Fork you, MediaWiki?

In the short-term, I believe a non-Wikimedia focused subgroup of ArchCom
may make sense.  The declining MediaWiki use outside of Wikimedia has been
a longstanding problem for us, but not the biggest problem.

- Rob Lanphier

For 15 years the folx working on Mediawiki have refused, insulted, and abused third-party users of their software. They have chased away the vast majority of people interested in improving the software for non-WMF implementations. They currently have as a policy that Mediawiki is the index parser implementation, even though they also state categorically that Mediawiki is not a parser^[1].

So: forks welcome!  Any takers?

Rob

15 years of ramen which is designed only for one, unique, site - which is dying - and sucks for pretty much everything other than that. 15 years of "not made here", monolithic, idiocy. 1 year of "let's spoil everyone's birthday party" management.

Fuck that. I moved on.

Memoirs of impressions of the Offline Strategy Task Force, as it stood in January 2010.

Any discussion of an offline strategy for the Wikimedia Foundation is, essentially, a discussion of technology and infrastructure. There are two primary target markets: those who already have access to WMF products, and those who do not. The largest offline product-consuming market will always be those who already have access to WMF products, but it is a primary element of the WMF mission to provide access to those markets who do not have access.

With the above assumptions, and the reality the Wikimedia Foundation is a charitable organization with finite resources, the primary strategy should be enabling third-party development of technologies and infrastructure for offline WMF-derived products. How the Foundation does so should not be restricted, but there are certain goals we found to be of particularly high value:

• XML article format, which can support semantics, with project-specific DTD.
• Create and publish a Mediawiki parser specification.
• Create and support a reference parser, and companion writer.

Related to these goals we found supporting intra-project standardization, and implementing international information categorization schema, to be important efforts to encourage communities to pursue (and support them in pursuit of) in order to make their output more valuable for offline applications.

When considering how to make WMF published content available to people who do not have regular internet access, the largest potential market could be realized through cellphone platforms. In the most-underserved internet markets cellular phone service has good to excellent availability. Retaining the theme of supporting third-parties rather than investing extensively in technology, it's noted there are already several cellular-based products and projects using WMF content. This second strategy for the Foundation is to focus on the cellphone specifically as the world's most ubiquitous hardware platform, with several goals related to this publication medium:

• Target upstream from end users: cellular network providers for dynamic content systems, and OEM for static content systems as well as built-in 'apps'.
• Prioritize support for third-party development: open offline storage standards, readers which use those standards, and finally proprietary products.
• Where possible, support non-internet distribution systems, for example an SMS article retrieval system.

School systems are a natural partner for WMF in regions under-served by Internet. They are centers for learners, a primary target audience for the Foundation's projects. Schooling systems themselves are the target audience for the Wikibooks project, as well as other more-specific wikiprojects. This tertiary strategy did not develop concrete targets, but rather a laundry-list of desired outcomes including:

• Work with schools, and support organizations which do so.
• Customizable content collations.
• Use multi-project approaches: draw content from any relevant WMF project.
• Use multiple distribution channels: Internet, static digital, print, &c.

Most WMF published content is general, and targets an adult audience. The offline markets with the lowest internet access rates are disproportionately younger, and content targeting a youth audience should be specifically supported. Third-party publishers tend to have target markets for whom they wish to tailor their content, as do schools and governments. Technologies already exist to provide best versions, as well as semantic tagging to improve article relevance. A fourth strategy focus involves improving the ease of creating custom collations, both through content initiatives and through technology development.

Sue Gardner's recent [blog entry] discusses what she sees as "changes that stuck", highlighting the [[en.Wikipedia]] issues of Biographies of Living People and license migration, and the supposedly Foundation-wide Strategy Project.

It's my opinion the 9 points she raised are fundamentally wrong as regards that latter 'change that stuck'.

As someone who was involved in the Offline Task Force, devoting rather a large number of hours to research, consultation, and discussion as well as editing our recommendations, [my impression of the process] is it was futile, a waste of our time, and ultimately co-opted by WMF staffers who altered, changed, deleted, or substituted their agenda for the issues discovered, researched, and presented by the community. Perhaps one cannot test the quality of the strategy until after it is begun to be implemented, but one can certainly judge the honesty with which it is collected and reported.

Take, for example, [[Offline]], the primary link for offline Strategy. All but three edits are by staff members, nearly 90% of the content was written within the past 6 weeks. Only one of the contributors ever attended an [[Offline Task Force]] [[meeting]]; Philippe, who hasn't touched the page in more than 6 months. And nothing on the page is related to the Offline Task Force's [[recommendations]].

1. The person/people leading the change did wait for it to happen naturally, then like a wiki-troll, they co-opted the community process and replaced the findings of the task force with their desired outcomes. Maybe only this one task force, but I wouldn't trust it to be such a unique situation.
   
2. A single person didn't make it happen, but a group of employees did.
3. There is no evidence of any effort made to understand the global/meta issues in the current pages. The trail of evidence disappears back in April, to be replaced in October with atheoretical and unsupported conclusions.
4. If the process was carefully designed to ask the right people the right questions at the right time, this was a carefully designed ruse to convince those volunteers and contextual experts that their efforts would ultimately shape the documents guiding Wikimedia Foundation's strategy 2010-2015, for none of the research is represented in the current pages.
5. Lots of people did lots of real work. No dispute about that. But "making it happen"? As far as the Offline Task Force is concerned, clearly what we found should happen is never going to happen because it has been excised from the offline strategy pages.
6. No, it appears almost none of the work which has gone into the current offline strategy has taken place in public. The primary contributor, a new employee, has never edited on a single talk page, has never asked a question nor answered one. So where did all the verbiage come from?
   
7. Yes, almost every bit of work on the current offline strategy took place in private, probably within the Wikimedia Foundation offices. No, [this is not a good thing]. To be blunt, leadership is about making decisions when they need to be made, publicly, and being responsible for them. It is better to make a bad decision than to not make a decision. As a sailor, often I must make commitments without enough data to be sure of safety, and yes I have run aground. But I cannot get anywhere if I wait in port until I know everything about the route, the weather, and the destination anchorage because I can never know enough to eliminate all risks of error or mischance. Operating in private until you won't be embarrassed means you will always be [operating secretly].
   
8. Did people put their credibility on the line? That's a tough call. Sue Gardner put her credibility on the line when she said Strategy would be a community-centered and driven process, with results drawn from the community. As regards the offline strategy that is clearly not the present case - none of the findings of the community task force are represented in the strategy documents.
9. Most people wanted - more than anything else - to advance the Wikimedia mission... Hmm. I think, among the most active members of the offline task force, I can agree with this statement. But I don't believe that is true of a majority of those involved with the offline strategy, certainly was not true of the majority of the individuals I interviewed while doing research related to the strategy. And there is a huge caveat: to advance their personal interpretation of the Wikimedia mission, however illogical or distorted that interpretation might be.

Maybe Ms Gardner thinks this pattern is a positive model. Ultimately, she claims responsibility for both the conception and implementation of the Strategy project. To me this means she is personally responsible for the current situation regarding Offline Strategy. She is responsible for encouraging the community involvement, the research, but also the disregarding of both. As a "change that sticks" I would see it as an anti-pattern.

Otourly's blog entry translated to English:

Water distribution at Taketa in Japan - public domain - Picture by Tsutsui Mizuki - And it make me curiously think about wikimedia commons' logo...

When we speak about Wikimedia Commons to Wikipedians, not natively anglophone in particular, they say Wikimedia Commons is good but too English-centric, so they use it only for essentials. But, the search tool of the site is too English as well so that it is really difficult for a non-English speaker to find what he is searching for. Briefly, an English search request on Commons will be generally more precise and find more matches than an equivalent request in French.

The true problem is not the English, because there must be a common language to link all the projects, but the problem is the categories.

To explain: the categories on commons are very complicated for someone who is not at ease with English. Often this person will only add one category (one of the main aims of the media collection) or even none to files they upload, leaving the confirmed contributors to clear up according to their English level. And I can assure you that it takes time, and sometimes these contributors would rather take photos, uploading photos, write descriptions, or revert some vandalism... I sometimes wonder how many confirmed contributors have less than 5% of their edit count fixing categorization...

Often my uploads define the categories that I will fill, correct, and, in a word, improve. There is meanwhile a tree view of the Commons Categories that I follow thanks to a little javascript code, created by [[User:Chphe]] called [[SuiviCat.js]]; a French name and as a consequence not a lot used on this anglophone project. I still remember when I requested the adaptation of SuiviCat for Commons...

In fact if we have a look outside the Wikimedia Foundation, I mean on other media websites (such as FlickR), the category system is often replaced by a tag system. Tags are useful, quick, simple... but tend toward disorder, in particular with homonyms. Wrong path, so back to our beloved categories.

In fact categories, to definitively solve the problem, should ideally be 100% multilingual. But this require sysops who are multilingual too. Otherwise vandalisms in Hindi could certainly be more difficult to detect... At the moment its seems to be an unattainable Utopia, but fully multilingual categories would have a big advantage; this could reconcile the different contributors of Wikipedias, Wiktionaries, Wikibooks, Wikinews...

Wikimedia Commons would became a truly international project, the research would be more usable by everybody. For all Wikipedias, each contributor would understand categories and subjects of the media... Besides, often it is the categories alone which best describe a file. For the good reason that not everyone is named Otourly, and as a consequence not everyone everyone links to Wikipedia in the Commons descriptions. Worst, sometimes there is only a minimal description, which does not describe it very optimally.

But it is not the fault of the English language, I must admit it... If we have a look this file for example : [[File:Church_of_the_Nativity_of_the_Theotokos_(Gora_Pnevits)_05.jpg]] only the title and the category are understandable for someone who has only few notions of English. There is no link to Wikipedia in the description which could help us to know what it is exactly.

But reconciling Wikipedia and Commons is possible, anyway, the [[Projet Monuments historiques]] is a good example; who better than French people to take photographs, sort them, geolocalize them (or just geolocalize categories) and offer historical monuments in France to everybody? It is true that these files on Wikimedia Commons are often only described in French, but they are mainly well categorized.

This blog entry is for Danny Pickle.

You signally failed to ask "Why the hell do you think anything related to humans you can sense is free culture?" I'm guessing you just decided to dismiss me and the whole conversation as a troll, unless you went to bed mid-discussion.

Like telling everyone to refuse to use proprietary software in developing free culture - as though this would suddenly make the proprietary hardware irrelevant. Oh, sorry, I shouldn't expect consistency even though you do.

The Suzuki recorder's shape is trademarked. Did you know that? Its exact ratios, decorative elements, are a corporate asset. And if I composed a jingle on it, slapped some free license acceptable to FSF on the tune and published it far and wide on the internet, the tune would be free culture. The tool has no influence on the product - I could use the instrument to write a melody for the piano, or even a Bede-esque poem composed of tone phrases.

It would be free culture, even though it undoubtedly would be influenced by Pachelbel's Canon in D, Queen's More of that Jazz (Youtube), and Joplin's Pleasant Moments. Its derivation from these intellectual properties - for that is what they are, whether or not currently protected by copyright law - has nothing to do with whether it is free culture. The idea that something is not free simply because of some artificial legal proscription is small-minded and just as artificial as the law cited.

As a digression, in the mid-90's in the USA it was illegal to "desecrate" any of the thousands of minute-man statues the US military dotted about the country's university campuses wherever they happened to have have a reserve officer training program. At the time there was a wave of protest on campuses against allowing the programs standing in accredited schools which had anti-discrimination policies - the US military clearly discriminates on the basis of gender and sexual orientation. Time after time activists requested permits to hold demonstrations in front of ROTC offices, and were turned down.

Rather than follow the rules, I and friends posted a notice in the paper of our celebration to be held in front of the ROTC offices. We then went down and enjoyed an afternoon of diversity, including dressing the statue up in a nice dress, while the ROTC students mustered at the side of the field. After the festivities died down, we cleaned everything up and went home, and sent out thank you notes to the CO and the University.

The cogent element of the event should be clear: we did not assume we needed permission to gather, to dress up (without causing permanent harm) the statue, or to carefully record our actions and then distribute the pictures/tapes - all of which the law clearly proscribed.

If you haven't gotten my point, I should probably be more blunt: there is no way any cultural item can avoid influencing its audience. Just as all video games are, in a sense, derivatives of pong, so every major software or artistic or hardware development has illegitimate offspring in the eyes of the law if literally and exactly enforced. But it would be impossible to prevent every infringement, especially if everyone just ignored an untenable legal position and just did it.

Trying to define what is free relative to an illegitimate legal standard is far more harmful than refusing to accept that illegitimate legal standard in the first place.

I wish I'd written this:

Unfortunately, what the CNCI document describes sounds like the opposite of innovative, which isn't a surprise, given that the impulse to conceive and develop it entirely in secret was the opposite of democratic. In the end, there's no better way to stifle innovation than to let a single entity control it. But that's the kind of wrong-headed groupthink that takes root and grows in small groups that are restricted by excessive secrecy.[1]

This is exactly why I think the secrecy of ComCom - and the WMF public relations efforts in general - is stupidly wrong. It discourages innovation, and attacks constructive criticism. And it does so for no measurable benefit.

If you are not doing wrong, transparency can only help you. Living in a fishbowl can be disconcerting, but if you develop a thick skin and work directly toward [[SMART]] goals - avoiding digressions and distractions - you accomplish much and gain a reputation for honesty and resolution.

Are there topics which should not be discussed publicly? of course. But nothing else should be confidential, full stop.

English encyclopedia articles should be understandable by non-specialist native speakers. If the topic or concept cannot be given a generic overview readily understood by a layperson, it is not a topic to be included in a general encyclopedia.

[[L'Hôpital's rule]] clearly fails this metric.

(The counter argument - that a specialist encyclopedia may cover its subjects at any depth - is a [[strawman]]. A specialist encyclopedia has a targeted audience; it is in fact the definition of such a work.)

Aargh!!

okay, so I've been wrestling with this script... it's blown up a couple of times after many many hours of work, and I've done a number of not-very-pristine-code bits to get it back up and running. I'm not good at babysitting a script.

Anyway, after getting home and seeing it dead and fixing it and rebooting it with toes crossed... I just discovered a logic failure in one of my four primary categories. "Former" indicates a user with plenty of activity on one or more Wiktionary languages, but on which the user has not edited within the past year. However, the script does not value recentness of editing activity over number of edits - so someone who has been editing (albeit rarely) on a language but was formerly active on a different language will be listed as formerly.

That's more of a value judgement than a logic problem, I guess. It's just that I personally would value recentness over number of edits.

Nothing quite like working the hell out of a new piece of code.

I've been casually working on a php mediawiki API class for, uhm, months. But got motivated this past week and rebuilt it a lot. Decided to hammer out a quick proof-of-concepts today and ended up with some junk code which will need to be rewritten.

On the other hand, right now it's chewing through a 1013 long list of names, checking the contributions of each on up to 171 different Mediawiki website, and for each site it's creating an instance of my class, connecting and logging in, requesting the name's contributions, parsing them if any, logging out, and moving on to the next site (assuming the user has not made enough contributions.) With so many website connections and communications the script is not quick, and each user can take several minutes.

I think I can safely say the log-in and user contributions routines are good.

On the other hand, the editing routines haven't been touched yet. They don't get any use until after working through the list of users the third time (first time builds the list of unique voters, the second time builds the list of users ordered by how active they are on Wiktionary projects, third time builds the wiki syntax for writing to the wiki.) By my estimations, three and a half days from now it will (finally) get done. That's a pessimistic guess though.

So I'm just watching the terminal as it ever-so-slowly scrolls along... we're all the way up to the An* usernames.

I love Strunk's Elements of Style. Yes, the 1918 version, before E.B. White joined his name to the foundational style text. Most especially, I love Rule #13, and this brilliant one-paragraph essay on writing:

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

Today I received the following, excerpted, bit:

I think reducing the bylaws to the boilerplate in order to speed up the process would be overkill. Can we look through Amgine's minimum version and make sure that every minimum clause is represented in the longer draft bylaws?

Can anyone explain to me why one would wish to include more than what is necessary?

I've tried to approach this subject three or four different ways. Face it, my writing skills suck, and I'm far too blunt at this time of night. Stripped of all rhetorical embellishments:

The Wikimedia Foundation Strategy project is [still] doomed.

This is not the simple pronouncement of someone who hates the idea, has done nothing to try to make it work. I put my bits of sweat and research into the process. I have every hope some vestiges of my efforts will make it into any reports, proposals, and recommendations.

My conclusions really bother me. While reading on the project, and working on a task force, I came into contact with a number of very wonderful people. While not entirely selfless, they were working in good faith on something they view as larger than themselves, larger than the Foundation itself really. Their visions of the project are inspiring, admirable, even at times beautiful.

I just don't think, in the larger picture and over the longer term, this project is very relevant to the future of the Wikimedia Foundation. Here are some of my reasons, which I think have evolved since my last entry on the subject:

• There is nothing tying any of this work to implementation. Not only is there no mechanism or created process going from envisioning to application, there is no transparent and public statements that anything will be implemented. There is no moral difference between the task force's efforts and [[Walter Mitty]]'s fantasies - that is, escapism from the reality of the Foundation as it is.


• The process fundamentally alters the relationship between the Wikimedia Foundation and the communities which it formerly served. With this process the future of the projects is clearly top-down, from the ED's office to the people who volunteer, rather than bubble-up from the people to the office. This may reflect a reality of long standing. That does not make it any more palatable. In fact, it fucking sucks.


• For all intents and purposes, the entire point of the Strategy project is to talk about other people doing things. This is 100% in opposition to the Wiki Way. In the Wiki Way, people work on what interests them. They do not work on what other people think they should work on.


• For all intents and purposes, the Strategy project is about talking about changes. I hate that. In my opinion, if you see something you'd like to change, you act on getting it changed. {{sofixit}} is the mantra of wikis. If anything is my primary point here, this is it.

There is one further point to be made: Everything is about Wikipedia.

No, to be honest, very little is about Wikipedia. At least, not if you're not sucked into the narrow, focused, blindered [[weltanschauung]] of the Wikimedia Foundation. Schools in third world countries don't want wikipedia: they want to teach students. Google news doesn't want wikipedia; they want free backgrounder information which is hyper-current. Random readers don't want wikipedia: they want reasonably reliable information instantly on the topic in which they are interested [this microsecond].

But wikipedia contributors - like contributors to each of the projects - are all about wikipedia.

en.WP should not contain literary criticism. Not that it is good or bad, but it is not encyclopaedic.

The title [[If on a winter's night a traveler]] is a good indicator of this novel which is reminiscent of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. The book commences on a hypothesis of novelistic elements ("If...") on a when, a someone...would do what? According to this book, the entire novel, even its plot, is an open trajectory where even the author himself questions his motives of the writing process. This theme — a writer's objectivity — is also explored in Calvino's novel Mr. Palomar, which explores if absolute objectivity is possible, or even agreeable. Other themes include the subjectivity of meaning (associated with post-structuralism), the relationship between fiction and life, what makes an ideal reader and author, and authorial originality.

Communication to and from the Wikimedia Foundation is strictly controlled. This includes all communication to the various communities, and from them. It is impossible to tell just how completely this practice of filtering and manipulation of communications streams is happening within the Foundation, controlling what either the left or right hands know or believe to be true[1]. A fair assumption is: probably most of it.

No one I have spoken to was able to name a single member of the Communication Committee who is primarily a Sister's Project community member. Let me restate that: there is no official communications link from the Foundation to any non-Wikipedia project. Full stop.

Listening in on various communications tools one is struck by the silence. Comproj seems to have had exactly one real application in about a year: an attempt to organize PR materials in one, central location. Of course the Communications Committee list is restricted to members.

An interesting - and telling, imo - symptom of the balkanization of the Foundation is the Wikimedia-Boston mailing list: Social list for Boston-area Wikimedia gatherings. "This is a list of Boston-area Wikipedians and other Wikimedia supporters."[2] - after all, some projects are more equal than others.[3]

However, speaking of Wikimedia-lists, there are plenty of them. Ostensibly the naming convention suggests they are to be used by/for Wikimedia Chapter formation/internal communications; few seem to actually be actively used for such. A relatively high percentage of the lists restrict archive access to members, so it's impossible to generalize accurately, but of those countries which do have a Wikimedia chapter few have any appreciable use; several have never had a single message posted. A very tiny sampling of lists in English show almost no Foundation<->Chapter community communications, with the noteworthy exception of WMUK.

So how is the Foundation communicating with its contributors, especially its niche communities?

• Secret communications
  

  By far this is the most common channel for dispersion of information. Via restricted-access Wikis, restricted mailing lists, restricted IRC channels, private e-mails and discussions. In the recent Fundraiser dozens of individuals - site bureaucrats and community leaders - were quietly threatened via back channels to prevent any site modifying the centralNotice Banner Advertisements even though these ads were often offensive to the local contributing editors. This highly-successful intimidation campaign is only one example of the coordination of WMF communications out of sight.
  

  
  


• Official communications:
  

  
  Board resolutions, press releases on [[Foundation wiki]] plus pronouncements on Meta or en.Wikipedia are probably the second largest channel for "communicating with the masses." These extremely impersonal messages dehumanize the Foundation; it becomes the corporate machine dictating to the projects, with no chance of response.
  
  The Mediawiki techs are a hugely important element of the Foundation, and they use [[bugzilla]] and [[wiki]] as their formal communications routes, [[supplemented]] with [IRC] and [[mailing lists]]. However, the reality is the bugzilla is ignored in favour of internal/personal communications networks in determining tech priorities. Even though the developers tell you the best way to get an issue addressed is to define the problem, develop a solution for the problem, and submit it this is not true: the best way is to throw a hissy fit involving dozens of well-placed people and make a public-relations headache - at which point your issue will magically develop priority and may actually get attention. (no guarantee it will actually be resolved, however: examples include Wiktionary's [[Extension:Transliterator]], community approved in August 2009, committed in October after languishing for months, never reviewed or approved by WMF devs as of this writing.)
  

  
  


• Semi-official communications:
  

  
  This is the human face of the Foundation: staff members like [[Bastique]] and [[Philippe Baudette]] who every day work in contact with various contributor communities, and serve as channels to bring issues into the Foundation staff meetings, and give depth and interpretation to the Foundation's less personal messages.
  
  These individuals have both an inappropriate stress and authority due to the public perception they are speaking in a semi-official capacity for the Foundation, which is increasingly remote from its average contributor.
  

  
  


• Informal communications:
  

  
  This is the way work actually gets done, no matter how carefully communications channels are monitored and prescribed. A phone call from the right person, an SMS heads up to someone who should be aware - these are the real networks which need to be recognized and - where appropriate - encouraged. They are prone to abuse, and to causing as many problems as they solve, where impediments to constant sharing of information are put in place.
  
  There are occasions where communication must not take place in public; they are the rare exception. There are occasions where communication is one-way - an instruction or announcement - but more commonly it should be a discussion with mutual agreement as to what was said, what compromises reached.
  
  Unfortunately, this channel is the least accepted or exploited by the Wikimedia Foundation, and in fact it appears the Foundation is actively campaigning to restrict informal communications between itself and the contributing community for whom it exists.
  

  
  

Well, there've been a few months of frenetic activity involved with the WMF which should be blogged about, so I'm working on three articles atm.

• Wikimedia Foundation Strategy: Excellent goodwill and good faith.
• On Mediawiki Bots: Mote, motivation, métier.
• Communication Corps
  

I simply am incapable of keeping up with what, for me, is empty process - the [[Strategic Planning]] matters not a [[jot]] or [[tittle]].

Here's why: this is a [[top-down]] imposition on the wikipedia community. If it is successful it will only be so by fundamentally destroying the character of that community, which develops organically from the bottom up. If it is unsuccessful, then it won't have mattered.

Like a substantial percentage of the wikipedia community, I do not respect our benevolent overlords. So long as they stay out of the way of our ongoing creation, they can do whatever they want and I'll support their equally vital efforts. If they decide to channel our creativity outside our mission statement (and, incidentally, [[theirs]]), well, then I have issues.

One of the first things I asked, when I was finally able to find a platform where I could ask anyone anything, was "What is your authority?"[1] I was trying to find out who had authorized the strategy initiative, and who was managing it. It was authorized by the Board of Trustees in April 2009, directing Ms Gardner to develop and implement the strategy.

This is really important. The board gave responsibility for creating a future plan to an employee. Not the community.

And Ms Gardner is doing the right thing - using outside advice and community-derived staff she is trying to create a strategy which is at least community-involved. But it isn't community-driven.

Maybe this is the best that can be hoped for. Maybe the Wikimedia communities are simply too insular, or too inter-antagonistic, to develop cooperative efforts for defining visions of the future. But, maybe, this is leaving the community feeling outside looking in, even according to some of the organizers.

I think particularly with the English wikipedia people feel significantly removed and want someone to "translate" the process for them. - Philippe

Different communities within what is sometimes called the "Wikimedia Movement" have occasionally been informed of the existence of this effort - which has been ongoing since at least April 2009 - and reacted quite defensively at what they feel is an encroachment on their sphere of influence.

But from my armchair there is little or no awareness or involvement in the process even among the more active members of the communities. So a minority will be making decisions for the whole, [[disenfranchising]] the majority.

Bah. I'm being asked to do more formal volunteering at WMF again.

I can't decide if this is a good or a bad thing, or whether I'll actually get involved in doing stuff or not. Indecision is potentially its own decision.

I'm torn about how to handle this topic...

In general, the press should maintain a healthy antagonistic relationship with government. And like it or not, beyond all the illusions and delusions, the [[WikiMedia Foundation]] serves as the government of the various [[projects]] and online communities it supports. So, throughout the sometimes chaotic [[IRC office hours]] on Friday([[transcript]]). I tried to maintain a skepticism and animosity.

But it was just soo sad...

So to preface this I have to say that I find [[Ms Gardner]] a sympathetic figure, and it was very hard to find fault with what was said and done in the talk. Except, of course, that little was said or done.

Far more fault was to be found in the audience. Which at times more resembled a riotous mob than the literate, motivated, strong-shouldered giants building the greatest websites on the planet from bare rocks they seem sometimes to think they are. From the raucous pre-show cerebral strutting to the strident questions and interjections during the talk, I've rarely seen a spectacle of nit-wits and testosterone/caffeine junkies I'd less like to be associating with except, possibly, watching English Rugby. Let me blunt, if I haven't been so yet: several of the people participating were rude, boorish, and thuggish, and are prime examples of why corporal punishment shouldn't be removed from the WMF options for improving behavior. I'd make a comparison with toddlers, but it simply wouldn't express the vitriol some were expressing.

But the content over which they were squabbling! it was so slight as to hardly be worth mentioning, let alone acting out.

On [[en.wp]], the rollout of [[Flagged Revisions]] is delayed. Yawn. En is a big site, and processes and software have to be scaled for the sheer volume of the place. This has always been true, likely always will be true. But the whining was intense, and this was the first question of substance, and went on and on, dragging in various WMF employees, and accomplished exactly nothing other than pissing off people who would later act out in their turn.

The softball question and discussion about [[Wikimedia Strategic Planning]], the ostensive purpose for the whole IRC talk thing, was pretty pointless as well. Except for one thing: it showed very clearly that there is a minority chorus who support it and are already involved in it, and a much larger majority who are unaware, indifferent, and are likely to start screaming as soon as changes are instigated by the project. It seriously sounded like a [[Greek chorus]] at times as a series of players would chime in to repeat themes or announce their support.

As an aside, I think Frank/[[Wikipods]] was mentioned at least a half-dozen times. This must have been the agreed on "we'll make sure to mention this at the meeting" topic.

But it also leads me into another 'theme' in the meeting - hostility. There was plenty in the meeting. And plenty of discussion about how the projects seem mighty hostile. And it's an important element of strategy to improve retention, but people leave because the community is hostile. And we shouldn't be hostile to newbies, but it seems we are. In several of the discussion threads this came up. Not that anything was suggested to change this (well, someone suggested banning everyone who is a current contributor, but I assume that was in jest.)

This theme led into another, more subtle one: twitting office, being twitted by office. Gerard was (mildly) belittled by a WMF officer. Sue was not-quite-bluntly asked about the recent departure of an employee (it strongly suggested to me that at least one person thinks there's a story there, and Sue's nonchalant answer the WMF will not notice the departure seems to confirm it - at the very least it was the faintest of praise.)

But getting back to the content, there really isn't much more that hasn't been mentioned. There was a dustup regarding Chapters. When isn't there a dustup regarding chapters? But in this case people carrying a grudge made clear they don't trust the WMF. Mind you, they're right not to. And then they were roundly shouted at for carrying a grudge.

Just as another aside, I noticed the extreme lack of comment or even notice that there isn't a Wikimedia Chapter USA. Still. Why is it that no one will come out and state that if there were a USA chapter there would be a helluva lot more action (and leverage), but that none of the extent chapters (or the organizers/activists ) want a USA chapter because it would over-power the others? Allow me to quote from [[en.Wikipedia]]: "Wikipedia policy has been formulated for the most part by habit and consensus..." It seems to me, then, that avoiding/preventing a USA Chapter is policy for the WMF. (oh, if you don't recognize that exact quote, even though it was part of en,wp for years, it's because it was written by [[Larry Sanger]]. Notice how that link doesn't go to either his [[w:User:Larry Sanger]] or [[w:Larry Sanger]]? I sure did, yet I clicked on his user name in [[Policy and Guidelines history]]. I found it interesting.)

So, in addition to the [[kerfuffle]], back to the content, what else was there? Oh yes, Gerard's question about smaller projects. Which somehow fell out of the question queue, but was graciously restored, and resulted in the best quote of the entire session:

[23:26pm] SueGardner: I think our obligation is to focus our energy, for the most part, on the projects that have the greatest potential.

I'm sure you can guess this caught the attention of several attendees. Ms Gardner went on to explain that "potential" was defined as projects with a large, available, literate, internet-connected readership where WMF is performing poorly, the emphasis being all mine.

However, what caught my attention most was the lack of real reference to projects at all, but rather languages. If Ms Gardner meant what she said, literally, she would be casting en.wp aside and focusing on the life-support projects like en.Wikinews or en.Wikisource or other English language project whose traffic is relatively minimal, yet which have the huge 'potential' as she describes it. En.wp doesn't qualify.

But that's not what she meant. In fact, she bluntly dodged the question about how this applies to projects. She was referring to languages such as Hindi and Chinese, and she stuck to those talking points like glue.

And that's how the meeting trailed off, a good half-hour to an hour longer than was planned. Some platitudes, some talking points, more hostility.

And Ms Gardner came across as nice.

Editorial advice in an encyclopedia article is just... weird.

Due to the non-xhtml compliant unmatched p tag, we highly recommend you avoid this syntax whenever possible [sic][1]

Every so often I run across an example of why Wikipedia is a completely ludicrous collection of crap. For some reason it's most pronounced in the religious-related articles.

So I was following a stream-of-consciousness research trend about legal arguments and ran across the completely specious statement "The Old Testament is likely the oldest surviving body of law still relevant to modern legal systems." [1]We won't even begin to comment on it beyond mentioning that certain legal systems in Sanskrit are still actively in use as they have been continuously for about 4 000 years now, according to their legal traditions and documents.

Anyway, related to this I ended up, in an extremely roundabout fashion, on the page of [[Saint Paul]], one of those lovely uncontroversial (despite the page move warring) religious articles. Which states the figure unequivocally is historical, but the only evidence on the entire planet is the religious texts of the religion which venerates him.

Which is almost as factual as the [[Flying Spaghetti Monster]]. And an NPOV violation of the first water.

Board Elections 2008: Comments on candidates

Why do I do this? I dunno. But here are my candid comments re: the people who've chosen to expose themselves to hyper-critical internet-based nattering nabobs of negativity such as myself, ... and I should comment regarding the contest itself but I'll leave that for another post.

The board candidates neatly fall into two camps: Wikipedians, and those who have serious involvement with other projects - a class I call Wikimedians for lack of a better term at this moment. (Note that involvement with Commons and Meta doesn't count here - after looking at the candidate's involvements on those sites it appears they are nearly exclusively involved there as part of their primary projects.)

To be blunt: the Foundation Board is, and likely always will be, completely ignoring the needs of the non-Wikipedia projects. This lack of focus appears to be the primary reason those projects are not particularly successful. In any garden the attention of the gardener is not on the plants which are thriving, but almost exclusively on those which are not doing so well. For this reason I am categorically opposed to candidates who are not active on non-Wikipedia projects; sorry, Wikipedia doesn't need the advocates, and this is not at all intended to slight either Wikipedia or those candidates who are only involved in that project.

==Wikimedians==
This group of candidates work exclusively or primarily in projects other than a Wikipedia.

Eclecticology

I know this user slightly. The user has a long history with the Wikimedia Foundation, and has been fundamental in the development of the Wiktionary project nearly from its inception. A strong contributor on multiple projects in both content and policy. That said, xe is known for a long, slow cogitation regarding issues and the community, and has shown a willingness to allow a strident minority to over-rule the will of the community - process over over product. I could see Eclecticology on a Board Advisory Committee far more than on the decision-making board.

Skenmy

I know this user slightly. Xe is young, reasonably enthusiastic, and active in several varying ways. Experience is the only thing this user requires, but based on the make up of the Board of Trustees previously this is clearly not a criterion for election - he can learn on the job like his predecessors.

CSpurrier

I know this user fairly well. A long-time Wikinews contributor, sysadmin, and everything else the community can convince him to do for them, he has been a Wikimedia Foundation Steward for a year and a half now. He's a stable, dedicated wikimedian who puts in a lot of time and effort - especially in the background - earning quiet respect and a reputation for reliability.

==Wikipedians==
These are the candidates who are useless on the Board, because they are only Wikipedians and appear, with a couple notable exceptions, nearly completely ignorant of the other projects and communities. Candidates in this group should not be elected.

Cimon Avaro

Cimon has been around the Wikimedia Foundation forever. He's knowledgeable, and on IRC has shown he's very insightful. Apparently he made a big impression on wikimedians during the first Wikimania, and may have had difficulties living up to or down those first impressions; I didn't attend and have long since disregarded those second-hand impressions because they clearly were not relevant to M Avaro's actions and accomplishments. Multilingual++

Wing

I do not know this user. Examining xyr contributions, I'm struck by two things: the claim for involvement on en.wp (because the user's nick there is [[User:Philopp]], since Aug. 2003) and the number of sites the user has visited to do interwiki links. Multilingual++.

SarcasticIdealist

I do not know this user. Appears nearly rabidly en.Wikipedian. I would probably have difficulties communicating politely with this person regarding biographies of living persons, but then I figure the primary criterion for a biography in an encyclopedia is a lack of a pulse. Multilingual++

Kmweber

I knew this user during his very brief period on en.wn. User is running a hoax campaign; that is, xe neither expects to win nor wants to do so, but is running in order to gain a platform for a fringe or marginalized viewpoint. IMO, having some history with this user on IRC, he's a loonie and a timesink.

Ryan Postlethwaite

I do not know this user. After an extremely shallow examination of this user's recent edits... well, how can I say anything politely? It seems to me the user enjoys wikilawyering and community process, but is somewhat lacking in content or wikignome activity, and thus I am left questioning in what way xe materially benefits the project.

Harel

In the interests of full disclosure, I am extremely displeased by the rogue actions of Israel, and by the international Jewish communities which continue to enable it's lawless behaviours. That said, this is the only board candidate who is active in the WMF chapters movement, another maneuver which I find myself categorically opposed to as it has been explained to me by persons central to its development as primarily an effort to wrest control and authority from "the americans." (In further disclosure, I am a United States ex-pat.)

Having gone to such great lengths to explain my possible biases against this candidate, I have no particular negative comments other than the fact the user claims to be supportive of the wider community, yet remains isolated and insular within the jewish languages despite also claiming more fluency in English than Yiddish. but he says he helped bring "law and order" to yi.wp. Multilingual++.

Swatjester

I've been on almost-nodding acquaintance with Swatjester in the past; that is, I don't know him personally. Perhaps a fair assessment of his character would be to point out that he's moving to a new nick on en.Wikipedia, [[SierraSix]], and his current user page is interwikied to the sandbox page on many diffrent languages of Wikipedia. A high percentage of content edits.

Alex Bakharev

I do not know this user. Although I did not research this facet, xe has been involved in orphaning images cross-projects. This may be perfectly legitimate (in the case where an image is to be deleted on Commons for copyright issues) or may be extremely divisive (in the case where an image is to be deleted on Commons without justification, such as "superseded" or subjective quality.) I don't have time to get a sample of such efforts, so I'm just going to mention potentially suspect transwiki behavior. Multilingual++.

Dedalus

I do not know this user, although I seem to recall we may have, once upon a time, interacted very rarely. A brief look through the user's contributions show xyr active in several levels of the NL community(ies), as well as interacting as a wikimedian and not solely as a wikipedian. That said, almost no activity outside Wikipedia in Nederlands.

Gregory Kohs

Although we do not actually know each other, M Kohs and I did interact early on in his involvement with the WMF when I was serving as part of the office/communications/public relations. Although xe presents several interesting arguments in the candidate statements and in responses to questions, it is exemplary of this candidate that the photo uploaded to Meta (and subsequently to Commons) is [ambiguously/not licensed] on xyr [[wiki]]. In brief, this is an SEO flim-flam artist imo, who none-the-less has some good ideas hidden away in the snake oil, as every good lie is hidden within a shell of truth. Oh, and did I mention the user has been banned for life on en.wp at least?

MBisanz

I do not know this user. I'm continually surprised by how many people use scripting to amass large edit counts.

Sj

I know this user slightly. Although this user has clearly changed xyr interactions with the WMF over time, I will be unable to forget the clear conflict of interest this user displayed at the 2006 Wikimania at which he managed to portray the OLPC's inclusion of Wikipedia on its XO laptop as the primary news event of the Wikimedia Foundation for the year, a few weeks after accepting a position with the OLPC involved in public relations. This history makes it hard for me to believe "As Board member, I would: * Represent the community's perspectives to the Board, not my own."

[Late edit: A couple of people msg'd me to suggest the "not in this group" sentence was not easily understood/prone to confusing, so I changed it for clarity.]