from_name: Chitu Okoli

subject: [Foundation-l] Personal research grant collaboration request

body:
Dear Wikimedia Foundation,

My name is Chitu Okoli. I am a professor in information systems (MIS) at
Concordia University in Montr?al, and I've been very interested in Wikipedia
for a while. (I am also a light Wikipedian, User:cokoli, since March this
year. In addtion, I've been listening in on foundation-l for a little while
now.)

I am currently working on a couple of research projects involving Wikipedia.
Two specific projects involve:
1. Obtaining a scholarly evaluation of the quality of its articles by
comparing Wikipedia articles with those of other encyclopedias; and
2. Mapping the sociological networks of Wikipedians among each other in
their wiki activities, and the effects of these networks on their individual
and group performance in Wikipedia.

I want to apply for grant funding to support my research, and I would love
to arrange this in a way that would translate into free computer equipment
for Wikipedia. For this, I would only need the Wikimedia Foundation's
organizational support and some technical cooperation. I hope it could be a
win-win situation where I could receive assistance for my research (and the
satisfaction of contributing tangibly to what I believe is a worthy cause),
and the Foundation could hopefully get some valuable resources.

I'd like to work together with you to see what options could work best for
mutual benefit. Specifically, let me quote my faculty's grant coordinator,
as he explains quite well the boundaries of what mind be possible:

<<
Also, with regards to buying and sending equipment to Wikipedia, you
should be okay doing that.  However, the university may request that the
equipment be returned to the university at the end of the research project
i.e. 3 years from the starting date.  So, Wikipedia could use the server
for 3 years, which would obviously help them by saving them the money in
the short term to purchase the equipment and in 3 years from now you may
request from the university that the equipment be donated, sold at a
discount, returned, etc.  This would have to be negotiated between
yourself and the Associate Dean and Dean of the business school.
I would suggest first that you contact Wikipedia to ask them to give you a
list of the server equipment that they need to buy, but tell them that the
value cannot exceed say $6000 CDN for example.  I say $6,000 because you
may get a maximum of $15,000/yr for 3 years, which you would need to hire
RAs, buy yourself a laptop to travel with, etc.  In return, they would
have to send you a letter of support indicating that they will be helping
you to collect the data you need via surveys, etc.
>>

How I would like the Wikimedia foundation to assist me is in two main ways:

1. If my research program seems interesting to you, and/or if you believe
the Foundation could benefit from the equipment that the grant(s) could
provide, please write me an official letter of support indicating that you
are willing to offer me necessary assistance in carrying out my research. I
am certainly NOT asking for financial assistance--rather, I'm trying to help
provide some. (Besides, after listening in on the fundraising banner
discussion, Wikimedia Foundation is the last place I'd go asking for money
:-) Such a letter of support in and of itself would be a great act of
"support" for me--it would be very helpful in helping me obtain a research
grant to continue my research.

2. As far as what actual "support" I would need, for much of my research, I
don't need anyone from the Wikipedia Foundation to actually do anything for
me--I am already working off the Wikipedia database dumps, and the
Wikitech-l provides pretty good technical support. (Thanks Timwi and Brion
Vibber for helping my research assistant, Claudio.)

However, some of the further research I might need to do could need
substantial help from the Wikimedia Foundation. One particular idea I have
in mind would be to conduct a survey of Wikipedians to figure out who they
are, and why they do what they do. I have in mind something very much along
the lines of the "Hacker Survey" that Boston Consulting Group conducted on
SourceForge developers, through the support of the Open Source Developers
Network. (The results are available in PDF at
http://www.bcg.com/opensource/BCGHACKERSURVEY.pdf.) I think the Foundation
could benefit from a similar survey, to better understand who Wikipedians
are. However, if I were to help conduct this survey (I am a social scientist
with special training in conducting accurate surveys), I would need special
access to Wikipedians beyond what a database dump could provide. This is
just an example to show the kind of "support" I would need that could be
mutually beneficial. And of course, I'm trying to get funds from outside to
sponsor this (e.g. I apply for a grant to pay the Foundation for developer
time to help create the surveys).

To be explicit, what I hope to offer the Wikimedia Foundation (subject to
grant award) would be:
1. Free hardware for about three years or so (depending on the grant terms).
2. Consulting/developer fees for specific projects that might require more
time by board members and developers.

Please post your thoughts and comments on this. I'd like you to help make
this a proposal that could help both me and the Wikimedia Foundation.

Sincerely,

Chitu Okoli, PhD
Assistant Professor in Management Information Systems
John Molson School of Business
Concordia University, Montr?al, Canada

Phone: +1 (514) 848-2424 x2967
cokoli at jmsb.concordia.ca
http://chitu.okoli.org/mis


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikipedia-l] send in the academics

body:
Abe wrote:

>"Academia" is the name for a huge institutionalized process of peer
>review.  Wikipedia is peer review on steroids, so you'd think that
>academics would be clamoring to contribute to Wikipedia, especially since
>academia and Wikipedia both love free expression and open discourse.  The
>difference is, academia is peer review with competition for prestige and
>resources, and Wikipedia is not.
>
>
I've occasionally wished for something like that, since Wikipedia and
academia between the two of them take up nearly all of my time, but I
think the two have quite different philosophies that aren't necessarily
well mixed.  Part of Wikipedia's strength is the exact opposite of the
prestige and control of resources that characterizes academia: nobody
has prestigious bylines on important articles; nobody is appointed
executive editor for articles or sets of articles; and so on.

Take for example photographs, which might be the least problematic place
to start.  Perhaps we should credit people who submit FDL'd photographs
in a byline that appears below the photograph (or even in the print
version, below the photograph). This would give photograph submitters
some prestige in return for hopefully encouraging submission of more
good FDL'd photographs.  But it could also have downsides: people might
start caring about the prestige more about the quality of the
encyclopedia; they might care more about whether their photographs are
the ones with the prestigious bylines than whether a particular
photograph is the best one to illustrate a particular point, and might
like inserting their photographs everywhere rather than judiciously
inserting them only where they add something significant to an article.
With text it seems that the same sorts of problems would be even more
severe.

So philosophically I guess I think we ought to keep more to a model of
anonymous thankless volunteers than to a model of prestigious
scientists.  And it does seem to be working so far, so I don't think we
need radical changes to encourage more writing.

-Mark


list: wikien-l

from_name: Juha

subject: [WikiEN-l] latex formatting of articles

body:
Hi,

Has anybody thought about automatically formatting articles with latex?
I wrote a small script that uses the Special:Export method do download
an article. This is then converted into latex format and processed into
a pdf. I was quite happy with the result, although the script was just a
quick stab. Here's an example:
http://beam.acclab.helsinki.fi/~jvierine/Niels_Henrik_Abel.pdf

Are there any plans to add a "download pdf version of article" feature
into mediawiki? It seems that it wouldn't be that difficult to implement.

Is there a way to get articles in an even more structural format that
with Special:Export? This would make the parsing less error-prone (now I
sometimes get strange errors). I read something about mediawiki DTD in
the meta-wiki, but the article didn't say if somebody was working on it.

juha


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Membership fees proposal

body:
Anthere wrote:

> The proposal is available at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Membership_fees.
>
> This proposal was set based on discussions with many editors, on meta,
> on irc, by email. Though it is probably not perfect, I believe it is a
> fair proposal trying to take into consideration all comments made.

I haven't followed most of the discussions, so this is just a first
impression, but a fee of $60 seemed a little bit steep, so it surprised
me when I first saw it.  I'm not sure it's actually a bad idea, but it
was a bit surprising.  I'm not 100% sure, but I think it's more common
to have a somewhat lower minimum membership fee, and then have higher
levels with additional mini-benefits for those who can afford them.  Of
course, part of that is my personal budgeting: I can see myself buying a
$20-$30 membership right now without too much thought, but a $60 one
would require a bit more consideration, and I might end up just not
joining at all if there's no intermediate $30 option.  If that's
something that a lot of other people would also do, that could be a
problem.  (Of course, it might also be balanced by some people who maybe
would've only given $30 but are now encouraged to give $60, so I'm not
sure which one results in the foundation raising more money overall.)

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Membership fees proposal


subject: [WikiEN-l] murder versus kill

body:
Harry Smith wrote:

>My question is do we use the term murder for this
>shooting or do we change the wikipedia article on
>murder?
>
>seems to be a question of wikipedia using its own
>definitions for words at wikipedia.
>
>is this type of internal consistency valuable?
>
>if it is not should we make that known?
>
>is using the term murder according to the wikipedia
>definition POV?
>
>
The problem isn't with the definition, but with applying it.  We can
very well discuss what "murder" means, and what it is defined as in
various places and at various times in history, and so on, but when we
start saying "this particular killing was a murder", that quickly
becomes problematic.

More than that, there's just no good reason to do it, and it sometimes
even sounds bad.  If we give the relevant facts, people can make their
own judgments as to whether a particular killing was in fact murder.
There's no good reason to describe John F. Kennedy as being "murdered",
for example.  Even in cases where nearly everyone agrees the killing was
wholly unjustified, like with the Holocaust, it sounds odd when you use
the term "murdered", as some of our articles currently do---it sounds
like you're going out of your way to say "this is what happened AND PS
IT WAS BAD!" rather than just reporting the facts.  I can't think of
many uses of the word "murder" apart from "[person] was convicted of
murder" that don't sound like that, actually.

-Mark


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: fundraising page - shouldn't we note what we
	are aiming for?

body:
--- Erik Zachte <e.p.zachte at chello.nl> wrote:

> Daniel wrote:
> "We might want to consider putting a bounty on creating a bot that could do
> that."
>
> I can't help but notice that our CFO repeatedly feels the urge to spend
> money where other options have not been exhausted (or even tried) ;)

I simply want results and I want them fast. Creating a process by which donors
get near instant feedback that their donation was counted and helped push us
toward a goal will generate many times the money any bounty would cost.

I'm also not at all keen on trying to attempt to do this in anything but an
automated way (esp since it would be *me* that would be attempting to be a
bot).

So do you have anything other than snide remarks to add? ;)

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
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from_name: Stephan Walter

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: latex formatting of articles

body:
Juha wrote:
> Has anybody thought about automatically formatting articles with latex?

See my script at http://wiki.auf-trag.de/

and http://wikipdf.sf.net/

> I wrote a small script that uses the Special:Export method do download
> an article. This is then converted into latex format and processed into
> a pdf. I was quite happy with the result, although the script was just a
> quick stab. Here's an example:
> http://beam.acclab.helsinki.fi/~jvierine/Niels_Henrik_Abel.pdf

Not bad, my script doesn't support images ;-)

Maybe we can join forces ...

Especially tables are horrible to deal with, and then there's BiDi
text... lots of things you have to take care of (if you want it to work
not only for english texts).

> Is there a way to get articles in an even more structural format that
> with Special:Export?

Currently not, but real XML export would sure be nice to have.

Regards,
Stephan

--
Stephan.Walter at epfl.ch  --  http://lart.info/~stw/  --  PGP: B2421799


from_name: Christopher Larberg

body:
You apparently misunderstood me. My comments were directed towards S. Vertigo and his tongue-in-cheek statements such as "Bush is a true patriot and a national treasure" and his implication that people who support Bush are attempting to inject such POV statements into the Wikipedia. My comments were in no way directed towards you.
-Slowking Man
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Geoff Burling<mailto:llywrch at agora.rdrop.com>
  To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org<mailto:wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
  Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 2004 10:53 PM
  Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Viajero/Zero and Lance6 - POV terms

  *snip*

  On Wed, 28 Jul 2004, Christopher Larberg wrote:

  > I'm not attempting to railroad this discussion off-track, but perhaps you
  > could find better places to post your sarcastically anti-American
  > vitriol.

  This one caught me off-guard & took me some time to compose a response.

  The point of my examples was to select some that were not as emotion-laden
  as the other ones we've discussed on this list: killings related to the
  Israeli-Palestinian conflict, White Supremacy, German-Polish relations. In
  trying to frame how to explain the facts & opinions, we too often get
  distracted by repeating the "facts". I had tried to pick some examples
  that would allow me to help everyone see where I was going, rather than
  become distracted with the ladder I was using to get us there. I obviously
  failed at this by my selection of controversial examples, & I'm sorry
  about that.

  However, as a U.S. citizen, I was under the impression that I was free to
  criticize any public figure, as long as I did not indulge in slander or
  libel. None of the things I wrote were either, & I am deeply offended that
  by exercising my right to free speech I am seen as being unfaithful to my
  country. Especially as that email has been the only time I said anything
  on this email list that could be considered critical of my country. And
  for the record, away from Wikipedia I am far less kind & restrained about
  what I say about the goofballs who are unashamedly grinding my country into
  the mud.

  Geoff
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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Memcached replacement

references:
<cd56vn$4u4$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<cd5skq$kkh$3@sea.gmane.org>	<cd69e9$qfm$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<41098F09.2060808@fas.harvard.edu>

body:
Ivan Krstic wrote:

> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>> I can rant all day about problems with memcached, both in the clients
>> and in the server. As soon as I find (or write) a suitable
>> alternative, I'm switching to it.
>
> Would you specify (in detail) the problems you've had, and possibly a
> list of new or improved features over memcached that you'd want? I might
> be able to find someone to write a replacement or patch the existing
> source.

Memcached has a mailing list. Maybe this person you're referring to
should join it. :)


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: nl:wiktionary now on UTF-8 :)

body:
I am really glad nl wiktionary is now switched to utf 8.

I hope you noticed as well that the page content you wanted removed on
en, had been blanked yesterday.

It is a good idea to think of thanking Shaihulud who helped you during
his holidays. I think he will be glad to help you again next time.

Gerard.Meijssen wrote:
> Yipeee !
>
> Thanks to Shaihulud, who was so kind to do the technical biz while on holiday, nl:wiktionay is now on UTF-8. I have been adding new words that contain special characters and it works like a dream.
>
> The other good news it that the current content is also really as it should be. So all the information copied from Timwi's website is really looking good. It also means that I can now add new content to other wiktionaries without fear of mucking things up. On that note, there is content on en:wiktionary that is not UTF-8 (English - see the edit page..)
>
> The word that I have done first is Nederlands. :)
> http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/Nederlands
>
> Thanks,
>   GerardMnt-Dispo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: LanguageCs.php - reply to Ashar & Timwi

body:
Vit Zvanovec wrote:

>>You change these by editing the Czech equivalent of en's
>>[[Wikipedia:Book sources]].
>
> 	Really? IMHO this is only a text about book sources, not the
> handling of ISBN in international wiki.

If you look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Booksources&isbn=068483068X
you will see that it uses the contents of [[Wikipedia:Book sources]],
replacing MAGICNUMBER with 068483068X.

>>>5. [[:cs:Wikipedie:Co je ?l?nek]] can't be deleted.
>
> 	No reaction.

I'm not a sysop, so I can't reproduce the problem. You should probably
provide more detail, but I won't guarantee that I can help.

Timwi


from_name: Ivan Krstic

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Memcached replacement (was: Re: Memcached
	rearrangement)

references:
<cd56vn$4u4$1@sea.gmane.org> <cd5skq$kkh$3@sea.gmane.org>
	<cd69e9$qfm$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> I can rant all day
> about problems with memcached, both in the clients and in the server. As
> soon as I find (or write) a suitable alternative, I'm switching to it.

Would you specify (in detail) the problems you've had, and possibly a
list of new or improved features over memcached that you'd want? I might
be able to find someone to write a replacement or patch the existing source.

Cheers,
Ivan.


body:
Timwi wrote:

>>>> 5. [[:cs:Wikipedie:Co je ?l?nek]] can't be deleted.
>>
>>     No reaction.
>
> I'm not a sysop, so I can't reproduce the problem. You should probably
> provide more detail, but I won't guarantee that I can help.

The page seems to have been deleted successfully by now.


subject: [Foundation-l] Poll about developer payment.

body:
Hello, we are writing to all active developers to survey views on
development and how these might interact with a rewards system that
has been proposed. There has been a discussion about this at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Developer_payment. It would be really
helpful if you could find time to answer the questions at the end of
this email.

Some people believe that Wikimedia could benefit from having certain
MediaWiki features developed or developed more quickly that they
currently are.

However, some of these features might not be coded because we do not
have internal resources to take care of them ourselves. Others do not
exist because no one is doing them, possibly due to low motivation,
being overworked by other tasks, or because no one is aware the
features are requested.

For these reasons, it has been suggested that we create a system which
would influence development activity in certain directions. In short,
that the Wikimedia Foundation offers bounties for certain development
tasks.

In order to take such a decision, we need to determine whether the
solution is potentially a good one, or not (both *technically* and
*socially*). We also wish to explore alternative solutions to increasing
performance and individual satisfaction.

Whilst recognizing that there is nothing wrong or amoral to wish to be
paid or rewarded for volunteer activity, we do not wish to alienate
people who are strongly opposed to the idea, nor donors who gave money
with another dream in mind. As with any system relying on voluntary
activity, use of money as an item of exchange for work is
controversial. What we would like to understand better is how
controversial it is, both for editors and for developers. This poll is
meant to help us understand better what developers' opinions are on
the topic.

A number of questions are included below, but please feel free to not
answer any that you not wish to respond to, particularly if you feel
they are too personal or not relevant to you. Add comments if you
wish, but try to keep them short and clear :-). Any complex proposals
should be added to Meta or sent to wikitech-l.

Please send your answers to anthere9ATyahoo.com.

Note : The reason we are distributing this questionnaire privately rather
than publicly is for the simple reason that some people are
uncomfortable talking about money issues in public. Also, some might
prefer not to enter into public controversies.

All replies will be kept confidential. If any statistics are released,
they will only be aggregate ones, and no comments will be quoted if
the author of them could be identified.

--------------------------------
--------------------------------

Are you, or have you been in the past, involved in development of
MediaWiki or maintenance of the Wikimedia servers?

If so, can you briefly indicate which specific activities you have
done (maintenance of servers, performance improvement, development of
features, debug, interface, "hotline" etc)

Which tasks, if any, really ought to be done, but currently are not?

Are there any tasks that you would like to get involved with but have
not yet done so?

If so, what is preventing becoming more involved with those tasks?

Is there anyone that you would like to be more involved with certain
tasks? If so, which tasks?

Did you find it easy to join the development team? Did you receive
appropriate guidance to allow you to start helping? Do you feel it is
easy now for newcomers to get involved?

If not, what do you think would help new developers to "get in"?

Was there anything in particular that you found helped you to join in?

Are you proud of what you are currently doing?

Do you feel your work is undervalued or under-recognized?

If you are now less involved with the development team than you were
previously, what made you decrease your contribution there?

What is the best reward for your good work, or what way would you prefer to be
rewarded?

Do you think any of the following could help? Thinking only of
technical considerations, please rate the following on this five point
scale from A to B.

A. Yes, I am convinced that could help a lot. I strongly support
B. Yes, it might help eventually. I slightly support this
C. I don't know if this will help. I neither support nor oppose this
D. No, I think it will not be helpful. I am slightly opposed to this
E. I am strongly opposed to this option, whether helpful or not

1. Having paid staff (permanent, full or part time, for example a
sysadmin). (Ie, paying someone for rather loosely defined activity)

2. A system of bounties or similar. For example, a one off contract
for a specific task, such as the development of a feature.

3. An award system : nomination of a "developer of the month" (for a special thank you
time) with an explanation of why. This could be advertised on IRC with
a paypal link on the fundraising page.

4. Another award system. For example, once a year, between one and three
developers could receive an award of the "best developer of the year",
possibly with a price  of hardware or of money, and thank you notes
splashed everywhere.

5. A "get to know me more" system : A special "know more about our developers" page, where each developer may explain how he contributed to the project, add a paypal
link, webpage link etc. This could be prominently linked to from the fundraising page.

6. Professional training to some of the developers if the Wikimedia Foundation could secure free or reduced price training.

7. Make our third global press releases oriented toward development issues, in order to attract new contributors for software and hardware issues. Focus on tech news site for promotion.

8. A meet-up for developers to work together occasionally (in Germany perhaps, with round of beers paid by the foundation :-))

9. A big clean up of the development pages on Meta, and clearer paths
to help new developers to "jump in".

10. Nomination of "organiser(s)" whose role would be to clean up the
list of tasks to do, clarify priorities, go around asking who could do
that, attract volunteers etc...

11. Please add your own ideas below.

Would you be interested to make a living directly or undirectly from Wikip?dia ?

If the Board were to hire staff, what type of staff do you think would be most helpful?

Do you think staff should be hired internally or externally? (ie, someone already volunteering, or someone who is not a participant)

If the Foundation were hiring, would you consider applying for a
development position?

How would you summarize your view on the proposed bounty system?
Strongly support / support/ neutral/ opposed/ strongly opposed/ undecided.

If opposed, please briefly indicate why.

If the Board decided to use a bounty system, would you try to get involved to get some of the bounties?

Do you feel your motivation level would be increased or decreased through the use of a bounty system?

If you are opposed to a bounty system, would its implementation cause you to decrease your level of contribution?

Please cite three tasks that you feel would be well suited to a bounty  system.

Given that we would roughly evaluate the number of hours for a task, how much do you think should be given for a bounty (ie, amount of money per hour)? Alternatively, how much would you suggest the Foundation should offer for the tasks you mentioned just above?

What do you think would be the largest benefit of implementing a bounty system?

What do you think would be the largest harm caused by a bounty system?

Do you have your own pay pal account?

Would you be interested in having a little bio about you and your achievement on WMF site ?

Would you be interested in having a link on the site whereby users could donate money to you via this account?

Would you be interested in receiving professional training?

If developers were to be awarded special prizes by the Board, would you prefer to receive money or hardware?

Are there any ways of improving organization that you feel you can commit yourself to right now? For example, cleaning up pages, writing documentation, coaching newbies, writing technical press releases, improving the bug tracking system, setting up a "tech news" reporting page, playing the pom pom girl?

Please send your answers to anthere9ATyahoo.com.

-------------------------
-------------------------

We thank you for your time and attention, and hope you will agree to participate to this survey. As board members and representants of all wikipedians, it is important to Angela and I that we take decisions which will be at the same time beneficial to the project, beneficial for WMF, consistent with our shared values and agreeable to the community.

Anthere

---------------------------------
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body:
Hello, we are writing to all active developers to survey views on
development and how these might interact with a rewards system that
has been proposed. There has been a discussion about this at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Developer_payment. It would be really
helpful if you could find time to answer the questions at the end of
this email.

Some people believe that Wikimedia could benefit from having certain
MediaWiki features developed or developed more quickly that they
currently are.

However, some of these features might not be coded because we do not
have internal resources to take care of them ourselves. Others do not
exist because no one is doing them, possibly due to low motivation,
being overworked by other tasks, or because no one is aware the
features are requested.

For these reasons, it has been suggested that we create a system which
would influence development activity in certain directions. In short,
that the Wikimedia Foundation offers bounties for certain development
tasks.

In order to take such a decision, we need to determine whether the
solution is potentially a good one, or not (both *technically* and
*socially*). We also wish to explore alternative solutions to increasing
performance and individual satisfaction.

Whilst recognizing that there is nothing wrong or amoral to wish to be
paid or rewarded for volunteer activity, we do not wish to alienate
people who are strongly opposed to the idea, nor donors who gave money
with another dream in mind. As with any system relying on voluntary
activity, use of money as an item of exchange for work is
controversial. What we would like to understand better is how
controversial it is, both for editors and for developers. This poll is
meant to help us understand better what developers' opinions are on
the topic.

A number of questions are included below, but please feel free to not
answer any that you not wish to respond to, particularly if you feel
they are too personal or not relevant to you. Add comments if you
wish, but try to keep them short and clear :-). Any complex proposals
should be added to Meta or sent to wikitech-l.

Please send your answers to anthere9ATyahoo.com.

Note : The reason we are distributing this questionnaire privately rather
than publicly is for the simple reason that some people are
uncomfortable talking about money issues in public. Also, some might
prefer not to enter into public controversies.

All replies will be kept confidential. If any statistics are released,
they will only be aggregate ones, and no comments will be quoted if
the author of them could be identified.

--------------------------------
--------------------------------

Are you, or have you been in the past, involved in development of
MediaWiki or maintenance of the Wikimedia servers?

If so, can you briefly indicate which specific activities you have
done (maintenance of servers, performance improvement, development of
features, debug, interface, "hotline" etc)

Which tasks, if any, really ought to be done, but currently are not?

Are there any tasks that you would like to get involved with but have
not yet done so?

If so, what is preventing becoming more involved with those tasks?

Is there anyone that you would like to be more involved with certain
tasks? If so, which tasks?

Did you find it easy to join the development team? Did you receive
appropriate guidance to allow you to start helping? Do you feel it is
easy now for newcomers to get involved?

If not, what do you think would help new developers to "get in"?

Was there anything in particular that you found helped you to join in?

Are you proud of what you are currently doing?

Do you feel your work is undervalued or under-recognized?

If you are now less involved with the development team than you were
previously, what made you decrease your contribution there?

What is the best reward for your good work, or what way would you prefer to be
rewarded?

Do you think any of the following could help? Thinking only of
technical considerations, please rate the following on this five point
scale from A to B.

A. Yes, I am convinced that could help a lot. I strongly support
B. Yes, it might help eventually. I slightly support this
C. I don't know if this will help. I neither support nor oppose this
D. No, I think it will not be helpful. I am slightly opposed to this
E. I am strongly opposed to this option, whether helpful or not

1. Having paid staff (permanent, full or part time, for example a
sysadmin). (Ie, paying someone for rather loosely defined activity)

2. A system of bounties or similar. For example, a one off contract
for a specific task, such as the development of a feature.

3. An award system : nomination of a "developer of the month" (for a special thank you
time) with an explanation of why. This could be advertised on IRC with
a paypal link on the fundraising page.

4. Another award system. For example, once a year, between one and three
developers could receive an award of the "best developer of the year",
possibly with a price  of hardware or of money, and thank you notes
splashed everywhere.

5. A "get to know me more" system : A special "know more about our developers" page, where each developer may explain how he contributed to the project, add a paypal
link, webpage link etc. This could be prominently linked to from the fundraising page.

6. Professional training to some of the developers if the Wikimedia Foundation could secure free or reduced price training.

7. Make our third global press releases oriented toward development issues, in order to attract new contributors for software and hardware issues. Focus on tech news site for promotion.

8. A meet-up for developers to work together occasionally (in Germany perhaps, with round of beers paid by the foundation :-))

9. A big clean up of the development pages on Meta, and clearer paths
to help new developers to "jump in".

10. Nomination of "organiser(s)" whose role would be to clean up the
list of tasks to do, clarify priorities, go around asking who could do
that, attract volunteers etc...

11. Please add your own ideas below.

Would you be interested to make a living directly or undirectly from Wikip?dia ?

If the Board were to hire staff, what type of staff do you think would be most helpful?

Do you think staff should be hired internally or externally? (ie, someone already volunteering, or someone who is not a participant)

If the Foundation were hiring, would you consider applying for a
development position?

How would you summarize your view on the proposed bounty system?
Strongly support / support/ neutral/ opposed/ strongly opposed/ undecided.

If opposed, please briefly indicate why.

If the Board decided to use a bounty system, would you try to get involved to get some of the bounties?

Do you feel your motivation level would be increased or decreased through the use of a bounty system?

If you are opposed to a bounty system, would its implementation cause you to decrease your level of contribution?

Please cite three tasks that you feel would be well suited to a bounty  system.

Given that we would roughly evaluate the number of hours for a task, how much do you think should be given for a bounty (ie, amount of money per hour)? Alternatively, how much would you suggest the Foundation should offer for the tasks you mentioned just above?

What do you think would be the largest benefit of implementing a bounty system?

What do you think would be the largest harm caused by a bounty system?

Do you have your own pay pal account?

Would you be interested in having a little bio about you and your achievement on WMF site ?

Would you be interested in having a link on the site whereby users could donate money to you via this account?

Would you be interested in receiving professional training?

If developers were to be awarded special prizes by the Board, would you prefer to receive money or hardware?

Are there any ways of improving organization that you feel you can commit yourself to right now? For example, cleaning up pages, writing documentation, coaching newbies, writing technical press releases, improving the bug tracking system, setting up a "tech news" reporting page, playing the pom pom girl?

Please send your answers to anthere9ATyahoo.com.

-------------------------
-------------------------

We thank you for your time and attention, and hope you will agree to participate to this survey. As board members and representants of all wikipedians, it is important to Angela and I that we take decisions which will be at the same time beneficial to the project, beneficial for WMF, consistent with our shared values and agreeable to the community.

Anthere

---------------------------------
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body:
Hello, we are writing to all active developers to survey views on
development and how these might interact with a rewards system that
has been proposed. There has been a discussion about this at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Developer_payment. It would be really
helpful if you could find time to answer the questions at the end of
this email.

Some people believe that Wikimedia could benefit from having certain
MediaWiki features developed or developed more quickly that they
currently are.

However, some of these features might not be coded because we do not
have internal resources to take care of them ourselves. Others do not
exist because no one is doing them, possibly due to low motivation,
being overworked by other tasks, or because no one is aware the
features are requested.

For these reasons, it has been suggested that we create a system which
would influence development activity in certain directions. In short,
that the Wikimedia Foundation offers bounties for certain development
tasks.

In order to take such a decision, we need to determine whether the
solution is potentially a good one, or not (both *technically* and
*socially*). We also wish to explore alternative solutions to increasing
performance and individual satisfaction.

Whilst recognizing that there is nothing wrong or amoral to wish to be
paid or rewarded for volunteer activity, we do not wish to alienate
people who are strongly opposed to the idea, nor donors who gave money
with another dream in mind. As with any system relying on voluntary
activity, use of money as an item of exchange for work is
controversial. What we would like to understand better is how
controversial it is, both for editors and for developers. This poll is
meant to help us understand better what developers' opinions are on
the topic.

A number of questions are included below, but please feel free to not
answer any that you not wish to respond to, particularly if you feel
they are too personal or not relevant to you. Add comments if you
wish, but try to keep them short and clear :-). Any complex proposals
should be added to Meta or sent to wikitech-l.

Please send your answers to anthere9ATyahoo.com.

Note : The reason we are distributing this questionnaire privately rather
than publicly is for the simple reason that some people are
uncomfortable talking about money issues in public. Also, some might
prefer not to enter into public controversies.

All replies will be kept confidential. If any statistics are released,
they will only be aggregate ones, and no comments will be quoted if
the author of them could be identified.

--------------------------------
--------------------------------

Are you, or have you been in the past, involved in development of
MediaWiki or maintenance of the Wikimedia servers?

If so, can you briefly indicate which specific activities you have
done (maintenance of servers, performance improvement, development of
features, debug, interface, "hotline" etc)

Which tasks, if any, really ought to be done, but currently are not?

Are there any tasks that you would like to get involved with but have
not yet done so?

If so, what is preventing becoming more involved with those tasks?

Is there anyone that you would like to be more involved with certain
tasks? If so, which tasks?

Did you find it easy to join the development team? Did you receive
appropriate guidance to allow you to start helping? Do you feel it is
easy now for newcomers to get involved?

If not, what do you think would help new developers to "get in"?

Was there anything in particular that you found helped you to join in?

Are you proud of what you are currently doing?

Do you feel your work is undervalued or under-recognized?

If you are now less involved with the development team than you were
previously, what made you decrease your contribution there?

What is the best reward for your good work, or what way would you prefer to be
rewarded?

Do you think any of the following could help? Thinking only of
technical considerations, please rate the following on this five point
scale from A to B.

A. Yes, I am convinced that could help a lot. I strongly support
B. Yes, it might help eventually. I slightly support this
C. I don't know if this will help. I neither support nor oppose this
D. No, I think it will not be helpful. I am slightly opposed to this
E. I am strongly opposed to this option, whether helpful or not

1. Having paid staff (permanent, full or part time, for example a
sysadmin). (Ie, paying someone for rather loosely defined activity)

2. A system of bounties or similar. For example, a one off contract
for a specific task, such as the development of a feature.

3. An award system : nomination of a "developer of the month" (for a special thank you
time) with an explanation of why. This could be advertised on IRC with
a paypal link on the fundraising page.

4. Another award system. For example, once a year, between one and three
developers could receive an award of the "best developer of the year",
possibly with a price  of hardware or of money, and thank you notes
splashed everywhere.

5. A "get to know me more" system : A special "know more about our developers" page, where each developer may explain how he contributed to the project, add a paypal
link, webpage link etc. This could be prominently linked to from the fundraising page.

6. Professional training to some of the developers if the Wikimedia Foundation could secure free or reduced price training.

7. Make our third global press releases oriented toward development issues, in order to attract new contributors for software and hardware issues. Focus on tech news site for promotion.

8. A meet-up for developers to work together occasionally (in Germany perhaps, with round of beers paid by the foundation :-))

9. A big clean up of the development pages on Meta, and clearer paths
to help new developers to "jump in".

10. Nomination of "organiser(s)" whose role would be to clean up the
list of tasks to do, clarify priorities, go around asking who could do
that, attract volunteers etc...

11. Please add your own ideas below.

Would you be interested to make a living directly or undirectly from Wikip?dia ?

If the Board were to hire staff, what type of staff do you think would be most helpful?

Do you think staff should be hired internally or externally? (ie, someone already volunteering, or someone who is not a participant)

If the Foundation were hiring, would you consider applying for a
development position?

How would you summarize your view on the proposed bounty system?
Strongly support / support/ neutral/ opposed/ strongly opposed/ undecided.

If opposed, please briefly indicate why.

If the Board decided to use a bounty system, would you try to get involved to get some of the bounties?

Do you feel your motivation level would be increased or decreased through the use of a bounty system?

If you are opposed to a bounty system, would its implementation cause you to decrease your level of contribution?

Please cite three tasks that you feel would be well suited to a bounty  system.

Given that we would roughly evaluate the number of hours for a task, how much do you think should be given for a bounty (ie, amount of money per hour)? Alternatively, how much would you suggest the Foundation should offer for the tasks you mentioned just above?

What do you think would be the largest benefit of implementing a bounty system?

What do you think would be the largest harm caused by a bounty system?

Do you have your own pay pal account?

Would you be interested in having a little bio about you and your achievement on WMF site ?

Would you be interested in having a link on the site whereby users could donate money to you via this account?

Would you be interested in receiving professional training?

If developers were to be awarded special prizes by the Board, would you prefer to receive money or hardware?

Are there any ways of improving organization that you feel you can commit yourself to right now? For example, cleaning up pages, writing documentation, coaching newbies, writing technical press releases, improving the bug tracking system, setting up a "tech news" reporting page, playing the pom pom girl?

Please send your answers to anthere9ATyahoo.com.

-------------------------
-------------------------

We thank you for your time and attention, and hope you will agree to participate to this survey. As board members and representants of all wikipedians, it is important to Angela and I that we take decisions which will be at the same time beneficial to the project, beneficial for WMF, consistent with our shared values and agreeable to the community.

Anthere

---------------------------------
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New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages!
-------------- next part --------------
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body:
Hello, we are writing to all active developers to survey views on
development and how these might interact with a rewards system that
has been proposed. There has been a discussion about this at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Developer_payment. It would be really
helpful if you could find time to answer the questions at the end of
this email.

Some people believe that Wikimedia could benefit from having certain
MediaWiki features developed or developed more quickly that they
currently are.

However, some of these features might not be coded because we do not
have internal resources to take care of them ourselves. Others do not
exist because no one is doing them, possibly due to low motivation,
being overworked by other tasks, or because no one is aware the
features are requested.

For these reasons, it has been suggested that we create a system which
would influence development activity in certain directions. In short,
that the Wikimedia Foundation offers bounties for certain development
tasks.

In order to take such a decision, we need to determine whether the
solution is potentially a good one, or not (both *technically* and
*socially*). We also wish to explore alternative solutions to increasing
performance and individual satisfaction.

Whilst recognizing that there is nothing wrong or amoral to wish to be
paid or rewarded for volunteer activity, we do not wish to alienate
people who are strongly opposed to the idea, nor donors who gave money
with another dream in mind. As with any system relying on voluntary
activity, use of money as an item of exchange for work is
controversial. What we would like to understand better is how
controversial it is, both for editors and for developers. This poll is
meant to help us understand better what developers' opinions are on
the topic.

A number of questions are included below, but please feel free to not
answer any that you not wish to respond to, particularly if you feel
they are too personal or not relevant to you. Add comments if you
wish, but try to keep them short and clear :-). Any complex proposals
should be added to Meta or sent to wikitech-l.

Please send your answers to anthere9ATyahoo.com.

Note : The reason we are distributing this questionnaire privately rather
than publicly is for the simple reason that some people are
uncomfortable talking about money issues in public. Also, some might
prefer not to enter into public controversies.

All replies will be kept confidential. If any statistics are released,
they will only be aggregate ones, and no comments will be quoted if
the author of them could be identified.

--------------------------------
--------------------------------

Are you, or have you been in the past, involved in development of
MediaWiki or maintenance of the Wikimedia servers?

If so, can you briefly indicate which specific activities you have
done (maintenance of servers, performance improvement, development of
features, debug, interface, "hotline" etc)

Which tasks, if any, really ought to be done, but currently are not?

Are there any tasks that you would like to get involved with but have
not yet done so?

If so, what is preventing becoming more involved with those tasks?

Is there anyone that you would like to be more involved with certain
tasks? If so, which tasks?

Did you find it easy to join the development team? Did you receive
appropriate guidance to allow you to start helping? Do you feel it is
easy now for newcomers to get involved?

If not, what do you think would help new developers to "get in"?

Was there anything in particular that you found helped you to join in?

Are you proud of what you are currently doing?

Do you feel your work is undervalued or under-recognized?

If you are now less involved with the development team than you were
previously, what made you decrease your contribution there?

What is the best reward for your good work, or what way would you prefer to be
rewarded?

Do you think any of the following could help? Thinking only of
technical considerations, please rate the following on this five point
scale from A to B.

A. Yes, I am convinced that could help a lot. I strongly support
B. Yes, it might help eventually. I slightly support this
C. I don't know if this will help. I neither support nor oppose this
D. No, I think it will not be helpful. I am slightly opposed to this
E. I am strongly opposed to this option, whether helpful or not

1. Having paid staff (permanent, full or part time, for example a
sysadmin). (Ie, paying someone for rather loosely defined activity)

2. A system of bounties or similar. For example, a one off contract
for a specific task, such as the development of a feature.

3. An award system : nomination of a "developer of the month" (for a special thank you
time) with an explanation of why. This could be advertised on IRC with
a paypal link on the fundraising page.

4. Another award system. For example, once a year, between one and three
developers could receive an award of the "best developer of the year",
possibly with a price  of hardware or of money, and thank you notes
splashed everywhere.

5. A "get to know me more" system : A special "know more about our developers" page, where each developer may explain how he contributed to the project, add a paypal
link, webpage link etc. This could be prominently linked to from the fundraising page.

6. Professional training to some of the developers if the Wikimedia Foundation could secure free or reduced price training.

7. Make our third global press releases oriented toward development issues, in order to attract new contributors for software and hardware issues. Focus on tech news site for promotion.

8. A meet-up for developers to work together occasionally (in Germany perhaps, with round of beers paid by the foundation :-))

9. A big clean up of the development pages on Meta, and clearer paths
to help new developers to "jump in".

10. Nomination of "organiser(s)" whose role would be to clean up the
list of tasks to do, clarify priorities, go around asking who could do
that, attract volunteers etc...

11. Please add your own ideas below.

Would you be interested to make a living directly or undirectly from Wikip?dia ?

If the Board were to hire staff, what type of staff do you think would be most helpful?

Do you think staff should be hired internally or externally? (ie, someone already volunteering, or someone who is not a participant)

If the Foundation were hiring, would you consider applying for a
development position?

How would you summarize your view on the proposed bounty system?
Strongly support / support/ neutral/ opposed/ strongly opposed/ undecided.

If opposed, please briefly indicate why.

If the Board decided to use a bounty system, would you try to get involved to get some of the bounties?

Do you feel your motivation level would be increased or decreased through the use of a bounty system?

If you are opposed to a bounty system, would its implementation cause you to decrease your level of contribution?

Please cite three tasks that you feel would be well suited to a bounty  system.

Given that we would roughly evaluate the number of hours for a task, how much do you think should be given for a bounty (ie, amount of money per hour)? Alternatively, how much would you suggest the Foundation should offer for the tasks you mentioned just above?

What do you think would be the largest benefit of implementing a bounty system?

What do you think would be the largest harm caused by a bounty system?

Do you have your own pay pal account?

Would you be interested in having a little bio about you and your achievement on WMF site ?

Would you be interested in having a link on the site whereby users could donate money to you via this account?

Would you be interested in receiving professional training?

If developers were to be awarded special prizes by the Board, would you prefer to receive money or hardware?

Are there any ways of improving organization that you feel you can commit yourself to right now? For example, cleaning up pages, writing documentation, coaching newbies, writing technical press releases, improving the bug tracking system, setting up a "tech news" reporting page, playing the pom pom girl?

Please send your answers to anthere9ATyahoo.com.

-------------------------
-------------------------

We thank you for your time and attention, and hope you will agree to participate to this survey. As board members and representants of all wikipedians, it is important to Angela and I that we take decisions which will be at the same time beneficial to the project, beneficial for WMF, consistent with our shared values and agreeable to the community.

Anthere

---------------------------------
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New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages!
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Poll about developer payment.

body:
Hello, we are writing to all active developers to survey views on
development and how these might interact with a rewards system that
has been proposed. There has been a discussion about this at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Developer_payment. It would be really
helpful if you could find time to answer the questions at the end of
this email.

Some people believe that Wikimedia could benefit from having certain
MediaWiki features developed or developed more quickly that they
currently are.

However, some of these features might not be coded because we do not
have internal resources to take care of them ourselves. Others do not
exist because no one is doing them, possibly due to low motivation,
being overworked by other tasks, or because no one is aware the
features are requested.

For these reasons, it has been suggested that we create a system which
would influence development activity in certain directions. In short,
that the Wikimedia Foundation offers bounties for certain development
tasks.

In order to take such a decision, we need to determine whether the
solution is potentially a good one, or not (both *technically* and
*socially*). We also wish to explore alternative solutions to increasing
performance and individual satisfaction.

Whilst recognizing that there is nothing wrong or amoral to wish to be
paid or rewarded for volunteer activity, we do not wish to alienate
people who are strongly opposed to the idea, nor donors who gave money
with another dream in mind. As with any system relying on voluntary
activity, use of money as an item of exchange for work is
controversial. What we would like to understand better is how
controversial it is, both for editors and for developers. This poll is
meant to help us understand better what developers' opinions are on
the topic.

A number of questions are included below, but please feel free to not
answer any that you not wish to respond to, particularly if you feel
they are too personal or not relevant to you. Add comments if you
wish, but try to keep them short and clear :-). Any complex proposals
should be added to Meta or sent to wikitech-l.

Please send your answers to anthere9ATyahoo.com.

Note : The reason we are distributing this questionnaire privately rather
than publicly is for the simple reason that some people are
uncomfortable talking about money issues in public. Also, some might
prefer not to enter into public controversies.

All replies will be kept confidential. If any statistics are released,
they will only be aggregate ones, and no comments will be quoted if
the author of them could be identified.

--------------------------------
--------------------------------

Are you, or have you been in the past, involved in development of
MediaWiki or maintenance of the Wikimedia servers?

If so, can you briefly indicate which specific activities you have
done (maintenance of servers, performance improvement, development of
features, debug, interface, "hotline" etc)

Which tasks, if any, really ought to be done, but currently are not?

Are there any tasks that you would like to get involved with but have
not yet done so?

If so, what is preventing becoming more involved with those tasks?

Is there anyone that you would like to be more involved with certain
tasks? If so, which tasks?

Did you find it easy to join the development team? Did you receive
appropriate guidance to allow you to start helping? Do you feel it is
easy now for newcomers to get involved?

If not, what do you think would help new developers to "get in"?

Was there anything in particular that you found helped you to join in?

Are you proud of what you are currently doing?

Do you feel your work is undervalued or under-recognized?

If you are now less involved with the development team than you were
previously, what made you decrease your contribution there?

What is the best reward for your good work, or what way would you prefer to be
rewarded?

Do you think any of the following could help? Thinking only of
technical considerations, please rate the following on this five point
scale from A to B.

A. Yes, I am convinced that could help a lot. I strongly support
B. Yes, it might help eventually. I slightly support this
C. I don't know if this will help. I neither support nor oppose this
D. No, I think it will not be helpful. I am slightly opposed to this
E. I am strongly opposed to this option, whether helpful or not

1. Having paid staff (permanent, full or part time, for example a
sysadmin). (Ie, paying someone for rather loosely defined activity)

2. A system of bounties or similar. For example, a one off contract
for a specific task, such as the development of a feature.

3. An award system : nomination of a "developer of the month" (for a special thank you
time) with an explanation of why. This could be advertised on IRC with
a paypal link on the fundraising page.

4. Another award system. For example, once a year, between one and three
developers could receive an award of the "best developer of the year",
possibly with a price  of hardware or of money, and thank you notes
splashed everywhere.

5. A "get to know me more" system : A special "know more about our developers" page, where each developer may explain how he contributed to the project, add a paypal
link, webpage link etc. This could be prominently linked to from the fundraising page.

6. Professional training to some of the developers if the Wikimedia Foundation could secure free or reduced price training.

7. Make our third global press releases oriented toward development issues, in order to attract new contributors for software and hardware issues. Focus on tech news site for promotion.

8. A meet-up for developers to work together occasionally (in Germany perhaps, with round of beers paid by the foundation :-))

9. A big clean up of the development pages on Meta, and clearer paths
to help new developers to "jump in".

10. Nomination of "organiser(s)" whose role would be to clean up the
list of tasks to do, clarify priorities, go around asking who could do
that, attract volunteers etc...

11. Please add your own ideas below.

Would you be interested to make a living directly or undirectly from Wikip?dia ?

If the Board were to hire staff, what type of staff do you think would be most helpful?

Do you think staff should be hired internally or externally? (ie, someone already volunteering, or someone who is not a participant)

If the Foundation were hiring, would you consider applying for a
development position?

How would you summarize your view on the proposed bounty system?
Strongly support / support/ neutral/ opposed/ strongly opposed/ undecided.

If opposed, please briefly indicate why.

If the Board decided to use a bounty system, would you try to get involved to get some of the bounties?

Do you feel your motivation level would be increased or decreased through the use of a bounty system?

If you are opposed to a bounty system, would its implementation cause you to decrease your level of contribution?

Please cite three tasks that you feel would be well suited to a bounty  system.

Given that we would roughly evaluate the number of hours for a task, how much do you think should be given for a bounty (ie, amount of money per hour)? Alternatively, how much would you suggest the Foundation should offer for the tasks you mentioned just above?

What do you think would be the largest benefit of implementing a bounty system?

What do you think would be the largest harm caused by a bounty system?

Do you have your own pay pal account?

Would you be interested in having a little bio about you and your achievement on WMF site ?

Would you be interested in having a link on the site whereby users could donate money to you via this account?

Would you be interested in receiving professional training?

If developers were to be awarded special prizes by the Board, would you prefer to receive money or hardware?

Are there any ways of improving organization that you feel you can commit yourself to right now? For example, cleaning up pages, writing documentation, coaching newbies, writing technical press releases, improving the bug tracking system, setting up a "tech news" reporting page, playing the pom pom girl?

Please send your answers to anthere9ATyahoo.com.

-------------------------
-------------------------

We thank you for your time and attention, and hope you will agree to participate to this survey. As board members and representants of all wikipedians, it is important to Angela and I that we take decisions which will be at the same time beneficial to the project, beneficial for WMF, consistent with our shared values and agreeable to the community.

Anthere

---------------------------------
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New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages!
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body:
On Thu, 29 Jul 2004 21:03:56 -0400, Chitu Okoli
<cokoli at jmsb.concordia.ca> wrote:

> I am currently working on a couple of research projects involving Wikipedia.
> Two specific projects involve:
> 1. Obtaining a scholarly evaluation of the quality of its articles by
> comparing Wikipedia articles with those of other encyclopedias; and

This part sounds great.

> 2. Mapping the sociological networks of Wikipedians among each other in
> their wiki activities, and the effects of these networks on their individual
> and group performance in Wikipedia.

This part concerns me slightly. Could you explain what you mean by
this please? What would you be doing other than surveying people? Will
it cause any disruption to Wikipedia? Will the users be aware they are
being studied? Will they be able to opt out?

> In return, they would
> have to send you a letter of support indicating that they will be helping
> you to collect the data you need via surveys, etc.

We might be able to help, but we can't guarantee any particular
response rate since completion of the surveys would obviously have to
remain completely optional to the users.

> However, some of the further research I might need to do could need
> substantial help from the Wikimedia Foundation. One particular idea I have
> in mind would be to conduct a survey of Wikipedians to figure out who they
> are, and why they do what they do.

What sort of support were you expecting from us here? Do you want us
to host the surveys? Do you want us to create the database where the
responses will be stored? Or would simply advertising them and linking
to them on an external site be enough? Is there any reason the surveys
would need to be on Wikipedia itself?

The research sounds really interesting and I'd like to know a bit more
about how you intend to conduct it and what effect, if any, you think
it will have on our users.

Angela.


subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: fundraising page - shouldn't we note what we are
	aiming for?

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Marco Krohn <marco.krohn at web.de> wrote on Wikipedia-l:
>
>>....
>>Following the first link I would like to suggest changing
>>two things:
>>
>>* there still is a link to Brion Vibbers notebook fund at the very end of the
>>
>>page. Don't get me wrong, Brion deserves a lot more money than he probably
>>gets through donations, but linking to a page which seems to be outdated
>>doesn't look good to me.
>
>
> The link now goes directly to a PayPal payment form instead of Brion's outdated
> notebook fund page. I plan to add other developers in that section as well.
> More changes and improvements are also planned for the new WMF website that
> Brion is helping us set up.

May I mention that I have some ideas about what to do on this page as
well, and things to do about the developers ? I do not do it right now,
because it is an html page and as such hard to edit. But just in case, I
wish to tell you that I intend to transform some points, so it would be
better that we discuss it to avoid you being upset afterwards because we
change everything again.

Just a thought

>>* the fundraising page doesn't contain information how much money we are
>>aiming for. A potential donator would just see that we have ~20 K$ on our
>>account and many probably will think "well, they probably have enough money".
>
>
> That is because
> 1) We don't have an approved budget
> 2) This is not a real fund drive (the message is en.wikipedia specific)
>
> Daniel Mayer,
> Wikimedia CFO
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Non-member message?

body:
Hello Christian

I told Fire about your issue. He checked in the settings, and saw that
you were properly registered. So, everything should work.
Fire recommand that you contact him in case of any further problem.
Fire at wikimedia.org should work hopefully :-)

ant

Christiaan Briggs wrote:
> When I tried to send messages to the list this morning I got the message
> below (although when I re-subscribed it said I was already a member).
> Any ideas as to why this happened?
>
> Christiaan
>
>> Your mail to 'WikiEN-l' with the subject
>>
>>     Re: [WikiEN-l] Viajero/Zero and Lance6 - POV terms
>>
>> Is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval.
>>
>> The reason it is being held:
>>
>>     Post by non-member to a members-only list
>>
>> Either the message will get posted to the list, or you will receive
>> notification of the moderator's decision.  If you would like to cancel
>> this posting, please visit the following URL:
>


from_name: Ronny Raschkowan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Non-member message?

body:
Christiaan Briggs wrote:

> When I tried to send messages to the list this morning I got the message
> below (although when I re-subscribed it said I was already a member).
> Any ideas as to why this happened?
>
> Christiaan
>
>> Your mail to 'WikiEN-l' with the subject
>>
>>     Re: [WikiEN-l] Viajero/Zero and Lance6 - POV terms
>>
>> Is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval.
>>
>> The reason it is being held:
>>
>>     Post by non-member to a members-only list
>>
>> Either the message will get posted to the list, or you will receive
>> notification of the moderator's decision.  If you would like to cancel
>> this posting, please visit the following URL:

Hello!

The problem should be fixed now. If you will still have the sane
problem, please don't hesitate to say so. :)

Sincerly yours,
Fire


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Personal research grant collaboration request

body:
Hello Chitu,

Just in case... do you by any chance speak french ?

Otherwise, I noted your proposition. Jimbo, Angela and I will answer you
as soon as possible. Meanwhile, I hope that some editors will comment on
your proposition :-)

anthere

Chitu Okoli wrote:
> Dear Wikimedia Foundation,
>
> My name is Chitu Okoli. I am a professor in information systems (MIS) at
> Concordia University in Montr?al, and I've been very interested in Wikipedia
> for a while. (I am also a light Wikipedian, User:cokoli, since March this
> year. In addtion, I've been listening in on foundation-l for a little while
> now.)
>
> I am currently working on a couple of research projects involving Wikipedia.
> Two specific projects involve:
> 1. Obtaining a scholarly evaluation of the quality of its articles by
> comparing Wikipedia articles with those of other encyclopedias; and
> 2. Mapping the sociological networks of Wikipedians among each other in
> their wiki activities, and the effects of these networks on their individual
> and group performance in Wikipedia.
>
> I want to apply for grant funding to support my research, and I would love
> to arrange this in a way that would translate into free computer equipment
> for Wikipedia. For this, I would only need the Wikimedia Foundation's
> organizational support and some technical cooperation. I hope it could be a
> win-win situation where I could receive assistance for my research (and the
> satisfaction of contributing tangibly to what I believe is a worthy cause),
> and the Foundation could hopefully get some valuable resources.
>
> I'd like to work together with you to see what options could work best for
> mutual benefit. Specifically, let me quote my faculty's grant coordinator,
> as he explains quite well the boundaries of what mind be possible:
>
> <<
> Also, with regards to buying and sending equipment to Wikipedia, you
> should be okay doing that.  However, the university may request that the
> equipment be returned to the university at the end of the research project
> i.e. 3 years from the starting date.  So, Wikipedia could use the server
> for 3 years, which would obviously help them by saving them the money in
> the short term to purchase the equipment and in 3 years from now you may
> request from the university that the equipment be donated, sold at a
> discount, returned, etc.  This would have to be negotiated between
> yourself and the Associate Dean and Dean of the business school.
> I would suggest first that you contact Wikipedia to ask them to give you a
> list of the server equipment that they need to buy, but tell them that the
> value cannot exceed say $6000 CDN for example.  I say $6,000 because you
> may get a maximum of $15,000/yr for 3 years, which you would need to hire
> RAs, buy yourself a laptop to travel with, etc.  In return, they would
> have to send you a letter of support indicating that they will be helping
> you to collect the data you need via surveys, etc.
>
>
>
> How I would like the Wikimedia foundation to assist me is in two main ways:
>
> 1. If my research program seems interesting to you, and/or if you believe
> the Foundation could benefit from the equipment that the grant(s) could
> provide, please write me an official letter of support indicating that you
> are willing to offer me necessary assistance in carrying out my research. I
> am certainly NOT asking for financial assistance--rather, I'm trying to help
> provide some. (Besides, after listening in on the fundraising banner
> discussion, Wikimedia Foundation is the last place I'd go asking for money
> :-) Such a letter of support in and of itself would be a great act of
> "support" for me--it would be very helpful in helping me obtain a research
> grant to continue my research.
>
> 2. As far as what actual "support" I would need, for much of my research, I
> don't need anyone from the Wikipedia Foundation to actually do anything for
> me--I am already working off the Wikipedia database dumps, and the
> Wikitech-l provides pretty good technical support. (Thanks Timwi and Brion
> Vibber for helping my research assistant, Claudio.)
>
> However, some of the further research I might need to do could need
> substantial help from the Wikimedia Foundation. One particular idea I have
> in mind would be to conduct a survey of Wikipedians to figure out who they
> are, and why they do what they do. I have in mind something very much along
> the lines of the "Hacker Survey" that Boston Consulting Group conducted on
> SourceForge developers, through the support of the Open Source Developers
> Network. (The results are available in PDF at
> http://www.bcg.com/opensource/BCGHACKERSURVEY.pdf.) I think the Foundation
> could benefit from a similar survey, to better understand who Wikipedians
> are. However, if I were to help conduct this survey (I am a social scientist
> with special training in conducting accurate surveys), I would need special
> access to Wikipedians beyond what a database dump could provide. This is
> just an example to show the kind of "support" I would need that could be
> mutually beneficial. And of course, I'm trying to get funds from outside to
> sponsor this (e.g. I apply for a grant to pay the Foundation for developer
> time to help create the surveys).
>
>
> To be explicit, what I hope to offer the Wikimedia Foundation (subject to
> grant award) would be:
> 1. Free hardware for about three years or so (depending on the grant terms).
> 2. Consulting/developer fees for specific projects that might require more
> time by board members and developers.
>
>
> Please post your thoughts and comments on this. I'd like you to help make
> this a proposal that could help both me and the Wikimedia Foundation.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Chitu Okoli, PhD
> Assistant Professor in Management Information Systems
> John Molson School of Business
> Concordia University, Montr?al, Canada
>
> Phone: +1 (514) 848-2424 x2967
> cokoli at jmsb.concordia.ca
> http://chitu.okoli.org/mis


subject: [Foundation-l] Membership fees proposal

body:
Mark wrote:
> I haven't followed most of the discussions, so this is just a first
> impression, but a fee of $60 seemed a little bit steep...

There is the option of paying less if you are an active user. The
minimum is $6 for those who have edited for a certain length of time.
We encourage people to pay $60 if they can afford it, but if they feel
they can't, they can contribute anything between $6 and $60 according
to their personal financial means.

Angela.


subject: [Foundation-l] Membership fees proposal


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Foundation-l] Membership fees proposal

body:
I wonder if a regular fee of $60 will raise much more than one of $30, as
certainly much less people will take the bait on such a considerable sum.
After all it does not buy them much except the satisfaction that they
contributed to a healthy Wikipedia. I have no idea where the optimum lies,
we would have to ask some economist to measure the price elasticity of a
clean conscience and/or ideological zeal, but this is a considerable amount
for people with average income. $30 sounds much better to me, keep the
goodies like a coffee mug with logo for people who add an extra donation of
$30 or more. Yes people can opt for a $6 contribution, but we would not want
to push them in that direction, would we?

Since this choice is pretty arbitrary and a suboptimal choice will cost us,
could we not keep a anonymous vote of what people would be willing to pay?
There are nice applets that make this a quickie to pull off.

On the other hand $500 to $1000 sounds ridiculously low for a company that
wants to donate. We might offer to add their logo on a sponsor page, but
that should start at no less than $10,000 IMO. If they want to be recognized
as sponsors they should have made a real difference.

Erik Zachte


subject: [Foundation-l] Membership fees proposal


body:
Daniel wrote:
"We might want to consider putting a bounty on creating a bot that could do
that."

I can't help but notice that our CFO repeatedly feels the urge to spend
money where other options have not been exhausted (or even tried) ;)

Erik Zachte


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] murder versus kill

body:
On 07/30/04 03:32, Delirium wrote:

>   Even in cases where nearly everyone agrees the killing was
> wholly unjustified, like with the Holocaust, it sounds odd when you use
> the term "murdered", as some of our articles currently do---it sounds
> like you're going out of your way to say "this is what happened AND PS
> IT WAS BAD!" rather than just reporting the facts.  I can't think of
> many uses of the word "murder" apart from "[person] was convicted of
> murder" that don't sound like that, actually.

Yep. As [[NPOV]] puts it:

"Karada offered the following excellent advice in the context of the Saddam
Hussein article:

     "You won't even need to say he was evil. That's why the article on Hitler
does not start with "Hitler was a bad man" -- we don't need to, his deeds
convict him a thousand times over. We just list the facts of the Holocaust
dispassionately, and the voices of the dead cry out afresh in a way that makes
name-calling both pointless and unnecessary. Please do the same: list Saddam's
crimes, cite your sources."

Saying that they killed someone for not helping them put an anti-tank
explosive outside the person's house ... does such an action really need
a great big "AND PS IT WAS BAD!"? I maintain that it does not, and that
it does the page discredit to do so.

Understate. Let the facts speak for themselves.

- d.


from_name: S. Vertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] murder versus kill

body:
--- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

> Understate. Let the facts speak for themselves.

This is exactly the way to go.

S

__________________________________
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New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Viajero/Zero and Lance6 - POV terms

body:
Mark wrote: "I don't know whether Harold Shipman still
denies murder, but, if he admits it, then surely
calling him a murderer is justified and NPOV. If he
disputes it, then calling him a 'convicted murderer, a
charge that he still denies' seems fair."

Sannse replied: "It's rather pedantic and irrelevant
to the discussion, but Shipman isn't denying anything
any more - he's dead."

I think Mark is right about a great many things, but
leaving it to a murderer to decide how their history
is written is not one of them. These days even a guy
who goes postal on an office full of people is still
just an "alleged murderer."  If we just agreed that
murder has a real definition, in religious, (old
government), social (culture trancending governments)
and legal (recent law) contexts, then to let someone
denial of their extremely low social status of
"murderer" by simple matter of opinion is... POV. We
dont consider POV unless its attributed, and in that
case, I disagree that a denial should be so closely
attached to the facts, as if they were in the least
related.

Yes, I know; this energy should be going toward
articles. ;)
-~~~

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


body:
Daniel wrote:
"So do you have anything other than snide remarks to add? ;)"

If you mean, do it myself, no, I'm afraid not, pretty busy. But I see
prospective developers from time to time ask how they can contribute. This
would be something that does not require intimate knowledge of MediaWiki
internals, so I'd say give it a try.

"The person creating it would have to be *very* trusted and their bot code
vetted for security purposes."

I wonder, many developers write applications which will need to run in a
secured environment, so much so that they don't get access to the live
version themselves. They test it on a fake account. Standard practice. Yes,
an audit would be wise.

Erik Zachte


from_name: Mark Richards

body:
The call him anything you like!

--- sannse <sannse at tiscali.co.uk> wrote:

> It's rather pedantic and irrelevant to the
> discussion, but Shipman isn't
> denying anything any more - he's dead.
>
> --sannse
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mark Richards" <marich712000 at yahoo.com>
> To: <wpmail at pcbartlett.com>; "English Wikipedia"
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2004 5:51 PM
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Viajero/Zero and Lance6
> - POV terms
>
>
> > Well, there comes a point where a fact is no
> longer
> > disputed by any significant number of people. I
> don't
> > know whether Harold Shipman still denies murder,
> but,
> > if he admits it, then surely calling him a
> murderer is
> > justified and NPOV. If he disputes it, then
> calling
> > him a 'convicted murderer, a charge that he still
> > denies' seems fair.
> > Mark
> >
> > --- Pete/Pcb21 <pete_pcb21_wpmail at pcbartlett.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Geoffrey Burling wrote:
> > >
> > > [Examples]
> > > > *President Bush, alleged cocaine abuser
> > > > *The CIA allegedly sold drugs in Los Angeles
> to
> > > fund the Contras in Nicaraugua
> > > > *Kenneth Lay, indicted for corporate fraud
> > > > *Martha Stewart, convicted of insider trading
> > >
> > > > I think is a solution that would nicely fit
> with
> > > the rules of NPOV.
> > >
> > > I thought that too. Interestingly though UK
> > > broadcasting rules are more
> > > relaxed about this.
> > >
> > > For instance, programmes do not have to say
> "Harold
> > > Shipman, convicted
> > > of mass murder,...". They can, and do, say "Mass
> > > murderer Harold
> > > Shipman...". Once someone has been convicted of
> X,
> > > that person doesn't
> > > appear to have recourse if someone calls them an
> > > Xer.
> > >
> > > Is this a case where WP NPOV exacts a higher
> > > standard than supposedly
> > > neutral TV news programmes?
> > >
> > > Pete
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages!
> > http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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body:
Fair point, and in the case of the postal worker I
think you're totally right - I guess I was thinking
more of the O.J.s of the world.
Mark

--- "S. Vertigo" <sewev at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Mark wrote: "I don't know whether Harold Shipman
> still
> denies murder, but, if he admits it, then surely
> calling him a murderer is justified and NPOV. If he
> disputes it, then calling him a 'convicted murderer,
> a
> charge that he still denies' seems fair."
>
> Sannse replied: "It's rather pedantic and irrelevant
> to the discussion, but Shipman isn't denying
> anything
> any more - he's dead."
>
> I think Mark is right about a great many things, but
> leaving it to a murderer to decide how their history
> is written is not one of them. These days even a guy
> who goes postal on an office full of people is still
> just an "alleged murderer."  If we just agreed that
> murder has a real definition, in religious, (old
> government), social (culture trancending
> governments)
> and legal (recent law) contexts, then to let someone
> denial of their extremely low social status of
> "murderer" by simple matter of opinion is... POV. We
> dont consider POV unless its attributed, and in that
> case, I disagree that a denial should be so closely
> attached to the facts, as if they were in the least
> related.
>
> Yes, I know; this energy should be going toward
> articles. ;)
> -~~~
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________
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from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Membership fees proposal

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Anthere wrote:
>
>> The proposal is available at
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Membership_fees.
>>
>> This proposal was set based on discussions with many editors, on
>> meta, on irc, by email. Though it is probably not perfect, I believe
>> it is a fair proposal trying to take into consideration all comments
>> made.
>
>
> I haven't followed most of the discussions, so this is just a first
> impression, but a fee of $60 seemed a little bit steep, so it
> surprised me when I first saw it.  I'm not sure it's actually a bad
> idea, but it was a bit surprising.  I'm not 100% sure, but I think
> it's more common to have a somewhat lower minimum membership fee, and
> then have higher levels with additional mini-benefits for those who
> can afford them.  Of course, part of that is my personal budgeting: I
> can see myself buying a $20-$30 membership right now without too much
> thought, but a $60 one would require a bit more consideration, and I
> might end up just not joining at all if there's no intermediate $30
> option.  If that's something that a lot of other people would also do,
> that could be a problem.  (Of course, it might also be balanced by
> some people who maybe would've only given $30 but are now encouraged
> to give $60, so I'm not sure which one results in the foundation
> raising more money overall.)

No organization should depend on membership fees as a major revenue
source.  If memberships produce a small net income over the cost of
administration we should be happy.  What we would probably want from
memberships is the sense of commitment that tells us that these people
are here for the longer term.  When membership fees are kept low, it
gives us a pool of people who can be asked to contribute when needed.
Those members may be more generous when asked.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Membership fees proposal


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's work together

body:
Once again, I'm making a plea that we all work together toward the
common goal of making an encyclopedia of useful human knowledge.

Let's not use Wikipedia as a forum to spread our own views and discredit
the views or reputations of others.

But let's ensure that _all_ points of view relevant to any given topic
are fairly and accurately represented. When public opinion (or even
expert opinion) is divided on any matter, lofty or trivial -- then we
need to step back from making any pronouncements of fact. In such a
case, we need to _include_ every relevant POV (i.e., Point Of View).

I'm seeing far too many objection to including POV in articles. "That
was a POV edit, etc." Nonsense! When an article is one-sided, the _only_
way to balance it and make it neutral is TO INCLUDE ALTERNATE POINTS OF
VIEW.

The very definition of an edit which promotes the NPOV is to DESCRIBE
SOMEBODY'S POINT OF VIEW.

It would help if people would stop using "POV" as a synonym for bias.
The trouble with using "POV" as a slang term for "biased" is that it
blurs the distinction between bias (which does _not_ belong in articles)
and Points Of View (which _do_ belong in articles, properly described,
attributed and sourced).

I'm really tired of hearing criticism about "POV edits" or "adding POV"
to an article, as if these were obvious violations, meriting little more
than an instant revert. Well, it's obvious to everyone but me and
Jimbo!!!

I ask Jimbo Wales to comment on this disturbing trend. Please, Jimbo,
settle once and for all whether the project you and Larry founded
APPROVES or DISAPPROVES of putting POV (i.e., points of view) into
articles. I don't expect a quick answer, because it's such a big and
crucial question, but I look forward to discussing this at the meeting
in Boston tomorrow.

The fate of Wikipedia hangs on it. We must all "hang together" on the
question of how to deal with multiple or conflicting points of view
(POV), or we'll all "hang separately" (as Ben Franklin put it) --
destroyed one at a time by our enemies.

It is NOT necessary for there to be so much bickering, so many edit
wars, so many settled questions rehashed. That's why people leave, they
can't stand the heat. So I would like us all to chill out about all
that.

Let's remember why we were attracted to Wikipedia in the first place. To
help create useful and accurate articles. (If there's a dispute about
any point, we apply the NPOV policy and say "According to A, B is true;
and according to X, Y is true" and leave it at that. What could be
simpler?)

Ed Poor
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body:
Bonjour Anthere,

> Just in case... do you by any chance speak french ?

Oui, j'en parle, mais comme une langue s?condaire (je viens du Nig?ria), et
pourtant la vari?t? qu?b?coise. Peut-?tre il serait mieux dire que je parle
[[franglais]] :-)

~ Chitu

-----Original Message-----
From: anthere9 at yahoo.com [mailto:anthere9 at yahoo.com]
Sent: July 29, 2004 9:40 PM
To: foundation-l at wikimedia.org
Subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Personal research grant collaboration request
Importance: Low

Hello Chitu,

Just in case... do you by any chance speak french ?

Otherwise, I noted your proposition. Jimbo, Angela and I will answer you
as soon as possible. Meanwhile, I hope that some editors will comment on
your proposition :-)

anthere

Chitu Okoli wrote:
>> Dear Wikimedia Foundation,
>>
>> My name is Chitu Okoli. I am a professor in information systems (MIS) at
>> Concordia University in Montr?al, and I've been very interested in
>Wikipedia
>> for a while. (I am also a light Wikipedian, User:cokoli, since March
>this
>> year. In addtion, I've been listening in on foundation-l for a little
>while
>> now.)


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Personal research on talk pages

body:
> From: Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] No personal original research policy

> Recently someone has been searching for essays I have
> written outside of Wikipedia, and has been trying to get
> people to discuss them on a Talk page for a Wikipedia
> article.

Huh? Those policies don't apply to Talk pages. What goes on on a Talk page
should be no big deal, as long as it has at least the iota of a scintilla of
a fragment of a shred of tangential relevance to the article it
discusses. And as long as it doesn't occupy so much space as to constitute a
drain on storage resources and isn't a hidden attempt to hijack Wikipedia
resources as a personal website. Why fuss about it? If you think your stuff
doesn't belong in Wikipedia, mention it in the discussion and let it go. Time
to worry about it when original research goes into an _article_.  My $0.02,
anyway.


subject: [Foundation-l] Membership fees proposal

body:
--- Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:

> It seems that the price should be set near the price of a decent
> magazine subscription, which in the US would be around USD $30 a year.
> That's how many public broadcasters in the US rationalize their
> membership drives.

We should have several different membership levels starting at $30 a year.

One possible structure:

$30 a year ($2.5/month): Standard
$60 a year ($5/month): Silver
$120 a year ($10/month): Gold
$240 a year ($20/month): Platinum
#240+ a year: Sustaining (yep, goes up a category)

And of course anybody who is active on any Wikimedia project could be a
volunteer-level member by just signing-up (and maybe paying a nominal fee). A
parallel discount fee structure should also exist (set it at 20% of the regular
fee structure and reserve it for special cases - such as for nations where the
cost of living is really low).

Going up each level should also mean the person gets more wampum (shirts, mugs,
etc). We could reach out to various businesses to ask for wampum donations
(discount cards, free gifts, etc). This may complicate the discount fee
structure though. Either way getting the gifts may require a separate payment
for shipping. It will also be some time before we could set up such a system.

Just some ideas to chew on.

-- Daniel Mayer

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subject: [Foundation-l] Membership fees proposal


from_name: Chitu Okoli

body:
Hi Angela,

Thanks for your responses. Here are my comments:

>> I am currently working on a couple of research projects involving
>Wikipedia.
>> Two specific projects involve:
>> 1. Obtaining a scholarly evaluation of the quality of its articles by
>> comparing Wikipedia articles with those of other encyclopedias; and
>
ANGELA> This part sounds great.
CHITU> I think this study is very important both for Wikipedia's publicity,
and also for my research program, so that I can "prove" to other scholars
the legitimacy of researching Wikipedia. You know the usual reactions: "You
mean ANYONE can write whatever they like? How do they control this?" ... and
so on. "Scholarly types" are even more uncomfortable than average with these
ideas. I believe such a study would help provide verification in terms they
understand of what I already believe (but am trying to prove with scholastic
rigour): that Wikipedia is CURRENTLY a top-notch encyclopedia, and its only
uphill from here.

>> 2. Mapping the sociological networks of Wikipedians among each other in
>> their wiki activities, and the effects of these networks on their
>individual
>> and group performance in Wikipedia.
>
ANGELA> This part concerns me slightly. Could you explain what you mean by
ANGELA> this please? What would you be doing other than surveying people?
Will
ANGELA> it cause any disruption to Wikipedia? Will the users be aware they
are
ANGELA> being studied? Will they be able to opt out?

CHITU> Actually, this part is much more benign than it sounds. This project
(which I am currently working on as we speak) doesn't involve any
involvement at all by Wikipedians or the Wikimedia Foundation. I've
replicated the English Wikipedia using a database dump, and I'm analyzing
the historical entries directly via SQL queries and special social
networking software to observe these relationships. No problemo. As much as
possible of my research will work directly from my replicated Wikipedia
installations and will involve no direct interaction with Wikipedia or
Wikipedians.

>> In return, they would
>> have to send you a letter of support indicating that they will be
>helping
>> you to collect the data you need via surveys, etc.
>
ANGELA> We might be able to help, but we can't guarantee any particular
ANGELA> response rate since completion of the surveys would obviously have
to
ANGELA> remain completely optional to the users.

CHITU> Of course; response rates are a basic risk with any survey research.
Which is why I LOVE the database dumps--the data is all right there! But for
this kind of investigation, we would have to beg the users to respond as
usual. For the SourceForge hacker survey
(http://www.bcg.com/opensource/BCGHACKERSURVEY.pdf), they got 526 responses
out of 1,648 developers contacted--an awesome response rate of 34.2%. On the
other hand, when they surveyed the Linux Kernel group, they got 134 out of
around 4000--a measly 2.4%.

>> However, some of the further research I might need to do could need
>> substantial help from the Wikimedia Foundation. One particular idea I
>have
>> in mind would be to conduct a survey of Wikipedians to figure out who
>they
>> are, and why they do what they do.
>
ANGELA> What sort of support were you expecting from us here? Do you want us
ANGELA> to host the surveys? Do you want us to create the database where the
ANGELA> responses will be stored? Or would simply advertising them and
linking
ANGELA> to them on an external site be enough? Is there any reason the
surveys
ANGELA> would need to be on Wikipedia itself?

CHITU> I was thinking of something like a temporary link (perhaps for a week
or two) on all pages (kind of like the fundraising banner) asking for
participation in the survey. This link could link to an external Web survey
host that I would manage directly, so that it would not need to expend any
further Wikipedia/Wikimedia resources other than the links. Of course, the
survey questionnaire itself would have to be fully approved by the Wikimedia
Foundation. I was thinking of at least two different surveys--one for
Wikipedia readers, available for every article page, and a second one for
Wikipedia contributors, available only when they click "Edit this page".
Just thoughts out load. Either way, I would only do what was approved by the
Wikimedia Foundation.