If you want to do something outside, you have to do something properly here first. You are not going to escape this step, IMHO.
A family might be also surprised if they discover that somebody had recognition while their relative did not get it the same way. This would convince them of the opposite, that is that their relative gave away time and energy to a community that does not even care the same grateful way to everybody.
Decades ago a child died of a nasty cancer in a town close to where I live. 6-12 months later another child died and it was all around local newspapers with a mass funeral attended by 1000s. The second child was the son of a local politician, or nephew or grandson to someone close to the board of the aldermen. I don't recall the details, I was very young, I remember people murmuring that the first family could have felt... bad. This "asymmetry" is what you should try to avoid (or prove that you tried) when you switch to RL initiatives.
You need a fair, clear, internal process to highlight who is deceases to get proper recognition and later anything else outside the wiki community.
Alessandro
Il martedì 9 novembre 2021, 10:35:57 CET, Camelia Boban <camelia.boban@gmail.com> ha scritto:
On Mon, Nov 8, 2021 at 6:25 PM Gnangarra <gnangarra@gmail.com> wrote:
In some ways we do
https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2021:In_Memoriam Is not the same. In memoriam wiki pages are indelible memories for us as wikimedians (thank you Risker/Anne for the response), but could mean less for the families which are not "inside" our way to remember. They maybe don't even understand the importance of their loved one activity, but could be surprised and proud for a physical (like a memorial plaque) community recognition.
Camelia
On Tue, Nov 9, 2021, 6:10 AM Risker <risker.wp@gmail.com> wrote:
There are many good points raised here.
I am saddened to report that, on English Wikipedia (because of its size, age and number of contributors), we have had a fair amount of experience in dealing with the death of one of our colleagues. We have developed a process that seems to work for us, and may serve as (a) a model or starting point for other projects and (b) some useful suggestions for addressing similar situations on a more global level. I have had the difficult duty of overseeing such processes on a few occasions, and post it here for others.
- Notification of the death of a Wikimedian may come in several different ways. A family member or personal friend may reach out to the project in different ways (frequently a post to a talk page), or they may contact another Wikimedian they know of who can share the news. In a few tragic situations, the dealth of the Wikimedian has been the subject of media reports.
- The person's privacy preferences are respected. If the person has made a point of *not* publicly linking their username to their personal information, we will not normally do so, unless there is at least agreement if not an active request from the family. If the family permits, we will link to the off-wiki obituary in many cases.
- The person's userpage is fully protected. We have a standard template that is added that basically says "this is the userpage of a deceased Wikipedian and it is preserved in their memory" (Paraphrased)
- Their talk page is archived, and a new section created where what information is available is posted. Colleagues from across the project will post in this section to express their thoughts and extend condolences to the family and friends of the deceased. If there is a fellow editor who is in contact with the family, they will send links to the family so that they can read the condolences.
- All user rights associated with the account are removed; if the person was an administrator, this requires Bureaucrat attention. If the person is a checkuser, oversighter, or steward, removal of those permissions is handled by stewards at Meta.
- Where applicable, pages where the username of the deceased are included will be modified.
- Stewards are contacted to globally lock the account. This may be delayed for a short period if the deceased editor's linked email address is being used for communication with the family, because locking an account also prevents use of email.
- The name of the deceased, along with (usually) a brief discussion of their editing activity, is posted at our project's "In Memoriam" page. Some editors who have had a significant impact on our project may be remembered in a fairly extensive obituary, often written in true collaborative style by colleagues whose wiki-lives have been affected by the deceased.
- In most cases, additional notices will be posted on project talk spaces where the deceased was active, and sometimes to noticeboards as well.
- Our "local" news paper ("The Signpost") will normally be informed, and there is often a news report about it in the next scheduled addition.
- (A newer addition to the process) If the deceased was included as a user with access to nonpublic information, an edit is made to the talk page of the noticeboard, and the WMF staff managing that page will remove their name (and carry out whatever internal processes are required).
I think the page on Meta that has been pointed out is a good start for centralizing the recognition of our colleagues who have died. As is plainly obvious, many of our former colleagues were active on more than one project. I have a couple of suggestions for improvement of the page:
- It might be helpful to add the date of death, or at least the year of death.
- When identifying the projects in which the deceased was active, a link to their user talk page and/or any other page that has been used to collect condolences or serves as an obituary, would be helpful. I think it might be better to express condolences at the local rather than the global level, but that is simply my opinion.
I hope this might prove helpful to colleagues on all projects who may have to deal with this situation in the future.
Risker/AnneEnglish Wikipedia
On Mon, 8 Nov 2021 at 23:09, Tito Dutta <trulytito@gmail.com> wrote:
Thank you very much for starting this thread.
I think that's a very important topic. I have been working on related portals for several years now and I am always available to provide my little inputs wherever I can. Some projects have their project space:
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4655446 (see the sitelinks), I agree that we may think of working on global best practices now (followed by or simultaneously a policy, if needed).
One think, I have felt, needs more attention for "Deceased Wikimedian" portal is "privacy". If an editor wanted to remain anonymous (suppose User:Editor09112021), and the plaque/obit should respect the privacy.
That's my initial thoughts on this.
???,???? ????(???????? ??? ???? ????)
?????, ? ???????, ???? ?????? ?:?? AM ??? ?????? Alessandro Marchetti via Wikimedia-l <wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> ???????:
Personally I think we should validate first a global policy on deceased users. After many years of SUL it's still very fragmented from platform to platform. A centralized procedure to confirm death and how to block account would be a good starting step.
After that, i think we need a standard obituary page on meta, that can be multilingual of course. Do you know
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deceased_editors exists? Probably not or Pier Luigi would be there.
Once you have that, you can go for more initiatives on a solid base.
For example, you can get some agreement to give some names of astronomical objects to former wikimedians (real name or username, if code allows it). There are 1000s of them waiting for a name (for asteroids, the system was in stand by some years ago, not sure when it will resume), but just send the list and people will pick them soon or later. You can ask for a publication such as a booklet. Or a plaque somewhere, maybe at the WMF office... honestly it's not my goal to pick one now.
In any case, you need a standardized system or you can't do these initiatives properly. You'll end up with one person remembered and the other one forgotten because their friends on wiki are not in the "right" circle of more active users. You have to give a fair chance to all users to be included in the list, with a standardize guideline on every wiki.
This is something that after years of SUL we should have and we don't... to my surprise. When I wrote some to-do-list on the topic years ago I was almost sure it would have taken less than 2-3 years to finally write a unified guideline. I find some long-term users who are 100% sure that it is "like this" or "like that" but it really isn't. One day I will create a stub for a page on meta just to see if it grows.
Alessandro
Il martedì 9 novembre 2021, 00:52:02 CET, Samuel Klein <meta.sj@gmail.com> ha scritto:
I'd like us to consider a more serious set of obits, after the fashion of the astronomers.
On Mon, Nov 8, 2021 at 6:25 PM Gnangarra <gnangarra@gmail.com> wrote:
In some ways we do
https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/2021:In_Memoriam On Tue, 9 Nov 2021 at 04:46, Camelia Boban <camelia.boban@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi everybody.
Today, on the social media channels, we received the news about another wikimedian who is passed away: Steve Suleeman (User:Stephensuleeman from idwiki). As others in the recent or distant past: Spasimir Pilev (User:???????? ????? from bgwiki), Pier Luigi Rocco (User:Moroboshi from itwiki), Elena Sanz Queiruga (User:ElsaBornFree from eswiki), User:SlimVirgin from enwiki, Krzysztof Machocki (User:Halibutt from plwiki).
For these losses, I think we - as a community, through the Wikimedia Foundation - need to set up a fund to build a commemorative plaque to remember all the wikimedians we have lost.
I would suggest it to be a thought from the community, extended also to all other major events of a wikimedian's life (marriage, birth of a child). We know a wikimedian often sacrifices the free time, dedicating a large part of their own real life to our projects and the movement. Would be a recognition from the community for the work done and a memory for the families, a "small gratitude to our fellow wikimedians" as someone said.
I know that some affiliates are already doing this (eq. Wikimedia Indonesia), would be a lovely idea to do it in a centralized way at the level of the whole movement.
What do you think?Camelia_______________________________________________
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