteers in open
processes that are part of the organizational structure. And I believe
an expanded Board (with the addition of a non-voting Advisory Board,
and/or an Executive Committee) is needed to provide such strategic
leadership.

Jimmy Wales has created something extraordinary by building a
non-profit dedicated to bringing free knowledge to the world. Instead
of taking Wikipedia down the for-profit route, he made sure that its
content remains permanently available by choosing a free license, and
that it is part of a broader charitable mission. He has been diligent
in keeping us focused on creating _free content_, even when the
community has sometimes pushed in the opposite direction. In short,
much of his leadership has been unquestionably good.

This is what he deserves huge credit for -- not the silly dispute
about who had the idea for creating a wiki-based encyclopedia first.
Criticizing Jimmy for setting up the organization the way he did is
legitimate, but repeating that criticism endlessly is  petty and
cheap.

But as important and crucial as Jimmy's leadership has been and
continues to be, to a certain extent Wikimedia needs to grow up. It
needs to pack its things and move out of Daddy's place. There's a
whole world out there to see, and we can only discover and explore --
and _create_ -- that world as an independent, open, free entity.
Within that new world, Jimmy is one leader among many. This transition
will not come painlessly and without fights. Any system is inclined
towards statism. Radically questioning any social structure quickly
puts you at the edge thereof. We need to, collectively, recognize that
the transition is needed if we are to manage it.

We must do these things "not because they are easy, but because they
are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the
best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we
are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which
we intend to win". We're not going to the moon, but it's a pretty wild
ride regardless.

Erik


body:
On 6/13/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> I will only say briefly

*cough* I suppose I'm not very good at writing briefly. Apologies for that.

Erik


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Commons-l] Safe Deletion

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> David Benbennick wrote:
>> Magnus, is there any plan to deal with files that have multiple
>> revisions?  Two possibilities:
>>
>> 1) Save all the revisions to a randomized directory name (e.g.
>> http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/commons_images/ea6e6a5a74/) which is
>> either listable with all the versions, or has an auto-generated
>> index.html file that lists the versions
>>
>> or
>>
>> 2) At least warn about this case, since currently the old versions
>> aren't backed up.
>>
>
> There's a rather hackish solution to this:
>
> 1. Use safe delete and use the auto-edit thing to save the URL.
> 2. If there are any old revisions left, delete the latest revision only.
> 3. Goto 1.

4) Wait a day or two, and click the regular "delete" tab.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/attachments/20060614/2ec4d56e/attachment.pgp


from_name: Fredrik Josefsson

subject: [Commons-l] Safe Deletion

body:
Hi Magnus.

What was the purpose of having a 14 day time limit?
Would there be any reason why there must be a time
limit at all?

At currently, I can't use the tool on any image where
anyone has made a small contrubtion (such as changing
a category).

/ Fred


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-06-14

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

Running test External image... FAILED!
Running test External image from https... FAILED!
Running test External links: Clickable images... FAILED!
Running test Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test Language converter: output gets cut off unexpectedly (bug 5757)... FAILED!
Running test HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!

Passed 388 of 404 tests (96.04%) FAILED!


subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed

body:
On 6/14/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Now that I look at it, it says at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_budget/2006/Q1 that the
> information was "Moved to the foundation's internal wiki for
> finalization".  "00:58, 11 January 2006 Daniel Mayer deleted
> "Wikimedia budget/2006/Q1" (moving to internal wiki for finalization)"
>  Is it there and I just can't find it?  Looking at
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Daniel_Mayer,
> it doesn't seem to be.

Internal wiki refers to internal.wikimedia.org, where only genuine
cabal members ;-) have access.

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed


subject: [Wikitech-l] Recent thumbnails and CAPTCHAS broken

body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:
> Over the last 2 days or so, there seems to have been a huge increase
> in the number of broken thumbnails on the Commons, especially PNG and
> GIFs.
>
> eg.
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Help_desk#regular_image_not_displaying
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Thumb_mode_doesn.27t_work.21.3F
> (and the topic below it)

Tim's working on this...

> The CAPTCHAS not showing up are a bit of a concern, especially since
> it's hard to collect information about what happened.
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/COM:HD#Can.27t_create_account_to_upload_image
> also a couple of days ago I noticed an anon user inserting a URL with
> big spaces in it to avoid the CAPTCHA and they commented they couldn't
> see the CAPTCHA (it was a legitimate URL).

I'll check this out. There's a few obvious things I can check, which may or may
not help.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060614/1d4ef137/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Some WiktionaryZ updates

body:
For those of you who haven't looked at WiktionaryZ lately, browse
around a bit on

http://wiktionaryz.org/

There are now about 50 users with access to our edit functions. For
those without access, these two screenshots show the functionality
that is currently there:

http://wiktionaryz.org/File:Wz-edit.png
Adding and removing translations/synonyms, relations, and attributes.

http://wiktionaryz.org/File:Wz-edit2.png
Editing and translating existing definitions.

Some of the functionality for generating these forms is already
abstracted in a way which will make it suitable for other Wikidata
(wiki-based structured data) applications. WiktionaryZ also uses the
existing namespace mechanism of MediaWiki in order to access its
relational tables, so that mechanisms like Special:Allpages work to
retrieve content.

Our biggest challenge is to define a model that allows us to deal with
the complex versioning requirements of relational data in an abstract
fashion. This is what much of my personal energy will be focused on in
the coming months. Other developers will concentrate on the UI bits,
on import/export interfaces, and on adding new lexicological and
ontological functionality.

We're still working with an old MediaWiki codebase because the
namespace manager code which we use is not yet merged into MediaWiki
proper. (BRIOOOON ;-) I hope to finish that process in the next couple
of weeks. At that point, we will create a new WiktionaryZ branch in
SVN so that any changes we make to the main MediaWiki code can be
effectively maintained. These changes are currently minimal, and I
think we can actually put them in the trunk once they have been made
sufficiently abstract and secure (e.g. making it possible to load any
PHP class for handling a particular namespace).

We currently have one more developer besides myself, not counting the
ongoing work on multilingual functionality for MediaWiki proper (mlmw
branch). Hopefully, we will soon have one or two additional
developers, and will also be able to bring in some open source
volunteers into our team. My own role is increasingly transitioning to
that of managing development and defining future strategy, which I am
very comfortable with. :-)

For those interested in the project, if all goes well, I will be
talking a lot about it at Wikimania's hacking days, as well as the
main conference. FWIW, I also hope that we will be able to build
strong and meaningful bridges to the Semantic MediaWiki project, which
is in many ways complementary to our own effort.

Erik


from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Commons-l] some statistics

body:
I wonder if the recent activity on bugzilla:2099 was prompted by your
partial solution? If we wait a little bit longer will this toolserver
solution be unncessary? I hope so.

bad_old_ones should still be very useful though. After exams I hope I
can spend a day or two to sit down with it.

Brianna


body:
On 6/14/06, Michael R. Irwin <michael_irwin at verizon.net> wrote:
> Instead he announced he would stack the Board to protect the project
> from the feared arrival of the unwashed masses (can not lock them out
> after all .... most of them know some stuff we want them to give us to
> publish freely) and proceeded to put two handpicked trustees/employees
> along with himself and designated two slots to be elected by count of
> active handles or sock puppets.

Are you saying that the election of Anthere and Angela was not
legitimate ("active handles or sock puppets")? I would beg to differ
on that point. While I sympathize with Tim Starling's point that
membership would be a reasonable method to guarantee the
organization's long term independence, I think the elections that took
place were unquestionably fair and open, and reasonable measures were
taken to deal with manipulation.

Again, I would also like to remind you that wikipedia.org is
wikipedia.ORG today. We take this for granted today, but it was by no
means a guaranteed outcome, especially for a project created by an Ayn
Rand objectivist. ;-) I would even go so far to say that Wikipedia
could be _very_ successful (not as successful as it is, but still)
while being proprietary. And it could have made Jimmy _lots_ of money.
Instead he put a lot of his own money into Nupedia and Wikipedia, and
is unlikely to get much, if any, of it back. As often as I may
disagree with him, it is absurd to assume greed as a factor in his
principal actions. If Jimmy wanted to be "filthy rich" (rather than
independently wealthy), he would already _be_ filthy rich, and
Wikipedia would be Wikipedia.COM.

That is not to say that there aren't conflicts of interest. Certainly
Jimmy wants to make Wikia succeed, and it is important for the
organization to be set up and run in such a way that people associated
with Wikia (Michael, Angela and Jimmy) can (yes, _can_) recuse
themselves when there is an obvious COI. The fact that 3 out of 5
Board members are associated with a for-profit that stands to benefit
from certain actions of the non-profit they lead does of course lend a
lot of weight to arguments for a larger and more diverse Board, and
more community involvement in the executive body. But these arguments
should be made under the full assumption of good faith of everyone
involved.

Erik


body:
On 6/14/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> Yes, however, I would hope that a genuine fundraising campaign would extend
> beyond placing a banner on our websites. It would involve solicitation and,
> especially, donor cultivation, especially of people making large gifts. The
> registration process to do this outside of Florida is complicated. It is well
> underway, but requires time and oversight, as it must be done annually in each
> state individually.

Are there ways in which the community or the fundraising committee
could help with that process?

> I agree that this may not be a viable model but worth trying out. Note that
> in an earlier email, I asked for volunteers and specifically mentioned this.
> So  far one person has volunteered.

Prod, prod, prod! :-) Let's make a page on Meta for people to sign up
and indicate their interests to do this for particular countries, and
then announce it widely (most Wikimedians don't read foundation-l).
But before we do this, I would like to clearly distinguish between the
_legal_ requirements and what we _want_ to do. Anthony said:

> Just to clarify what mav said, emails are considered "written"
> communications.  From Publication 1771: "An organization can provide
> the acknowledgement electronically, such as by an e-mail addressed to
> the donor."

Is that correct? What is Brad's opinion on the legal requirements? In
some EU countries, we have also gradually introduced digital
signatures as a valid definition of "written communications". I would
like to be absolutely clear on what we have to do. If we can use
digitally signed e-mails, we should do so, even if it requires an
initial investment in know-how and a certificate.

Written thank you notes and Christmas cards are a good idea to
maintain donor relations, of course. But if we can keep the legal
requirements separate, we might be able to more efficiently
decentralize our communications by not burdening our volunteers with
unnecessary legal complexity -- we could send out standard e-mails
_and_ creative volunteer greetings from around the globe. This would
also make the checking whether a letter has been sent less critical.
And let's face it -- getting a personal greeting from a Wikimedian is
cool in its own special way.

> Regardless, there are some other issues
> taht  should be considered, such as the uniformity of the thank you note. This
> would  mean shipping cards, letters, printed envelopes, and what have you to
> people--another cost that should be considered.

Well, I'm not sure how uniform they have to be given the above. The
legally required communications should be standardized, of course.

Erik


body:
On 6/14/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> (Mainly concerning wikipedia, but cross-posting to foundation-l because
> of some discussion of committees; see the end.)
>
> We've discussed on and off that it'd be nice to vet specific revisions
> of Wikipedia articles so readers can either choose to read only quality
> articles, or at least have an indication of how good an article is.
> This is an obvious prerequisite for a Wikipedia 1.0 print edition, and
> would be nice on the website as well.

I'm working on a set of consolidated specifications for this, please
give me a few days until I finalize it (it's a fairly large document).
Allow me to quote from the set of requirements I start with:

* revision-specific tagging rather than article-specific tagging
* changeset-oriented: when possible, only review the changes from the
last reviewed revision to the next unreviewed one
* scalability in the overall quantity of articles reviewed per time unit
* distinction between different types of review, such as vandalism,
accuracy, neutrality, copyright status, etc.
** acknowledge that different people have different abilities to
review these different aspects of an article
* systematically involving editors who are self-selected as being
qualified in the particular disciplines
* universal applicability to Wikipedia, Wikinews, Wikisource,
Wikiquote, Wiktionary, and any other open wiki project using MediaWiki
* facilitate fixing problems over tagging them
* discoverability. All aspects of the user interface should be
discovered by the average wiki editor during normal use of the system.
* fun. Any review process must be addictive and simple in order to
motivate long term interest.

I've been mulling over this problem since 2002 and I think that all
proposed processes fail in several of these criteria. That is not to
say that I believe I have the "one answer", but I hope the specs I'm
working on will become a basis for further renewed discussion, and
lead directly towards a realistic implementation path.

Erik


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] Native Cherokee XML Dumps 20060606 Posted

body:
The Native Cherokee Language Translation Project has posted XML dumps
against enwiki 06-06-2006 at

ftp.wikigadugi.org/wiki

Please feel free to download and review.   This translation is using
conjugation, and verb stem decomposition and reconstruction.

Translation runs are posted in Sequoyah Syllabary and text phonetics.

The Machine translation is a work in progress.

Jeff Merkey


from_name: Richard Fan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for the unblocking of PatCheng

body:
I feel that my block by Blnguyen is extremely unfair and based on hearsays
outside of Wikipedia. I would like to contest the block.


body:
On 6/14/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Delirium wrote:
> <snip>
> > Proposal #2: Institute a rating and trust-metric system
> > ---
> > Wikipedians rate revisions, perhaps on some scale from "complete crap"
> > to "I'm an expert in this field and am confident of its accuracy and
> > high quality". Then there is some way of coming up with a score for
> > that revision, perhaps based on the trustworthiness of the raters
> > themselves (determined through some method). Once that's done, the
> > interface can do things like display the last version of an article over
> > some score, if any, or a big warning that the article sucks otherwise
> > (and so on).
> >
> > Some pros: Distributed; no duplicated effort; good revisions are marked
> > good as soon as enough people have vetted them; humans review the
> > articles, but the "process" itself is done automatically; most articles
> > will have some information about their quality to present to a reader
> >
> > Some cons: Gameing-proof trust metric systems are notoriously hard to
> > design.
> <snip>
>
> Ever taken a look at <http://advogato.org/trust-metric.html>?
>
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax

I'm starting to notice a pattern here....

~maru


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
On Jun 13, 2006, at 1:19 PM, Brion Vibber wrote:

> Fred Bauder wrote:
>
>> On Jun 13, 2006, at 12:01 PM, Brion Vibber wrote:
>>
>>> What are examples of things a hypothetically ideal management would
>>> do *right* that the present management is not?
>>>
>>
>> Deal with marshaling assets and legal resources to deal with
>> defamation litigation. Tackle the problem of how to effectively avoid
>> such litigation.
>>
>
> Is there anything specific in what you'd like to see done about it?
> What can the
> management do to make this work more visible or more complete?
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

I think the major step leadership can do is to made every
administrator and user aware that one of the major risks of being a
publisher (which Wikipedia and each user is) is defamation
litigation. [[Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons]] is an example
of good work in that direction. So, consciousness raising and support
for administrators who take the initiative and act boldly in this
area (the arbitration committee can help in this now). All this goes
toward building a track record of good faith efforts to minimize the
consequences and damage that results from vandalism and malicious
editing. When we do end up in court it is going to very helpful to be
able to document the policies and actions we took to minimize and
control damage resulting from defamation.

Also we need to start lining up legal resources for every language
and jurisdiction on Earth. If someone is libeled in the Finnish
Wikipedia, what happens? Do we just say, tough, see you in court in
Florida? So part of this is public relations. Being able to quickly
apologize in Finnish might be very helpful.

And I guess, we need to consider the question raised by the
Siegenthaler incident and focused on by Brandt: the degree of our
responsibility for the anonymous malicious editor. The legal defense
that we are not a publisher, nor are we responsible for identifying
the person who made the malicious edit might be effective, but that
is very like keeping a stray dog around and when it bits someone,
saying, "not my dog".

Fred

>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 6/14/06, Michael R. Irwin <michael_irwin at verizon.net> wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
> >Again, I would also like to remind you that wikipedia.org is
> >wikipedia.ORG today. We take this for granted today, but it was by no
> >means a guaranteed outcome, especially for a project created by an Ayn
> >Rand objectivist. ;-) I would even go so far to say that Wikipedia
> >could be _very_ successful (not as successful as it is, but still)
> >while being proprietary. And it could have made Jimmy _lots_ of money.
> >Instead he put a lot of his own money into Nupedia and Wikipedia, and
> >is unlikely to get much, if any, of it back. As often as I may
> >disagree with him, it is absurd to assume greed as a factor in his
> >principal actions. If Jimmy wanted to be "filthy rich" (rather than
> >independently wealthy), he would already _be_ filthy rich, and
> >Wikipedia would be Wikipedia.COM.
> >
> >
> I think you are dreaming.  The dot.com changed to dot.org after some
> serious business planning got started by a few members of the
> "community" at large and with some steady pressure from other long time
> valued contributors.   A potential threat emerged to Jimbo's iron fisted
> control via paying the bills for the bandwidth and servers and he moved
> quickly to quash it via unilateral organization of the non profit and
> design of the charter for retained long term god-king status, or if
> assume good faith this was merely coincidental timing.
>
A scan of the wikipedia-l list shows that the idea for turning
Wikipedia into a non-profit was in the works for a very long time,
almost from day one, though it was initially alluded to more as if it
were going to be a private foundation rather than a public charity.

I remember thinking that I'd believe it when I saw it.  Then I saw it,
and now I believe it.  From all the evidence I've seen Jimbo doesn't
seem to be greedy when it comes to money.  Of course I've heard him
say before that he isn't doing it out of altruism, so I do wonder what
his real motive is.

> If wikipedia.com had not previously embraced the FDL and then made some
> committments regarding advertisement free long term free access it might
> very well gone the way of Nupedia.   Jimbo kept his options open as long
> as possible and then moved like a good entrepreneur to succeed and
> salvage what value he could.  The fame, honorariums, and name
> recognition might yet make him a fortune or at least a high salary or
> return via Wikia, speaking engagements, or executive level consulting
> but probably not until he "over delivers" on some fairly lofty
> advertised goals.
>
It's certainly possible.  In fact, I think Jimbo could fairly easily
turn his fame into money, if that's what he desires.  To quote Citizen
Kane, "it's no trick to make a lot of money... if what you want to do
is make a lot of money."  I think that goes doubly so for someone in
the position of Wales.

> Perhaps he has already "over delivered" adequately.  Perhaps not.  There
> seem to be a lot of people on this list making valid points regarding
> the maintenance or improvement of the overall quality of the aggregate
> data you folks currently have in Wikipedia.   It appears to be steadily
> improving to me, but I do not do any systematic sampling.  Most of the
> stuff I am interested in for research background is fairly concrete data
> and well frequented.
>
> >That is not to say that there aren't conflicts of interest. Certainly
> >Jimmy wants to make Wikia succeed, and it is important for the
> >organization to be set up and run in such a way that people associated
> >with Wikia (Michael, Angela and Jimmy) can (yes, _can_) recuse
> >themselves when there is an obvious COI. The fact that 3 out of 5
> >Board members are associated with a for-profit that stands to benefit
> >from certain actions of the non-profit they lead does of course lend a
> >lot of weight to arguments for a larger and more diverse Board, and
> >more community involvement in the executive body. But these arguments
> >should be made under the full assumption of good faith of everyone
> >involved.
> >
> >
> We assume good faith by policy but start to decide on an individual or
> community basis that people are trolls or undesirable after a certain time.
>
>  It is ludicrous to set up a board that in the longterm needs to recuse
> up to four fifths of its membership regarding much of its
> responsibility.   You are welcome to assume good faith as long as you
> like.   This is an amateurish setup that should never have been
> established when dealing with publicly donated funds.  It should be
> fixed as soon as feasible with some style and grace.  The current board
> could establish some appropriate useful policy for future board members
> regarding conflicts of interest and independence whether elected or
> appointed and then the people with conflicts should ease themselves off
> the board at completion of their terms or divest their conflicting
> investments.   Everybody gets their ticket punched so they can put on
> their resume they were Founding Board Members or Trustees of the
> prestigious Wikimedia Foundation and the conflicts go away in the next
> round of elections or appointments.  It may not be much for their hard
> work on our behalf but at least it some recognition for their efforts.
>
I certainly agree that the situation looks bad, and really it seems
inevitable that if there haven't been actual problems that there will
be ones in the future.  Then again, Wikia and Wikimedia have both
moved toward decentralizing day-to-day decisionmaking, by hiring a
CEO.  Hopefully this means the potential number of conflicts of
interest will go down.

I'd like to see Wikimedia become much more open.  This involves having
more board members, and more diverse board members, but it also
involves having a definite membership with a real voice in the whole
process.  Currently it's still up in the air whether or not Wikimedia
even has any members that aren't on the board.

Things have been gradually getting better, though.  The original
"stacked" board seems to be capable of independent thought after all,
and there's talk (which seems to be legitimate) about expanding it
even further.  A CEO has been selected to decentralize the day-to-day
operations.  The finances are being audited by an outside third party,
which hopefully will catch any grey-area or outright illegal use of
funds.  And the foundation is slowly moving out of the first stage of
denial with regard to the fact that it has no legal members.

Anthony


body:
On 6/14/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > Of course, if you have the person's address, I agree the point is
> > rather moot.  Even if it costs $1 to send a letter to someone donating
> > $250, that's only four tenths of one percent.    Email would be more
> > useful if there are donors making that size donation who don't want to
> > release their address.
> >
> > I suppose it might cost more than $1 to send a letter outside the
> > United States, but then again how many people living outside the
> > United States donate more than $250 to Wikimedia and then file a US
> > tax return where they itemize deductions?  Probably 0.
> >
> > Anthony
> How,
> I do not know how you arrive at that $1. It typically is substantially
> more. It is not only postage, you are sending something that is printed,
> there is the handling, there is a certain percentage that returns. You
> do want to maintain your database and register those RTS. You then have
> to consider how to follow up, do you want to find out what is wrong with
> the address. On average it costs over $5 to handle a RTS.

I don't know how you arrive at $5, but that's only for letters that
are returned to the sender.  What about the others, and what
percentage is generally returned to the sender?

And what if you just want to ignore those letters that are returned to
the sender?

Let's think about 1000 letters.  High quality business paper should be
less than $50.  Add $50 more for toner.  Envelopes are $10.  Labels
are $10.  A paper folder is $100 (should last a lot longer than 1000
letters, though).  That makes $220 to produce the letters.  Add in
$390 for postage, which assumes you don't have the volume to send at
the nonprofit rate.  Now let's assume you can't get volunteer labor,
which is probably untrue considering there are probably enough
Wikipedians just in the Tampa Bay area willing to help.  At 50 letters
an hour (slow) and $10/hour (expensive) that's $200.  Comes out to
$810, so at that volume with those assumptions we're still under
$1/letter with about 20% to spare.

If volume goes down price goes up, but take the volume under 500
letters or so and it's something Danny could do by himself in a couple
days.

Now I assume the foundation already has a decent laser printer.  Am I
wrong here?  And I was neglecting the cost of keeping the database,
because that's something that has to be done anyway.

> When you do
> not handle this well, you get yourself on the wrong side of
> organisations that monitor charities that ask for money. This can cost
> you your license in the first place but worse, it can give a
> organisation a bad name.
>
What license is going to be lost by making what types of mistakes?

> Once you decide to do professional marketing, you have to ensure that
> you maintain your database. This should mean that you commit to doing it
> well. The benefits can be huge and given our brand recognition it is
> likely to be huge. But please do this well or do not do it all.
> Thanks,
>      GerardM

I wasn't talking about professional marketing, I was talking about the
cost to send letters to people who donated at least $250.

If it really does cost $5/letter, you could always tell people to
include an extra $5 if they want a written confirmation letter.  But I
don't see where you're getting this figure.

Anthony


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> I'm curious.
>
> What can the board and management (whatever its structure) *do* that will be better?

I think there are several things which could be done better, and I very
much appreciate Brion's calling attention to the need for practical
discussions rather than vague statements of dissatisfaction. :)

We have for the past couple of years operated in a fairly unusual way,
in that 4 of the 5 board members have been extremely active in things
that would normally be the functions of executives and employees.  This
is a natural mode of operation for a small club, but it shows a lot of
strain as things grow.

Angela, Anthere, and I have been deeply involved in all aspects of the
projects (and intend to continue doing so).  Michael has been, for the
past year, deeply involved in the business side of things (negotiating
bandwidth, paying bills, doing accounting, etc.).

This is highly unusual.  I am on the board of several nonprofit
organizations, and I am not asked to take part in the day to day
management.  The ability to attract high quality people (from inside the
community, or from outside the commnity as needed) to serve on the board
depends in large part of separating these day to day management
functions from board functions.  Being on the board of Wikimedia should
not be a full-time job.

> What are examples of things a hypothetically ideal management would do *right*
> that the present management is not?

Some of the areas where we have been failing is in the timely
negotiation of partnerships which are consistent with our charitable
mission and which would both reduce our reliance on fund drives, and
increase our abilities to meet our charitable goals.  We are doing a
great job in some areas (English, German, French, Japanese, and several
other European languages), a decent job in some areas (Chinese is not
bad, Arabic shows promise), and a fairly poor job in other areas (Hindi,
Swahili, Bengali, etc.)

> If there's something that management needs to *do* which will actually be better
> served by a new management structure or new board members, then by all means
> let's talk about it, but let's not put the cart before the horse.
>
> What first, then how.

:)

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


body:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> Wikiversity is a natural fit with the existing projects and the slogans
> and bylaws yet it is not being implemented despite overwhelming
> community support.

It should be noted that I am a strong supporter of Wikiversity.  So,
whatever merits the rest of your rant might have, this does not seem to
be particularly relevant.

The Wikiversity group was asked to make some relatively minor
adjustments to the charter, adjustments which addressed the concerns
*not of the board*, but of the people who had opposed to creation of
Wikiversity.

The board has not been presented with a followup proposal for a vote.

--Jimbo


body:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> I have been eagerly awaiting Wikiversity for about three years now as it
> was an obvious synergistic project.   I would be curious as to what the
> real holdup is with it.   Are we afraid of hardware or bandwidth
> limitations?  Are a bunch of self motivated learners to potentially
> radical and threatening to the status quo?

Perhaps the irony is that the board has deliberately chosen not to
engage in "top down management" and to let this community "manage
itself".  This has a lot to recommend it, because the wikiversity
proposal is a lot stronger for it.

But if you are really upset that this community-driven process takes so
long, then instead of clamoring for the board to not micromanage, you
should perhaps ask us to do so.  I am quite sure that we could get
Wikiversity approved and up and running in 2-3 weeks time, if we chose
to run roughshod over the community to do it.

This is actually a very typical scenario, of course.

--Jimbo


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Section numbering

body:
On 6/14/06, Netocrat <netocrat at dodo.com.au> wrote:
> > IMHO, this kind of linking isn't that great anyawy. We should use proper
> > anchors, as section names change so quickly (much more so than article
> > names, at any rate), and there isn't (afaik) any way of finding out what
> > links exist to a given section.
>
> And it causes unmemorable and long urls that are unsuited to Usenet
> articles and emails.

For common ones, you can set up redirects to the section heading. That
works, thankfully.

> === [[#shortid|1.1]] Heading and TOC entry ===

Eep. :)

Steve


subject: [Textbook-l] Game Guides

body:
Lord Voldemort wrote:
> 1. What was the original purpose of Wikibooks?

To create and distribute a full set of textbooks to support education
from the Kindergarten through the University level, in all the languages
of the world.  I view this as an integral part of making real our
mission to deliver a free encyclopedia to every single person on the
planet, because we also want to give them all the curriculum materials
they would need in order to get an education to the point where an
encyclopedia would be useful.

> 2. Is the current purpose the same?

100% the same.

> 3. Who has control over the overall content of Wikibooks? The
> Wikimedia Foundation, the WMF Board, the community of Wikibookians?

The ultimate control over all the projects is in the hands of the
Wikimedia Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization with a specific charter
and mission.  The Foundation is controlled by the board of the foundation.

> 4a. Some time ago now, you declared that game guides did not fit with
> the intent of WB.  Were you speaking on behalf of the Wikimedia
> Foundation?  Were you speaking just as Jimbo?

I was speaking as President of the Wikimedia Foundation, and as Jimbo. :)

> 4b. Who decided all of a sudden to rid Wikibooks of game guides?  Was
> there recent discussion on Meta?  Between the Board?  If so, is there
> a record of this discussion?

There was no sudden decision.  The process has been going on for a very
long time now.

> 5. Why specifically do game guides not fit in Wikibooks?  Are there
> possible tax-exemption implications with having these here?  If so,
> where is the information regarding this?

I believe that there are serious implications, yes, but not just for
tax-exemption.  Wikibooks seeks to become a high quality resource for
education, not a dumping ground for stuff that doesn't belong in
Wikipedia, not a general place for people to write whatever they like.
It is for textbooks, broadly defined, for actual courses taught in
actual institutions.

> 6. If the community of Wikibookians disagrees with the decision, and
> consensus is formed against it, can the community disregard the
> pronouncement?

This strikes me as a wildly hypothetical question.  If the community of
Wikibookians decides that they do NOT want to write textbooks, that they
want to write something else, then the situation is the same as if they
would like to turn Wikipedia from being NPOV into something else, or
whatever.  It just isn't going to happen.

To my knowledge, there has been no "pronouncement".  The community
process is working perfectly well, and the game guides are going away in
an orderly fashion.

> 7. If the community rejects the pronouncement and decides they want
> game guides included, what steps would need to be taken to ensure
> there place at WB?  Would the WMF bylaws need to be changed? If so,
> how would they go about doing that?

I would recommend that people who want to do things which are
inconsistent with the mission of Wikibooks to do so.  It's a free world.
 I think game guides are great.  I think video game walkthroughs are
great.  I think political tracts are great.  I think web comics are
great.  None of them belong in Wikibooks, though.

> 8. Can video games be an acceptable textbook subject?  If so, what are
> the requirements?  Is a simple walkthrough constitute a textbook?

The requirement is simple: is there a course taught in some legitimate
institution which would use this work _as a textbook_?  I think that a
simple walkthrough is probably not a textbook, no.

> 9. If video game guides are to be gotten rid of, what about board game guides?

They are the same.  This is not about video games, it is not about
games.  It is about defining what it means to be a textbook.

> 10. There is talk of a "Accredited Institution" metric.  If one small
> institution somewhere develops a class on a topic, does that warrant
> that topic's textbook on WB?  What about  if three institutions have
> the class?  Should links to some number of courses be provided to show
> the suitability for WB? If so, how many?

I would personally say that 1 is enough.  Many wikibookians would no
doubt seek to set a higher threshold, and that would be fine with me too.

> 11. Do classes that you do not earn credit for (either
> extra-curricular or within school, but not for credit) count as
> classes under the Accredited Institution metric?  For example, clubs
> used to educate someone on a topic not otherwise found in class.

I don't know.

> 12. If the removal of video game guides also results in the leaving of
> many prolific and trusted WB editors, does the WMF consider this okay?

I do not consider it OK, but neither do I consider it OK for a minority
of people who are not supportive of the mission of Wikibooks to hijack
it for their own entertainment purposes.  What I would hope is that
people would recognize the value of the mission, and accept that not
every part of human life has to go on under the Wikimedia Foundation
umbrella.

> 13. Any other comments on these issues?

There seems to be a mistaken view by some that I have done something
drastic, when I have not.

--Jimbo


subject: [Textbook-l] Game Guides

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> Indeed, even the idea of making Wikibooks strictly non-fiction content
> is something relatively new, although I think this is a reasonable
> focus.

I do not think this is new at all.  I have said, from the very beginning
of Wikibooks, that NPOV is non-negotiable here as elsewhere.  Go read
the archives of the mailing list for an extended discussion of this.

Fiction has never been contemplated as being part of the Wikibooks mission.

> The problem that Wikibooks is facing now is the incredibly
> limiting restriction of making Wikibooks only for textbooks, with no
> real clear definition as to what a textbook really is.  Saying that you
> must cite a course of study in an accredited educational institution and
> that the textbook fits in with a proscribed syllabus is going way too
> far in my opinion.  How could anything possibly be written at all with
> that sort of very strict interpretation?  Yet that is precisely the
> standard that is being used.

I do not see how this is the current standard, nor do I see how such a
standard is especially restrictive.

> If we (and especially Jimbo) is suggesting that this is the standard
> that needs to be applied, perhaps we simply need to nuke the whole
> website, such as was done with French Wikiquote.  Kill everything and
> perhaps bring back the one agreed upon textbook that started it all:
>  Organic Chemistry.

?  There are thousands and thousands of perfectly legitimate pages in
Wikibooks which stick quite firmly to the mission.  And there is a tiny
handful, which the community has been eliminating over time, which do
not.  No problem, and certainly no reason to shut anything down.

> Calling in the U.S.
> Federal Government on this issue is an attempt to distract from the
> issue, which is a policy dispute between one rather prominent individual
> (namely Jimbo) and admins on Wikibooks.

I do not think there is any dispute between me and any admins.  As far
as I have been able to determine whenever you and I have emailed about
this privately, we see 100% eye to eye on all these matters, for example.

>  My understanding was that
> they were very distinct groups (Wikia and Wikimedia) and the policies
> and even existance of a Wikia project has no bearing on Wikimedia
> projects.

I agree with you completely.  If community members are making decisions
on that basis, that is their right, but there is nothing coming from me
that would lead in that direction.

--Jimbo

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


subject: [Textbook-l] Game Guides

body:
Cormac Lawler wrote:
> There are very clearly
> How-to books that belong on Wikibooks (and that would very definitely
> be useful as part of an accredited course).

Absolutely.

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


subject: [Textbook-l] Game Guides

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> There is a group on Wikibooks, following the textbook only philosophy to
> an extreme, that suggests How-to books do not belong on Wikibooks
> either, along with the removal of Video Game texts and even biographies
> were suggested for removal.  One of the justifications for this is that
> Wikia projects exist now for these subjects and as such they are no
> longer needed on Wikibooks.

This justification does not come from me and makes no sense to me.

If, however, the community of Wikibooks is purging content that does not
fit with the initial mission of Wikibooks, I see no problem with that.

Please do not portray things that I have not done, am not doing, and
have nothing to do with as being somehow things that I am doing for some
alleged financial benefit.

> What has really surprised me, and I think shows how rediculous the drive
> to remove content from Wikibooks has gone, was the reaction I got to
> suggesting a formal textbook about video game design focusing on Doom
> was met with substantial resistance and even outright rejection.

I would assume that it is quite easy to find a course on video game
design, and then to write a textbook for that course, using Doom as an
extended example.  Why should this be problematic?

>  I even
> cited specific univsersity courses and majors from prominent accredited
> educational institutions to demonstrate that such a textbook would not
> only exist, but might even be useful for teaching one of these formal
> courses.  I still contend that content like this is being rejected
> because of the topic alone.

Well, I do not agree with that at all.

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 6/14/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Now let's assume you can't get volunteer labor,
> which is probably untrue considering there are probably enough
> Wikipedians just in the Tampa Bay area willing to help.

In Tampa bay?

Do you think that just one person working for a few hours is enough to
stuff 1000 envelopes?
If not, I don't know what you're thinking...  because pretty much not
more than number of Tampa localers showed up at the last meetup there,
and .. well.. A meetup isn't work.

You seem have odd notions about how much work, beyond babysitting
their pet article and windbagging on lists, that a majority of our
volunteers are willing to perform.


body:
Kernigh wrote:
> Excuse me, can you clarify?
>
> How does [[User:Jimbo Wales]] "retain the power to dictate policy"?
> Retention requires that you already have the power. When did [[User:Jimbo
> Wales]] obtain the power to dictate policy "where he deems necessary"?
>
> I understand that someone in the Wikimedia Foundation can dictate policy in
> exceptional cases where that is required, but I do not understand how the
> Wikimedia Foundation is organised.

This has been our traditional community policy everywhere in all
projects.  It is not used much, and certainly has not been used in the
case of Wikibooks.

--Jimbo


body:
Wow, what a bizarre twisting of history.  I have no recollection of why
Larry called you a troll, but I suppose I can guess.

Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> This is all history.   A done deal.
>
> When Nupedia.com was in the process of flopping due to over regulation
> and over credentialization Wikipedia.com was set up.    Eventually a
> committment was made to the FDL which started attracting free culture
> types to assist the large number of P'hds who came over from Nupedia.com.
>
> Some of us started trying to get involved in the business planning at
> meta to assure we could buy more servers and bandwidth when the load got
> too high on Jimbo's hobby budget.   It was at this time that I was
> designated a troll by Langer Sanger on his way out of the project.
>
> Jimbo responded by always assuring the mailing that he had plenty of
> cash and surplus bandwidth for the Wikipedia experiment.    He shifted
> the active domain to wikipedia.org and in secret with perhaps some help
> from a select few employees or advisers unilaterally setup the nonprofit
> in Florida.
>
> He announced on the maililng his intent to stack the Board and then he
> proceeded to do so.   It was a fait accompli or done deal and there was
> only limited whining and complaining on the wikipedia-l mailing list.
>
> If you review the mailing lists since that time you will find occasional
> nuggets where policy has been handed down ever since by the god-king.
> There are also occasional pronouncements scattered through the various
> policy pages.
>
> Since he controls the servers and bandwidth via the Wikimedia Foundation
> which he controls there is no appeal from a "Jimmy says" flash..
>
> It was and is the contention of the remaining community locally that
> adequate protection for the community from the god-king is inherent in
> the ability to fork.   Most people dissatisfied with this state of
> affairs tend to move on, particularly after being labeled and lynched
> as  a "troll", "POV warrier", or other useful tag.
>
> The way I see it, a fork is overdue.
>
> Obviously a fork would have to address the issue of how the newly
> emerging community intended to govern/manage itself.   As God-Kings go
> Jimbo is not all that bad so there is little to be gained by exchanging
> him for another.
>
> regards,
> lazyquasar
>
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
>

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


body:
On 6/14/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/14/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Now let's assume you can't get volunteer labor,
> > which is probably untrue considering there are probably enough
> > Wikipedians just in the Tampa Bay area willing to help.
>
> In Tampa bay?
>
In the Tampa Bay area, say a 50 mile radius of the main office.  Or
say the USF campus, to make it even simpler.

> Do you think that just one person working for a few hours is enough to
> stuff 1000 envelopes?

I've seen 2000 envelopes stuffed by 3 people in a few hours.  But that
was where the content of all the envelopes was identical, which is a
lot easier.

As I said, I think 50 envelopes per person-hour is a slow estimate.
That'd be 5 people for 4 hours.

> If not, I don't know what you're thinking...  because pretty much not
> more than number of Tampa localers showed up at the last meetup there,
> and .. well.. A meetup isn't work.
>
I'd be more likely to show up at a meeting where something important
is going to be accomplished than to show up at a meetup where people
hang out and socialize.

> You seem have odd notions about how much work, beyond babysitting
> their pet article and windbagging on lists, that a majority of our
> volunteers are willing to perform.

We're not talking about a majority of volunteers, just a handful.

Anthony