Wikimedia-l September 2010

107 participants
76 discussions

Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia mirrors
by Aude 16 Sep '10

16 Sep '10

On Sep 16, 2010, at 6:44 AM, Bod Notbod <bodnotbod(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 11:14 AM, Aude <aude.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >> Surely there are third parties with such experience and interested in >> this. [...] Surely google has or should have copy? > > It would be interesting to know what Google has. I recently began a > new article and was stunned to see that Google had indexed, given a > high ranking to, and (IIRC) had a cache of the article within the day. I see new articles & edits appear in Google searches almost immediately. > > I'm not technical, so I speak from ignorance, but I imagine they > wouldn't have article histories. Probably. If i remember correctly, WMF gets some modest income from google (& others?) for providing priority feeds of recent changes (as feeds or through API) whereas normal users have API limits. Please clarify if someone knows better! > > The notion that Wikipedia was currently vulnerable to data loss had > honestly never occurred to me; I thought that the reference sites that > use our content meant that back-ups are ubiquitous. You've all given > me the fear. I don't fear anything bad but concerned. But suppose (very very very unlikely) there was some massive scandal and fundraising dried up or some massive lawsuit or other scenario and WMF ceased to exist? Not impossible? (what's the reserve? How long can wmf survive if fundraising dried up today?) Distributed mirrors and database dumps are in my view fundamental top priority, providing peace of mind, right along w/ keeping servers running. All the other WMF staff programs (awesome that they are!) are far secondary Would also be cool to see more innovative uses of wikipedia content, made possible with good dumps @aude > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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[Foundation-l] [Language committee] Transparency
by Milos Rancic 16 Sep '10

16 Sep '10

As Karen fixed her anonymity issue, archives of the Language committee will be public by default starting from September 12th, 2010. We will continue to use the same method for the list archives, as it allows us to talk about confidential (mostly personal) issues. Previous emails will stay as they are, according to the old rules.

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[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation Fellowship program
by Philippe Beaudette 16 Sep '10

16 Sep '10

Hi all, Please see the Wikimedia Blog (http://blog.wikimedia.org/ ) for an exciting announcement about the Wikimedia Foundation Fellowship program, and the first recipient of a Fellowship, Steven Walling. ____________________ Philippe Beaudette Head of Reader Relations Wikimedia Foundation philippe(a)wikimedia.org Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Cyn Skyberg joins Wikimedia as CTCO!
by Liam Wyatt 15 Sep '10

15 Sep '10

On 9 September 2010 01:56, Sue Gardner <sgardner(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: > Hi folks, > > I'm delighted to tell you that the Wikimedia Foundation has just hired > its first-ever Chief Talent and Culture Officer. Cyn Skyberg will > begin work with us this coming Monday, September 13. She'll report to > me <snip> > I am delighted Cyn will be joining us: please help me welcome her. But > -- she doesn't yet have a Wikimedia e-mail address, and she's not yet > subscribed to our mailing lists. So maybe wait for Monday :-) Having waited 'till the new week as requested.... Welcome Cyn! :-) I never really "got" SecondLife beyond as a proof of concept but the one thing that did come across very clearly was that it had a vibrant internal culture which was actively supported by LindenLabs. So I look forward to seeing what can be achieved by this crucial position at the WMF to develop a vibrant and open culture within the WMF staff and between the staff and the wider community. Of course, as the WMF grows (and it will grow a lot according to the strategic plan) the relationship between the community and the staff (tech, fundraising, outreach etc.) will become ever more important in ensuring the health of the projects. I'm interested to see the change in position title from the original as "Human Resources" to "Talent and Culture" as Erik described. I've always thought that if for some reason all of the Wikimedia projects suddenly disappeared (and no one had any backups) we would be upset about it for a couple of days but then we would just start again - and we would do it better! On the other hand, if the community disappeared all of a sudden then the projects would become irrelevant and overgrown with spam within a week no matter how resilient the staff, financial or technical systems. So, whilst I understand that Cyn's job is specifically to manage the WMF staff "talent and culture" I look forward to seeing how that role interacts with the talent and culture visible in the community at large. Welcome once again, Sincerely, Liam wittylama.com/blog Peace, love & metadata

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[Foundation-l] Six more weeks for the current "most often used" messages
by Gerard Meijssen 15 Sep '10

15 Sep '10

Hoi, Now that the Usability Initiative software has been rolled out to all Wikimedia projects, the composition of the "most often used" messages has changed. It is expected that a new list of messages will be created in six weeks time. Thanks, GerardM http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2010/09/six-more-weeks.html

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Re: [Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?
by Peter Damian 14 Sep '10

14 Sep '10

I also posted this to the Wikipedia Review here http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=30718&view=findpost&p=252… We ought to become closer, no? Peace, love, metadata etc Peter

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[Foundation-l] Office hours with Sue Gardner
by Philippe Beaudette 14 Sep '10

14 Sep '10

Hi all, Sue Gardner, the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, will be having office hours this Thursday (September 16) at 17:00 UTC (10:00 PT, 13:00 ET, 19:00 CEST) on IRC in #wikimedia-office. If you do not have an IRC client, there are two ways you can come chat using a web browser: First, using the Wikizine chat gateway at <http://chatwikizine.memebot.com/cgi-bin/cgiirc/irc.cgi>. Type a nickname, select irc.freenode.net from the top menu and #wikimedia-office from the following menu, then login to join. Or, you can access Freenode by going to http://webchat.freenode.net/, typing in the nickname of your choice and choosing wikimedia-office as the channel. You may be prompted to click through a security warning, which you can click to accept. Please feel free to forward (and translate!) this email to any other relevant email lists you happen to be on. ____________________ Philippe Beaudette Head of Reader Relations Wikimedia Foundation philippe(a)wikimedia.org Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikitech-l] Community vs. centralized development
by emijrp 13 Sep '10

13 Sep '10

Hi all; I think that Jamie has started an important topic. I don't think that WMF is going to usurp Wikipedia and the sister projects now or in the future, but it is statistically possible. If we want to protect us, the human knowledge and our work of this hypothetical scenario, we need complete full dumps frequently. But this scenario is a malicious one, and I think that there are many more dangerous posibilities, and unfortunately, they are common. For example, small or massive lost of data due to natural disasters, crackers attacks, stolen passwords, hardware and software bugs, sudden crazy sysops, and _human errors_. Is WMF ready for that? Long time ago I searched info about that, but I only found these links[1][2]. Recently, I have been concerned about this again. Most of the Wiki[mp]edia projects are small, and their full backups are updated every week[3] and they can be stored everywhere, but the largest ones like English Wikipedia gets outdated soon[4] (now, it is +200 days old). I don't know so much about the infrastructure and how WMF servers are allocated around the world, so, I want to ask a simple question: In the case of a complete disaster in the "main" servers, will WMF be able to restore all the Wiki[mp]edia contain using backups? We got a terrible fright when 3000 images were deleted accidentally in 2008[5] and I think that not all were recovered. When people ask about images dump the most common reply is: "Are you going to store 7 TB (Commons)?" I can't store that at home of course, but, I'm sure that a few universities or entities around the world can, not only for backup purposes, for researching too (in full resolution or thumbs). Also, I think that we need to start mirroring Wiki[mp]edia dumps to other servers around the globe, as the common GNU/Linux ISOs mirrors do. Also, Library of Congress said some time ago that they are going to save a copy of all the tweets sent to Twitter.[6] When are they going to save a copy of Wiki[mp]edia? I hope we have learnt a bit since Library of Alexandria was destroyed. I don't want that an error moves us back to January 15, 2001. Regards, emijrp [1] http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/view/Disaster_Recovery [2] http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/view/Offsite_Backups [3] http://download.wikimedia.org/ [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Emijrp/Wikipedia_Archive [5] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2008-September/039265.html [6] http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/04/loc-google-twitter/ 2010/9/8 Jamie Morken <jmorken(a)shaw.ca> > Hi, > > I was involved in an open source project that was usurped by one of the > main developers for the sole reason of making money, and that project > continues now to take advantage of the community to increase the profit of > that developer. I never would have thought such a thing was possible until > I saw that happen. If that developer wasn't acting greedy, there would now > be open source hardware for radio transceivers of all types, but instead > there is only open source software for radio of all types. I find it a > shame, and when I was working on that project I could *feel* it being > usurped! I unfortunately may be paranoid as I feel the same thing here with > the wikimedia foundation usurping wikipedia. If you don't believe me, just > consider that it is a very gradual process, like getting people used to not > being able to download image dumps anymore, and ignoring ALL requests to > restore this functionality. Also failing to provide full history backups of > the flagship wiki. These two facts allow the wikimedia foundation to > maintain the control of intellectual property that wasn't created by the > people. If you want the wikimedia foundation to respect you as volunteers, > you will have to DEMAND respect by making sure that they never usurp the > project. I think the best way to do this is to make sure we can all > download up to date full history with images wikipedia's so a fork at any > time is possible. Sure it may be paranoid, but trust me it is worth it to > be paranoid regarding a project as important as wikipedia. I have been in > situations like this before, I wish I had acted before even if I was wrong! > I wouldn't even be speaking now except for reading the heart-felt words of > volunteers in this thread that are unhappy with how the wikimedia foundation > is running. We need to organize to get wikimedia foundation to release > images tarballs, they are only ignoring multiple requests to do so, so far. > > cheers, > Jamie > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l >

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[Foundation-l] The Signpost – Volume 6 Issue 37 – 13 September 2010
by Wikipedia Signpost 13 Sep '10

13 Sep '10

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[Foundation-l] Update on the fundraiser
by Philippe Beaudette 12 Sep '10

12 Sep '10

Hi everyone, I wanted to just do a quick update to this list about the status of the Fundraiser. As you know, we committed to making this a highly collaborative process, and I'm very pleased with how that's working out so far. We have many banner suggestions from the community (you can view them all at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Messages ) and members of the community are actively engaged in designing our social media strategy. Of course, the Foundation will provide support to those community members. We have begun and continue a process of outreach to the various wikis in our projects: we have a dedicated outreach team that's working to contact every wiki and identify people who are willing to lead the discussions on their home wiki, or engage in the discussion on meta. I want to clarify a couple of things: first, messaging will almost definitely be project specific. That is, without a clear and compelling reason, when reading the banner suggestions, you should assume that "Meta" or "Wikipedia" would be replaced with the name of the project you're viewing the banner on. Obviously, some banners are project specific, and those will run ONLY on the appropriate project. (Wikipedia would not get a message targeted at Wiktionary, for instance, and vice versa, but they would both get messages that were tailored for the global projects). Second, when we engage in translating the messages that will be used, we will strongly encourage the communities to not just translate but to actually localize. If the slogan doesn't make sense in Swahili, for instance, we'll ask the translators to help us work with it until it does. One of my colleagues, Sage Ross, a longtime wikimedian, submitted a theme that I love: "Edit this fundraiser." That's really what we're shooting for: a fundraiser that we all jointly collaborate to create. We'll have expert support and the group of fundraising professionals that I work with at the Foundation are top notch, but it's very important that there be community engagement. So, please, edit the fundraiser. Suggest banner ideas, and just as importantly, join in the debate about the ones that are suggested! As you probably know, we're doing banner testing on Thursday afternoons (Pacific time). You may not know that we're posting the statistics as quickly as possible, so that the community can help us to evaluate effectiveness. All the stats reports are indexed at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_2010/Banner_testing/Stats . The team at the Foundation is working very hard to ensure that we all have the same information upon which to judge the success and failure of the banners. We're engaging in a redesign of the donation process as well, which will simplify the process, we hope. The technical testing for that is beginning now. In addition, we're testing (hopefully this week) the infrastructure for targeting banners at specific geographic locations, which will allow us a great deal more precision in our targeting of messages. On the whole, although there's a ton of work yet to be done, I'm optimistic about our progress so far. What would make it better? If you join in the discussion. Thanks, Philippe ____________________ Philippe Beaudette Head of Reader Relations Wikimedia Foundation philippe(a)wikimedia.org Imagine a world in which every human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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Wikimedia-l September 2010