Hi everyone,
This Friday's office hours will feature Mike Godwin, the Wikimedia
Foundation's Legal Counsel. If you don't know Mike Godwin, you can
read about him at <http://enwp.org/Mike_Godwin>.
Office hours this Friday are from 2230 to 2330 UTC (3:30PM to 4:30PM
PDT). Mike will also be taking the following Thursday from 1600 to
1700 UTC (9:00AM to 10:00AM PDT).
The IRC channel that will be hosting Mike's conversation will be
#wikimedia-office on the Freenode network. If you do not have an IRC
client, you can always 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. Go ahead.
--
Cary Bass
Volunteer Coordinator, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
At 07:59 AM 6/27/2010, Fred Bauder wrote:
>Yes, articles from diverse points of view would be good.
One Size Fits All. (If It Doesn't Fit You, You get an F.)
Free Public Education for All. (Implicit: One Curriculum, Centrally
Decided. How?)
Free Encyclopedia: (One Brief Article Per Subject.)
I just came from the AERO Conference in Albany, NY. Educational
Philanthropy is destroying indigenous cultures around the world,
imposing, all with good intentions, the economic and social paradigms
that are dominant in the donor cultures. John Taylor Gatto, who
coined "Dumbing Down," was there as one of the keynote speakers. And then,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_LbZ3XcfK4
Not only it is an option to have many schools, it is a necessity.
Not only is it an option to have many teachers and many courses, it
is a necessity.
Not only is it an option to have many points of view, without
diversity, there is no depth.
Wikipedia, unless it develops and uses genuine consensus process,
will follow this old deadening error.
AERO is "Alternative Education Resource Organization." They are now
extensively connected with IDEA, Institute for Democratic Education
in America; and, in the end, the people who are involved have many
competing educational theories and techniques, often at each other's
throats, so to speak, where they disagree, but are uniting behind a
broad consensus, which, as you might suspect if you see the video I
linked, is likely to punch through the noise. They know how to do it,
they have the energy, and they have the resources.
Wikiversity allows diversity. And, just in case, NetKnowledge is an
alternative, and I just came across conex.org.
The AERO and IDEA people were not aware of Wikiversity. Now they are.
Watch this space.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)yahoo.com>
Date: 27 June 2010 12:05
Subject: [Foundation-l] Please help review [[Commons:Sexual content]]
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
As many of you are aware, Commons has been developing a proposed
policy regarding sexual content at [[Commons:Sexual content]].[1] It
is now stable and ready for review by third parties - if you haven't
read it yet, please look it over and provide any feedback on the talk
page. We want to move forward on adoption soon.
Dcoetzee has requested feedback from the English Wikipedia, and we'd
appreciate it if you can all help spread the news to your own local
wikis, since this affects everyone. Thank you!
[1] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Sexual_content
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foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
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Hi folks,
Just wanted to send you a heads up that we're going to be doing a
little bit of banner testing for a very brief period on the English
Wikipedia sometime soon. For about a 24 hour period, there will be
banners appearing to a small segment of users that direct users to a
couple of different sets of questions for a very quick informal survey.
This is primarily a test of the medium; it's not a message test.
We're trying learn something about people who click on our banners and/
or answer the questionnaire, not specifically testing the message that
gets them there.
Our hope is that this will be minimally intrusive, since it will only
run for one day. The idea is to maximize the targeting of the usage
of this tool.
The questions on the survey will be in a few broad buckets. We're
asking about:
- readership (how often?)
- editing frequency (for logged in users only)
- Foundation knowledge (did you know it's a non-profit? what do you
think the primary income source is?)
- Very basic demographics (age, sex).
We will most likely be doing more testing in the future, but for now
these are the base questions. We know it's not a scientific polling
or sampling, but the goal is to extrapolate some data from what we
find out here.
pb
____________________
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
Hi everyone,
The next strategic planning office hours are:
Wednesday, 04:00-05:00 UTC, which is:
-Tuesday (8-9pm PST)
-Tuesday (11pm-12am EST)
There has been a lot of tremendous work on the strategy wiki the past
few months, and Task Forces are finishing up their work.
Office hours will be a great opportunity to discuss the work that's
happened as well as the work to come.
As always, you can access the chat by going to
https://webchat.freenode.net and filling in a username and the channel
name (#wikimedia-strategy). You may be prompted to click through a
security warning. It's fine. More details at:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours
Thanks! Hope to see many of you there.
____________________
Philippe Beaudette
Facilitator, Strategy Project
Wikimedia Foundation
philippe(a)wikimedia.org
mobile: 918 200-WIKI (9454)
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
Some motivation for a proper WikiCite project. --sj
=============== Begin forwarded message ==================
"How citation distortions create unfounded authority: analysis of a
citation network"
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/339/jul20_3/b2680
Abstract:
Objective -To understand belief in a specific scientific claim by
studying the pattern of citations among papers stating it.
Design - A complete citation network was constructed from all PubMed
indexed English literature papers addressing the belief that \u03b2
amyloid, a protein accumulated in the brain in Alzheimer\u2019s
disease, is produced by and injures skeletal muscle of patients with
inclusion body myositis. Social network theory and graph theory were
used to analyse this network.
Main outcome measures - Citation bias, amplification, and invention,
and their effects on determining authority.
Results:
The network contained 242 papers and 675 citations addressing the
belief, with 220 553 citation paths supporting it. Unfounded authority
was established by citation bias against papers that refuted or
weakened the belief; amplification, the marked expansion of the belief
system by papers presenting no data addressing it; and forms of
invention such as the conversion of hypothesis into fact through
citation alone. Extension of this network into text within grants
funded by the National Institutes of Health
and obtained through the Freedom of Information Act showed the same
phenomena present and sometimes used to justify requests for funding.
Conclusion:
Citation is both an impartial scholarly method and a powerful form of
social communication. Through distortions in its social use that
include bias, amplification, and invention, citation can be used to
generate
information cascades resulting in unfounded authority of claims.
Construction and analysis of a claim specific citation network may
clarify the nature of a published belief system and expose distorted
methods of social citation.
--
Samuel Klein identi.ca:sj w:user:sj
Hi everyone,
As I'm sure you're all aware, the Pending Changes trial began earlier this
week, and seems to be off to a great start. There are many issues to be
sorted out both on the community policy side and on the technical side, but
everyone here seems to grappling with the community issues without a lot of
prodding. On the development front, the team now has a blissfully mundane
software maintenance/incremental improvement process to deal with, as
opposed to feeling antsy about needing to deploy.
With the launch out of the way, William is now wrapping up and turning the
project management reigns over to me. When I first started contracting with
WMF back in the beginning of May, I had the mistaken assumption that I'd be
taking over then, since William had/has another huge opportunity that is
looming on the horizon that appeared likely to take 100% of his time. In
our first meeting as we started going over the transition, he resolutely
pointed out "no, I'm staying until we deploy this, however long it takes".
We are really glad he was able to stick with us through this, and we're
extremely grateful for his tenacity and commitment. This feature would
likely have been delayed longer and would have missed many critical details
without him. I learned a lot about project management working with him, and
enjoyed it a great deal. Thanks William!
The main developers, (Aaron and Chad) plan to continue knocking down issues
as they discover them, as well as continuing to whittle down the backlog of
issues we postponed until after the initial deployment:
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/projects/46157
Some of the most significant work surrounds the "reject" button an a few
related tweaks. Since the topic of how exactly to optimize the workflow is
still a subject of debate, we'd appreciate some feedback on the subject.
The features in question are all linked to from here:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:FlaggedRevs/Specifications
The trial itself is slated to last until August 15. After that, community
consensus will be required to leave the feature on permanently. A strict
reading of the proposed trial would suggest we're obligated to turn the
feature off immediately around August 15, but I've seen at least one comment
suggesting we leave it on that time. I've proposed here that we instead
leave the feature turned on while we discuss the permanent status:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Pending_changes/Trial#leaverunn…
If you have any concerns that need the dev team's attention, please bring
them up here:
http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Pending_Changes_issues
We're a little behind in looking at that page, but we will get back to you
if you post there. We'll also get back to you if you prefer to post to
Bugzilla:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=MediaWiki%20extensions…
That's all for now. Thanks for reading!
Rob
p.s. I didn't want to turn this email into a parody of an overly-long Oscar
speech, but I also did want to specially call out Aaron Schulz, the lead
developer on this project, who did a remarkable job developing and preparing
the software for this launch as well as making sure that any problems that
we did inadvertently introduced were knocked down extremely quickly (often
within minutes of finding out). Great work, Aaron!