Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-04-29/News and notes

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• Regarding the reduced amount allocated to Wikimedia Norway I believe that we have shown that we indeed are doing a lot with volunteers, we have run dozens of courses and last year we had Wikipedia Academy that was well attended, with the crown prince of Norway and one government minister as guests. We also have two quite successful language versions of Wikipedia in Norway, Nynorsk that just passed 100 thousand articles and Bokmål/Riksmål that is close to 400 thousand. We do not need any money or paid positions to go forward, but I believe we could do more, with two full-time positions. However the FDC seems to believe that we can manage with just one. I believe that is a waste, one person will not simply be half of two - it is too hard to start this alone. So if this is the final word on this years request, I would just say forget it, let WMF keep the money. Spending them on one person is just a waste. Ulflarsen (talk) 06:26, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
  • A reply is given on meta:Talk:FDC portal/FDC recommendations/2012-2013 round2#Comments regarding WM NO.Anders Wennersten (talk) 17:23, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
• Minor correction: Christophe Henner doesn't seem to be Wikimedia France's head, but its vice-chair. effeietsanders 09:26, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Fixed; thanks for pointing this out. I've used "vice-president" because it's closer to the original French. Graham87 09:39, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
    • Sorry, Christophe—that was my laziness in not looking it up at the end of a very long session preparing this. Tony (talk) 11:17, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
• Would be great if there was programmers / tech support that long term Wikipedians could apply for. While outreach efforts are important we need to support those who are currently editing more. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 10:21, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
  • For example if someone could make the cite template work consistently (right now it deletes the sentence that occurs right after).Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:31, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
    • hey, us developers are around. We can't help if people don't ask. Generally local templates are handled fine by the local community (especially when the community is enwikipedia), and the local template wizards almost certianly know more about the cite template than your average dev does. However if issues do occur that cannot be solved locally people should bug the developers. Bawolff (talk) 18:35, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
    • James, is that {{Citation}}? I don't see any description of this problem on the talk page; is it written up somewhere? Klortho (talk) 17:56, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
• Two comments:
  1. The third paragraph from the end under "Controversy" needs revision, there doesn't seem to be a connection between the sentence about eligibility and the sentence about mismanagement of funds; it seems like the first sentence of the next paragraph should somehow go inbetween them. But I'm not sure how to fix it myself.
  2. WikiLove was re-enabled on Monday, at around 23:04 UTC. Anomie⚔ 11:33, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Thanks. I hope this is clearer now. Tony (talk) 15:03, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
• The article says that France "received nothing in the FDC's first round last October". That's not accurate - it received bridge funding of $94k. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 11:49, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Thanks for spotting this, Mike. Fixed. Tony (talk) 15:03, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
• Those grant and FDC are nightmares. I don't know what HK problems are about "misusing and not returning funds" but even if the funds are not misused, returned, and even REPLACED - it doesn't solves any problem. Should I use my time asking for other funding to other entities in Indonesia for six months Q&A, WMID already got some funding. But instead WMID got ZERO, lost lots of time while the funding "expert" flying around the world giving their funds to the first world chapters and drinking wine - unbelievable. Quitting is not a matter of drama or non drama, it is a matter of time. My suggestion is stop stating that WMF support chapters - it only support *some chapters* not all. Stop saying that one is WMF Global South Expert, if one is giving substantial amount of grants to non countries that lies in suggested title. Because in Indonesia, I'm having problem explaining to my constituent that we didn't receive money, and yes, we asks. Absolutely a waste of time. Siska.Doviana (talk) 09:16, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

  Hi Siska, thank you for your feedback. Just to let you know: out of 7 FDC members, one is from Bangladesh, and one from India. Another two are from former Soviet block - definitely not Global South anymore, but with a good understanding of scarcity, censorship, etc. All of the FDC members are Wikimedia volunteers, like you, and we don't get paid for the work we do. We are particularly concerned about funding projects within Global South outreach (as it is an explicit pillar of WMF strategy, which we are bound to). WMID has not applied for the FDC funding yet, so you can't blame the FDC that it "got ZERO". Pundit|utter 10:31, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

  • Hi Pundit, I meant about grant, but good point - or FDC we just look at the spreadsheet request and laughs. It so complicated we just don't bother. Same people still behind it with additional volunteer face. We're betting that it will took more of our time filling in and more Q&A (in addition to grant that already took six months of our time) so we let other people do it. After seeing the result, we laugh some more. At least we are right. ZERO. Siska.Doviana (talk) 10:45, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
    • additional commet by trying not to sound bitter: 1) at least you got to travel 2) don't worry on loosing chapters, trust me, it's not that important, loosing trust is. Siska.Doviana (talk) 10:50, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
    • Well, it is a fact that the FDC application is the most complicated of all within WMF schemes (although still much easier than other applications in normal foundations giving grants of comparable scale). But we are determined to try to simplify this, whenever possible. Writing an application is definitely not just several hours of work (and neither is evaluating it, we spend 80-100 hours prior to deliberations f2f). All in all, I would like to encourage you to consider applying, when you feel ready - and the FDC staff, as well as the FDC is definitely open to support you in getting there. Our purpose is to distribute the money where it is needed and effectively spent, Global South is our priority, and I honestly believe we act in good faith and impartially from WMF itself, so hopefully it is an improvement. Regarding traveling - yes, that is definitely nice. However, I'm pretty sure that for most of us it would be economically more feasible to spend the same amount of time we do on the FDC to work and travel as tourists :) What I saw of Milan at Round 2 meeting was thanks to two 1-hour runs before breakfast, lol. Not that I'm complaining about traveling - of course it is nice to do that, meet Wikimedia enthusiasts from all over the world, put faces to names, etc. I'm just doubtful if it should be perceived as a major perk. I agree with you that loosing trust is a serious threat, I do hope we will be able to earn this trust and prove that the FDC may sometimes give unpopular recommendations (funds cutting), but that it does so in good faith, after a thorough professional review, and that it honestly strives to improve Wikimedia governance as a whole, as well as to help chapters, rather than make them jump the loops. Pundit|utter 11:19, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
• sigh. I think you should be more professional and make it more complicated, because other suggestion seem to be slamming against the wall of your "professional" term. Siska.Doviana (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 11:48, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

  Mm, I sincerely hope we can try to be professional and still simplify the process, whenever possible. Learning from feedback from the community, and taking suggestions from chapters such as yours, reluctant to participate in the process because of its complexity, help us do better and I appreciate that you spend your time and share your concerns. Pundit|utter 12:44, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

• The "chicken and egg" analogy is instructive. I have learned from this page that when a chapter first gets funding, its top priority will be to hire people who can make more and better applications for further funding. Imagine how this affects my plans to make more donations. Maproom (talk) 21:20, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

  The fact someone thinks it is impossible to get funding for an employee without having an employee does not mean it is in fact the case. There are several examples of chapters that have gotten funding for their first employee without an employee, and certainly without an employee helping draft the application. Our movement is blessed with relatively ample resources, and the last thing we would want to promote is paid busywork to secure additional funds.

  Some of the discussion here and on the mailing list threads around this has been repeatedly conflating non-compliance (i.e. violation of grant terms, mostly during execution and reporting phases), with the burden of applying for funds (i.e. before funding is granted). Both Wikimedia Hong Kong and Wikimedia Indonesia have had significant non-compliance in their past grants; while this reflects on their track record and factors into funding decisions, it has absolutely no bearing on the burden of application. Ijon (talk) 23:08, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

• I am curious about the Wikisource discussion. Was there any discussion, when transcribing The Yellow Wall Paper, of the purpose of doing that? A free electronic text has been available for more than a decade thanks to the efforts of Project Gutenberg. Was any Wikisource value-add statement articulated at the event, perhaps? Ijon (talk) 23:17, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

  English Wikisource has its inclusion criteria s:Wikisource:What Wikisource includes and as Wikisource is a complete volunteer effort we do not judge what volunteers bring to the site against what is at other sites (note that judge is different from encourage or seek out). In fact we welcome different versions of the same work, and there are some interesting differences between versions. Works being inside the WMF wiki framework allows interwikis and interchange between works and sites, and that is the added value of works at Wikisource, the scanned work is at Commons, and thus every image is available to all the sister sites, it enables translations, interlanguage comparisons, etc. ... There are many thousands of images that have been reproduced and cleaned up from works and now reside in Commons due to WS efforts. Was any of that communicated at the event, I have no idea. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:05, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

  Thanks, Billinghurst. I am aware of these advantages; I was curious if a statement was made at the GLAM Bootcamp, in particular as they were engaging, among other things, in this type of mostly-redundant work. I shall wait for a response from one of the participants. Ijon (talk) 03:00, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

  Big statement about redundant work, has elements of PoV. Duplication of some effort? Sure. Redundant? Hardly. The works at Gutenberg are less than perfect, and we have imported them before, found errors, and have had no way to check against a source, which we find as the ongoing value of WS … available source. G. may have changed their process but we regularly found their works didn't have edition data, so whose imprint, which year of publication, etc. We were doing text match and splits against some works and it was problematic due to edition variances, let alone errors. We definitely checked. Note this is neither a comparison nor a criticism, just a comment. — billinghurst sDrewth 15:18, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

  Theornamentalist suggested this work for the session that he and I were leading because it was short and had simple formatting, scans were available and it had a good OCR, and it was of some historical significance. The main thing to keep in mind is that out of a three day Boot Camp, we had a 1–hour session to introduce about 15 experienced Wikipedians to Wikisource with a goal of making it hands-on. We wanted a work that we could dive into and possibly finish (we didn't finish it that evening but several members of the group worked on it for the next several days to complete it — the work is now in Wikisource mainspace here: The Yellow Wall Paper). We did explain our reasons briefly for using this book. In addition to Gutenberg, the work already had unsupported text at Wikisource (almost certainly imported from Gutenberg as it originally had the same errors, or at least differences from the scans, that still exist today in the Gutenberg version you linked). We pre-uploaded the scans to commons as we decided it was too time consuming to set up the book template and experienced wikipedians could handle that part. We discussed the value of scans and how that has the ability to make us more reliable than Gutenberg yet more usable than the scans alone. An added bonus to showing the value of the work was that this work already had a (actually two) audio recording on commons and an article on Wikipedia about both the book and the author, creating several linking opportunities. The existence of the work elsewhere was not a consideration, at least not for me, nor would it be in the future — we have a different goal and supporting scans are almost mandatory for new works here since the implementation of the ProofreadPage Extension (c. 2007). I did mention that for particularly large works where text is available elsewhere, there are tools to bot in the text such as match & split; however, I wouldn't consider such a work suitable for a introductory session of 1 hour.

  Although we didn't discuss in detail the value of one work versus another to the project, we did briefly discuss works that exist elsewhere on the web supported by scans versus those that don't — but that usually applies to works on university websites and not Gutenberg — and the lack of any particular value in works where the original form is web based; such as modern government documents. We also mentioned the application to GLAM and needing to address the expectations of a donor, in particular that the 12th C. manuscript that the museum wants to donate scans of isn't going to get transcribed tomorrow, nor likely next year, unless the donor wants to help us find people to do it. If we had a lot more time, say a day or a whole weekend, for a workshop dedicated to Wikisource, we could get into these things a lot more; possibly taking the time to find a suitable work that nobody else has. If the focus was again GLAM we could spend considerable time discussing value to both the project and the GLAM partner and I agree that discussion would be beneficial and given sufficient time, I would have the group select the work.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 14:29, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

  If I'm allowed to summarise: an event like this has as first purpose putting seeds in the ground, not harvesting, i.e. explaining and engaging in the projects rather than producing content, so the value of the content produced is a bad question to start with; however, the important concepts were addressed and work performed is also valuable in that it takes advantage of Wikisource to improve the defects of the PG transcription. --Nemo 14:52, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

• I hope the Signpost would consider covering the AffCom annual report in at least a little more detail (perhaps in next week's edition), for the benefit of its readers. I say this as someone who has read the entire thing. :) Ijon (talk) 23:38, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
• WMF needs to stop disbursing funds to chapters all together. Building dozens of decentralized bureaucracies around the world, each with a perceived divine right to gobble funds for paid staffers, does not advance in any way the core mission which Wikimedia Foundation is supposed to be supporting: improvement of the site and servers, improvement of the software, and expansion of volunteer participation. The fact that they are actually starting to take a look on how the money is being spent is a promising first step. Once the extreme wastefulness of the current system becomes clear, hopefully all these little fledgling national bureaucracies will be cut down at the knees. Carrite (talk) 15:39, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

WOTY prize

I'd like to point out that Demmy got his money, and looks like the problem wasn't actually Jimbo's fault. en:User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#2012_Wikipedian_of_the_Year_prize_money. Elitre (talk) 10:23, 17 June 2013 (UTC)