Mailing List Archive

> Why has no steward responded to these and many other requests for information
> made in February, March, and April 2006?

Only three stewards (Anthere, Datrio, and Oscar) have CheckUser
access. I don't know if the backlog is because the policy is unclear
on when requests can be fulfilled, or whether there just aren't enough
people willing to carry out these requests.

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

On 4/14/06, Angela <beesley@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Why has no steward responded to these and many other requests for
> information
> > made in February, March, and April 2006?
>
> Only three stewards (Anthere, Datrio, and Oscar) have CheckUser
> access. I don't know if the backlog is because the policy is unclear
> on when requests can be fulfilled, or whether there just aren't enough
> people willing to carry out these requests.

Not really - we have CheckUser access on Meta, but every Steward can
give him CheckUser access on any other wiki.

Personally, I'm taking care of every request that'll get through _to
me_. I'm not checking [[Request for CheckUser information]] all the
time, I'll confess. I'll try to take care of these requests in a few
minutes, I hope someone will be able to help me.

--
Pozdrawiam,
Dariusz Siedlecki
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Angela wrote:
>>Why has no steward responded to these and many other requests for information
>>made in February, March, and April 2006?
>
>
> Only three stewards (Anthere, Datrio, and Oscar) have CheckUser
> access. I don't know if the backlog is because the policy is unclear
> on when requests can be fulfilled, or whether there just aren't enough
> people willing to carry out these requests.
>
> Angela.

I do not usually answer to requests on that page, but only when they are
specifically asked to me. Several reasons : first, I consider I do not
have a technical enough knowledge to help best. Second, I already have
too much to do :-) So, I only help when people email me or ask me on irc.

Ant

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

Birgitte Arco wrote:
>
>>I am perplex that the en.wikibooks does not have a
>>big enough base of
>>editors to vote on a check user...
>>I am quite lazy, so I will not go to the stats page
>>to check. But can
>>you roughly say how many active editors per month
>>the project currently
>>has ? How many very active editors per month ?
>>
>>ant
>>
>
>
> The number of editors who edit a small project, and
> the number of editors who pay any attention to the
> community pages are two completely different things.
> At English Wikisource which has over 3,000 registered
> users (There is no stats on the languages of
> Wikisource) often closes consensus deletion with two
> votes plus the nomination. There are less than 10
> people who regularly edit at the Scriptorium, although
> I hope more read it. There are a lot of editors who
> come over from Wikipedia to work on a single project,
> and only pay attention to our policies if that project
> is up for deletion of a copyright violation. And
> vandalism is definitely on the rise. We used to have
> a few vandals that just messed up one page (Macbeth is
> a favorite). In the past month we have had three
> attacks that seem to be by a bot. It registered some
> name with Troll in it and replaces entire pages with
> Animations of a troll until blocked. It seems each
> attack has targeted the sames pages. I feel the need
> of a project for checkuser and ability to gather 25
> votes are completely unrelated. Perhaps if everyone
> still feels this is non-negotiable we could have a
> steward who is generally available personally assigned
> to each project that requests one.

I would rather prefer having a checkuser generally available to each
project. Again, checkuser requires technical knowledge. And checkuser
and stewards are too different jobs. But otherwise, your proposal looks
fine.


> When I have needed a checkuser in the past I have had
> to go through third parties on IRC because no
> available steward felt comfortable fulfilling my
> request directly. And that makes it hard on me when
> my blocks are questioned and I am accused having
> ulterior motives (this was from outside the project).
> I feel in my case I alerted and consulted with other
> administrators and people outside of Wikisource enough
> to feel confident these accusations cannot taken
> seriously. However, administrators of small projects
> are being put in the position of deciding between
> protecting the project legally or from vandalism or
> else protecting their reputations from accustions of
> blocking people on unconfirmed suspicions. If I
> hadn't been trusted by someone who was trusted by
> stewards, I would have been put in a very nasty
> postition. If things continue as they are, sooner or
> later some one on some project is going to be stripped
> of adminship because they did what they needed to do
> to protect the project, and didn't think to cover
> themselves as well as I did.
>
> Birgitte SB

Nod. I understand what you say.
Unfortunately, absolutely *any* editor may be attacked anytime and have
his/her reputation attacked. If you doubt that, check out the recent
emails between David Gerard, Aurevilly and myself :-(

Now, I must also say that it is quite unconfortable to do checkuser on a
project you absolutely do not know and in a language you do not know either.

Something that occured to me recently. I got a checkuser from a small
language project. A person A, made the request to check if person B did
not edit under several accounts. He suspected sockpuppetry. He said he
was sysop (I checked, he was). I did the check. The ip was shared by
three editors names. Impossible for me to try to see if edits were
similar or on similar topics. I gave the information to person A (only
the name of the other editor).
Then, person B contacted me a few days later, to ask me to check person
A, to see if he had a certain ip, which vandalised several articles...
and user B own user page. A bit perplex, I checked, and indeed, UserA ip
was the one which vandalized the articles (it was really vandalism) and
the user page. So, I confirmed person B that person A shared an ip with
a vandal. Likely, person A was a vandal. And a sysop...

And I deeply wondered if I had done well to tell UserA that UserB had
sockpuppets. And UserB that UserA was a sysop.

Requests may be done by *good* editors and by *bad* editors. Stewards
have no way to know. I am not sure it is good.

ant (who heard you were a good person :-))

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

>
> Nod. I understand what you say.
> Unfortunately, absolutely *any* editor may be
> attacked anytime and have
> his/her reputation attacked. If you doubt that,
> check out the recent
> emails between David Gerard, Aurevilly and myself
> :-(
>
> Now, I must also say that it is quite unconfortable
> to do checkuser on a
> project you absolutely do not know and in a language
> you do not know either.
>

. . .

> Requests may be done by *good* editors and by *bad*
> editors. Stewards
> have no way to know. I am not sure it is good.
>
> ant (who heard you were a good person :-))



I realize there is fine line here. And I am confident
that no one will take the accusations against me
seriously. However I was very cautious about things,
thinking of how everything would look once all the
evidence was deleted. All history of any
contributions made by the editor at Wikisource have of
course disappeared. And especially as the person was
nuked on another project which destroyed most of the
history there, which I could have used to back up my
actions. I kept records of what I could and trusted
that people would speak up for me if it came that (as
Brad has done).

However, in general the people who are trusted from a
Foundation perspective take little interest in the
running of the smaller projects. At the same time,
those that keep these projects running smoothly are
told they are not trusted enough to have the tools
they need. And then people with access, such as
yourself, feel uncomfortable even using the tools to
pass info on. And I understand why you feel that way
of course. Because I feel uncomfortable blocking
someone indefinitely without being 100% sure he was
the same person who had caused problems before. It is
not just that I worry about what others may accuse me
of, but I take the responsibility seriously. In the
end it is my action, whoever else advised me on it.
But am convinced the risk of legal exposure is a great
enough problem that I can overcome the discomfort.

This is really a larger and mor far reaching problem.
No one at Wikisource subscribed to this list until
someone told us that it had been decided here that our
copyright policy was not restrictive enough. That is
when a few of the regular editors signed up. I
imagine there are a great number of active projects
out there running their own little worlds, divested
from the Foundation in all but name. I believe there
are other problems we haven't yet imagined already out
there. Things need to be handled differently.
Perhaps new projects are approved to easily. It might
be a good idea to assign official liaisons. Or maybe
there should be a mentorship program for bureaucrats.
Perhaps the Foundation should randomly run a detailed
assesment of the smaller but active projects. Or
maybe there should be a recruitment of the people who
run these projects to become more active within the
Foundation. I do not know the answer, but I can see
symptoms that this is a larger problem than stewards
ignoring requests for Checkuser.

I will say this, projects like Wikisource are very
different from Wikipedia. They are also very
different from Wikipedia was when it as small as
Wikisource is now. What worked then and now for WP
will not work for Wikisource or Wikibooks. I can see
this just from that expectations there are of how X
voters should be gotten from X active editors. When
people were active at Wikipedia years ago, they joined
the community. Now these editors are either fed up
with community from WP experiences, or else they
devote all their "community" time to WP, but they
still come edit regularly on places like Wikisource.
I see many names I recognize from WP community
discussions in the Recent Changes at Wikisource. But
they never join in on any WS general disscussions. I
am not saying this is either good or bad; it is just
makes a different animal entirely. Also as Robert
Horning said, we attract vandals of a sophisticaton WP
never even imagined when there were only 12
administrators. I feel that if projects like
Wikisource and Wikibooks are continually regarded by
the Foundation the way they are now, they will become
like difficult step-childrem. I do not believe anyone
wants that to happen. I certainly don't and that is
why I encouraging for something to change. There must
be more intergration and trust on all levels. And I
mean trust that our work will be supported as well as
trust that we act responsibly in the running our
projects.

Although this is old news, I will say this also
because it regards trust running the other way. It
was very hard on us to have to delete all the UN
resolutions and Crown legislation. We truly believed
(trusted) our copyright policy was supported. And
even now we have never gotten a straight answer on the
thinking behind the copyrights. Any disscussion I
read about it, leaves me newly aware of the lack of
understanding people have about the basics of
Wikisource. Or else I get the impression that
everyone from the Foundation is being intentionally
vague. So we are being very cautious, and I worry
every day someone will come down and say we have get
rid of X also. And that is the worst part of being and
admin, when the rules suddenly change on you and you
are left to enforce them on very unhappy people. And
on top of it all I do not understand why they changed
or even if my current interpration of the rules is
correct. Things like this can only happen so many
times before everyone becomes too gun-shy to keep
contributing, or else decides to just ignore the rules
they feel are arbitrary. Either of those would be a
bad thing. Sorry this was so long.

Birgitte SB

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 4/14/06, Anthere <Anthere9@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>In short, I think that only editors known by a significant
>>number of other editors should ever be given checkuser access. Hence the
>>25 votes. Which may be too high a value.
>
>
> Yes, I think changing the phrase "25-30 editors approval" to "the
> approval of 10 active editors" would be a reasonable change that can
> be made without too much bureaucracy. While it's good to be cautious
> about these things, specific parameters like this are *meant* to be
> tuned. Be bold :-)
>
> Erik


I'll ask the board its opinion :-)

ant

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

Birgitte SB wrote:
>>Nod. I understand what you say.
>>Unfortunately, absolutely *any* editor may be
>>attacked anytime and have
>>his/her reputation attacked. If you doubt that,
>>check out the recent
>>emails between David Gerard, Aurevilly and myself
>>:-(
>>
>>Now, I must also say that it is quite unconfortable
>>to do checkuser on a
>>project you absolutely do not know and in a language
>>you do not know either.
>>
>
>
> . . .
>
>
>>Requests may be done by *good* editors and by *bad*
>>editors. Stewards
>>have no way to know. I am not sure it is good.
>>
>>ant (who heard you were a good person :-))
>
>
>
>
> I realize there is fine line here. And I am confident
> that no one will take the accusations against me
> seriously. However I was very cautious about things,
> thinking of how everything would look once all the
> evidence was deleted. All history of any
> contributions made by the editor at Wikisource have of
> course disappeared. And especially as the person was
> nuked on another project which destroyed most of the
> history there, which I could have used to back up my
> actions. I kept records of what I could and trusted
> that people would speak up for me if it came that (as
> Brad has done).

Hi

> However, in general the people who are trusted from a
> Foundation perspective take little interest in the
> running of the smaller projects.

I would not say this at all. Trust does not come from being a
participant in a *big* project, or on a major language. Trust comes from
the frequent interaction we have with some editors and from sharing
certain tasks, which allow to get to know each other.

How does that happen ?
Well, perhaps you start writing on this mailing list and I'll notice
what you say sounds wise and interesting and willing to build something.
And perhaps others will tell me they feel the same. And perhaps we'll
exchange a couple of emails on minor issues (such as a checkuser) and I
will find you a cool person. Then, perhaps I will go look at your page
to see who you are. I will notice something which suggest you could be
interested in a certain project, then I'll invite you to join for that
task and you will agree. And we'll have fun doing that and do a good
work. Repeat that a bunch of times, and that will be it.

It is totally unrelated to the size or the nature of your favorite
project :-)

Do you have kids ?


At the same time,
> those that keep these projects running smoothly are
> told they are not trusted enough to have the tools
> they need. And then people with access, such as
> yourself, feel uncomfortable even using the tools to
> pass info on. And I understand why you feel that way
> of course. Because I feel uncomfortable blocking
> someone indefinitely without being 100% sure he was
> the same person who had caused problems before. It is
> not just that I worry about what others may accuse me
> of, but I take the responsibility seriously. In the
> end it is my action, whoever else advised me on it.
> But am convinced the risk of legal exposure is a great
> enough problem that I can overcome the discomfort.

nod.

> This is really a larger and mor far reaching problem.
> No one at Wikisource subscribed to this list until
> someone told us that it had been decided here that our
> copyright policy was not restrictive enough. That is
> when a few of the regular editors signed up. I
> imagine there are a great number of active projects
> out there running their own little worlds, divested
> from the Foundation in all but name.

nod.
Recently, some chinese editors also joined.
We need a common ground where to meet each others.

I believe there
> are other problems we haven't yet imagined already out
> there. Things need to be handled differently.
> Perhaps new projects are approved to easily.

Waitaminutehere. The last approved project... was...wikinews. It was
quite a while ago !

It might
> be a good idea to assign official liaisons. Or maybe
> there should be a mentorship program for bureaucrats.
> Perhaps the Foundation should randomly run a detailed
> assesment of the smaller but active projects. Or
> maybe there should be a recruitment of the people who
> run these projects to become more active within the
> Foundation. I do not know the answer, but I can see
> symptoms that this is a larger problem than stewards
> ignoring requests for Checkuser.
>

All good ideas.
But but but, we tried the official liaisons (they were called
ambassadors). It failed.
Recruitement of people : yes indeed. But this can only happen when we
start knowing each other a little bit more.
I absolutely agree with you we have a major problem of communication.
Actually, this has ALWAYS been the case. Just differently.
When I joined, the english wp was on one version of the software and all
others on an older version. There was no meta. There was no common
mailing list (later, non english were parked on one list). Actually, the
miscommunication was SO bad that a language even forked and is still
suffering today of that fork.
Last year, I tried to work to create Quarto with others interested in
communication, such as Sj. It was a place where at least description of
projects state could be made. By lack of human help, I gave up.
Elian also maintained with Aphaia's help a project-state on meta. I
think it is dead now.
There are now several wikizines in different languages (plus Walter's
global one), I hope they communicate a bit between themselves. But each
essentially give news of a specific project. Not cross project

If you have ideas, please, by all means, provide them. Or better,
IMPLEMENT them.

> I will say this, projects like Wikisource are very
> different from Wikipedia. They are also very
> different from Wikipedia was when it as small as
> Wikisource is now. What worked then and now for WP
> will not work for Wikisource or Wikibooks. I can see
> this just from that expectations there are of how X
> voters should be gotten from X active editors. When
> people were active at Wikipedia years ago, they joined
> the community. Now these editors are either fed up
> with community from WP experiences, or else they
> devote all their "community" time to WP, but they
> still come edit regularly on places like Wikisource.
> I see many names I recognize from WP community
> discussions in the Recent Changes at Wikisource. But
> they never join in on any WS general disscussions. I
> am not saying this is either good or bad; it is just
> makes a different animal entirely.

Which strongly suggest me that we should rather try to have
inter-projects checkusers.
Let me see... Karynn for example, is apparently a motivated checkuser,
with the full tech knowledge necessary. She may not be an arbitrator, I
think she is trusted as a checkuser. Why not having her checkuser on
several english speaking projects ?

Would not it be wiser than some inactive editors becoming checkuser on
wikibooks just because *there ought to be* a checkuser ? If the user has
done less than 50 edits in the past 3 months, it makes no sense that he
becomes checkuser really.

In any cases, I fully understand the different nature of editorship.

Also as Robert
> Horning said, we attract vandals of a sophisticaton WP
> never even imagined when there were only 12
> administrators. I feel that if projects like
> Wikisource and Wikibooks are continually regarded by
> the Foundation the way they are now, they will become
> like difficult step-childrem.

How are they regarded ?

As far as I am concerned, Wikibooks at least has a life on its own. It
knows very well how to keep joke books, remove Wikiversity or wikimania
proceedings. And it has a few vocal representatives on its list :-)

Admittedly, I know much less of Wikisource. But you are here now, no ? :-)

I do not believe anyone
> wants that to happen. I certainly don't and that is
> why I encouraging for something to change. There must
> be more intergration and trust on all levels. And I
> mean trust that our work will be supported as well as
> trust that we act responsibly in the running our
> projects.

Speaking of trust. One suggestion made last summer was that those given
checkuser access should provide their real names. What is your opinion
about this ?
If the Foundation trusts those with checkusers to use it according to
policy, would checkusers trust the Foundation enough to provide their
real names ?

> Although this is old news, I will say this also
> because it regards trust running the other way. It
> was very hard on us to have to delete all the UN
> resolutions and Crown legislation. We truly believed
> (trusted) our copyright policy was supported. And
> even now we have never gotten a straight answer on the
> thinking behind the copyrights. Any disscussion I
> read about it, leaves me newly aware of the lack of
> understanding people have about the basics of
> Wikisource. Or else I get the impression that
> everyone from the Foundation is being intentionally
> vague.

No. It is worse than this...
The Foundation board did not discuss this issue, even less took a
decision about copyrights on wikisource. I presume it came from a
discussion between Jimbo and legal bodies. I am intentionally vague on
your UN resolutions and Crown legislation deletions because I am not
aware of it.
Sorry.

So we are being very cautious, and I worry
> every day someone will come down and say we have get
> rid of X also. And that is the worst part of being and
> admin, when the rules suddenly change on you and you
> are left to enforce them on very unhappy people. And
> on top of it all I do not understand why they changed
> or even if my current interpration of the rules is
> correct.

This is a problem. Have you talked to JImbo for clarification ? You are
lucky, you share a language... Imagine japanese editors...

Things like this can only happen so many
> times before everyone becomes too gun-shy to keep
> contributing, or else decides to just ignore the rules
> they feel are arbitrary. Either of those would be a
> bad thing. Sorry this was so long.

I am a proponent of ignore all rules...

Cheers and thanks for the long email.

ant

PS : do you like mint tea ?

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

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

This is gotten really long so I going to attempt
summaries:

--- Anthere <Anthere9@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Birgitte SB wrote:

> > However, in general the people who are trusted
> from a
> > Foundation perspective take little interest in the
> > running of the smaller projects.
>
> I would not say this at all. Trust does not come
> from being a
> participant in a *big* project, or on a major
> language. Trust comes from
> the frequent interaction we have with some editors
> and from sharing
> certain tasks, which allow to get to know each
> other.
>
> How does that happen ?

>{{Explanation of getting noticed by Foundation
people}}

I completely understand how someone from a project big
or small
becomes trusted and agree that it can only happen by
getting to
know a person. What I meant was in the other
direction; that the
trusted people don't check in on the small projects.
Before the
copyright issue I always assumed the Foundation knew
generally
what happened at Wikisource. I certainly thought some
one was
reading our policy pages and approved of them. That
someone
made sure we had an active bueraucrat and responsible
admistrators.
However in reality the Foundation knows very little of
how smaller
projects are run and makes no effort that I know of to
check-in.
The only attention such projects recieve is if they
come to a
Foundation level people with a problem. That is not
good.
I really believe if a big Wikimedia scandal occurs it
will be
in one of these small non-English, non-German,
non-Japanese,
non-French projects. Right now there could be
policies in
place that expose the Foundation to as much liability
as
abuse of Checkuser. Who knows?


>
> Do you have kids ?
>

No.

>>{{My exeperience needing checkuser an blocking
dicomfort}}

> nod.
>
>>{{There are small project divested from the
Foundation in all but name}}

> nod.
> Recently, some chinese editors also joined.
> We need a common ground where to meet each others.
>
> :I believe there
> > are other problems we haven't yet imagined already
>> out
> > there. Things need to be handled differently.
> > Perhaps new projects are approved to easily.
>
> Waitaminutehere. The last approved project...
> was...wikinews. It was
> quite a while ago !

Perhaps project was the wrong word. I mean new
community.
New languages that don't have adminstrators in place



> > {{Numerous ideas for better intergration}}

>{{Numerous previous attempts at intergration and
stories
>of past horrors}}

> If you have ideas, please, by all means, provide
them. Or better,
>IMPLEMENT them.

>>{{How Wikisource and other small projects are
different
>>from Wikipedia}}

>Which strongly suggest me that we should rather try
to have
>inter-projects checkusers.
>Let me see... Karynn for example, is apparently a
motivated checkuser,
>with the full tech knowledge necessary. She may not
be an arbitrator, I
>think she is trusted as a checkuser. Why not having
her checkuser on
>several english speaking projects ?

>Would not it be wiser than some inactive editors
becoming checkuser on
>wikibooks just because *there ought to be* a
checkuser ? If the user
>has
>done less than 50 edits in the past 3 months, it
makes no sense that he
>becomes checkuser really.

>In any cases, I fully understand the different nature
of editorship.

Inter-project checkusers would be fine. Actually I
think that having stewards
do checkuser is fine. Except that it doesn't happen.
I don't have problem
with the denial of local checkusers, so much as the
denial of the checkuser
information completely. The current system would be
fine if it only worked :)

>>Also as Robert
>> Horning said, we attract vandals of a sophisticaton
WP
> >never even imagined when there were only 12
> >administrators. I feel that if projects like
> >Wikisource and Wikibooks are continually regarded
by
> >the Foundation the way they are now, they will
become
> >like difficult step-childrem.

>How are they regarded ?

>As far as I am concerned, Wikibooks at least has a
life on its own. It
>knows very well how to keep joke books, remove
Wikiversity or wikimania
>proceedings. And it has a few vocal representatives
on its list :-)

>Admittedly, I know much less of Wikisource. But you
are here now, no ?
>:-)

They are regarded in this way. They are left alone
without guidelines or
advice and told to make thier own community; govern
themselves. Then when
everything seems to be going fine some one steps in
and says "Oh you guys
are doing *that*. That is no good, you have get rid
of that. And you must make up your
own rules with the details of what goes and what can
stay. Sorry I can't really give
advice" And then they make new policies and no one is
willing say the new policy
actually kosher. So they hold their breath and hope
the whole thing doesn't repeat
again.

It is not that I don't think we are valued so much as
I feel we don't really know
where we stand. It as if we want to build something
wonderful and strong and
proper; then it rains and we find out it was just a
sandcastle. And when we ask for
new materials we are just given more sand. I know
eveyone only wants the best
for us, and I do not think there is any lack of
respect. I just see these situations
repeating and people becoming frustrated if nothing
changes. And that is why I
am here. Why I joined this list, because maybe that
way Wikisource can be better
informed in policy decisions. But I am more worried
about the other communities that
are not currently represented here. I want to speak
up for them and say Wikisource
was once not plugged into the Foudation and we were
unaware of major problems.
Some other community is out there is with no idea they
will have to destroy
their own work when it comes to light. This is not so
much about Wikisource as them

>>{{Intergration and Trust are needed}}

>Speaking of trust. One suggestion made last summer
was that those given
>checkuser access should provide their real names.
What is your opinion
>about this ?
>If the Foundation trusts those with checkusers to use
it according to
>policy, would checkusers trust the Foundation enough
to provide their
>real names ?

I am surprised that this is not already required. I
think you mean the
Board would have access to the real names and not the
people
who are being checked, right?

>>{{Old copyright policy problems}}

>No. It is worse than this...
>The Foundation board did not discuss this issue, even
less took a
>decision about copyrights on wikisource. I presume it
came from a
>discussion between Jimbo and legal bodies. I am
intentionally vague on
>your UN resolutions and Crown legislation deletions
because I am not
>aware of it.
>Sorry.

That is worse. Really the discussion happened on this
list. We never
got any real official ruling just vague comments that
GFDL is good
everything else is bad. This really not good enough
for many
reasons I will not get into. It is not simple but I
do not want to
force answers from people who are not knowledgable,
because
that is what caused the deletion of UN and Crown in my
opinion.

>>{{Being cautious with copyright waiting for the
other shoe to drop}}

>This is a problem. Have you talked to JImbo for
clarification ? You are
>lucky, you share a language... Imagine japanese
editors...

See above. Yes I think some other languages are going
to have
rude shock about these kind of issues in the future.
It will be worse
because they will be much further along than we were
when this
happened. Thats why I am bringing this up. I want to
find a solution
before there is another 6 months of work put into
these projects
that will have to be deleted. I am thinking of those
people most of
all.

>>{{ either too gun-shy to keep contributing, or
decide to just ignore
> > the rules they feel are arbitrary.}}

>I am a proponent of ignore all rules...

Well yes, but we don't want people to go too far out
of bounds.

>PS : do you like mint tea ?

I really do like all kinds of tea. But I never make
it at home
I only order it at rrestaurants.

BirgitteSB

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Hello

>>{{Explanation of getting noticed by Foundation
>
> people}}
>
> I completely understand how someone from a project big
> or small
> becomes trusted and agree that it can only happen by
> getting to
> know a person. What I meant was in the other
> direction; that the
> trusted people don't check in on the small projects.
> Before the
> copyright issue I always assumed the Foundation knew
> generally
> what happened at Wikisource. I certainly thought some
> one was
> reading our policy pages and approved of them. That
> someone
> made sure we had an active bueraucrat and responsible
> admistrators.
> However in reality the Foundation knows very little of
> how smaller
> projects are run and makes no effort that I know of to
> check-in.
> The only attention such projects recieve is if they
> come to a
> Foundation level people with a problem.

That is correct. Usually, attention is given when there is a problem.
One can not assume the Foundation is aware of everything that is going
on on all projects. And one certainly should NOT assume the Foundation
knows and approve of local policies. For a simple and good reason. The
Foundation is 3 people on the projects (Angela, Jimbo and myself).
Whilst the projects are 8 and some are in over 100 languages. So,
knowing and approving is simply impossible. Plus, do we really want that ?

That is not
> good.

Well. I only half agree.

On one hand, our project is held together by a couple of major rules,
which should absolutely be followed by all projects. Hmmm, I see only a
few ones
1) general goal of a project should be respected, whatever the language.
2) content should be freely usable, freely reusable and free to modify.
3) content should follow NPOV rule

And that's about it.

On the other hand, our project is not run in a top-down fashion. There
is no reason why the Foundation should know or approve local project
policies. So, generally, I see not why "this is not good" unless the
policy is about the goal, or the licence or the npov.


>>How are they regarded ?

> They are regarded in this way. They are left alone
> without guidelines or
> advice and told to make thier own community; govern
> themselves.

Well, yes... it is great it is this way :-)

Then when
> everything seems to be going fine some one steps in
> and says "Oh you guys
> are doing *that*. That is no good, you have get rid
> of that. And you must make up your
> own rules with the details of what goes and what can
> stay. Sorry I can't really give
> advice" And then they make new policies and no one is
> willing say the new policy
> actually kosher. So they hold their breath and hope
> the whole thing doesn't repeat
> again.

I see what you mean.
But again, I have no idea who stepped in and who told you you were doing
wrong etc... So, I can't really comment and mostly can not really say
who could better help you set up new policies.


>
>>>{{Intergration and Trust are needed}}
>
>
>>Speaking of trust. One suggestion made last summer
>
> was that those given
>
>>checkuser access should provide their real names.
>
> What is your opinion
>
>>about this ?
>>If the Foundation trusts those with checkusers to use
>
> it according to
>
>>policy, would checkusers trust the Foundation enough
>
> to provide their
>
>>real names ?
>
>
> I am surprised that this is not already required. I
> think you mean the
> Board would have access to the real names and not the
> people
> who are being checked, right?

Correct


>>>{{Old copyright policy problems}}
>
>
>>No. It is worse than this...
>>The Foundation board did not discuss this issue, even
>
> less took a
>
>>decision about copyrights on wikisource. I presume it
>
> came from a
>
>>discussion between Jimbo and legal bodies. I am
>
> intentionally vague on
>
>>your UN resolutions and Crown legislation deletions
>
> because I am not
>
>>aware of it.
>>Sorry.
>
>
> That is worse. Really the discussion happened on this
> list. We never
> got any real official ruling just vague comments that
> GFDL is good
> everything else is bad. This really not good enough
> for many
> reasons I will not get into. It is not simple but I
> do not want to
> force answers from people who are not knowledgable,
> because
> that is what caused the deletion of UN and Crown in my
> opinion.
>
>
>>>{{Being cautious with copyright waiting for the
>
> other shoe to drop}}
>
>
>>This is a problem. Have you talked to JImbo for
>
> clarification ? You are
>
>>lucky, you share a language... Imagine japanese
>
> editors...
>
> See above. Yes I think some other languages are going
> to have
> rude shock about these kind of issues in the future.
> It will be worse
> because they will be much further along than we were
> when this
> happened. Thats why I am bringing this up. I want to
> find a solution
> before there is another 6 months of work put into
> these projects
> that will have to be deleted. I am thinking of those
> people most of
> all.

Would you be interested to create a group of people whose goals would be
* To study which languages should be covered in our projects, or not
* To study the wiseness to open a new language of a given project
(according to number of interested editors etc...)
* To gather a collection of pages of rules and guidelines to mandatorily
translate in the future language before any creation of the new wiki
* To collect pages to suggest new wikis to help them find their way in
the jungle (with recommandations such as "register to foundation-l",
"follow requests for permission on meta" etc...)


Do you think that would be interesting ?
If so, would you agree to lead the creation of that group ?

Ant


>>>{{ either too gun-shy to keep contributing, or
>
> decide to just ignore
>
>>>the rules they feel are arbitrary.}}
>
>
>>I am a proponent of ignore all rules...
>
>
> Well yes, but we don't want people to go too far out
> of bounds.
>
>
>>PS : do you like mint tea ?
>
>
> I really do like all kinds of tea. But I never make
> it at home
> I only order it at rrestaurants.
>
> BirgitteSB
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com

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

--- Anthere <Anthere9@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> On one hand, our project is held together by a
> couple of major rules,
> which should absolutely be followed by all projects.
> Hmmm, I see only a
> few ones
> 1) general goal of a project should be respected,
> whatever the language.
> 2) content should be freely usable, freely reusable
> and free to modify.
> 3) content should follow NPOV rule
>
> And that's about it.
>

Although these three rules apply equally to the
Wikipedias the same cannot be said of all projects.
Wikisource and Wikiquote particularly do not hold a
NPOV policy on material. Of course, editorial notes
are another story but they make up a very, very small
part of our project. Free to modify is also not a
consideration on Wikisource as we explicitly forbid it
in almost all cases. Also since next nothing in our
project is available under GDFL it make the "freeness"
very complicated. Even public domain is not
straightforward. There are things that are PD in the
US bur not in England for example. I could give many
more inconsistencies of international copyright.

> On the other hand, our project is not run in a
> top-down fashion. There
> is no reason why the Foundation should know or
> approve local project
> policies. So, generally, I see not why "this is not
> good" unless the
> policy is about the goal, or the licence or the
> npov.
>

I do not think things should be run completely from
the top down. But we should have some basic
guidelines similar to what you gave above actually on
the wikis somewhere and translated in the correct
language at the very least.

>Would you be interested to create a group of people
>whose goals would
>be
>* To study which languages should be covered in our
>projects, or not
>* To study the wiseness to open a new language of a
>given project
>(according to number of interested editors etc...)
>* To gather a collection of pages of rules and
>guidelines to
>mandatorily
>translate in the future language before any creation
>of the new wiki
>* To collect pages to suggest new wikis to help them
>find their way in
>the jungle (with recommandations such as "register
>to foundation-l",
>"follow requests for permission on meta" etc...)


>Do you think that would be interesting ?
>If so, would you agree to lead the creation of that
>group ?

>Ant


I think that is very interesting and would definately
want to be involved. I do not know that I have enough
conacts amoung people with different language skills
to start it up myself. If such group of people can be
rounded up I would definately want to see this
through. One the first things I feel is needed is
updated stats on the current wikis so we can see what
worked in the past and what has stalled. Also if the
stats page gave numbers of admins and buerucrats (if
any) that might be useful.


BirgitteSB

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

roc wrote:
> Many Chinese editors, including me, have the same concern as what
> Essjay said, and that is why we currently do not have any checkusers
> local to zhwiki
> (http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Checkuser). People worry
> about the possibility that the IP addresses of registered users may be
> leaked to evil hands or regimes (the currently ruling Chinese
> Communist Party is exercising more and more control over Internet for
> its own interests); if that happened, both the individuals and the
> Foundation would suffer; although the chance is low, one incident
> would be enough. Currently, we give our trust to the few users
> appointed by the Foundation, so I think that any new procedures for
> cross-project checkusers need to put this worry in consideration. (The
> Chinese community continue to debate whether we really need local
> checkusers and what more stringent selecting criteria and monitoring
> procedures for local checkusers should be adopted.)
>
> roc (zh:User:R.O.C)

Ermmm, Roc... just to clarify...

None of the checkusers have been appointed by the Foundation. They were
all chosen by their local communities.
None of the stewards (who can do checkuser as well) have been appointed
by the Foundation either. They were all elected on meta, by editors.

This said, the Foundation, I believe, know all current stewards and
trust them.
We only know half of those with checkuser access though.

ant

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

Birgitte SB wrote:
> --- Anthere <Anthere9@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>On one hand, our project is held together by a
>>couple of major rules,
>>which should absolutely be followed by all projects.
>>Hmmm, I see only a
>>few ones
>>1) general goal of a project should be respected,
>>whatever the language.
>>2) content should be freely usable, freely reusable
>>and free to modify.
>>3) content should follow NPOV rule
>>
>>And that's about it.
>>
>
>
> Although these three rules apply equally to the
> Wikipedias the same cannot be said of all projects.
> Wikisource and Wikiquote particularly do not hold a
> NPOV policy on material.

Oh, good point. But just because there is no need for such a policy over
there.

Of course, editorial notes
> are another story but they make up a very, very small
> part of our project. Free to modify is also not a
> consideration on Wikisource as we explicitly forbid it
> in almost all cases.

Good point again.

Also since next nothing in our
> project is available under GDFL it make the "freeness"
> very complicated. Even public domain is not
> straightforward. There are things that are PD in the
> US bur not in England for example. I could give many
> more inconsistencies of international copyright.

Which is why I did not mentionned a specific license. We use several
licenses for images. Wikinews is not under GFDL. What we would all agree
probably is the freedom to use content.

Actually, I have a question to wikibook editors. Do Wikibooks books
follow NPOV, or not at all ?

>>On the other hand, our project is not run in a
>>top-down fashion. There
>>is no reason why the Foundation should know or
>>approve local project
>>policies. So, generally, I see not why "this is not
>>good" unless the
>>policy is about the goal, or the licence or the
>>npov.
>>
>
>
> I do not think things should be run completely from
> the top down. But we should have some basic
> guidelines similar to what you gave above actually on
> the wikis somewhere and translated in the correct
> language at the very least.

Hmmm, true. I think this is particularly missing for the intermediary
projects. Wikipedia had this defined very well because Larry Sanger was
taking care of it. Wikinews had it quite well defined because we
requested a full study and description of the concept before its approval.
This never happened for projects such as wikibooks, wikiquote,
wiktionary or wikisource.

If wikiquote was proposed today, it would never be accepted for example.
But these projects were one day proposed on a mailing list and ...
simply started !

And who took care of defining basic *common* guidelines that all
projects could inspire of when starting a new language ? No one I guess.

Now, I would say that it would be more logical that a couple of editors
of each project do the description of the project and draft basic
guidelines, that the Foundation could approve afterwards.

>>Would you be interested to create a group of people
>>whose goals would
>>be
>>* To study which languages should be covered in our
>>projects, or not
>>* To study the wiseness to open a new language of a
>>given project
>>(according to number of interested editors etc...)
>>* To gather a collection of pages of rules and
>>guidelines to
>>mandatorily
>>translate in the future language before any creation
>>of the new wiki
>>* To collect pages to suggest new wikis to help them
>>find their way in
>>the jungle (with recommandations such as "register
>>to foundation-l",
>>"follow requests for permission on meta" etc...)
>
>
>
>>Do you think that would be interesting ?
>>If so, would you agree to lead the creation of that
>>group ?
>
>
>>Ant
>
>
>
> I think that is very interesting and would definately
> want to be involved. I do not know that I have enough
> conacts amoung people with different language skills
> to start it up myself. If such group of people can be
> rounded up I would definately want to see this
> through. One the first things I feel is needed is
> updated stats on the current wikis so we can see what
> worked in the past and what has stalled. Also if the
> stats page gave numbers of admins and buerucrats (if
> any) that might be useful.

We always fall on the same issue Birgitte... many would think it great,
but few would agree to lead such a project. At best follow another
person doing it.

Okay, so... who is motivated to start such a project ?
* which entirely new languages should be accepted or opposed (including
constructed languages, dialects...)
* when a new language should be allowed to start in a given project
* making guidelines for those starting a new language
* support to new languages starting (checkuser, sysop etc...)

etc...

who is motivated to start such a project ?

Ant

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

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

--- Anthere <Anthere9@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Birgitte SB wrote:

> Also since next nothing in our
> > project is available under GDFL it make the
> "freeness"
> > very complicated. Even public domain is not
> > straightforward. There are things that are PD in
> the
> > US bur not in England for example. I could give
> many
> > more inconsistencies of international copyright.
>
> Which is why I did not mentionned a specific
> license. We use several
> licenses for images. Wikinews is not under GFDL.
> What we would all agree
> probably is the freedom to use content.
>
The main difference as I see is this. Wikipedia is
creating content. WP could chose to make it's content
free or not; they chose to make it free. Wikisource
has no control on whether our content is free or where
it is free. We can only choose whether or not to make
it available. Downstream users are going to have to
evaluate whether they are free to use Wikisource
contect individually unless they are in the United
States. Our material is under various licenses as
well as public domain (as applicable in the US). We
cannot give anyone a blanket guarantee the content is
free for them to use whether we include non-commercial
or not. They are still going to have to evaluate each
license category and judge based on the laws they must
abide by.


> >>Would you be interested to create a group of
> people
> >>whose goals would
> >>be
> >>* To study which languages should be covered in
> our
> >>projects, or not
> >>* To study the wiseness to open a new language of
> a
> >>given project
> >>(according to number of interested editors etc...)
> >>* To gather a collection of pages of rules and
> >>guidelines to
> >>mandatorily
> >>translate in the future language before any
> creation
> >>of the new wiki
> >>* To collect pages to suggest new wikis to help
> them
> >>find their way in
> >>the jungle (with recommandations such as "register
> >>to foundation-l",
> >>"follow requests for permission on meta" etc...)
> >
> >
> >
> >>Do you think that would be interesting ?
> >>If so, would you agree to lead the creation of
> that
> >>group ?
> >
> >
> >>Ant
> >
> >
> >
> > I think that is very interesting and would
> definately
> > want to be involved. I do not know that I have
> enough
> > conacts amoung people with different language
> skills
> > to start it up myself. If such group of people
> can be
> > rounded up I would definately want to see this
> > through. One the first things I feel is needed is
> > updated stats on the current wikis so we can see
> what
> > worked in the past and what has stalled. Also if
> the
> > stats page gave numbers of admins and buerucrats
> (if
> > any) that might be useful.
>
> We always fall on the same issue Birgitte... many
> would think it great,
> but few would agree to lead such a project. At best
> follow another
> person doing it.
>
> Okay, so... who is motivated to start such a project
> ?
> * which entirely new languages should be accepted or
> opposed (including
> constructed languages, dialects...)
> * when a new language should be allowed to start in
> a given project
> * making guidelines for those starting a new
> language
> * support to new languages starting (checkuser,
> sysop etc...)
>
> etc...
>
> who is motivated to start such a project ?
>
> Ant
>

I think new languages should be supported if they seem
likely to suceed establishing an active community.
Before we can judge that or set up any guidelines we
really need more information. I would very much like
to take the first step in this. Which I believe is
analizing what has worked or not in the past. But
right now some of the stats pages are months old and
Wikisource has none at all for individual languages.
I don't know that the information I can get from any
updated stats would really tell what makes a community
sucessfull. However it should allow us to see what
communities have a certain level of activity. Then I
think we should ask people from various communities to
fill out a survey about the beginings of their
community and maybe we can find some indicators we can
use to answer your points.

BirgitteSB


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

--- Andre Engels <andreengels@gmail.com> wrote:

> 2006/4/19, Ray Saintonge <saintonge@telus.net>:

> > Going out of our way to ensure that downstream
> users will be able to
> > copy this material is ultimately an untenable
> position. People must
> > accept responsibility for their own actions. We
> do well to warn them of
> > possible problems, but we should have no
> obligation to hold their hands
> > in the way that we would hold those of a child.
> We can say that we have
> > reasonable and supportable grounds for saying that
> a given document is
> > in the public domain, or that it is covered by
> fair use (or dealing) in
> > the server jurisdiction, and that we cannot vouch
> for its legal status
> > in some other jurisdiction. In saying this I make
> a specific statement
> > that I do not consider public interest alone to be
> grounds for
> > publishing most documents.
>
> And here I disagree. The right to re-publish is at
> the heart of the
> Wikimedia philosophy. It's very nice that you ensure
> you have the
> right to republish (although I think "they haven't
> complained yet"
> isn't exactly 'ensuring a right' - I strongly advise
> you to take
> stricter guidelines), but Wikimedia was made for
> free material. Which
> means that others have the right to republish. That
> that is under
> different licenses - Wikipedia allows changing, but
> requires it to be
> under the same license, Wikisource only requires
> that it may be copied
> unchanged - is no problem. But if your material may
> not be reproduced
> by others at all, I think you are not following the
> spirit of
> Wikimedia.

First off I want to say that the English Wikisource
does not take anything under fair use/dealing.
Although I think that making information available is
the true heart of Wikimedia, the ability to freely
disseminate it right up there. And I would never want
to accept material where an author gave permission for
publication on Wikisource without giving any
distribution rights. However I believe it is not
possible to guarantee worldwide that the downstream
user can just take Wikimedia information without
looking into their local laws. Even with GFDL. Some
countries simply do not have provisions for
recognising a license like the GFDL. Right now
Wikisource only has material that we believe is freely
distributable for commercial use somewhere. I cannot
guarantee it is freely distributable *everywhere* but
I do not believe that would be possible no matter how
restrictive we are. I feel we just need to stress the
importance of keeping everything properly tagged so
downstream users can sort it out. We have been told
no non-commercial and we got rid of that. My concern
is that the thinking behind non-commercial was that we
need to be able to give such a blanket guarantee.
Also there are odds and ends that I do not understand
where they fit in to copyright at all.

BTW we are not talking about any licenses here that
are not used at WP and Commons (mainly various PD
reasons). Whether the people there do not see the
issues I do or simply never looked very far into it, I
do not know.


Birgitte SB

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On 4/19/06, Andre Engels <andreengels@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I don't think the difference with Wikipedia is as large as you state
> here. Sure, one can rewrite a Wikipedia article and still have an
> encyclopedia article, but one can also easily make small changes that
> are simply incorrect. Someone who changes the digits of pi in
> wikisource isn't that much different from someone who changes an
> article on Wikipedia to state that Hitler was born in China. Do they
> have the right to do that? I'm not sure. But someone is definitely
> allowed to take a Wikipedia article, change it to say that Hitler was
> born in China, and publish that under the GNU/FDL. Likewise, they have
> the right to take the value of Pi from Wikisource, change it, and put
> that on their website.


I think the point of Ec's argument was missed. I believe he was getting at
a slightly more fundamental point--something more along the lines of the
"purpose" (kind of a bad term, I know) of the two projects: the fact that
one project's personal goals might not fit another project's personal
goals. In the case of Wikipedia, there is always a sense of
"incompleteness" about the articles; there's always something that can be
added to a Wikipedia article that can make it better. But, at some point in
the evolution of a text at Wikisource, there is a point where this
completeness is reached: the point in time when the text matches a
previously published version of that work. Once this point is reached,
there is no need to edit the text anymore, for no more modifications could
be made that would leave it the same text that was previously published.

Sure, a person always has the right to edit any work on Wikisource, but the
matter at stake is that remodification is not one of our goals, for after a
certain point in time, Wikisource would not see anymore modifications
necessary. Let's say Wikisource published a few of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Maybe the scrolls have spelling errors in them. How important is it to be
able to fix those spelling mistakes? Wikisource would say it's important
NOT to fix them, since those mistakes are present in the original text and
should be faithfully reproduced for any person who wants to closely study
the scrolls without having to handle them in person.

Sorry about the length of this. What I'm trying to say, is that
Wikisource's main goal is archiving, which Wikipedia's is not. Because of
this difference, Wikipedia's goals will not work with Wikisource and
Wikisource's won't work with Wikipedia. This illustrates that fact that a
set of broad, kind of vague, group of over-arching goals is needed for every
project to follow while each project still has the freedom to custom-tailor
its immediate goals to its own aims.

And here I disagree. The right to re-publish is at the heart of the
> Wikimedia philosophy. It's very nice that you ensure you have the
> right to republish (although I think "they haven't complained yet"
> isn't exactly 'ensuring a right' - I strongly advise you to take
> stricter guidelines), but Wikimedia was made for free material. Which
> means that others have the right to republish. That that is under
> different licenses - Wikipedia allows changing, but requires it to be
> under the same license, Wikisource only requires that it may be copied
> unchanged - is no problem. But if your material may not be reproduced
> by others at all, I think you are not following the spirit of
> Wikimedia.


This philosophy is one which causes no small amount of grief for many
editors and contributors at Wikisource. Many times we've been approached by
people who had excellent documents that have great value in and of
themselves, but we must turn away those works because of licensing problems
(maybe they're released under a non-commercial license or Wikisource could
get the permission to display them on the web yet not allow other people to
mercilessly copy and redistribute those texts). I will agree, republication
is a great idea, but it's come at a fair price, and for the archivists at
Wikisource that price is infuriating.

Why couldn't the Wikimedia philosophy be tweaked a bit to allow some works
to explicitly not be redistributable? The text would of course be freely
accessible to all, but no one can go put it on their own website without
proper permission. The blanket statement of ensuring total, absolute
freedom drastically cuts down the amount of things that can be presented to
the world on the Wikimedia projects. But what's more important: allowing
third parties to freely distribute our own works or being able to share
valuable information that would have otherwise gone unbeknownst to the rest
of the world with the stipulation that it can only be presented on a
Wikimedia project?
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Hello all,
and welcome Brigitte and other Wikisource folks - take my greetings,
from an en/jawikiquote sysop.

Brigitte SB wrote:
> > However, in general the people who are trusted from a
> > Foundation perspective take little interest in the
> > running of the smaller projects.

As Anthere said, principally there is no causality between project
size and involvement to the Foundation level activities. They are many
editors who are active on smaller projects, Wiktionary or Wikinews
alike, and fairly involved into the Foundation activities, like Amgine
or Sabine Cratella. I could add myself to that list as one Wikiquote
editor.

And if you - and/or other Wikisource editors - are interested in this
sphere - Foundation activities concerning smaller project,
"translation & (small projects') promotion subcommittee" will
appropriate your interest and expect collaboration with you. If
circumstance allows, you would invite to join to it ;-) like just
Anthere show a typical course ... if you want to work with someone and
he or she does too, then you are getting involved more and more.

On 4/15/06, Anthere <Anthere9@yahoo.com> wrote:

> How does that happen ?
> Well, perhaps you start writing on this mailing list and I'll notice
> what you say sounds wise and interesting and willing to build something.
> And perhaps others will tell me they feel the same. And perhaps we'll
> exchange a couple of emails on minor issues (such as a checkuser) and I
> will find you a cool person. Then, perhaps I will go look at your page
> to see who you are. I will notice something which suggest you could be
> interested in a certain project, then I'll invite you to join for that
> task and you will agree. And we'll have fun doing that and do a good
> work. Repeat that a bunch of times, and that will be it.
>
> It is totally unrelated to the size or the nature of your favorite
> project :-)

> > This is really a larger and mor far reaching problem.
> > No one at Wikisource subscribed to this list until
> > someone told us that it had been decided here that our
> > copyright policy was not restrictive enough. That is
> > when a few of the regular editors signed up. I
> > imagine there are a great number of active projects
> > out there running their own little worlds, divested
> > from the Foundation in all but name.

I think I could share your case - I haven't seen here no other regular
of Wikiquote than Essjay, but anyway we haven't discussed about
Wikiquote at any rate - Generally it is rare to be involved into the
Foundation level activities unless some legal problem arises like on
French Wikiquote or English Wikisource.

And as Ant suggested, we don't monopolize this problem within us
editors of smaller projects, but with editors whose language is very
different from English and hence whose activities are rarely shown on
English world (no one has been so bold, at least as far as I know, to
send a mail directly to the foundation-l and ask someone to translate
into other language; it is in my opinion odd from principal because of
stated multilingualism of this mailing list, but as a plain fact it
could be - even on meta, I have been accused by someone because I
hadn't been submitted in "the language many people can read". It is a
strange opinion if someone doesn't speak in English, she doesn't
respect multilingualism, but such attitude is not unique)

Same gaps are sometimes observed between the largest project and
another in the same language. Some of
the former tend to think a way fitting to them are good universally -
we know it depends. The former are sometimes troublesome, since they
don't intentionally harm anyone and in the worst case, they are raged
as if they were mistreated. But, even though in pain, someone needs to
realize such things don't go as they think not in every time and
place, if their way isn't suitable to solve a particular issue.
Happily, not so in many times, but as a Wikiquote/Wikinews editor I
felt surely Wikipedia editors put their shoes on my toes in some
occasions. On the other hand, such unpleasant but apparent kicks have
stimulated our relatively still projects. So we could say here,
diversity is sweet, and it is what we always need.

Not only big project editors but of smaller ones are therefore
strongly invited to join the Foundation activities.

As for checkuser issues, specially vote for giving trust to certain
editors, the current procedure is based on Wikipedia community
experiences. Now you pointed out it hasn't worked well on Wikisource.
Rules can be revised, but to revise it, we need to share our
experience with each other. So again, welcome to foundation-l.

> All good ideas.
> But but but, we tried the official liaisons (they were called
> ambassadors). It failed.
> Recruitement of people : yes indeed. But this can only happen when we
> start knowing each other a little bit more.
> I absolutely agree with you we have a major problem of communication.
> Actually, this has ALWAYS been the case. Just differently.
> When I joined, the english wp was on one version of the software and all
> others on an older version. There was no meta. There was no common
> mailing list (later, non english were parked on one list). Actually, the
> miscommunication was SO bad that a language even forked and is still
> suffering today of that fork.
> Last year, I tried to work to create Quarto with others interested in
> communication, such as Sj. It was a place where at least description of
> projects state could be made. By lack of human help, I gave up.
> Elian also maintained with Aphaia's help a project-state on meta. I
> think it is dead now.
> There are now several wikizines in different languages (plus Walter's
> global one), I hope they communicate a bit between themselves. But each
> essentially give news of a specific project. Not cross project
>
> If you have ideas, please, by all means, provide them. Or better,
> IMPLEMENT them.

Ahm, as for WMF website, naturally focusing on its linguistic
uniformity, now we are talking how we can improve it within wmfcc &
translation subcomm. I don't promise it will be a near future, but
want to say always new ideas and editors are welcome.
Note; to improve the WMF site, you needn't log it on. Most of its
content have been drafted and translated on Meta.


--
Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l