from_name: Florence Devouard

body:
this is not an official announcement

==========

I thought it would be nice to offer a little update with regards to the
organisation, in particular from a "person" perspective.

I outlined the various areas of activities of the Foundation, to try to
identify in which areas we were staffed and in which areas we were
either understaffed or not staffed at all.
By staff, I do not necessarily mean "employee" as it may be volunteers
from the community, interns, pro-bono help, contractors etc...

But the fact is, when an area is under-staffed, the job either is not
done at all, or poorly done by other staff members (on top of their
regular activity), or poorly done by board members (who can not take
care of what they should take care of). These under staffed areas or not
staffed areas should be a focus of attention.

When I accepted to become chair of the board, I indicated that one of my
priorities would be to work on the organization of the Foundation. I
renewed that wish early 2007, making it a top priority along with
"quality", "recognition as a charity" and "outreach".

I also wanted to give you a feedback on what has been achieved in terms
of organization since then, and what is currently still not satisfactory.

----------

I have identified several areas

* Corporate and Financial issues (finances, accounting, audit)
* Fundraising/Grants
* Business development
* Legal
* Press/messaging and Communication
* Events
* Chapters
* Software
* Hardware/network
* Charity activity
* "Human resources"

And I was trying to identify which "departments" needed more work and if
so, of which sort.

----------

Financial issues

First, strictly speaking corporate issues.
We updated the bylaws at the end of 2006, first major update since the
first version written by Alex Roshuk and approved by Jimmy Wales. The
new version mostly intended to reflect the reality of our organization
mission, activity, organization etc...
The second version was largely written by Brad Patrick, with some
comments by the board. I believe these new bylaws will stand for a long
time.
We have drafted a new vision and mission statement, which hopefully will
be agreed upon soon.
We are also now listed as charity on GuideStar.

We successfully finished the audit of our 3 first years of operation at
the end of 2006. This was a major work. We will go on having our
statements audited in the future.
I must say that the new year is beginning slowly on audit matters, but I
am not worried about that and think we have more pressing issues at
hand. Audit company made us several recommandations for improvement, and
a lot has indeed improved in the past few weeks. I'll plan an update for
you on such matters after next board meeting.

Carolyn, our COO, is given us frequent financial updates (do not worry,
we will not close in 3 months), and a part time bookeeper is currently
being added to the team. We have set up a conflict of interest policy,
confidentiality agreement is on its way. A lot has been done in the past
few months. I wish that you understand how very important this area is,
even though it is largely away from your eyes. As a charity, we have
some obligations to respect. Since most of our revenue comes from
donations, we also have a duty to be as transparent as possible. There
were huge progress on this side.

On the less positive side, we were unable to provide at the end of the
year a public annual report (too much to do).
We still do not have the 990 documents perfectly fixed and they are not
uploaded on the Foundation side. It is on its way though.
There are still many internal controls to set into place as well (such
as record keeping policy, reimbursement policy etc...). A large part of
this should be done by the board itself.
We lack a proper bank, which would fit our needs.
We also would need help from professionals to advise us on international
issues.

-----------

* Fundraising/Grants

We just finished our biggest fundraising ever. The donor management has
been greatly improved thanks to David Strauss. Thank you letters were a
significant part of the office activity for a while.

On the not so positive side, we should be able to raise much more than
we are currently doing, in particular from big companies and big
charities. Afaik, no grants were seeked in the past months. And no
formal feedback was offered in regards to last fundraising.

I am not entirely sure we currently have sufficient team on this. More
volunteers may be of great help certainly.

We may find benefits in getting help from a fundraising professional
(either as temporary contractant, or even better, pro-bono).
Currently, we do only online soft fundraising, but we may decide for a
more aggressive fundraising policy in the future (in particular in the USA).

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

* Business development

Lot's of work has been done on this in the past few months. We got some
new sources of funds, a brand new contract for datafeed, more customers.
The income from this source is still pretty limited, but it is a big way
to the future.

Most of our business development is of two kinds. Either services (such
as setting up datafeed and getting paid for this), or brand use (such as
getting royalties when a third party sell a DVD with Wikipedia logo on it).

Datafeed require more technical development, in particular to propose a
wap feed which we do not have yet (tech volunteers here ?)

Brand require
1) fixing trademarks issues
2) brand strategy

I do not think we will hire more people in this very specific area in
the next few months. However, I hope that we can get some pro-bono help
to help us explore our brand strategy and brand marketing.

Business will increase our revenus in the future, but right now, it is
costing a lot from a legal, administrative and technical perspective.

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

* Legal

A lot has been done, a lot is still to be done.
Our legal needs are of several types.
Litigation and conflict resolution (for all the various ongoing legal
threats related to our projects content - this part is the most visible
for you)
Negotiation and drafting of contracts (such as job contract, datafeed
contract)
Intellectual property issues (such as trademarks)
Various legal counseling issues (such as confidentiality agreement,
corporate issues, investment, chapter agreements...)

Our main problem on legal issues is coordination. We get propositions
from various pro-bono lawyers, and legal interns. The legal area we
cover is very vast, and needs close attention in the coming months.

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

* Press/messaging and Communication

The area is getting more organized since the arrival of Sandy, who also
receive some help from many many volunteers (comcom, various press
contacts and interns). Press has become a huge issue in the past months,
eating up a lot of volunteer time. Translation is only taken care of by
volunteers, under the benevolent coordination of Aphaia.

There are many needs in this area, but a lot of it may be done by
volunteers. Hopefully, the volunteer coordinator will bring much help on
this.

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

* Events

Right now, it is essentially Wikimania. At the board retreat, it was
suggested we should do more events. Which is fair, but in all honesty,
we can not absorb more than Wikimania. Doing events is probably more the
job of local chapters, and I suggest we should have a common place where
all events organised by chapters should be listed.

Events are very largely managed by volunteers. Last year, Delphine was
paid for being Wikimania organiser. This year, KJ is paid part time by
Wikia to help, and an administrative assistant will probably be paid by
the Foundation to give an hand. All others are volunteers and we should
give then a big thank you, because it is a lot of work to do, in rather
stressful conditions. No staff member on this, but Theodonarian and
several others are doing a fabulous job.

-----------

* Chapters

The area is getting more organized since the arrival of Delphine, who
also receive some help from many many volunteers.
Big commons areas betweeen Foundation and chapters is
1) promotion of projects (which involve setting up of promotional
material in common)
2) press
3) business development (such as DVD or datafeed)
4) events

We are currently on defining guidelines for chapter creation, chapter
recognition, brand use authorization. The hot potatoe is commercial
brand use authorization.

----------

* Software
* Hardware/network

To put it simply. We currently have 4 developers employed. Others are
volunteers. The websites work with a handful of people, which is a true
miracle. In the past months, Brad has worked hard so that we have better
prices and contracts. So, on the bright side, lot's of work has been
done, and contrarywise to other areas, that shows (the site is working
smoothly).
On the less bright side, we have several software development for
example, which have been pending for a long time. Mix of lack of people
and poor strategy and priority management. Hopefully, more developers
and in particular a CTO should come to strengthen the team in the coming
months.

-----------

* Charity activity

Now, I am thinking very very hard. Hmmmm. Not sure what we really did here.

The website is working ?
Being listed in GuideStar ?
Some of us were contacted by Unesco and participated to some talks ?

Well. We did things, but these were not part of a clear strategy :)

-----------

* "Human resources"

I apology for the ugly term.

The office in St Petersbourg is now only populated with Wikimedia
Foundation staff (Wikia staff has moved somewhere else).

We have a dozen people in the office or Tampa area.
Carolyn (COO), Danny (Grants, business), Barbara (essentially office
assistant), Brion (our tech god), Sandy (communication). We also have
nearby Brad (General Counsel) and Rob (hardware).
We also have half a dozen interns (some of them can be found on irc
sometimes). We get pro-bono help from Lin, a lawyer working in the same
building.
Not in the office, but contractors elsewhere in the world, Tim Starling
and Mark (tech), Delphine (chapters).

Several positions are planned in the near future (from tomorrow to 6
months).

A part-time bookkeeper in the office (ongoing), to second Carolyn.
More developers and in particular a Chief Technical Officer.
One or two volunteers coordinators (announcement just made)
An executive director

A few more words on executive director. We hired a search firm to help
us on this path. Current step is "interview of board members and staff
to better identify what the Foundation is really looking for". I will
inform you of the next steps so that community members may have the
possibility to candidate.
On this very topic, let me clarify that the board asked that as much as
possible, a priority be made for community members to be hired rather
than "unknown people". As recently mentionned on this very list, this
conflicts a bit with having our office in St Petersbourg.

More positions might be opened in the future, but are not clearly
outlined for now.

Amongst the two big issues we need to solve with regards to the people
we employ are
* as an employer, we still do not provide any benefits (such as
healthcare). I have asked Carolyn to help on that, so that we propose
more interesting opportunities for those willing to work for us.
* we wish to involve people from all over the world, not restricting
employees to USA only. Currently, those working "offshore" have to be
their own employers (they are contractants). This is not sustainable in
the long run, so we have to explore more international employment issues.

The fact of dealing with "online" employees put certain issues in
perspective, such as traceability of what they effectively do.

We are still a bit in limbo regarding committees. Roughly, the techco,
the comcom, the chapcom, the transco are working quite well. The fundcom
had hard days, but is recovering. The spcom is basically dead etc...
We need to work more on this, and I believe the volunteer coordinator
may be a great part of the answer :-)

Second, board itself.

The new bylaws and a relevant resolution caused major changes in the way
board members are nominated or elected, numbers, terms etc...
I am happy to say that our current board is pretty good and well
balanced. Whilst there are sometimes disagreements and tensions, we are
much more efficient than before, thanks to various personal
and professional profiles. There is still improvements to bring, but
overall, this is a very good working board.

In next june, 3 of our current board members will finish their terms and
new elections occur. One suggestion recently made was to clarify the
skills we more specifically need on the board, and it is not entirely
impossible that seats open for election be related to a certain set of
skill rather than not. This will be discussed at the next board meeting.

---------

I apology if this was a bit long and possibly a bit confusing for some
of you. I mostly meant to share with you some thoughts I had of some
priorities to work upon. It is quick, but may ring bells.

If you guys know a professional fundraising person: raise your hand
If you guys know a professional in international employment: raise your hand
If you guys know a brand strategist, raise your hand
If you guys wish to be candidate on the next board and want to discuss
the "skilled-oriented board membership", raise your hands

Just food for thoughts

ant


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Update of Foundation organization


list: wikien-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Essjay RFC deleted

body:
On 05/03/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
> William Pietri wrote:

> > This especially concerns me as you used your administrative powers to
> > enforce your minority view in a disagreement in which you were very
> > actively involved. Wouldn't it have been better to let somebody who had
> > less involvement decide the outcome?

> This is becoming more and more epidemic in recent weeks.  It's one of the
> major reasons why I'm seriously considering not contributing further.

You're leaving because I dared use my l33t admin powers to delete in
process an odious pretense at a dispute resolution page under the
rules regarding the colour it assumed in its claim for legitimacy,
*despite* a lynch mob feeling otherwise. How dare I!

It was a lynch mob page. It was only made an RFC to give it colour of
legitimacy. Unfortunately, it failed even those rules and should have
been killed yesterday. The wacky move of moving it to Essjay's
userspace doesn't change that - uncertified RFCs are only kept in
userspace at the subject's explicit request. If it's an RFC, it lives
or dies like one.

Of course, that's nothing compared to people denied a hanging party, as you say.

- d.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 3/5/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip
> If a volunteer strongly believes in the work of the foundation, has
> shown commitment to the project through positions of trust, has shown
> that they will do at least X hours a day, and has assumed much
> responsibility then I think they could be trusted with a position.

Even so, it's hard to put in what you'd like to put in when you have
another full-time obligation.

There are some volunteers whom have been able to volunteer for
Wikimedia without other full time obligations, but they are few and
far between and are not a scalable solution for our needs.

Furthermore, 40 people spending an hour to solve one problem is not
equal to 1 person spending 40 hours.  40 people have the advantage of
a broader perspective, but they fail in almost every other regard. A
great many problems would be far better solved with 40 people for 10
minutes and one person for 20 hours....

Time input vs results for complex tasks is non-linear and I suspect
that the majority of our long term volunteers don't put in enough time
to get out of the you-lose section of the curve.   This might explain
the over abundance we have in people doing patrolling for obvious
vandalism vs more complex 'quality checking' work like sourcing.

> I agree, there are some critical jobs with time-sensitivity that
> cannot be left to volunteers, but volunteers should be used as
> extensively as possible.

I think everyone would agree on that last point. We might just
disagree where the tradeoff point for volunteers is...


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Job: Volunteer Coordinator

body:
Hmmmm

Instead of chatting about the weather, could we talk more about the job
itself ?

Are they some people on this list that might be interested, but are not
sure because they did not entirely understand what the job would encompass ?

Ant


from_name: Delirium

body:
Sebastian Moleski wrote:
> I've recruited and manged a great number of volunteers while working at a
> university. The main problem with them is that, unless they have some sort
> of alternative source of income/wealth, it's just not economically feasible
> for them to put in more than a few hours a week.
>

I'm not sure actually putting in a lot of time is a problem, but I do
agree that employees are better for some things, mainly because of
consistency.  If it's a job that *has* to be done every single week
reliably, then an unpaid volunteer is not necessarily the best choice.
I've worked on Wikipedia-related things for much more than 40 hours some
weeks, but I could not *commit* to working 40 hours every single week
unless I were being paid to do it, because I have other obligations for
my "real life" that sometimes pop up.  As a volunteer I could commit to
"x hours over the next year", even where [x] is large, but I couldn't
commit to being available at any specific time or even specific week.
Since presumably a consistent volunteer coordinator would work better
than one who was available 80 hours one week and 0 the next, I can see
the advantage of hiring someone for the role.

-Mark


from_name: Gwern Branwen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Accountability: bringing back a proposal I made

body:
Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2007 16:07:11 -0500
In-Reply-To: <45EBDB9F.2070808 at wikia.com> (Jimmy Wales's message of "Mon, 05
	Mar 2007 17:58:07 +0900")
Message-ID: <86r6s3wgao.fsf at elan.rh.rit.edu>
User-Agent: Gnus/5.110006 (No Gnus v0.6) Emacs/22.0.95 (gnu/linux)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
--text follows this line--
Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> writes:

> In response to the EssJay scandal, I want to bring back an old
proposal
> of mine from 2 years ago for greater accountability around
credentials:
>
>
  http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-May/022085.html
>
> At the time, this seemed like a plausibly decent idea to me, and
  the
> reaction at the time was mostly positive, with some reasonable
  caveats
> and improvements:
>
>
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-May/thread.htmlto
read the entire thread of "An idea".
>
> Nowadays, I bring back the proposal for further consideration in
  light
> of the EssJay scandal.  I think it imperative that we make some
positive
> moves here... we have a real opportunity here to move the
  quality of
> Wikipedia forward by doing something that many have vaguely
  thought to
> be a reasonably good idea if worked out carefully.
>
> For anyone who is reading but not online, I will sum it up.  I
  made a
> proposal that we have a system whereby people who are willing to
verify
> their real name and credentials are allowed a special
  notification.
> "Verified Credentials".  This could be a rather open ended
  system, and
> optional.
>
> The point is to make sure that people are being honest with us
and with
> the general public.  If you don't care to tell us that you are a
PhD (or
> that you are not), then that's fine: your editing stands or
falls on its
> own merit.  But if you do care to represent yourself as
  something, you
> have to be able to prove it.
>
> This policy will be coupled with a policy of gentle (or firm)
> discouragement for people to make claims like those that EssJay
  made,
> unless they are willing to back them up.
>
> How to confirm? What counts as confirmation?  What sorts of
things need
> confirmation? These are very interesting questions, as there are
  many
> types of situations.  But one thing that we have always been
  very very
> good at is taking the time to develop a nuanced policy.
>
> Just to take a simple example: how to verify a professor?  This
strikes
> me as being quite simple in most cases.  The professor gives a
  link to
> his or her faculty page at the college or university, including
  the
> email there, and someone emails that address to say "are you
  really
> EssJay?"  If the answer is yes, then that's a reasonable
  confirmation.
>
> We can imagine some wild ways that someone might crack that
  process
> (stealing a professor's email account, etc.) but I think we need
  not
> design around the worst case scenario, but rather design around
  the
> reasonable case of a reasonable person who is happy to confirm
> credentials to us.
>
> (This is a lower level of confirmation than we might expect an
employer
> to take, of course.)
>
> For someone like me, well, I have an M.A. in finance.  I could
  fax a
> copy of the degree to the office.  Again, someone could fake
  their
> credentials, but I don't think we need to design against some
mad worst
> case scenario but just to have a basic level of confirmation.
>
> --Jimbo

I like this proposal, as it is similar to one I've been bruiting
about for the last few days.

The way I see it, there is no really golden mean between full
pseudonymity (where you give few to no details about who you are;
where "few to no" means that the obtainable information is limited
to basically the sort of stuff userboxes cover - excluding stuff
like your real name, address, phone number, employment or
employment history and other things like credentials), and full
transparency. When I saw full transparency, here I mean that
enough information about one's life is  given that, in principle,
one can verify claims about expertise, official credentials, and
so on.

Now, note that I emphasize verifiability. This differs from
Jimbo's proposal. If I may use some out-moded descriptions,
Jimbo's idea where one has another rank in the hierarchy where
credentials are deemed verified (past tense) is more of an
Immediatist/Deletionist sort of proposal. I am not surprised at it
- it is a truth of Wikipedia history that every time a scandal of
some sort scars the community, restrictive I/D proposals pop up
and gain credence (example: disabling anonymous page creation
after Seigenthaler), but that doesn't mean we should just do
them. If we implement any such proposals, disarrayed and dismayed
by a recent scandal, we will have to live with it a long time,
particularly if orders for it come from the top and are enforced
by changes in the MediaWiki software (remember, "code is law"). I
understand many elder editors are not particularly convinced
restricting page creation worked and that it should be turned on
again, but because the order for that restriction came from the
top and is implemented in code, it is literally impossible for
anons to create pages except through meatpuppets of registered
editors. And this has been the case for quite literally years
(come this December, I think it will have been 2 full years). So
if we are considering proposals which will give a subset of
registered editors official imprimatur, possibly reflected in the
software itself (not sure how else the "Verified Credentials"
would be implemented), then we need to be rather careful.

That said, I also don't like the proposal because it adds yet
another level to the hierarchy (how will it go? Anons, editors,
Verified Credential editors, admins, bureaucrats, Checkuser,
Oversight, stewards, board, Jimbo?), because it centralizes the
activity of checking credentials, and just in general imposes
overhead - the whole point of wikis is to reduce overhead and bet
that it enables good users more than bad ones.

What we need to do is discourage the in between. There is no
golden mean, but this does not mean we should set up yet another
heavyweight process to verify people on the transparent end of the
spectrum, but rather we culturally or perhaps by guideline or
policy say that claims to expertise not backed up by verifiable
information should be discounted and the claimer treated exactly
as if they were pseudonymous.  Let people claim to be professors,
if they want, but let no one treat them as professors without
sufficient reason to believe that. One cannot legislate common
sense, as the saying goes.

--
Gwern
Inquiring minds want to know.


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Essjay RFC deleted

body:
On 3/5/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> You're leaving because I dared use my l33t admin powers to delete in
> process an odious pretense at a dispute resolution page under the
> rules regarding the colour it assumed in its claim for legitimacy,
> *despite* a lynch mob feeling otherwise. How dare I!
>

You would not close and AFD you had been involved in. While I don't
belive the issue has come up with RFC before it is not an unreasonable
position that the same ruleset applies.

> It was a lynch mob page.

Nyet. "lynch mob"s would generaly not be in favor of someone keeping
their adminship.

> It was only made an RFC to give it colour of
> legitimacy.

Nyet. It ended up at RFC because a few people thought that was where
it should be rather than filling up most of [[WP:CN]].

>Unfortunately, it failed even those rules and should have
> been killed yesterday. The wacky move of moving it to Essjay's
> userspace doesn't change that - uncertified RFCs are only kept in
> userspace at the subject's explicit request. If it's an RFC, it lives
> or dies like one.
>

It isn't an RFC though since it wasn't create as an RFC. The
alturnative position gives people the option of people moveing stuff
they don't like to an RFC subpage and then deleteing it after 2 days
if no one notices the move.

Of course there is the third option of trying to define what is and is
not an RFC through ways other than the process of it's creation but
that brings up other issues.

Generaly if you wish to nomic your way out of a problem on wikipedia I
would recomend copyright since it tends to have fewer side effects.

> Of course, that's nothing compared to people denied a hanging party, as you say.

Again will point out that that straw poll did not support de-adminship.

Anyway essjay left and people had for most part lost interest. Letting
the page rot (maybe locking it down first) woud have worked as well.

--
geni


body:
On 3/5/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> I wanted to bring this up because, as a charity with limited
> resources,
[snip]

Perhaps "a charity with limited resources" is the wrong mindset to an
extent. "A charity which is not yet effective at bringing in
supporting funding given its exposure" is probably a lot more
accurate.

It's true that all charities need to be wise with their spending, but
the same is also true of virtually all businesses.  I like to think of
our position as unusually 'poor' to be more of a temporary situation
which we should be attempting to cure.   Once past that hump we can
stop letting "how can we best save money" get in the way of "how can
we best perform our mission" in the situations where those two goals
diverge.

I welcome off-list data on the viewer/donation and fund drive take
rate ratios of other NPOs. :)


from_name: Anthony

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Accountability: bringing back a proposal I made
	nearly 2 years ago

body:
On 3/5/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> Academic credentials seem to me to have little to do with many of the
> skills necessary to being a Wikipedian (even less so when it comes to
> positions of trust)

But if you feel that way, then wouldn't it be accurate to say that
they shouldn't be on a user page in the first place?  User pages are
supposed to be for helping build the encyclopedia, after all.  If
credentials aren't helpful, and they're potentially harmful, then by
all means get rid of them.

This does raise another issue though.  What if someone doesn't claim
anything on their user page, but instead links to their web page
outside Wikipedia which makes the claim.

It seems like anyone who wants to lie about their credentials could
easily use this loophole if it's allowed.  But not allowing such links
would be pretty much impossible to police (or overly restrictive if no
links at all are allowed).  This is not saying that it's a bad idea to
at least keep the fake credentials out of userspace, just saying that
the usefulness is somewhat limited.

Anthony


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Mon, 5 Mar 2007 08:50:30 -0600, cohesion <cohesion at sleepyhead.org>
wrote:

>> >I would modify the proposal: You only need to verify the credentials
>> >if you're in a position of trust (adminship or higher).

>> I'd start with admins, but if it is not onerous open it to others.
>> There is definite value in being able to establish your bona-fides. It
>> also helps us to check for subtle bias.

>Is this for PR reasons? It seems to me like the people with advanced
>credentials are not that often admins due to other demands. This may,
>however, preclude them from having the time to send in their
>credentials. I wouldn't want to encourage the concept that admins have
>more weight in content disputes, and if they are the only ones that
>can verify their credentials that might be the case.

Is what for PR reasons? Start with admins?  I guess not; it gives us a
defined subset of generally active and high profile users.

>I wouldn't mind requiring people in trusted positions not be
>anonymous, but if we are moving to a general credentialing system I
>wouldn't want that to break down on adminship lines.

No, I'd see it as something that should be available to all, but I
have no objection to trialling it on admins to see what the overhead
is like.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Jossi Fresco

body:
On Mar 5, 2007, at 12:58 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> In response to the EssJay scandal, I want to bring back an old
> proposal
> of mine from 2 years ago for greater accountability around
> credentials:

There are two issues that I believe are being mixed in this
discussion, and that may require a different treatment.

1. Identity
2. Credentials

1. Identity -- The Amazon.com RealName (TM) is designed to guarantee
the *indentity* of the person, by the simple means of providing a
credit card account that Amazon uses to verify the account holder
name via CSV.

The main idea behind RealName is that if you are willing to put your
real name up there with your comments, reviews, etc. you will be
extra careful on what you write, and readers of your reviews will
take that into account when reading them.

A "Confirmed Identity" system could be easily added to WP. If we had
such a system in place, the Essjay scandal would have never
happened ... TNY fact checking team would have only needed to run a
check on Essjay "RealName"... rather that take his user page at face
value.

This "Confirmed Identity" can be displayed alongside the username in
edit histories, as well as an icon on the user's page. Implementation
is quite simple.

2. Credentials -- This is a tougher one to implement and somewhat
against the grain of the community culture; most of our content is
not developed by experts with credentials, but by people that are
passionate about the subjects they edit.

Going for an "identity" system, rather than a "credentials" system
will also remove the possible negative consequences in edit disputes:
"I have a PhD. in Greek literature, and I tell you that you are wrong
about Parmednides". After all, if you are Joe Blow, tenured professor
at the University of Guam, and you have a "Confirmed Identity" tag
certifying that you are indeed Joe Blow, your credentials can be
easily verified by whomever wants to make the effort to do so.

-- Jossi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Essjay RFC deleted

body:
On Mon, 05 Mar 2007 08:01:47 -0800, William Pietri
<william at scissor.com> wrote:

>I understand you viewed it as a lynch mob, and that you were upset about
>that. I get it.
>But you don't seem to have acknowledged that a) you didn't get much
>support in that view, and b) other people could have other reasonable
>interpretations. Have you considered either of those things?

Unsurprisingly I back David.  That page has an inglorious history:
started as a wildly out of process straw poll on whether to hang,
disembowel or burn the witch, moved to an RfC, refactored into a form
which was at least marginally compliant, but as David says never
properly certified - and in any case now moot since Essjay has "left
the building".  One more piece of navel fluff under the Wikipedia
microscope.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Anders Wegge Jakobsen

subject:
[Foundation-l] Possible changes regarding *all* Wikimedia IRC
	bots

body:
"Sean Whitton (Xyrael)" <sean at silentflame.com> writes:

 ...

> * That all operators of IRC bots contact me via e-mail telling me
> their bot nickname, what is does and what it is cloaked with, as well
> as a note if it uses an o:line. I can then recloak them with your
> assistance. This also has the purpose of weeding out inactive bots (no
> action being taken yet, though).

 Hi!

 I run a bot called WeggeBot in #wikipedia-da and
#wikipedia-skan. It's purpose is to expand [[Wikilinks]] to direct
links to the wikipedias.

 The bot does not use an o:line to my knowledge, but since I have no
idea what that means, I could be misinformed.

--
// Wegge
<http://geowiki.wegge.dk/wiki/Forside> - Alt om geocaching
Bruger du den gratis spamfighther ser jeg kun dine indl?g *EN* gang.


from_name: Deathphoenix

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Foundation-l] Accountability: bringing back a
	proposal I made nearly 2 years ago

body:
On 3/5/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/5/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> > I'm not sure I've provided enough context to fully explain the
> > proposal. The idea is not to _require_ anything, but to only ask for
> > confirmation if people make the claim _themselves_, and then only for
> > people in positions of trust, or those whose credentials have been
> > called into question. Anyone is free to reach any level of trust
> > without professional credentials.
>
> Frankly, this proposal is impractical and unworkable.  I am not about
> to go through all this nonsense to verify stuff - all it's going to do
> is to make people less willing to state things about themselves on
> their user pages.
>
> For instance, I have a B.Eng. in Computing from Imperial College,
> London.  I have stated this on every job application I've submitted
> throughout my professional career (thirteen years or so by now) and
> have NEVER been asked to verify it.  To be honest, I'm not sure I
> could, easily; I don't know where my actual degree certificate is.  I
> suspect my parents have it, actually.  I guess I could phone up the
> college and ask them to fax something, but this is way too much of a
> pain in the behind to actually be worth doing for uncompensated
> volunteer effort at Wikipedia, especially since it's of complete
> irrelevance to what I'm actually doing here.
>
> If we start requiring that admins must verify every single statement
> about themselves they make - or even if this is restricted to only
> claims of professional expertise - this is going to result in the
> following:
>
> 1. Admins will simply remove any statements that aren't worth the
> effort of verifying. Net gain for the project: zero.
> 2. People with expertise won't want to become admins, widening an
> already-existing gulf.  The perception in some circles that people
> become admins because they don't write articles will increase.
> 3. Only those seeking greater authoritativeness than their writing and
> argumentative skills already command will find the cumbersome process
> attractive.  Thus, the querulous, the trolls, and those with dubious
> qualifications will be the ones getting that 'verified' badge to wear
> to use as a stick in arguments.
>
> I am, since I occupy a position of responsibility, quite willing to
> verify my identity to the Foundation/Jimbo in private - but verifying
> other stuff is frankly not worth my scarce time and effort.
>

I'd be perfectly willing to verify the degrees I say I hold on my user page,
but only to the Foundation. In other words, I'd prefer that my simple
statement of holding degrees in Engineering and Applied Arts be the one
thing I mention about my education, but am willing to provide proof to the
Foundation that my degrees are with accredited institutions. In other words,
I don't want to get specific about my academic credentials in public, but am
willing to verify it (and my identity) in private to the Foundation as long
as the documents I send for verification remains private and unpublicised.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] "Planet" feed aggregators

body:
On 3/5/07, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> I've fiddled a bit with Planet before; if there's no objection I'll set
> that up later today. If anyone wants in, let me know where to find your
> blog. :)

No objection from me, but: I want us to make sure that all the blog
posts appearing are only Wikimedia-related. So I would insist that
blogs either provide a Wikimedia-specific feed, or that we are able to
filter them on our side by tag.

And it would be _very_ nice if we could make it scale beyond you or
the dev team -- i.e., if some other volunteer could be in charge of
approving and adding feeds.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic


from_name: George Chriss

subject: [Foundation-l] [Fwd: Wiki Podcast from India!]

body:
Hi all,

To follow up on Anthere's message, links to available WikiCamp video archives
are listed below.  The event was held at Tidel Park, Chennai, 25-Feb-2007.


body:
Hi all,

To follow up on Anthere's message, links to available WikiCamp video archives
are listed below.  The event was held at Tidel Park, Chennai, 25-Feb-2007.

>From a conference organizer:  "There are more videos of the event at
indiainteracts.com. Use the keyword wikicamp to search for them."

Truth in Numbers: The Wikipedia Story ('wikidocumentary.wikia.com') also looks
promising.

Hope this helps, George
en_wp: [[User:GChriss]]
irc.freenode.net: GChriss

============
Exclusive interview with Jimmy Wales:
http://indiainteracts.com/video/top_home.php?year=2007&month=02&dat=26&guid=Exclusive-Interview-With-Jimmy-Wales

Event kickstart:
http://indiainteracts.com/videos/2007/02/27/Wiki-Camp-2007--Kickstart/

Jimmy's keynote - Part 1:
http://indiainteracts.com/videos/2007/02/27/Wiki-Camp-2007--Jimmy-Talk-Part--1/

Jimmy's keynote - Part 2:
http://indiainteracts.com/videos/2007/03/02/Wiki-Camp-2007--Jimmy-Talk-Part--2/

Press conference:
http://indiainteracts.com/videos/2007/03/02/Wiki-Camp-2007--Jimmys-Press-Meet/

Blogs vs Wikis:
http://indiainteracts.com/videos/2007/03/01/Wiki-Camp-2007--Blog-Vs-Wikia/

Birds of a Feather session:
http://indiainteracts.com/videos/2007/03/02/Wiki-Camp-2007--Q-and-A/

Jimmy with the audience:
http://indiainteracts.com/videos/2007/03/01/Wiki-Camp-2007--Unconference

Organizer's Chat:
http://indiainteracts.com/videos/2007/02/28/Wiki-Camp-2007--Organisers-Chat/


from_name: luke brandt

subject: [Foundation-l] RfC: Draft licensing policy resolution

body:
Kat Walsh wrote:
> On 2/20/07, jkelly wrote:
>>   Hi,
>>
>> Quoting Erik Moeller:
>>> # Such EDPs must be minimal. Whenever possible, content used under an
>>> EDP should be replaced with a freely licensed work if it carries
>>> equivalent information content. Media used under EDPs are subject to
>>> deletion if there is rough consensus that they lack an applicable
>>> rationale. They must be used only in the context of other freely
>>> licensed content, and may not be arranged in galleries.
>>   I suggest that this needs some additional discussion.  If en:'s experience is
>> typical, saying that replaceable unfree media is acceptable until it is
>> actually replaced, instead of being possible in theory to replace, reduces the
>> incentive to create or find free content considerably.  Further, I'd suggest
>> that the "burden of consensus" really needs to be that the unfree media is a
>> justifiable exception to our goal of producing free content.
>
> I agree with this... yikes, definitely needs revision if that's what
> it's implying.
>

Hi - It seems there is no consensus for this position:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Fair_use#promophotos_in_other_language_editions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Fair_use#Why_we_delete_replaceable_Fair_Use

- luke


from_name: Mercenary Wikipedian

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Is editing for payment a fundamentally problematic
	conflict of interests?

body:
    Having worked both in publishing, where these conflicts of interest play
    out regularly, and in Silicon Valley startups, where PR is a necessary
    fact of life, I believe it is a much stronger conflict. Academics and
    journalists both have reputations to lose. PR people and other
    commercial writers don't, not like academics.

Sure they do, if you are talking about established editors who are banking
on the fact that they have some degree of respect within the community that
allows other to more readily assume good faith about their edits. A paid
editor's ability to render services effectively largely rests upon his good
name. After all, like it or not, many (perhaps most) editors are more
suspicious of significant revisions or new articles by anons than by
established, trusted members of the community.

    Journalistic and academic reputations are built on the factual quality
    and accuracy of one's work. There are extensive vetting and enforcement
    mechanisms in both industries. People in PR and advertising build
    reputation on their ability to work without regard to factual accuracy,
    or in spite of it. They are professional POV warriors. We adopt their
    funding models at our peril.

    William

So far as I can tell, no one is talking about the foundation adopting a new
funding model. The question is this: will paid editors be afforded the same
assumption of good faith that are author's whose motives are not so clear? I
am of the opinion that all contributions should be examined on their merits.
No one is arguing for a sudden shift in policy that allows for spamlink
insertions or POV articles. As others have mentioned, assuming good faith
for even paid editors will simply make it more likely that they are
forthcoming about whether they have received/are receiving financial
remuneration for their work on Wikipedia. This will allow other editors to
determine whether the editor is indeed POV-pushing or in fact editing in
good faith.

Something else that others have not mentioned as a possible boon to
Wikipedia can be predicted even if one assumes that the worse-case scenario
comes to pass. Let's assume that paid editors are permitted to operate in
the open (rather than under the radar, as some are surely doing now). Let's
further assume that all of them initially succumb to the urge to be
POV-pushing warriors with little regard for Wikipedia policy/guidelines.

First of all, does anyone doubt that administrators would be any less
willing to ban spammers and POV-pushers in that world than the current one?
Of course they wouldn't, and if anything, editors disclosing that they are
working for Acme Corp. and then proceeding to violate NPOV, RS, or whatever,
would be banned with extreme prejudice because it would be obvious what they
were doing, and their edits would be obviously unconstructive (presumably).

Now, let's assume that there are people out there who would want to do a
Wikipedia edit job for money more than one time in their life. In order to
do this, they would have to be able to show some record of success to
potential customers. This means these paid editors would have to edit within
the bounds of the policies and guidelines for some time in order to show
potential clients that they can write in the WP style and in a manner that
won't get deleted as cruft/spam/etc. Additionally, since people running any
decent-sized company are presumably literate, and presumably would have some
rudimentary idea of what Wikipedia is (say, "the encyclopedia that anyone
can edit"), does anyone really think that they are going to shell out cash
for someone to go in and insert a bunch of spam one time, only to have it
deleted and the admins/community alerted to their nefarious intent?

Instead, what is more likely is that editors who exhibited some degree of
familiarity with/expertise in the WP community would be paid to clean-up
articles of particular interest to the client and then maintain them by,
say, deleting vandalism, false defamatory claims, etc. If the paid editors
did this sort of thing, is that not in keeping with the goals of the
encyclopedia? Are we here to write an encyclopedia, or enforce some
communist ideal of editorial egalitarianism? Wikipedia policy is not
supposed to be emulating anyone's ideal political system, if I read WP:NOT
correctly. That is, there is no reason to have a policy that states that
people must reap equal wages (or non-wages) for equal editing work on
Wikipedia. Some people can and do edit for what might be seen as altruistic
reasons. Some might just want to pretty-up articles that they find useful in
hopes that others will do the same. Who is to say which motive is selfish or
improper? That is, who decides that editing for pay is somehow a morally
inferior motive to editing for Wiki-community glory?

Additionally, assuming that paid editing is or becomes a widespread
phenomenon, you will have people paid by competing firms who moderate each
other when individuals fail to abide by community standards. After all, a
competing firm could rake up some bad press for their rival by producing
evidence of improper, bad faith editing by paid agents of said rival. It
isn't, as some have suggested, simply a matter of a paid leviathan on one
side and poor volunteer wikipedians on the other. I would plead with the
community that WP:AGF not be abandoned simply because some Wikipedians have
anti-capitalist sentiments. Let's judge edits by their content and editors
by their contributions, not by their motive.

Respectfully,

MW

_________________________________________________________________
Play Flexicon: the crossword game that feeds your brain. PLAY now for FREE.?
  http://zone.msn.com/en/flexicon/default.htm?icid=flexicon_hmtagline


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Accountability: bringing back a proposal I made nearly 2
	years ago

body:
In response to the EssJay scandal, I want to bring back an old proposal
of mine from 2 years ago for greater accountability around credentials:

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-May/022085.html

At the time, this seemed like a plausibly decent idea to me, and the
reaction at the time was mostly positive, with some reasonable caveats
and improvements:

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-May/thread.html
to read the entire thread of "An idea".

Nowadays, I bring back the proposal for further consideration in light
of the EssJay scandal.  I think it imperative that we make some positive
moves here... we have a real opportunity here to move the quality of
Wikipedia forward by doing something that many have vaguely thought to
be a reasonably good idea if worked out carefully.

For anyone who is reading but not online, I will sum it up.  I made a
proposal that we have a system whereby people who are willing to verify
their real name and credentials are allowed a special notification.
"Verified Credentials".  This could be a rather open ended system, and
optional.

The point is to make sure that people are being honest with us and with
the general public.  If you don't care to tell us that you are a PhD (or
that you are not), then that's fine: your editing stands or falls on its
own merit.  But if you do care to represent yourself as something, you
have to be able to prove it.

This policy will be coupled with a policy of gentle (or firm)
discouragement for people to make claims like those that EssJay made,
unless they are willing to back them up.

How to confirm? What counts as confirmation?  What sorts of things need
confirmation? These are very interesting questions, as there are many
types of situations.  But one thing that we have always been very very
good at is taking the time to develop a nuanced policy.

Just to take a simple example: how to verify a professor?  This strikes
me as being quite simple in most cases.  The professor gives a link to
his or her faculty page at the college or university, including the
email there, and someone emails that address to say "are you really
EssJay?"  If the answer is yes, then that's a reasonable confirmation.

We can imagine some wild ways that someone might crack that process
(stealing a professor's email account, etc.) but I think we need not
design around the worst case scenario, but rather design around the
reasonable case of a reasonable person who is happy to confirm
credentials to us.

(This is a lower level of confirmation than we might expect an employer
to take, of course.)

For someone like me, well, I have an M.A. in finance.  I could fax a
copy of the degree to the office.  Again, someone could fake their
credentials, but I don't think we need to design against some mad worst
case scenario but just to have a basic level of confirmation.

--Jimbo


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Sebastian Moleski wrote:

>On 3/5/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Based on the fact that Wikimedia Foundation has such a large pool of
>>volunteers, I think the 40 hour week difference makes little
>>difference. Is there a reason why Wikimedia Foundation can't contract
>>volunteers (as charity shops do)? Similarly, there is no reason why
>>the Foundation can't give official positions to volunteers who can be
>>trusted to work a minimum number of hours a week (with or without a
>>contract). Such volunteers would be given a job description and be
>>asked to do things by the Foundation in the way an employee would.
>>
>>
>I've recruited and manged a great number of volunteers while working at a
>university. The main problem with them is that, unless they have some sort
>of alternative source of income/wealth, it's just not economically feasible
>for them to put in more than a few hours a week. So you could say: why not
>hire a lot of volunteers that just do a little bit of work? The problem
>there is that lack of communication, variety of approaches to solving tasks
>compounded by geographic diversifcation will make it very unlikely that such
>an arrangement can be effective and efficient. This holds especially for the
>kind of jobs Florence was talking about. Unless we're talking about small,
>well-contained tasks, volunteers just won't be able to do them in a speedy
>manner.
>
Add to that the fact that many volunteers here are dilletantes who
prefer to go on to something else when they are bored with a task, and
the prospects of getting the tediously repetitive tasks done by
volunteers is very poor.  I don't think that employment needs to be
defined in terms of the 40-hour week.  Contracts to accomplish certain
tasks within a specified time would be more practical.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Essjay RFC deleted

body:
On 05/03/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:

> Unsurprisingly I back David.  That page has an inglorious history:
> started as a wildly out of process straw poll on whether to hang,
> disembowel or burn the witch, moved to an RfC, refactored into a form
> which was at least marginally compliant, but as David says never
> properly certified - and in any case now moot since Essjay has "left
> the building".  One more piece of navel fluff under the Wikipedia
> microscope.

It's hit DRV, where the lynch mob are now asserting that anyone who
doesn't agree with them is too biased to comment:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2007_March_5#User:Essjay.2FRFC

- d.


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] "Planet" feed aggregators

body:
On 05/03/07, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikilist at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/5/07, Jim Wilson <wilson.jim.r at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I doubt most Wikimedians even know that the inclusion of new extensions
> > would be considered.  I certainly didn't - until you just said something.
> >
> > Is there a sounding-board somewhere that people can make these suggestions
> > and the community can discuss it?
>
> As far as I've seen, it's mostly harassing Tim and/or Brion until they
> give you an answer.

You oversimplify too greatly.

A huge proportion of the extensions out there are written by, if I may
be frank, amateurs. They may be quick and dirty solutions to fulfill
people's needs at the time. They may not be compatible with the newest
versions of MediaWiki, or may use appallingly bad and even unsafe
practices to get things done, which may lead to the inclusion of
security vulnerabilities; commonly XSS and SQL injection.

If we're to enable an extension on the Wikimedia cluster, then we have
to be reasonably sure that we can trust the code. This means we have
to review it for security and for sanity, and for performance. This
takes time. Time which we don't have, on the whole.

Some of this can be skipped when the extension is written by an
experienced and trusted developer and uses appropriate techniques to
do things, although there is still a phase of review which (rightly)
needs to take place, so it's still not instantaneous.

Another big problem is that people request the installation of the
most ridiculous and pointless little extensions. There are vast
arguments over how complex wiki text should be, and internally there
is a ripple of discontent over how complex it has become. A lot of the
community's thirst for nonsense was slaked in an efficient and
effective manner by Tim Starling with the introduction of
ParserFunctions. Unfortunately, now they want more. Variables. Arrays.
All sorts of nonsense which, frankly, they *do not need* to write an
encyclopaedia.

The community frequently bitches at the development and system
administration teams to do things faster, but it is the development
and system administration teams which have a responsibility to keep
the sites alive, and which will take the flak - oh yes, there's a lot
of flak to come from all our users - when the shit hits the fan, as it
might do without the proper processes.

Rob Church


subject: [Wikitech-l] "Planet" feed aggregators

body:
On 3/5/07, Jim Wilson <wilson.jim.r at gmail.com> wrote:
> I often blog about extensions that I've written or ways to
> hack/bypass/modify/deal with MediaWiki.

I think MediaWiki-related blog posts should be fine. It would be nice
to get Wikimedians to more actively demand the inclusion of useful MW
extensions on Wikimedia servers, and if they hear about that through
the feed, so much the better. If it gets too technical, we may want to
split things up, but let's be inclusive in the first iteration.

> I wouldn't mind serving in this facility - but I'm biased since I hope to
> have my own content included in the aggregate.  Would the person in charge
> of approving/monitoring* feeds necessarily have to be an unbiased
> third-party?

Nope. There are enough people who can kick you if you do something
unreasonable. ;-)
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic


from_name: GerardM

body:
Hoi,
If you read carefully you will have noticed that there is no need for a
consensus in all the projects. First of all, where the board makes a ruling
that some things are not acceptable they are not acceptable. No consensus
needed. When some projects decide to allow for Fair Use and others not, this
will be acceptable provided the respective laws are abided by.

So, nothing new here.

Thanks,
    GerardM

On 3/5/07, luke brandt <shojokid at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Kat Walsh wrote:
> > On 2/20/07, jkelly wrote:
> >>   Hi,
> >>
> >> Quoting Erik Moeller:
> >>> # Such EDPs must be minimal. Whenever possible, content used under an
> >>> EDP should be replaced with a freely licensed work if it carries
> >>> equivalent information content. Media used under EDPs are subject to
> >>> deletion if there is rough consensus that they lack an applicable
> >>> rationale. They must be used only in the context of other freely
> >>> licensed content, and may not be arranged in galleries.
> >>   I suggest that this needs some additional discussion.  If en:'s
> experience is
> >> typical, saying that replaceable unfree media is acceptable until it is
> >> actually replaced, instead of being possible in theory to replace,
> reduces the
> >> incentive to create or find free content considerably.  Further, I'd
> suggest
> >> that the "burden of consensus" really needs to be that the unfree media
> is a
> >> justifiable exception to our goal of producing free content.
> >
> > I agree with this... yikes, definitely needs revision if that's what
> > it's implying.
> >
>
> Hi - It seems there is no consensus for this position:-
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Fair_use#promophotos_in_other_language_editions
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Fair_use#Why_we_delete_replaceable_Fair_Use
>
> - luke
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Accountability: bringing back a proposal I made
 nearly 2	years ago

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> In response to the EssJay scandal, I want to bring back an old proposal
> of mine from 2 years ago for greater accountability around credentials:

After some thought I'm fairly ambivalent about this. On the one hand I
have some concern that this could lead to some people with "verified
credentials" throwing their verified weight around inappropriately, on
the other hand it may quiet some of our less dedicated critics. Either
way I doubt much will come of it in terms of actual article quality and
 I probably won't bother to get verified myself. I'm satisfied that my
edits stand on their own merits and they mostly aren't related to my
degrees anyway.

More generally, however, I am concerned about the idea of quickly
implementing new policies in direct response to breaking scandals. It's
been well over a year now since we lost anonymous article creation in
the aftermath of the Siegenthaler Kerfuffle and I still have no idea
whether it improved our quality, or even whether it had any effect on
how Wikipedia is perceived. Is this Essjay Affair even going to continue
to be a big thing outside the Wikipedia community? Something like the
webcomic notability issue seems more likely to remain a long-term PR
problem than this, IMO, unless we start seeing a flurry of additional
Essjays popping out of the woodwork.


body:
On 3/5/07, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> If you read carefully you will have noticed that there is no need for a
> consensus in all the projects. First of all, where the board makes a ruling
> that some things are not acceptable they are not acceptable.

Indeed. I don't expect that, in the current, highly diverse community
of Wikimedia projects, there would _ever_ be consensus for either a
strong position on freedom, or a strong position on inclusiveness. I
would expect that support for freedom is higher among regular
contributors. Importantly, it represents a core value that has been
part of this project since the very beginning, even before Wikipedia
itself was launched. It is useful to review the first public
announcement on the Nupedia project, made in March 2000:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.sport.skating.ice.recreational/browse_thread/thread/adf490040e1ed203/27789abb074ffb77

"What does it mean to say the encyclopedia is "open content"? This
means that anyone can use content taken from Nupedia articles for all
purposes, both for-profit or non-profit ..."

(I also always find it interesting that this mission statement was
already ambitious enough to suggest that Nupedia should "become the
largest general encyclopedia in the history of humankind.")

Part of the job of the Board is to strengthen and build the support
for freedom in our community, but that doesn't mean that we would ever
abandon this principle -- even if a majority of contributors opposed
it. It is a foundation value (with both a lower and upper case F).
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic


subject:
[Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Accountability: bringing back a
	proposal I made nearly 2 years ago

body:
On 3/5/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> 1) Any user can ask for his or her professional credentials to be verified.
>

Creates work for office or simular that doesn't result in much benefit.

> 2) Making up professional credentials is prohibited, and may result in
> a ban. (This may or may not be covered by existing policy, but judging
> from the Essjay case, it is probably not sufficiently clear.) This is
> independent of whether or not the user asks for credentials to be
> verified. We may investigate claims that are dubious when they are
> pointed out to us.

No. No community support for this and appears to be policy cruft.
Better to go with. "makeing up credentials mad result in bad things
happening please don't".

>
> 3) Any user trusted on admin level or higher who makes a statement of
> credentials on their user page must have them verified through a team
> of volunteers designated to this role by the Wikimedia Foundation (we
> may want to involve the chapters if this becomes international). The
> process of verification could be similar to what Citizendium uses,
> i.e.:
> a) have an existing, credentialed user vouch for the credentials to be
> correct based on personal knowledge,
> b) respond to an email associated with a reliable institution, and
> point us to a web page of that institution where their credentials are
> listed,
> c) point to someone associated with a reliable institution we can
> contact to verify the credentials.
>

Oh man please no. Way too buracratic. People wanting to avoid it will
would have to remove such claims even when true before running for
adminship which wont look good. OR could run into the rather odd case
of people mentioning credentials on some projects but not on others.

There was majority support for essjay staying an admin. There were
problems above that level but I feel the requirements for running for
arbcom are at present about right (in terms of getting a decent mix
and number of candidates but not too many) and the community keeps a
pretty tight watch on buracrats. Oversight and checkuser are de-facto
at least arbcom and or the foundation's responcibilty and thus may be
subject to different standards.

--
geni


from_name: Michael Bimmler

subject: [WikiEN-l] a final word on Essjay

body:
On 3/5/07, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com> wrote:
> I should probably state somewhere for the record that I am not a small
> canine, I am actually a human being. Just in case anyone was wondering,
> the image on my Userpage is also not a picture of me.
>
I should probably state that you should believe nothing you see on my
userpage, as the page  might have been vandalised 2 minutes ago. Can
we all go back to normal business now?
Michael


from_name: Kutler, Christopher

subject: [Wikitech-l] Reordering Navigation, Search and Toolbox in Wiki Skin

body:
At the risk of receiving RTFMs, does anyone know if there is a way of changing the order of the Navigation, Search and Toolbox in Wiki Skin so that the Search box comes first, followed by the Nav box then the Toolbox. I was going to just change the order of the code in MonoBook.php, but I'm wondering whether this can be done via one of the stylesheets or something like that.

Any advice would be greatfully appreciated.

Thanks

Chris

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body:
On 3/5/07, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> If it's a job that *has* to be done every single week
> reliably, then an unpaid volunteer is not necessarily the best choice.

Not necessarily, but possibly.  I used to be an unpaid volunteer
firefighter, and there were lots of things we did that *had* to be
done every single week reliably.

One difference with Wikimedia projects is that the job is not as
important - lives don't literally hang in the balance.  But another
difference which could more easily be made a similarity is that
Wikimedia volunteers aren't as effectively organized.  Volunteer
firefighters were unpaid, but we still had a boss, we still had rules,
we still had to submit applications, and go to meetings, etc.  When it
came time to send out fundraising letters, we were expected to put in
our time and do it, even though few of us would have volunteered to do
*that* job.  Our boss (the fire chief), was paid, but not as a
full-time salary, and he had a full time job too.

For most Wikimedia volunteers, none of this formality is necessary, of
course.  But for some other things it might work.  If a competent
person is hired as volunteer coordinator I'm sure this will become
much more clear.

Anthony


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Reordering Navigation,
	Search and Toolbox in Wiki Skin

body:
On 05/03/07, Kutler, Christopher
<Christopher.Kutler at nationalarchives.gov.uk> wrote:
> At the risk of receiving RTFMs, does anyone know if there is a way of changing the order of the Navigation, Search and Toolbox in Wiki Skin so that the Search box comes first, followed by the Nav box then the Toolbox. I was going to just change the order of the code in MonoBook.php, but I'm wondering whether this can be done via one of the stylesheets or something like that.

Nope, that's more or less the correct method.

Rob Church


from_name: Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Essjay RFC deleted

references:
<fbad4e140703050751m6f15e790j891ded3052f3c436@mail.gmail.com>
	<45EC3EEB.4070804@scissor.com>
	<bdhou2l6mb6bvmm6kicjn6h9v30lrpo3su@4ax.com>
	<fbad4e140703051006l68381a9aybcc2d20e59cd98c0@mail.gmail.com>
	<o38pu21qcm2nc14jai6rb7h6rl6uvbrsdn@4ax.com>
	<38a7bf7c0703051505t63473e1aw1a1fb4068046c508@mail.gmail.com>
	<oq8pu295hvu0hfal4ee1ctdtis138qb4hd@4ax.com>
	<38a7bf7c0703051523t44e4fc3ak3b1e6374c267ce90@mail.gmail.com>
	<pq9pu21p8l7qc7dav4u84048gbescl9jbk@4ax.com>

body:
That is exceptionally sound advice for situations like the current one, but
I don't think it works as applied in normal times.  I don't think we could
have no article on, for example, the most recent congressional or
parliamentary election even if it's been less than a year since
them.  Deleting routine articles, or sentences within articles, on grounds
of "too new, not a year yet" would certainly soon before more trouble than
it was worth.

Which is unfortunate, because any bright-line rule that could have
eliminated several of the travails of the past month would have been a Very
Good Thing.

Newyorkbrad

On 3/5/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 5 Mar 2007 15:23:55 -0800, "George Herbert"
> <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >What's ended up happening is, perhaps both typically and tragically,
> >Wikipedia standard controversy reaction - it's up, it's down, it's
> >back up, it's moved, it's moved again, it's speedy deleted then
> >restored then deleted and up for DR and sideways with sugar on top and
> >can I please have a little more, sir?
>
> All the more reason to go back to my proposal of many reiterations: no
> article on any event until at least a year after it has happened, to
> allow time to form a proper historical perspective.
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] a final word on Essjay

body:
On 05/03/07, Ken Arromdee <arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 4 Mar 2007 SonOfYoungwood at aol.com wrote:
> > I find it sickening that he lost his job at Wikia over this issue.
>
> Why?  What would happen if you got hired for a job and then it was discovered
> that you falsified your resume?

God knows. Perhaps such a thought is why he published his real
identity when he took the job on Wikia, months ago.

There's a timeline of this little debacle floating around somewhere; I
commend it to you.

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


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 3/5/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Someone to coordinate volunteers is the way to go. [snip]
>
> I'd apply for the job myself but being a sysadmin pays too well ;-p
>
AFAIK no salary has yet been set for the position.  Why not apply
anyway, and state in your letter how much you currently get paid?

Anthony


body:
On 3/5/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> There are two parts to the suggestion: 1) marking some statements with
> a "verified credentials" tag, and 2) a "policy of gentle (or firm)
> discouragement for people to make claims like those that EssJay made,
> unless they are willing to back them up".

I'm cross-posting this to wikipedia-l and foundation-l, because it may
very well become a Foundation-level issue at some point.

I would support the following:

1) Any user can ask for his or her professional credentials to be verified.

2) Making up professional credentials is prohibited, and may result in
a ban. (This may or may not be covered by existing policy, but judging
from the Essjay case, it is probably not sufficiently clear.) This is
independent of whether or not the user asks for credentials to be
verified. We may investigate claims that are dubious when they are
pointed out to us.

3) Any user trusted on admin level or higher who makes a statement of
credentials on their user page must have them verified through a team
of volunteers designated to this role by the Wikimedia Foundation (we
may want to involve the chapters if this becomes international). The
process of verification could be similar to what Citizendium uses,
i.e.:
a) have an existing, credentialed user vouch for the credentials to be
correct based on personal knowledge,
b) respond to an email associated with a reliable institution, and
point us to a web page of that institution where their credentials are
listed,
c) point to someone associated with a reliable institution we can
contact to verify the credentials.

We may extend this to regular users if it proves to scale well.

4) Users with verified credentials will get a little "Verified
credentials on <date>" marker on their user page, nothing more. This
marker would ideally be independent of the wikitext of the page, and
set in the user table instead.

I am opposed to any marker of edit contributions and such -- users who
care about credentials can look them up, those who do not care should
not be bothered by them in discussions or contributions.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic


subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Wikipedia-l] Accountability: bringing back
	a	proposal I made nearly 2 years ago

body:
On 3/5/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> There are two parts to the suggestion: 1) marking some statements with
> a "verified credentials" tag, and 2) a "policy of gentle (or firm)
> discouragement for people to make claims like those that EssJay made,
> unless they are willing to back them up".

I'm cross-posting this to wikipedia-l and foundation-l, because it may
very well become a Foundation-level issue at some point.

I would support the following:

1) Any user can ask for his or her professional credentials to be verified.

2) Making up professional credentials is prohibited, and may result in
a ban. (This may or may not be covered by existing policy, but judging
from the Essjay case, it is probably not sufficiently clear.) This is
independent of whether or not the user asks for credentials to be
verified. We may investigate claims that are dubious when they are
pointed out to us.

3) Any user trusted on admin level or higher who makes a statement of
credentials on their user page must have them verified through a team
of volunteers designated to this role by the Wikimedia Foundation (we
may want to involve the chapters if this becomes international). The
process of verification could be similar to what Citizendium uses,
i.e.:
a) have an existing, credentialed user vouch for the credentials to be
correct based on personal knowledge,
b) respond to an email associated with a reliable institution, and
point us to a web page of that institution where their credentials are
listed,
c) point to someone associated with a reliable institution we can
contact to verify the credentials.

We may extend this to regular users if it proves to scale well.

4) Users with verified credentials will get a little "Verified
credentials on <date>" marker on their user page, nothing more. This
marker would ideally be independent of the wikitext of the page, and
set in the user table instead.

I am opposed to any marker of edit contributions and such -- users who
care about credentials can look them up, those who do not care should
not be bothered by them in discussions or contributions.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic

_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


list: wikipedia-l

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [WikiEN-l] Accountability: bringing back a
	proposal I made nearly 2 years ago


from_name: geni

body:
On 3/5/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> I don't think community support can be gauged fairly from the response
> to the Essjay situation. Essjay was a highly respected contributor,
> and many were inclined to respect and defend his desire to create a
> fake identity without an informed debate about the nature of
> credentials, and why it is important that we treat such statements
> with care.
>
> I believe this debate needs to take place now, independently of the
> Essjay incident.
>

You can have it takeing place now or you can have it independent of
the Essjay incident. you can't have both.

> Why won't it look good? I don't believe there's a problem with
> removing claims, or perhaps adding an {{UnverifiedCredentials}}
> template.

Someone has a degree and mentions it on their userpage. They then
apply for adminship but have no wish to provide data on themselves to
the foundation. So they have to take the information off. There is
then a risk of people holding that against them.

--
geni


body:
On 3/5/07, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:

> This is going to be nightmarish to police and run. Not to mention you
> have to have a
> signed release from the person in order to obtain access to this level
> of personal information.

I'm not sure I've provided enough context to fully explain the
proposal. The idea is not to _require_ anything, but to only ask for
confirmation if people make the claim _themselves_, and then only for
people in positions of trust, or those whose credentials have been
called into question. Anyone is free to reach any level of trust
without professional credentials.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Accountability:
	bringing back a proposal I made nearly 2 years ago


from_name: The Wikipedia Documentary

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wiki Podcast from India!

body:
Hi there, documentary fans-

Currently traveling the world shooting the documentary "Truth in Numbers: The Wikipedia Story", director Nic Hill makes it to Chennai, India, where he and his small crew from Underdog Productions meet up with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.  There they rock the first ever Indian WikiCamp (http://wikicamp.in), an "UnConference" where wiki enthusiasts from all over the country gather to "harness the power of Wikis."

In the spirit of that harnessing, check out the 'making-of' podcast and join in on the first-ever "crowd-sourced" documentary here: www.wikidocumentary.org

Thanks!
-WikiDoc

_____________________________
Change address / Leave mailing list: http://ymlp.com/u.php?Ferrisito+wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Hosting by  YourMailingListProvider


from_name: Keith Old

subject: [WikiEN-l] Larry Sanger weighs in on the Essjay incident

body:
On 3/5/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/3/07, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
> > As in Chinese Democracy, the Guns n. Roses album that has been 15 years
> in
> > the making and still hasn't been released.
>
> Dude, Guns 'n Roses? Don't you know that if you need an abandonware
> example on the internet, you use [[Duke Nukem Forever]]? I mean,
> that's just common courtesy.
>
> --Oskar
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Oskar,

Sorry. Never heard of it although I have heard of Duke Nukem. My gaming
knowledge is close to zero, I'm afraid. :>) Before you ask I generally don't
comment on gaming AFDs or webcomics.

Mind you, I don't think it has cost as much as Chinese Democracy which is at
$15 million and counting. It seems that Chinese Democracy has been going for
longer.

Regards

Keith Old

Keith Old


from_name: Oldak Quill

subject: [Foundation-l] Update of Foundation organization

body:
On 05/03/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/5/07, Florence Devouard <anthere at anthere.org> wrote:
> [snip]
> > * we wish to involve people from all over the world, not restricting
> > employees to USA only. Currently, those working "offshore" have to be
> > their own employers (they are contractants). This is not sustainable in
> > the long run, so we have to explore more international employment issues.
> [snip]
>
> First off, I'm terrified to raise this point in public because I know
> that there are people here who will scream that I'm some kind of
> nationalist bigot for bringing this up. But I think it's a very
> serious matter which demands the input and understanding of a wide
> audience.
>
> It is my understanding that if we have true employees in a nation that
> our organization will have a legal presence in that nation. If we have
> a legal presence in that nation, we will be subject to the
> jurisdiction of that nation.
>
> It would be ideal that our activities would generally be so far away
> from the ambiguous grey areas of the law that the differing legal
> behavior would not be a substantial issue for us. However, this just
> isn't the case today. We benefit substantially from detailed aspects
> of US law in the areas of libel, copyright, and privacy.
>
> *Does operating the foundation with regular employees in a nation
> create a jurisdictional issue as I described?
> *How can we avoid this risk while maintaining the agility to hire
> useful people from any part of the world?
> *What are the qualities and risks of various jurisdictions?
> *How can we deal with the impact of being subject to multiple jurisdictions?
>
> I fear that in the worst case being directly subject to the laws of
> many nations we may find our entire method of operation (open access
> Wikis) to be too risky.

A related question: what would an online employee bring to Wikimedia
that online volunteers couldn't? If the answer is not much, then
perhaps resources could be better spent elsewhere. This is not to say
that I don't look forward to the day when the Foundation has employees
in several countries with different backgrounds, perspectives and
skills, but the expense of acheiving this must be justified.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Florence Devouard

subject: [Foundation-l] [Fwd: Prix Ars Electronica 2007 - Extended Deadline]

body:
fyi

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Prix Ars Electronica 2007 - Extended Deadline
Date: Mon,  5 Mar 2007 16:42:11 +0100 (CET)
From: communities at prixars.aec.at
Reply-To: communities at prixars.aec.at
To: 00000035 at bender.aec.at

Dear friends and participants of Prix Ars Electronica!

Prix Ars Electronica 2007 is considering several requests of artists and
submitters and has extended the deadline for the online registration
until March 16, 2007.

NEW Submission Deadline: March 16, 2007
Details about entering are available online only at http://prixars.aec.at/

The 21st Prix Ars Electronica 2007 - International Competition for
Cyberarts has a few new features. The new Hybrid Art category, a new
prize for Media.Art.Research, and the integration of Net Vision into
Digital Communities are the most visible signs of the intensive work
that is being done on the definition of the competition?s categories. As
always, the aim is to continually keep the Prix Ars Electronica updated
in line with leading-edge developments in the dynamic field of cyberarts.

Computeranimation / Film / VFX, Digital Musics, Interactive Art, Hybrid
Art,
Digital Communities, u19 - freestyle competition, [the next idea] grant,
Media.Art.Research Award

Contact
Ingrid Fischer: communities at prixars.aec.at

Your Prix Ars Electronica 2007 Team

----------------------------------------------------------------------
If you don't want to receive the AEC Newsletter any more, you can
unsubscribe by sending a mail to 00000035-unsubscribe at listsrv.aec.at
with the text "unsubscribe" in the subject: line
-----------------------------------------------------------------------


from_name: Andrew Cady

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Study finds that Wikipedia has evolved from an
	oligarchy to a ...

body:
On Sat, Mar 03, 2007 at 11:54:22AM -0500, Bartning at aol.com wrote:
> My two cents:
>
> Actually, Plato thought democracy was a step below oligarchy in
> _The Republic_, one step above anarchy.  Remember, his good friend
> Socrates, the main character in the book, was killed by a true
> democracy.  He argues, as does Madison in the _Federalist Papers_,
> that pure democracy has very serious flaws.  It should be "devolved"
> to democracy, though democracy also provides freedom and has its
> place, and we should remember Plato's republic also had "philosopher
> kings."

Plato's Republic was not essentially dissimilar to Soviet Communism;
the main difference is that the Soviets at least payed lip service to
democracy and the value of the working class.  Russell on Plato:

  It has always been correct to praise Plato, but not to understand
  him.  This is the common fate of great men.  My object is the
  opposite.  I wish to understand him, but to treat him with as little
  reverence as if he were a contemporary English or American advocate of
  totalitarianism. [...]

  But even if we suppose there is such a thing [in government]
  as "wisdom," is there any form of constitution which will give
  the government to the wise?  It is clear that majorities, like
  general councils, may err, and in fact have erred.  Aristocracies
  are not always wise; kings are often foolish; Popes, in spite of
  infallibility, have committed grievous errors. [...]

  The problem of finding a collection of "wise" men and leaving the
  government to them is thus an insoluble one.  That is the ultimate
  reason for democracy.

Please remember that (if we are to believe the dialogue) Socrates
could have fled, but chose to drink the hemlock out of respect for
the authority of Athenian government.  Even where the state murders
to censor critics, its dictates are not to be resisted.  That is the
mentality of Plato.

I won't touch on whether Athens was "true democracy."


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Accountability: bringing back a proposal I made
	nearly 2 years ago

body:
On 05/03/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> The point is to make sure that people are being honest with us and with
> the general public.  If you don't care to tell us that you are a PhD (or
> that you are not), then that's fine: your editing stands or falls on its
> own merit.  But if you do care to represent yourself as something, you
> have to be able to prove it.

[For the sake of full disclosure, I'm doing my BSc at KCL.]

I have some concerns with the "impact on the social dynamics of
Wikimedia" (as Erik put it) that would result from Jimbo's idea. I
fear that users will unfairly be given more worth based upon their
credentials.

Academic credentials seem to me to have little to do with many of the
skills necessary to being a Wikipedian (even less so when it comes to
positions of trust). Sure, one would expect a user with a background
in academics to write readable, clear and well-researched articles
(such is their training), but beyond this the vast majority of work
done on Wikimedia (grunt work, minor edits, &c.) seem little helped.
What's more, I'm not sure how credentials would come into the article
creation/improvement process anyway: if an article is good and
well-referenced then it's quite irrelevent whether it's primary editor
has just secondary education or a PhD. [IMO, referencing should *in
theory* make the qualifications of our editors irrelevant]

Since academic credentials don't improve the intrinsic worth of an
article (at least, I don't believe so) and doesn't say anything about
a user's editing, community and administrator skills, I can't see a
reason to react to Essjay's controversy with such alarm.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Kasimir Gabert

subject: [Wikitech-l] AJAX and .aspx as technologies for MediaWiki?

body:
Hello Virgil,

Most web servers that run wikis are run using open source technology.
ASP.NET is closed source and run by Microsoft, and so I doubt that it
would get far in this community.  The two main languages that you want
to build it in would be PHP or Perl (Python, Ruby, etc, as well).

Kasimir

On 3/5/07, Virgil Ierubino <virgil.ierubino at gmail.com> wrote:
> A quick development question.
>
> If an AJAX-enabled, or "next-gen" MediaWiki were to be built, would it be
> acceptable for it to have been made in a format such as .aspx (i.e. built
> using Microsoft Visual Web Developer)? I was wondering if this might have
> some kind of clash with GFDL/Copyleft principles, or accessibility or
> compatibility. Would web pages in the .aspx format be acceptable as the
> output of the software that Wikipedia runs on?
>
> Thanks.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
Kasimir Gabert


body:
On 05/03/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 3/5/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > The point is to make sure that people are being honest with us and with
> > the general public.
>
> I would modify the proposal: You only need to verify the credentials
> if you're in a position of trust (adminship or higher).
> - Reduces the number of necessary verifications
> - Has less of an impact on the social dynamics of Wikipedia
> - Gives us a good response to media ("user was not in a position of
> trust") when other editors use fake credentials
> - Gives editors a sense of perspective when looking at userpages
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik

I think we should only introduce restrictive measures (which Jimbo's
proposal is) if they are completely necessary. How are credentials
necessary to positions of trust? Will they be taken into account when
someone is elected; or when the admin makes a decision, votes or
weighs in on a discussion? [eg. admins with no credentials are
undermined by other users]. I hope the answer to the last question is
a firm and resounding notion but even the best intended proposals can
put us in an unwanted position.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 3/5/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 2) Making up professional credentials is prohibited, and may result in
> > a ban. (This may or may not be covered by existing policy, but judging
> > from the Essjay case, it is probably not sufficiently clear.) This is
> > independent of whether or not the user asks for credentials to be
> > verified. We may investigate claims that are dubious when they are
> > pointed out to us.

> No. No community support for this and appears to be policy cruft.
> Better to go with. "makeing up credentials mad result in bad things
> happening please don't".

I don't think community support can be gauged fairly from the response
to the Essjay situation. Essjay was a highly respected contributor,
and many were inclined to respect and defend his desire to create a
fake identity without an informed debate about the nature of
credentials, and why it is important that we treat such statements
with care.

I believe this debate needs to take place now, independently of the
Essjay incident.

> Oh man please no. Way too buracratic. People wanting to avoid it will
> would have to remove such claims even when true before running for
> adminship which wont look good.

Why won't it look good? I don't believe there's a problem with
removing claims, or perhaps adding an {{UnverifiedCredentials}}
template.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic


body:
On 05/03/07, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> An employee brings minimally as his/her commitment to work 40 hours a week.
> An employee can be told to do what is deemed necessary by the organisation.
> An employee is part of an hierarchy and he/she does not have the option to
> say "Sorry, but like you I am a volunteer".
>
> These are all things that are really relevant differences. Strange that I
> did not have to think hard nor long to come up with just this initial list.
> When I think of it, a professional can be hired to do the things where we do
> not have the volunteers to do these tasks.
>
> Thanks,
>     GerardM

Based on the fact that Wikimedia Foundation has such a large pool of
volunteers, I think the 40 hour week difference makes little
difference. Is there a reason why Wikimedia Foundation can't contract
volunteers (as charity shops do)? Similarly, there is no reason why
the Foundation can't give official positions to volunteers who can be
trusted to work a minimum number of hours a week (with or without a
contract). Such volunteers would be given a job description and be
asked to do things by the Foundation in the way an employee would.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Oldak Quill wrote:

>On 05/03/07, Sebastian Moleski <sebmol at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I've recruited and manged a great number of volunteers while working at a
>>university. The main problem with them is that, unless they have some sort
>>of alternative source of income/wealth, it's just not economically feasible
>>for them to put in more than a few hours a week. So you could say: why not
>>hire a lot of volunteers that just do a little bit of work? The problem
>>there is that lack of communication, variety of approaches to solving tasks
>>compounded by geographic diversifcation will make it very unlikely that such
>>an arrangement can be effective and efficient. This holds especially for the
>>kind of jobs Florence was talking about. Unless we're talking about small,
>>well-contained tasks, volunteers just won't be able to do them in a speedy
>>manner.
>>
>>
>I certainly agree that managing 12 volunteers doing a few hours a week
>would be more difficult than 2 employees, but as a not-for-profit
>charity there's no harm in exploring the feasability of relying on
>volunteers.
>
>You mention communication. Volunteers given these positions would be
>aware that they're doing an important job: they should feel obligated
>to working a particular number hours of week and should also feel
>obligated to inform the Foundation when they are unable to fulfil
>this. The Foundation could contact them over the phone or by e-mail: I
>can't see it being hard to contact volunteers.
>
This is naive.  I am very much in support of of maximum volunteer
inpout.  You cannot oblige anybody to work a specified number of hours
per week unless they are getting something out of it.  That something
may still be intangible, like personal satisfaction, instead of money;
pure altruism is unlikely to be enough.  When you start to hassle them
by phone or whatever they're more likely to say, "Screw you!" and go away.

Ec


from_name: Jossi Fresco

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Accountability: bringing back a proposal I
	made	nearly 2 years ago

body:
On Mar 5, 2007, at 7:52 PM, Michael Noda wrote:

> This sounds much more like what we might want.  Is Amazon's system
> open, or will we have to craft our own?  It seems like the sort of
> thing that would be useful in more online settings than WMF projects,
> so we could likely get coding support from the wider FLOSS community,
> if we publicised the project.

We can "roll our own" if needed be. If we do it with credit cards, it
is a no brainer. But given that we use PayPal for our fundraising
drives, the Foundation could approach PayPal and see if they are
willing to lend a hand. PayPal has a "confirmed indenity" program as
well.

> If we really want to implement something like this, I can see a call
> for mandating Confirmed Identity for all positions of trust higher
> than Admin (adminship, whether or not it's still "not a big deal", is
> probably not a big enough deal to require Confirmed Identity from all
> 1000+ admins.)  I think requiring Confirmed Identity from all future
> press contacts is a no-brainer, at this point.

That could be a good first step.

-- Jossi


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Is editing for payment a fundamentally problematic
	conflict of interest?

body:
On 3/3/07, Jaap Vermeulen <jaap.vermeulen at gmail.com> wrote:
> "I have recently been approached by an organisation to improve articles
> related to the organisation in question (not create new ones). I would
> receive money for doing so.

Presently, I would consider this unacceptable.

There is a scenario which I would consider viable:

a) a person paid to do editing is paid to edit in a specific field,
rather than only about a single entity in that field.
b) the person is paid to do so by trusted non-profit organization X,
which receives money from interested organizations.
c) the person is chosen by organization X.
d) the editor must identify the nature of their editorial work on
their user page. This will link to a page on the website of
organization X where the nature of the relationship is described.
e) all edits are expected to be in line with existing policy.

X might == Wikimedia, but keep in mind that this would change the
relation of the WMF to its content, so it might be preferable for a
separate organization we trust to handle this. It might be a
subsidiary.

If we think back to the Microsoft case, I think it would be fine for
an independent organization to pay someone who generally improves the
articles about open document standards under strict adherence to NPOV,
and it would be fine for Microsoft and other interested parties to pay
money to the Foundation for this. It would not be fine for Microsoft
to hire someone.

That said, I doubt my position has majority support.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic