body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>Michael R. Irwin wrote:
>
>
>>A bigger stacked Board micromanaging the community will leave us in the
>>future right where we are now.
>>
>>
>
>I'm curious.
>
>What can the board and management (whatever its structure) *do* that will be better?
>
>
There were some other posts that had some interesting ideas so I will be
concise and off the cuff.

The Board and Management could acknowledge that the Projects manage
themselves according to approved procedures and core values and focus on
delivering a robust, adequate infrastructure.  If a problem is
identified  the Board or manager  should  have a project point of
contact .... say a project mailing list ????   where they can go to
request appropriate attention.

By placing the burden on the Board, management, and/or employees to come
convince consensus driven, roughly democratic groups of interested
volunteers there is a problem to be resolved our project leadership,
local expertise, and community structures would regain some relevance.

The Board could respond in a timely manner to project proposals and
other activities requested from the communities of volunteers.    The
easiest way to kill any initiative in any organization is to simply keep
iteratively requesting unjustifed rework.   Wikiversity is basically
defunct via this technique.

Any decent secretary or executive assistant could set up a suspense
prioritized action queue and coordinate emails between the Board members
so that any given activity that was accepted for action by the Board
goes back out with a decision within a reasonable period of time.   Say
a month.  This assumes that communications procedures are nailed down
and followed by the Board Members.

>What are examples of things a hypothetically ideal management would do *right*
>that the present management is not?
>
>
Eliminate uncertainty by making decisions in accordance with due
process.   Notice this requires some due process to be defined.
Wikiversity has been blindsided repeatedly after it tackled new
requirements levied by the Board.  Nobody likes to play rigged games
where others can change the rules arbitrarily.

>
>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. There's not necessarily anything wrong with that; this isn't a
>democracy, it's a business (even if a non-profit one) and the board's job is not
>to represent the users, it's to ensure that the company implements its goals (as
>stated in the bylaws).
>
>
I disagree.   It is predominantly a participatory informal
"democracy/committee" process in the projects and the volunteers in many
cases are voting with their feet and manhours.   Our micromanagers cry
here on the mailing list that nobody wants to participate or help do the
drudge work.    Apparently nobody wants to preemptively participate in
effective policy making rather than wait and come cry about decisions
when they are finally made by somebody else.   Basically the projects
have no way to ratify any policy that cannot be arbitrary overturned.

Further, there were a lot of people who donated a lot of time before
Jimbo stacked the Board.  He was not the only stakeholder or
philanthropist with a vested interest at the time of that unilateral
action.   Like it or fork it is not an appropriate response when other
stakeholders cannot match the hardware or bandwidth requirements.
Great sound bite though.

A further problem is that the bylaws were written to express Jimbo's
goals, not those of the community at large.   People keep claiming there
is no cabal.   I would very interested in exactly how many people
participated in filling out the initial paperwork for the Foundation.
Further, it is Jimbo and only Jimbo who interprets those goals.
Wikiversity is a natural fit with the existing projects and the slogans
and bylaws yet it is not being implemented despite overwhelming
community support.

>
>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.
>
>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
What would be a redefinition of our concepts of customers and
suppliers.   The projects are the Wikimedia Foundation's customers who
create the information the Foundation wishes to be delivered worldwide
to other customers/users.   Yet the projects are treated as property
which can be controlled by Board.

The Foundation needs to manage the infrastructure and let the projects
manage themselves.   The large successful projects will fall right in
line with the overall principals of neutrality and freedom of
information because it was the successful articulation/evolution of
these that feuled Wikipedia's explosive growth.   The projects that
drift inappropriately will fail and fade.  I agree that the Foundation
must enforce the core principals that were articulated to receive
project approval for Foundation hosting but this must be seen as an
impersonal, neutral, enforcement by the Foundation, not a possibly
arbitrary or biased or uninformed judgement by a single individual.

Standard tasks should be defined where possible with specific scopes and
procedures.   People like credit.   An effective manager should  be able
to devise a way to give credit to the volunteers or paid staff as they
completet the tasks he has prioritized or scheduled.

Let us consider the old saw:  lead, follow or get out of the way.   A
problem right now is that many of the volunteers have little or no idea
when "leadership" at the top Foundation level has gotten out of the
way.   Every thing slows or stalls until somebody invites leadership to
come microdecide and as a result the Board gets ever more overloaded.

How is an interesting question.

Unstacking the Board would immediately solve many problems at the
strategic organizational level.  It would restore credibility to the
Board with some factions while reassuring the projects that there was
truly an entity that could restrain Jimbo from running amok on Wikibooks.

It would also begin to define the Foundation as an entity independent of
Jimbo that will be capable of surviving indefinately.   Notice this is
required to meet future committments to deliver free information made
while requesting donations from participants creating and using the
information.  The Foundation has a clear Fiduciary responsibility to
those donors who sent cash in good faith even if it values the time of
our other philanthropists at zero responsibility or committment.

regards,
lazyquasar


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Michael R. Irwin

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


list: foundation-l

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>On Jun 13, 2006, at 12:01 PM, Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>
>
>>Michael R. Irwin wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>A bigger stacked Board micromanaging the community will leave us
>>>in the
>>>future right where we are now.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>I'm curious.
>>
>>What can the board and management (whatever its structure) *do*
>>that will be better?
>>
>>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.
>
>Fred
>
>
Good idea Fred!

That reminds me .....

1. Establish some sane policy on conflicts of interest between
organization members internal responsibilities and external interests

2. Extract Jimbo from the appearance of the ability to abuse or
mismanage the Wikimedia Foundation for personal gain.

regards,
lazyquasar


list: wikien-l

from_name: Minh Nguyen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Category intersections would be great :(

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> I just noticed that we have [[Category:Digital cameras]] and
> [[Category:SLR cameras]], but no [[Category:Digital SLR cameras]]. How
> incredibly frustrating that the options are:
>
> - Tag all DSLRs with a new category, leaving the two old ones (redundant)
> - Tag all DSLRs with a new category, replacing the two old ones, and
> putting the new category as a sub category of both SLR cameras and
> Digital cameras (doesn't seem clean)
> - Use CatScan (broken)
> http://tools.wikimedia.de/~daniel/WikiSense/CategoryIntersect.php?wikilang=en&wikifam=.wikipedia.org&basecat=digital+cameras&basedeep=1&mode=cs&tagcat=SLR+cameras&tagdeep=1&go=Scan&userlang=en
>
> - ???
>
> Steve

While we're on this topic, Bug 6281
<http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6281> is an attempt at
solving a related issue -- intersecting templates -- at Wiktionaries
that use templates to structure entries.

--
Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com>
AIM: trycom2000; Jabber: mxn at myjabber.net; Blog: http://mxn.f2o.org/


subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed

body:
Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

>Michael R. Irwin schrieb:
>
>
>
>
>>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?
>
It is precisely the Board's fault.  If critical functions cannot be met
by motivating volunteers then budgets need to be established to pay for
those critical functions to be met, workforces hired and trained, etc. etc.

Regarding your desire that I snap to and perform tasks you desire
completed at meta ... forget it.  I contribute when and where I please,
often anonymously to avoid hassles.   Feel free to delete the obsolete
business planning that "24" and I attempted to initiate at meta.   If
meta had been used as advertised initially instead of merely diverting
volunteers from management issues the Foundation would not be in its
current mess nor would there be a mess to clean up at meta.

As far as I am concerned you can turn meta off entirely.   In my view,
it has done more harm to the projects and "communities" it was supposed
to support than good.

Have fun.

regards,
lazyquasar


subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed


from_name: oscar

subject:
[Foundation-l] Hiring of Interim Executive Director and Legal
	Counsel

body:
On 6/12/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>
> Following a long discussion, both publicly and privately, the board of
> the foundation voted recently to hire an interim Executive Director and
> legal counsel.  We offered the position to Brad Patrick, and he
> accepted.  We have discussed at length the parameters of the
> position, including job responsibilities, and so on.  (This has been
> posted and discussed publicly as well.)
>
> Who is Brad?  Brad has been our pro-bono legal counsel for the past
> several months, has become very active in foundation matters and in the
> projects.  He is of course a huge fan of free software, Larry Lessig,
> and Wikipedia, and lives and breathes this stuff.  Rather than doing
> "merely" legal work (nothing mere about it, of course) for us, he has
> gotten involved in helping the board think about policy, in helping
> Danny deal with various "customer support" issues, etc.
>
> The need for fulltime legal counsel should be obvious to everyone
> involved with the projects.  We are increasingly approached with
> interesting opportunities to partner with various organizations in ways
> that are consistent with our community values and missions, and we
> really need fulltime legal support to make sure these deals are done in
> a way which is safe for the foundation.  Additionally, of course there
> is an ever increasing burden as we grow more popular of legal complaints
> that we continue to try to deal with in a timely and effective manner.
>
> The need for help in the executive arena is also obvious to
> most of you... particularly any of you who have had to deal with the
> critical lack of human bandwidth at the foundation level to get things
> done in a timely fashion.
>
> Brad was selected first and foremost because he is of the community,
> actively involved for several months, and deeply committed to our mission.
>
> Additionally, when I consulted recently with our volunteer attorneys,
> including Alex Roshuk, Jean-Baptise Soufron and Michael Snow, as well
> as consulting with Eben Moglen of the FSF and Larry Lessig of Creative
> Commons, a common refrain was that we need someone who is familiar with
> the particulars of Florida law, as well as someone who can effectively
> co-ordinate and manage pro-bono legal resources.
>
> This is important to emphasize: we are not hiring an in-house counsel
> *instead of* seeking pro-bono help, but hiring in-house counsel *so
> that* we can effectively seek and manage pro-bono help.  As an example:
> when I asked Eben Moglen for help, he said that he can (starting this
> fall, most likely) arrange for us the equivalent of a half-time lawyer,
> except he was quite adamant that he could do so only if we could manage
> the pro-bono hours effectively, and he was very strongly in support of
> us having someone fulltime.
>
> Additionally, Brad will be taking on a number of job responsibilities
> that fall outside of the strictly legal scope, *on an interim basis*.
> We, the board, have been overwhelmed for many months, and we need help
> and assistance with business deals, legal matters, finance, audit,
> planing, etc., etc., the list goes on and on.
>
> We intend to hire a fulltime Executive Director following a very careful
> process of consulting with the community, building support globally,
> defining what the foundation needs, and a comprehensive search for a
> good candidate, both *within the existing community* and *outside the
> community*.  It is my intention that we be very very careful in this
> process to preserve our fundamentally community-driven model, while at
> the same time adding professionalism to the organization in order to
> empower and defend the community model. :)
>
> Among Brad's duties will be to assist in co-ordinating and managing that
> search process, in conjunction with the board and community leaders of
> all kinds.
>
> We expect there to be significant press attention to this hiring, and
> significant support and attention from the community.  If you have been
> following the discussion on foundation-l, you will know that there are
> serious excitements and of course concerns in the community about what
> this direction means for the future of the foundation and for the
> community.
>
> I intend to keep repeating my same message strongly and simply: it is my
> intention to build upon and extend our radical methods of openness and
> community involvement, while at the same time playing close attention to
> the needs of the organization which makes all of that possible.
> Whatever side any of you personally may come down on, relating to some
> of the details of all that, I hope that you will join me in saying that
> our similarities and hopes and dreams for the future are more important
> than any minor differences, and that we can work our way forward as we
> always have... slowly and carefully, with genuine respect for everyone
> who is taking part in the discussions in a constructive way...
>
> It is important to emphasize that the ED position is primarily about the
> organization, not about the community.  That is to say, now is not the
> time to start leaving "please unblock me" messages on Brad's talk page.
> ;-)
>
> Brad is starting work immediately.
>
> --Jimbo

herewith also my sincere congratulations to brad and the organization!
(this quote about "a small step..." came to mind, and i couldn't resist
remembering how pete conrad felt) ;-)

oscar

--
> #######################################################################
> #    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
> #    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
> #######################################################################
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> What can the board and management (whatever its structure) *do* that will be better?
>>
>>
> There were some other posts that had some interesting ideas so I will be
> concise and off the cuff.
>
> The Board and Management could acknowledge that the Projects manage
> themselves according to approved procedures and core values and focus on
> delivering a robust, adequate infrastructure.  If a problem is
> identified  the Board or manager  should  have a project point of
> contact .... say a project mailing list ????   where they can go to
> request appropriate attention.
>
> By placing the burden on the Board, management, and/or employees to come
> convince consensus driven, roughly democratic groups of interested
> volunteers there is a problem to be resolved our project leadership,
> local expertise, and community structures would regain some relevance.
>
> The Board could respond in a timely manner to project proposals and
> other activities requested from the communities of volunteers.    The
> easiest way to kill any initiative in any organization is to simply keep
> iteratively requesting unjustifed rework.   Wikiversity is basically
> defunct via this technique.
>
> Any decent secretary or executive assistant could set up a suspense
> prioritized action queue and coordinate emails between the Board members
> so that any given activity that was accepted for action by the Board
> goes back out with a decision within a reasonable period of time.   Say
> a month.  This assumes that communications procedures are nailed down
> and followed by the Board Members.

This all sounds great.

>> What are examples of things a hypothetically ideal management would do *right*
>> that the present management is not?
>>
>>
> Eliminate uncertainty by making decisions in accordance with due
> process.   Notice this requires some due process to be defined.
> Wikiversity has been blindsided repeatedly after it tackled new
> requirements levied by the Board.  Nobody likes to play rigged games
> where others can change the rules arbitrarily.

Sounds great too.

>> 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. There's not necessarily anything wrong with that; this isn't a
>> democracy, it's a business (even if a non-profit one) and the board's job is not
>> to represent the users, it's to ensure that the company implements its goals (as
>> stated in the bylaws).
>>
> I disagree.   It is predominantly a participatory informal
> "democracy/committee" process in the projects and the volunteers in many
> cases are voting with their feet and manhours.

I disagree with your disagreement here. ;)

The *projects* are participatory informal "democracy/committee" process, but The
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is not.

It sounds to me like one of the chief issues is identifying the boundary between
management of the projects and management of the company. Would you agree with
this? If not, how would you describe the issue?

> What would be a redefinition of our concepts of customers and
> suppliers.   The projects are the Wikimedia Foundation's customers who
> create the information the Foundation wishes to be delivered worldwide
> to other customers/users.   Yet the projects are treated as property
> which can be controlled by Board.

Bingo.

> The Foundation needs to manage the infrastructure and let the projects
> manage themselves.

Bingo.

> Unstacking the Board would immediately solve many problems at the
> strategic organizational level.  It would restore credibility to the
> Board with some factions while reassuring the projects that there was
> truly an entity that could restrain Jimbo from running amok on Wikibooks.

How is Jimbo's historical and ongoing status as default big cheese for all
projects related to the composition of the board? (This is not a rhetorical
question.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> What can the board and management (whatever its structure) *do* that will be better?
>>
>>
> There were some other posts that had some interesting ideas so I will be
> concise and off the cuff.
>
> The Board and Management could acknowledge that the Projects manage
> themselves according to approved procedures and core values and focus on
> delivering a robust, adequate infrastructure.  If a problem is
> identified  the Board or manager  should  have a project point of
> contact .... say a project mailing list ????   where they can go to
> request appropriate attention.
>
> By placing the burden on the Board, management, and/or employees to come
> convince consensus driven, roughly democratic groups of interested
> volunteers there is a problem to be resolved our project leadership,
> local expertise, and community structures would regain some relevance.
>
> The Board could respond in a timely manner to project proposals and
> other activities requested from the communities of volunteers.    The
> easiest way to kill any initiative in any organization is to simply keep
> iteratively requesting unjustifed rework.   Wikiversity is basically
> defunct via this technique.
>
> Any decent secretary or executive assistant could set up a suspense
> prioritized action queue and coordinate emails between the Board members
> so that any given activity that was accepted for action by the Board
> goes back out with a decision within a reasonable period of time.   Say
> a month.  This assumes that communications procedures are nailed down
> and followed by the Board Members.

This all sounds great.

>> What are examples of things a hypothetically ideal management would do *right*
>> that the present management is not?
>>
>>
> Eliminate uncertainty by making decisions in accordance with due
> process.   Notice this requires some due process to be defined.
> Wikiversity has been blindsided repeatedly after it tackled new
> requirements levied by the Board.  Nobody likes to play rigged games
> where others can change the rules arbitrarily.

Sounds great too.

>> 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. There's not necessarily anything wrong with that; this isn't a
>> democracy, it's a business (even if a non-profit one) and the board's job is not
>> to represent the users, it's to ensure that the company implements its goals (as
>> stated in the bylaws).
>>
> I disagree.   It is predominantly a participatory informal
> "democracy/committee" process in the projects and the volunteers in many
> cases are voting with their feet and manhours.

I disagree with your disagreement here. ;)

The *projects* are participatory informal "democracy/committee" process, but The
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is not.

It sounds to me like one of the chief issues is identifying the boundary between
management of the projects and management of the company. Would you agree with
this? If not, how would you describe the issue?

> What would be a redefinition of our concepts of customers and
> suppliers.   The projects are the Wikimedia Foundation's customers who
> create the information the Foundation wishes to be delivered worldwide
> to other customers/users.   Yet the projects are treated as property
> which can be controlled by Board.

Bingo.

> The Foundation needs to manage the infrastructure and let the projects
> manage themselves.

Bingo.

> Unstacking the Board would immediately solve many problems at the
> strategic organizational level.  It would restore credibility to the
> Board with some factions while reassuring the projects that there was
> truly an entity that could restrain Jimbo from running amok on Wikibooks.

How is Jimbo's historical and ongoing status as default big cheese for all
projects related to the composition of the board? (This is not a rhetorical
question.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> What can the board and management (whatever its structure) *do* that will be better?
>>
>>
> There were some other posts that had some interesting ideas so I will be
> concise and off the cuff.
>
> The Board and Management could acknowledge that the Projects manage
> themselves according to approved procedures and core values and focus on
> delivering a robust, adequate infrastructure.  If a problem is
> identified  the Board or manager  should  have a project point of
> contact .... say a project mailing list ????   where they can go to
> request appropriate attention.
>
> By placing the burden on the Board, management, and/or employees to come
> convince consensus driven, roughly democratic groups of interested
> volunteers there is a problem to be resolved our project leadership,
> local expertise, and community structures would regain some relevance.
>
> The Board could respond in a timely manner to project proposals and
> other activities requested from the communities of volunteers.    The
> easiest way to kill any initiative in any organization is to simply keep
> iteratively requesting unjustifed rework.   Wikiversity is basically
> defunct via this technique.
>
> Any decent secretary or executive assistant could set up a suspense
> prioritized action queue and coordinate emails between the Board members
> so that any given activity that was accepted for action by the Board
> goes back out with a decision within a reasonable period of time.   Say
> a month.  This assumes that communications procedures are nailed down
> and followed by the Board Members.

This all sounds great.

>> What are examples of things a hypothetically ideal management would do *right*
>> that the present management is not?
>>
>>
> Eliminate uncertainty by making decisions in accordance with due
> process.   Notice this requires some due process to be defined.
> Wikiversity has been blindsided repeatedly after it tackled new
> requirements levied by the Board.  Nobody likes to play rigged games
> where others can change the rules arbitrarily.

Sounds great too.

>> 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. There's not necessarily anything wrong with that; this isn't a
>> democracy, it's a business (even if a non-profit one) and the board's job is not
>> to represent the users, it's to ensure that the company implements its goals (as
>> stated in the bylaws).
>>
> I disagree.   It is predominantly a participatory informal
> "democracy/committee" process in the projects and the volunteers in many
> cases are voting with their feet and manhours.

I disagree with your disagreement here. ;)

The *projects* are participatory informal "democracy/committee" process, but The
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is not.

It sounds to me like one of the chief issues is identifying the boundary between
management of the projects and management of the company. Would you agree with
this? If not, how would you describe the issue?

> What would be a redefinition of our concepts of customers and
> suppliers.   The projects are the Wikimedia Foundation's customers who
> create the information the Foundation wishes to be delivered worldwide
> to other customers/users.   Yet the projects are treated as property
> which can be controlled by Board.

Bingo.

> The Foundation needs to manage the infrastructure and let the projects
> manage themselves.

Bingo.

> Unstacking the Board would immediately solve many problems at the
> strategic organizational level.  It would restore credibility to the
> Board with some factions while reassuring the projects that there was
> truly an entity that could restrain Jimbo from running amok on Wikibooks.

How is Jimbo's historical and ongoing status as default big cheese for all
projects related to the composition of the board? (This is not a rhetorical
question.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> What can the board and management (whatever its structure) *do* that will be better?
>>
>>
> There were some other posts that had some interesting ideas so I will be
> concise and off the cuff.
>
> The Board and Management could acknowledge that the Projects manage
> themselves according to approved procedures and core values and focus on
> delivering a robust, adequate infrastructure.  If a problem is
> identified  the Board or manager  should  have a project point of
> contact .... say a project mailing list ????   where they can go to
> request appropriate attention.
>
> By placing the burden on the Board, management, and/or employees to come
> convince consensus driven, roughly democratic groups of interested
> volunteers there is a problem to be resolved our project leadership,
> local expertise, and community structures would regain some relevance.
>
> The Board could respond in a timely manner to project proposals and
> other activities requested from the communities of volunteers.    The
> easiest way to kill any initiative in any organization is to simply keep
> iteratively requesting unjustifed rework.   Wikiversity is basically
> defunct via this technique.
>
> Any decent secretary or executive assistant could set up a suspense
> prioritized action queue and coordinate emails between the Board members
> so that any given activity that was accepted for action by the Board
> goes back out with a decision within a reasonable period of time.   Say
> a month.  This assumes that communications procedures are nailed down
> and followed by the Board Members.

This all sounds great.

>> What are examples of things a hypothetically ideal management would do *right*
>> that the present management is not?
>>
>>
> Eliminate uncertainty by making decisions in accordance with due
> process.   Notice this requires some due process to be defined.
> Wikiversity has been blindsided repeatedly after it tackled new
> requirements levied by the Board.  Nobody likes to play rigged games
> where others can change the rules arbitrarily.

Sounds great too.

>> 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. There's not necessarily anything wrong with that; this isn't a
>> democracy, it's a business (even if a non-profit one) and the board's job is not
>> to represent the users, it's to ensure that the company implements its goals (as
>> stated in the bylaws).
>>
> I disagree.   It is predominantly a participatory informal
> "democracy/committee" process in the projects and the volunteers in many
> cases are voting with their feet and manhours.

I disagree with your disagreement here. ;)

The *projects* are participatory informal "democracy/committee" process, but The
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is not.

It sounds to me like one of the chief issues is identifying the boundary between
management of the projects and management of the company. Would you agree with
this? If not, how would you describe the issue?

> What would be a redefinition of our concepts of customers and
> suppliers.   The projects are the Wikimedia Foundation's customers who
> create the information the Foundation wishes to be delivered worldwide
> to other customers/users.   Yet the projects are treated as property
> which can be controlled by Board.

Bingo.

> The Foundation needs to manage the infrastructure and let the projects
> manage themselves.

Bingo.

> Unstacking the Board would immediately solve many problems at the
> strategic organizational level.  It would restore credibility to the
> Board with some factions while reassuring the projects that there was
> truly an entity that could restrain Jimbo from running amok on Wikibooks.

How is Jimbo's historical and ongoing status as default big cheese for all
projects related to the composition of the board? (This is not a rhetorical
question.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 6/13/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
> According to the current guidelines, this is the proper solution.  I
> don't see what's so unclean about it, anyway -- a DSLR is _defined_ as
> an SLR that is _also_ a digital camera.  It's no stranger than "Bridges
> in France" being a subset of both "Bridges" and "Things in France".

Yeah, actually you're right. I was just dreaming of the day when
having atomic attributes on pages is the right thing to do (supposedly
the way de.wp does it?)

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
On 6/13/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> I'm afraid he is a notable figure. We should not have some kind of
> hatchet job on him, but someone who has engaged in all the public
> activity he has is certain deserving of a Wikipedia article. Of
> course, he is not a terrorist in the sense Timothy McVeigh was; he is
> just a critic. He makes a point now and then, but from the
> perspective of users whose privacy is at risk he is more of a
> destructive vandal. His point about anonymous people wielding power
> has some traction, but I notice that folks who edit under their own
> name receive more or less the same treatment as people who use
> pseudonyms.

Er, apart from having been a bit of a prune with respect to a certain,
well-known encyclopaedia site, what has he done that is notable? How
is he different to any other public nuisance? Has he featured in any
print newspaper articles? Surely we don't have articles on anyone who
has ever stalked anyone?

Steve


list: textbook-l

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

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>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.
>
>
Regarding Wikiversity .... there are still some of us advocating that
Wikiversity be a standalone project for developing and delivering
educational materials of all kinds.  When a textbook is ready for
Wikibooks or a multimedia animation is ready for wikicommons then the
participants at Wikiversity can be trusted to migrate the materials if
it is appropriate.

It should not be dictated by outsiders to Wikiversity participants what
materials they can control in their own project space for maximun
educational efficiency.

The typical argument concerns duplication of data on hard drives and
duplication of effort.   Regarding the first I hope we can ignore it
given Moore's law, the current price of hard drives and the liklihood
that Wikiversity will be approved in two or three decades.   Regarding
the second, writing, studying and wikis are all about duplicated efforts
and integration/separation of the same.

It will be a serious damper on Wikiversity's community to routinely have
groups showing up insisting local materials be relocated and deleted
locally only to find out that the other projects have inappropriately
modified the material or otherwise damaged their easy utility by
newcomers to Wikiversity.

Personally I think that the anticipated Wikiversity participants can be
trusted to work with other projects to locate mature materials
effectively.    There should be no inflexible mandate built into the
project ground rules.   To establish an effective pleasant learning
environment (the only kind that will prosper) the participants need
maximum freedom with minimal effective core guidelines.

regards,
lazyquasar


from_name: Lord Voldemort

body:
On 6/13/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
> On Jun 13, 2006, at 12:01 PM, Brion Vibber wrote:
>
> > Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> > What can the board and management (whatever its structure) *do*
> > that will be better?
> >
> > 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.

I think this is being handled. And a step forward in this realm is the
taking on of Brad as in-house council as communicated late yesterday
or early today. Wouldn't you agree? --LV


body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>On 6/13/06, Michael R. Irwin <michael_irwin at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>What makes you think that the project 'manage themselves'?  As far as
>I can tell many of the projects substantially mismanage themselves.
>Most of the wikipedias, for example, are loaded with inaccurate and
>potentially libelous material and the projects have thus far
>formulated no systematic solution to addressing such quality issues.
>
>
>
Forgive my unclarity.  I assumed we were talking about how to achieve
healthy projects and project teams that do self organize and manage
themselves.   According to my training, experience, and literature,
external top down management rarely achieves high efficiency or
reliability in complex information projects.   Seems to work ok on the
greenchain unless you irritate the senior union personel present.

>Many people work on our projects, but virtually all of them work
>exclusively on what they consider 'fun' and in this manner many things
>are accomplished. However, there are many important things which
>almost no one considers 'fun', and these things end up neglected as a
>result.   Worse we seem to have this misconception embedded in our
>culture that this sort of extreme disorder with its inherent flaws is
>a fundamental aspect of all volunteer organizations. I wonder how many
>Wikipedians have ever volenteered before, certantly not many!
>
>
It is hard to say.   Perhaps we should request the Wikiversity research
net to take a survey for us.  My personal experience is that after being
abused for attempting to help out with what I know how to do and with
which I have applicable professional experience I am only a casual
contributor to Wikipedia in the course of personal research.  Typos,
citations, stray facts, excellent external links, etc.

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?

You are welcome to ignore my posts if you find them too lengthy.

regards,
lazyquasar


from_name: Ryan Delaney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
On 6/11/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Jun 11, 2006, at 1:38 PM, Sean Barrett wrote:
> >
> > See also Terrorists#negotiating with
>
> I agree. And I made that decision for myself when I switched to using
> my real name on Wikipedia.
>
> But that's not a decision Wikipedia has the right to make for me. It
> is not a government, and I am not its citizen.
>

No admin was forced to sign up, either. Wikipedia and the Wikimedia
Foundation aren't responsible for the actions of crackpots like Brandt. He's
responsible. If you want the Hivemind page taken down, he's the guy you
should be going after.

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


from_name: Ben Yates

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Cultural distinctions are accidental? Consensusamong
	cultures is bad?

body:
Hi -- I came across this comment on the mailing list -- do you have
any specific examples?

Cheers

Ben Yates

On 6/8/06, Arie van Buuren <arie2 at tien.biz> wrote:
> FWIW, the Dutch and German language Wikipedia editors have developed their
> own processes and policies which at some points differ substantially from
> those of the English language Wikipedia. Even the best of translations of
> quite a few articles on these wikis would never survive (intact or at all)
> on the English Wikipedia.
>
> (Presumably other language wikis have done the same but I've edited only
> these three.)
>
> Arie [[User:Avb]]
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Ben Yates
Wikipedia blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com


from_name: Zack Clark

subject: [Foundation-l] aWheeler #00 - by the grace of Wikimedia

body:
In-Reply-To: <50174.82.45.205.32.1149878975.squirrel at webmail7.pair.com>
on Fri, 9 Jun Alison Wheeler wrote:

>On Fri, June 9, 2006 17:57, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
>>The thing is, the vast majority of those tens of thousands of
>>participants don't really care about the foundation.  They just want
>>to work on a free encyclopedia/free news reporting service/free image
>>repository/whatever.
>>It'd be interesting if nothing else to see just what percentage of
>>Wikipedians have any desire at all of being Wikimedians.
>>
>except that the real thing is, you can't separate the two. Wikipedia (and
>Wikibooks, Wiktionary, etc) all exist not by the grace of god, but by the
>grace of Wikimedia (Foundation). If someone wants to play rough with a
>Wikipedia entry they don't go after the individual editors and try and
>trace all the IP addresses, but look to the legal body responsible for
>that entry, WMF. As such, whether they are aware they "care about the
>foundation" or not, we need to educate them better that they need to.
>.............

Alison raises a crucial point here (even if tangent to Anthony's).
So, if WMF attracts rough play by being the legal body responsible
for entries - what can be done to eradicate said responsibility??

Backing up to Anthony's post.  I readily admit that there are plenty of
Internet services which I enthusiastically & respectfully employ without
ever really caring about their foundations.  WP is a whole other animal
however, and it is difficult to see how anyone who's been made aware of
the phenomenon could fail to be extremely interested in all its aspects.
But gawd knows, this is the exact type of thing I can be so wrong about.
Therefore, who has some good ideas on how to estimate what percentage of
Wikipedians are interested in WMF?

Z.Clark


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
On 6/13/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Er, apart from having been a bit of a prune with respect to a certain,
> well-known encyclopaedia site, what has he done that is notable? How
> is he different to any other public nuisance? Has he featured in any
> print newspaper articles?

[[Daniel_Brandt#References]]

--
geni


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Andrew Dunbar

subject: [Wikitech-l] Changing accesskey for wpDiff

body:
The English Wiktionary has the same accesskey, "d" for the Delete tab
and for the Show changes button. Unlike many other accesskeys, this
one is not set in MediaWiki:Monobook.js - is there another file I can
edit to change the accesskey to "v" like on the English Wikipedia?

(Google and Wiki searches turned up nothing)

Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)

--
http://linguaphile.sf.net


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

poore5 at adelphia.net stated for the record:

> 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

Who is this "Wikipedia" who needs to do these things?  How does he or
she go about "identifying the people that have harmed"?  What
qualifications does he or she have to "support them through the experience"?

If my family or I were the victim of a crime, I would not welcome a
miscellaneous bunch of inexperienced and ill-informed volunteers from
all over the world trying to "identify" and "support" me.  The weight of
"IANAL" disclaimers alone would crash my server.

Amateurs writing an encyclopedia is one thing.  Amateurs trying to fix
the lives of strangers is quite another.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Portions of this message were
 sean at epoptic.com | composed using a computer.
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from_name: Timwi

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

body:
(originally posted to tech list, but replying here because I think it's
more on-topic here)

Steve Bennett wrote:
> Hi all,
>   There's a bot substituting {{clear}} with the equivalent HTML: <div
> style="clear: both"></div>. There are several reasons I can think of
> why this is a bad idea:

Myself, I never understood the point in it at all. Why do you ever want
to clear floating elements? It creates ugly stretches of empty space. If
you feel that you need it in some particular situation, then surely that
is an indication that the floating elements are positioned badly, and
using "clear:both" only adds to it by also positioning the section
headers badly.

If there are too many images on the page, surely the page would look
better if they were turned into a gallery or removed entirely, instead
of stacking floating elements left and right.

Timwi


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>Michael R. Irwin wrote:
>
>
>>Brion Vibber wrote:
>>
>>
>>>What can the board and management (whatever its structure) *do* that will be better?
>>>
>>>
>>>
snip some background

>>I disagree.   It is predominantly a participatory informal
>>"democracy/committee" process in the projects and the volunteers in many
>>cases are voting with their feet and manhours.
>>
>>
>
>I disagree with your disagreement here. ;)
>
>The *projects* are participatory informal "democracy/committee" process, but The
>Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is not.
>
>
Then they should consider budgeting for an adequate payroll, raise
adequate funds,  begin defining work processes, and hiring and training
staff.    Volunteers are not going to do anything  for long with which
they do not have some kind of input, buyin or warm fuzzy that they are
appreciated.   Budget for plaques, list the achievements somewhere,
coach the paid staff to really appreciate any and all errors as a golden
opportunity to help train the volunteer staff while getting away from
their normal duties ... paid recess!  Many options have been previously
devised, some time googling or yacking aimlessly on the community
mailing lists or wikis should discover something somewhere.

>It sounds to me like one of the chief issues is identifying the boundary between
>management of the projects and management of the company. Would you agree with
>this? If not, how would you describe the issue?
>
>
>
Yes, exactly!  Some others have made this point very effectively on this
thread as well.

snip further agreements

>How is Jimbo's historical and ongoing status as default big cheese for all
>projects related to the composition of the board? (This is not a rhetorical
>question.)
>
>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
Huh?  You were there!  Writing or debugging too much code to pay
attention to the politics?

I summarized it a few minutes ago over on textbook-l.  It is a low
volume list, anyone interested in my crude, grumpy, outline of history
can find it there.

Concisely, he screwed up bigtime.

He should have trusted the community of volunteers and stood for
election, he would been a shoe in by a landslide ..... he was still
picking up most of the cash expenses and everyone recognized he truly
was one of two key founders leading the community in
establishing/evolving a successful project approach.   His timing was
good when he unilaterally established the non-profit.   Everyone could
pretty well tell the wikipedia.org was on the verge of large success.
Who wants to abandon an impending gigantic success over a petty point of
organizational common sense?

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.

I realize that we are supposed to assume good faith and all that but
subsequent conflicts of interest really beg the question when combined
with the lack of community participation and planning in setting up the
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.   There were people on the list with legal,
business, engineering, education, etc. education and experience that
could have helped avoid many of the problems that you folks now face,
which were designed into the organization at the onset and allowed to
fester.

high regards,
lazyquasar


subject: [Foundation-l] DiPierro #00 - "Moral integrity"

body:
In-Reply-To: <71cd4dd90606110738l6e379ad8we749531c58ed9bda at mail.gmail.com>
On 6/11/06 Anthony DiPierro wrote in part:

>"Moral integrity" probably isn't the term I was looking for.  I should
>have left it as "integrity".

Errrr....
The only issue with the phrase "Moral integrity" is its redundancy!
Or did you mean something else??

Z.Clark


list: commons-l

from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Commons-l] some statistics

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) schrieb:
>
> Um... is it possible to get {{albumcover}}, {{bookcover}} and the like
> added to the list of "suitable deletion templates", so we can go through
> http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/bad_old_ones.php?category=Against%20policy
> like a hot knife through butter? :)
>
I've done even better: safe_delete now works for all requests coming
from bad_old_ones. It even states the "source category" in the reason.

Magnus

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subject: [Foundation-l] Eloquence #02 - happy to help

body:
In-Reply-To: <b80736c80606130010l7421e23fwa279f3f59a8a3da2 at mail.gmail.com>
On 6/13 Erik Moeller wrote in part:

>I'd be happy to help develop an organizational model, but I'd also be
>interested in what plans there currently are, and what Brad's thoughts
>on the above matters are.

Very classy Erik. I for one hope you receive the
cooperation that your good faith offer deserves.

Z.Clark


body:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> I realize that we are supposed to assume good faith and all that but
> subsequent conflicts of interest really beg the question when combined
> with the lack of community participation and planning in setting up the
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

What conflicts of interest?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> I realize that we are supposed to assume good faith and all that but
> subsequent conflicts of interest really beg the question when combined
> with the lack of community participation and planning in setting up the
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

What conflicts of interest?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> I realize that we are supposed to assume good faith and all that but
> subsequent conflicts of interest really beg the question when combined
> with the lack of community participation and planning in setting up the
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

What conflicts of interest?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> I realize that we are supposed to assume good faith and all that but
> subsequent conflicts of interest really beg the question when combined
> with the lack of community participation and planning in setting up the
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

What conflicts of interest?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Daniel Mayer

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

body:
--- Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > It must be written and include some other stuff not on normal PayPal or MoneyBookers payment
> > confirmation emails (which reminds, me - I need contact our PayPal rep to find out how to
> > change what those emails say).
> > See
> > http://www.irs.gov/publications/p526/ar02.html#d0e3485
> >
> > -- mav
> >
> Just to clarify what mav said, emails are considered "written"
> communications.  From Publication 1771: "An organization can provide
> the acknowledgment electronically, such as by an e-mail addressed to
> the donor."

Anthony is correct. My point though, is that I'm pretty sure that the confirmation emails sent by
PayPal and MoneyBookers do not clearly provide all the information needed for donors donating $250
or more. Most importantly, they do not explicitly declare whether or not we gave the donor "any
goods or services as a result of [the donor's] contribution (other than certain token items and
membership benefits)."

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.

Sign up at: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_committee

-- mav

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 6/13/06, Michael R. Irwin <michael_irwin at verizon.net> wrote:
> The Board and Management could acknowledge that the Projects manage
> themselves according to approved procedures and core values and focus on
> delivering a robust, adequate infrastructure.
[snip]

With about 900 words in this last post alone I find you to be
excessively active on this subject.

Please decrease your volume. The current excess of low quality
speculation and conjecture is making it difficult for people whom have
other obligations  to participate or follow the discussion.

That said, I did want to respond to this point of yours (the only one
I bothered reading):

What makes you think that the project 'manage themselves'?  As far as
I can tell many of the projects substantially mismanage themselves.
Most of the wikipedias, for example, are loaded with inaccurate and
potentially libelous material and the projects have thus far
formulated no systematic solution to addressing such quality issues.

Many people work on our projects, but virtually all of them work
exclusively on what they consider 'fun' and in this manner many things
are accomplished. However, there are many important things which
almost no one considers 'fun', and these things end up neglected as a
result.   Worse we seem to have this misconception embedded in our
culture that this sort of extreme disorder with its inherent flaws is
a fundamental aspect of all volunteer organizations. I wonder how many
Wikipedians have ever volenteered before, certantly not many!


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] "refactoring" signatures

body:
On 13/06/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:

> Pompous Bullshit English?
>
> It (British/Commonwealth English) tends, in my (probably biased)
> experience, to be used by people trying to put on airs and sound
> pretentiously superior, like real estate developers naming a
> development "Harbour Centre" when it's nowhere near a harbo(u)r nor
> particularly close to the center/re of anything important, or fashion
> magazines ("Glamour") that desperately want to show how elegant they
> believe themselves to be, or snooty academics who would rather be
> involved with an "encyclopaedia" than a commoner's "encyclopedia".
>
> I find it especially bothersome to encounter the word "paedophile",
> since I hardly think pedophiles deserve to be dignified with a
> pretentiously dressed-up spelling.

I believe a small number of people not blessed with US citizenship
have been known to use it, but I guess the inflated pomposity is just
the foreign inferiority complex kicking in.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: Delirium

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>What makes you think that the project 'manage themselves'?  As far as
>I can tell many of the projects substantially mismanage themselves.
>Most of the wikipedias, for example, are loaded with inaccurate and
>potentially libelous material and the projects have thus far
>formulated no systematic solution to addressing such quality issues.
>
>
Where is this potentially libelous material they are supposedly "loaded"
with?  If you are making this claim: There have in the past existed a
nonzero number of libelous claims in Wikipedia articles, that's
certainly a reasonable claim.  But to claim they're "loaded" with such
material requires some evidence.

As for accuracy, in the first place the projects have relatively good
accuracy, as confirmed for example by the _Nature_ review.  However, it
is widely agreed that we can do a better job labelling which of our
articles are in progress and which are "ready" to various degrees, and
there are a number of proposals to do so.  Since this requires some
coding it is indeed possible that the Foundation could help out here by,
for example, hiring a coder to implement some features to help make this
happen.  The fact that we haven't eliminated world hunger and cured
cancer all at once doesn't mean that things are being "mismanaged",
merely that there remains more to be done.

-Mark


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 6/13/06, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Does the applicable law already allow for the use
> > of digitally signed e-mails, or do we have to send snail mail?
>
> It must be written and include some other stuff not on normal PayPal or MoneyBookers payment
> confirmation emails (which reminds, me - I need contact our PayPal rep to find out how to change
> what those emails say).
> See
> http://www.irs.gov/publications/p526/ar02.html#d0e3485
>
> -- mav
>
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."

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed

body:
On 6/13/06, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
> Michael R. Irwin schrieb:
> > 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.
>
FWIW, I personally have never claimed that Wikimedia lacks
transparency due to intentional deceipt.  Personally I think it's
probably more due to incompetence.

> > 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?
>
Providing information to the public is one of the main
responsibilities of the board (if not to do directly, then to get
someone else to do it).  If it's not being done properly, it is the
board's fault.

As for volunteering for the task of cleaning up Meta, that would rely
on having the information in the first place.  And meta isn't really
what needs the most cleanup, the foundation wiki is.

Let me get specific.  The latest finance report is from 2005.  Same
thing with the latest budget report.  Even if I had access to the
foundation wiki, which I don't, I couldn't resolve this, because I
don't have access to Wikimedia's financial data.

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.

Maybe you could be more specific about what types of informaton
cleanup someone currently out of the loop can do.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed


subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
On 12/06/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Andrew Gray wrote:
>
> >It's just a lot easier to do this when someone's been so kind as to
> >point the article out for us, when it slipped past new-pages
> >patrollers, rather than wait for someone else to stumble across it and
> >suggest deletion. The community does have - not in this case,
> >particularly, but generally speaking - an overly "censorship! no!"
> >reaction to "could you please get rid of this trivial article?", even
> >in cases where the request is honest, well-meant, and polite. We
> >should really work on that.
>
> Wouldn't it be easier to mark it for speedy-deletion and see what
> happens instead of outright deleting upon request?  If indeed the case
> is as obvious as you say, then it should be taken care of by the
> speedy-deletion category cleanup crew in relatively short order, which
> will in some sense ratify the decision to delete it by at least one
> other person.  That's normally what I do in all but the most obvious cases.

Most of the time, when handling OTRS emails, I'm on IRC; I'll tag it
for deletion, drop the link into channel, and say "Anyone concur this
is a speedy"? Gets the oversight, but also means I can actually reply
promptly and say "the article's gone" - if I just tag and leave it,
there's no telling what state it'll be in when they see the email.

I do try and avoid speedying without two people passing it, but I also
like to get it gone fast.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: David Benbennick

subject: [Commons-l] Safe Deletion

body:
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.


body:
On 6/13/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Where is this potentially libelous material they are supposedly "loaded"
> with?  If you are making this claim: There have in the past existed a
> nonzero number of libelous claims in Wikipedia articles, that's
> certainly a reasonable claim.  But to claim they're "loaded" with such
> material requires some evidence.

Nine presses of random page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrisholme
Thirty six presses:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scot_Alan_Bittinger

And it's not all libel .. there is a lot of crap... advertisements...
self promotion.. and people who are just confused (i.e
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subst:image_copyright).

The fact of the is that while we are catching a lot of things what
matters is what we aren't catching.  With no systematic review
process, no resources to build one, and a 'communitiy' which is
actively hostile to the mechanisms of such a process... we are pretty
much screwed.  We've invested very little in automated tools, and
built no strong processes for quality control. There has been a lot of
*TALK* but it's just that .. talk.

The fact is that we're simply allowing a huge amount of crap to slip
by while we busily congratulate ourselves for the fraction that we did
find.

> As for accuracy, in the first place the projects have relatively good
> accuracy, as confirmed for example by the _Nature_ review.  However, it
> is widely agreed that we can do a better job labelling which of our
> articles are in progress and which are "ready" to various degrees, and
> there are a number of proposals to do so.  Since this requires some
> coding it is indeed possible that the Foundation could help out here by,
> for example, hiring a coder to implement some features to help make this
> happen.  The fact that we haven't eliminated world hunger and cured
> cancer all at once doesn't mean that things are being "mismanaged",
> merely that there remains more to be done.

The nature review was focused on a small number of scientific
subjects. Our coverage on many top level things is great. It's the
stuff that people don't look for where the dragons lurk.  By demanding
that I provide evidence here you put me in the same silly situation
where we often put our critics, if I go find something it will be
fixed and you'll say "see no problem".  But the fact remains that we
still don't have any systematic way to reduce the chances that pages
we serve up are not malicious drivel.


from_name: Cormac Lawler

body:
On 6/13/06, Kernigh <xkernigh at netscape.net> wrote:
> Cormac Lawler wrote:
> > As far as I see it: the community has control over the content, and
> > the board bears the legal liability for the content. Jimbo's unique
> > part in this is that he retains the power to dictate policy where he
> > deems necessary, and when he thinks a project has veered off course
> > significantly from its goals or the goals of the foundation. I'm not
> > sure of what other times he has exercised this power, apart from the
> > recent debate about the content of Wikibooks - maybe someone else,
> > perhaps Jimbo himself, can clarify this.
>
> 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.
>
> -- [[User:Kernigh]]
>    http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Kernigh
>

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.

The power structure of the Foundation was changed drastically by the
creation of a non-profit organisation and a board, and is continuing
to change with the formation of committees - see:
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_organigram>.
Individual projects make their own policies, as always - but it has
always been (to my knowledge) that Jimbo retains the *right* to step
in on policy, where he deems necessary. But this is *not* to suggest
that Jimbo decrees policy - that would be false - Jimbo generally
places fundamental emphasis on the community (see:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales/Statement_of_principles>).

Does that clarify?

Cormac


body:
On 6/13/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thirty six presses:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scot_Alan_Bittinger

[sigh] Deleted already.  As I said.. it's pointless to try to make
examples because people just fix them and then we pretend that it's
solved... we're so deep into firefighting that we refuse to
acknowledge that we have serious systematic problems.

For those who are not enwiki admins, the text was:

== Scot Alan Bittinger ==
----
'''Scot Alan Bittinger, is a douchebag .. His mom is cool though ..'''
== Pictures ==
http://www.filelodge.com/files/room14/335815/598456464_l.jpg

The only revision was:
05:55, May 15, 2006 . . Sluggishbizkit


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

body:
I think this raises some important questions. I am giving only partial
answers right now, but they should be some indication of the direction, at least
as I see it.

In a message dated 6/13/2006 6:21:28 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
eloquence at gmail.com writes:

On  6/12/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> 1 Are we  allowed to solicit funds anywhere? Not quite as simple as you may
>  think.

I remember that we've had those discussions before about  the
fundraising page and the way it should be worded. In recent  fund
drives, however, we've become more aggressive, with a personal  appeal
from Jimmy, slogans like "Help empower the world", and so on. We  still
have a disclaimer that this does not constitute a solicitation, but  is
that sufficient? Are we currently registered in any U.S. state  other
than Florida for solicitation of funds? If not, would such  a
registration make sense?
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.

> 2 What is the cost of a direct mailing? Try multiplying  postage costs by
1000s,
> add printing costs, then add hourly rates. We  can either do the mailing
in-house
> (at which point you must consider  whether it is worth paying my salary to
have
> me stuff envelopes) or a  service (which adds to the costs).

How about trying to decentralize the  "licking envelopes" part? Allow a
large number of reasonably trusted  volunteers to send "thank you"
notes (add some legal disclaimer about the  sender not being a
Wikimedia employee etc. if necessary). Compensate them  for postage,
but not for time. I'm not sure this is a viable model, but it  may be
worth trying out.

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. 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. There is also the issue of
oversight. I can imagine people pushing off the tedious stuffing of envelopes  for
any number of valid reasons. What assurance do we have that the proper
mailings get sent. Note that I do not believe these problems are
insurmountable--just that they should be considered. There are also other  options, such as
paying a commercial service to do this, however, this is an  added expense.

>  3 Are there any mails that we are required to send by law? Yes

That's a  good point. How good are we presently at complying with these
regulations,  e.g. notifying people who make >$200 donations outside
regular fund  drives? Does the applicable law already allow for the use
of digitally  signed e-mails, or do we have to send snail mail?
To date, this has been done in time. I have even instituted a policy that a
letter is now sent immediately upon receipt by  snail mail of  any gift over
$200. I also have PDFs of each letter for our own  records. One practical thing
to note is that the bulk of larger donations is  sent via bank transfer or
personal check mailed to the office, not by Paypal. As  such, even if we were
able to send such letters electronically (and I was under  the impression that
we could not), the only contact information we often have is  a snail mail
address, so the question is moot.

Danny


body:
On 6/13/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/13/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Thirty six presses:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scot_Alan_Bittinger
>
> [sigh] Deleted already.  As I said.. it's pointless to try to make
> examples because people just fix them and then we pretend that it's
> solved... we're so deep into firefighting that we refuse to
> acknowledge that we have serious systematic problems.
>
Sure, there are systematic problems with building something of high
quality using a wiki.  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?

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.

Anthony


body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 6/13/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>> Where is this potentially libelous material they are supposedly "loaded"
>> with?  If you are making this claim: There have in the past existed a
>> nonzero number of libelous claims in Wikipedia articles, that's
>> certainly a reasonable claim.  But to claim they're "loaded" with such
>> material requires some evidence.
>>
>
> Nine presses of random page:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrisholme
> Thirty six presses:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scot_Alan_Bittinger
>
It seems you're unlucky or something, because I just hit random page a
full 100 times and found nothing particularly bad.

In any case, I don't think we disagree that there should be a way of
tagging pages with their degree of "doneness".  I don't see what that
has to do with community mismanagement in need of the Foundation to fix
it though---the community has in fact proposed doing just that, complete
with some detailed proposals, while the Foundation certainly hasn't
(see: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Article_validation_proposals).  It
hasn't actually happened yet because: 1) it's only been fairly recently
(I'd say the last 6 months or so) that it's become a more pressing
priority than writing content in the first place; 2) it's a fairly
difficult problem to solve without falling into the bottomless pit of
complex-but-gameable systems.

That said, I don't object to the Foundation prodding things along, for
example by organizing a working group to come up with a more final
proposal suitable for implementation.  Some coordination across projects
would be particularly helpful with that.

-Mark


body:
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

> 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...

The foundation hasn't solved this yet, but things take time... and
perhaps the foundation is somewhat hand-tied right now with this
constant worry of having to work with the community for every little
thing or suffer the wrath of the perpetually annoyed windbags.

I could fault a lot of people for a lot of things, it's pretty easy to
assign blame.. but I wouldn't fault the board for Wikipedia quality
problems, at least not directly.  ... Faulting them for assigning too
much importance to a community which has demonstrated a pervasive
unwillingness to behave responsibly? perhaps :)

> 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.


body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> 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...
>
> The foundation hasn't solved this yet, but things take time... and
> perhaps the foundation is somewhat hand-tied right now with this
> constant worry of having to work with the community for every little
> thing or suffer the wrath of the perpetually annoyed windbags.
>

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.

-Mark


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [Commons-l] some statistics

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> Brianna Laugher schrieb:
>> Also, would it be possible to get a list of all images in
>> [[Category:Unknown - June 2006]] that have not been edited since
>> before June (these would be the images with malformed/depreciated
>> 'unknown' tags)... and that are not used on any projects? (I will
>> check en.wp by hand for the moment :/ )
>>
>> Note that that category has 6000+-200 entries. (I just recounted it.)
>>
>> I know I'm not the only admin that would do a lot more deleting if
>> there was an easy way to check which ones were "easier" (non-easy =
>> having to remove from use). And when you delete an image that no one's
>> using, you're far less likely to incite angry mobs :)
>>
>> They're still not easy because half the time the tag is wrong, or the
>> uploader was never notified or something stupid... but they're easIER.
>>
> http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/bad_old_ones.php
>

Um... is it possible to get {{albumcover}}, {{bookcover}} and the like
added to the list of "suitable deletion templates", so we can go through
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/bad_old_ones.php?category=Against%20policy
like a hot knife through butter? :)

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
On 6/13/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>
Publication 1771 is available at
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1771.pdf if anyone wants to read it.
And to clarify, there's no requirement for the email to be digitally
signed.

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


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

body:
(Mainly concerning wikipedia, but cross-posting to foundation-l because
of some discussion of committees; see the end.)

We've discussed on and off that it'd be nice to vet specific revisions
of Wikipedia articles so readers can either choose to read only quality
articles, or at least have an indication of how good an article is.
This is an obvious prerequisite for a Wikipedia 1.0 print edition, and
would be nice on the website as well.

There is a lengthy list of proposals here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Article_validation_proposals

I wanted to try to rekindle the process by summarizing some of the
proposals, which I think can be grouped into three main types, and then
suggest some ideas on where to go from there.

Proposal #1: Fork or freeze, then bring up to our quality standards.
---
Wikipedians would look around for articles that look reasonably good
(perhaps starting with feature articles) and nominate them to be worked
on.  Then either freeze them (by placing a notice or some sort of
technical measure), or else fork them off to a copy.  The articles would
then be checked for referencing, accuracy, grammar, and so on, possibly
only by users who've met some bar for participation in the clean-up
process, resulting in an article suitable for publication.  Forking or
freezing is to ensure the cleanup process actually terminates rather
than trying to clean up a moving target; there are of course pros and
cons to forking vs. freezing.

Some pros: Fairly straightforward; follows successful methods of "stable
release" management in the software-development world; allows a certain
amount of editorial work not normally suitable for an in-progress
encyclopedia (like cutting out an entire section because it's too far
from being done to go in the print version); is easy to integrate
"expert review" into as a last vetting step before it goes out the door.

Some cons: Either disrupts normal editing through a freeze, or results
in duplicated effort with a fork.  Also is likely to result in a fairly
slow process, so the reviewed version of each article may be replaced
with an updated version quite infrequently; most articles will have no
reviewed version, so doesn't do much for increasing the typical quality
of presentation on the website.

Proposal #2: Institute a rating and trust-metric system
---
Wikipedians rate revisions, perhaps on some scale from "complete crap"
to "I'm an expert in this field and am confident of its accuracy and
high quality".  Then there is some way of coming up with a score for
that revision, perhaps based on the trustworthiness of the raters
themselves (determined through some method).  Once that's done, the
interface can do things like display the last version of an article over
some score, if any, or a big warning that the article sucks otherwise
(and so on).

Some pros: Distributed; no duplicated effort; good revisions are marked
good as soon as enough people have vetted them; humans review the
articles, but the "process" itself is done automatically; most articles
will have some information about their quality to present to a reader

Some cons: Gameing-proof trust metric systems are notoriously hard to
design.

Proposal #3: Extend a feature-article-like process
---
Extend a feature-article type process to work on revisions rather than
articles.  For example, nominate revision X of an article as a featured
article; improve it during the process until it gets to a revision Y
that people agree is good.  Then sometime later, nominate a new revision
Z, explain what the differences are, and discuss whether this should
supercede the old featured version.  Can also have sub-featured statuses
like "good" or "mediocre, but at least nothing is outright wrong".  In
principle can be done with no code changes, though there are some that
could ease things along greatly.

Some pros: Gets at the effect of proposal #2 but with a flexible
human-run system instead of an automatic system, and therefore less
likely to be brittle.

Some cons: Will need carefully-designed software assistance to keep all
the information and discussion manageable and avoid descending into a
morass of thousands upon thousands of messy talk pages

---

These are not necessarily mutually exclusive.  In my opinion, something
like #3 would be best suited to marking quality of revisions on the
website, and then the best of these could feed into a process like #1
that would do final vetting and cleanup before a print publication (in
addition to print-specific things like editing for space, formatting,
image resolution, etc.).

In any case, obviously proposals can come and go forever.  None are
implemented, but that's partly because nobody wants to sink a bunch of
time into implementing a system when there's no guarantee it will even
be used.  My hope is to condense the discussion so we choose some
high-level ideas on how to proceed before moving on to the inevitable
details, and then move to implementation once we've agreed what we
actually want.

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

Thoughts?

-Mark


list: wikipedia-l

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


from_name: Michael Snow

body:
Delirium wrote:

> We've discussed on and off that it'd be nice to vet specific revisions
> of Wikipedia articles so readers can either choose to read only
> quality articles, or at least have an indication of how good an
> article is.  This is an obvious prerequisite for a Wikipedia 1.0 print
> edition, and would be nice on the website as well.
>
> There is a lengthy list of proposals here:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Article_validation_proposals
>
> I wanted to try to rekindle the process by summarizing some of the
> proposals, which I think can be grouped into three main types, and
> then suggest some ideas on where to go from there.

Thank you for taking the time to address this.

> Proposal #1: Fork or freeze, then bring up to our quality standards.
> ---
> Wikipedians would look around for articles that look reasonably good
> (perhaps starting with feature articles) and nominate them to be
> worked on.  Then either freeze them (by placing a notice or some sort
> of technical measure), or else fork them off to a copy.  The articles
> would then be checked for referencing, accuracy, grammar, and so on,
> possibly only by users who've met some bar for participation in the
> clean-up process, resulting in an article suitable for publication.
> Forking or freezing is to ensure the cleanup process actually
> terminates rather than trying to clean up a moving target; there are
> of course pros and cons to forking vs. freezing.
>
> Some pros: Fairly straightforward; follows successful methods of
> "stable release" management in the software-development world; allows
> a certain amount of editorial work not normally suitable for an
> in-progress encyclopedia (like cutting out an entire section because
> it's too far from being done to go in the print version); is easy to
> integrate "expert review" into as a last vetting step before it goes
> out the door.
>
> Some cons: Either disrupts normal editing through a freeze, or results
> in duplicated effort with a fork.  Also is likely to result in a
> fairly slow process, so the reviewed version of each article may be
> replaced with an updated version quite infrequently; most articles
> will have no reviewed version, so doesn't do much for increasing the
> typical quality of presentation on the website.

This option would work well, I think, for two possible uses. One is for
offline distribution, since there's less point in creating a fork that
will just be another online variation on the same theme. The second
possibility I think we would benefit from is the "freeze" option of
presenting stable, reviewed versions by default to users who do not log in.

> 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.

Aside from the manipulation problem, with this kind of approach I
wonder, "To what end?" Simply attaching a number to things is not that
interesting in and of itself. It needs to be put to some kind of use,
and while that's certainly possible, I'm more excited about potential
uses to which the other approaches better lend themselves.

Another potential concern I would point to with these is the possibility
of what might be called grade inflation. People might well start
criticizing the use of low scores as "biting newcomers" or something
like that. This would be an unfortunate reversal of the current trend
for featured articles, for which candidates have been held to
progressively higher standards. It also would undermine our hopes that
generally speaking, the content tends to improve over time.

> Proposal #3: Extend a feature-article-like process
> ---
> Extend a feature-article type process to work on revisions rather than
> articles.  For example, nominate revision X of an article as a
> featured article; improve it during the process until it gets to a
> revision Y that people agree is good.  Then sometime later, nominate a
> new revision Z, explain what the differences are, and discuss whether
> this should supercede the old featured version.  Can also have
> sub-featured statuses like "good" or "mediocre, but at least nothing
> is outright wrong".  In principle can be done with no code changes,
> though there are some that could ease things along greatly.
>
> Some pros: Gets at the effect of proposal #2 but with a flexible
> human-run system instead of an automatic system, and therefore less
> likely to be brittle.
>
> Some cons: Will need carefully-designed software assistance to keep
> all the information and discussion manageable and avoid descending
> into a morass of thousands upon thousands of messy talk pages

One of the weaknesses of directly modeling the featured article system
is that it doesn't scale well. I suppose in a sense that's part of what
you're saying, but you seem to suggest that it could be made to scale.
That might be possible but right now I don't see how, could you perhaps
elaborate on how you would design this? The suggestions I extrapolate
from this outline would to my mind mostly add complexity to the system,
and I'd expect them if anything to scale worse and not better.

> These are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

That's certainly true, although personally I mostly prefer elements of
the first approach.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Wikitech-l] Artcyclopedia hotlinking Commons thumbnails

body:
Hello,

[[w:Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks]] seemed to suggest I should report
this here. Artcyclopedia appears to be hotlinking our image
thumbnails, although they link to the Commons image description page
(see eg. http://www.artcyclopedia.com/commons/leonardo-da-vinci.html
). I'm not sure what if anything should be done.

Thanks,

[en.{wp,wb}|commons|meta]:User:pfctdayelise