WereSpielChequers

Welcome to Meta!

Hello WereSpielChequers, and welcome to the Wikimedia Meta-Wiki! This website is for coordinating and discussing all Wikimedia projects. You may find it useful to read our policy page. If you are interested in doing translations, visit Meta:Babylon. You can also leave a note on Meta:Babel or Wikimedia Forum (please read the instructions at the top of the page before posting there). If you would like, feel free to ask me questions on my talk page. Happy editing! -- sj | translate | + 20:42, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Proposals/Evaluating welcome messages

Hey, just wanted to thank you for the proposal, and let you know that I've pointed it out to others at the Foundation. You should hear back from us in a bit. Is it okay to email you through the wiki if we have questions that might be better asked in private first? Steven Walling at work 01:04, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes of course. WereSpielChequers 08:40, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

London meetup 46 date change

Hey,

WMUK are having a Board meeting and meetup in Birmingham on Sunday 12th June so have asked if we can change the date of London meetup 46 - would moving it to Sunday 19th June work for you?

James F. (talk) 19:39, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes that should be OK. WereSpielChequers 20:29, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Great, thanks.

James F. (talk) 21:36, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

File:Edits by user type.png

WMF support: sr

Apologies, I thought you wanted to edit the subject recruitment page (for which IRB clearance is at least as relevant as for non-public data). I'll add this item to both pages, thanks --DarTar 02:48, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

No problem, I agree that we need some commonality between them. WereSpielChequers 13:02, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

RE: Questions on Research_talk:Vandal_fighter_work_load

See my replies. Sorry for the delay. New analyses are consuming an inordinate amount of time. I'm looking for editors who convert from vandalism/test edits to be good Wikipedians without registering a new account. :) --EpochFail 16:58, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

London meetup 50 date change

I'm proposing to move the date of London meetup #50 a week later, as I'll be out of the country. Thought I should ping you a message directly, though, as you've already signed up. Does that work for you?

James F. (talk) 12:24, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikioutreach- WCI 2011

Thanks for adding the category --Naveenpf 13:03, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

You're very welcome. There were a number of oter Indian treasures in that museum, and I'm hoping that we can get more photographs up in the future. WereSpielChequers 18:33, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Help needed locating research results

Hi WSC. I'm trying desperately to locate some information I need. You know your way around here better than I do, can you offer any solutions to my quest HERE ? Cheers --Kudpung 01:11, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

PS: Is this Research:Committee this still active at all, and did a central collecting place for research results ever get created? Sorry to be a nuisance, but I'm being asked to get involved in Meta-Wiki stuff and I'm a total newbie in navigating around WMF stuff outside en.Wiki =: (
--Kudpung 01:48, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi Kudpung, well it has a fairly active mailing list. But getting researchers to respond to talkpage postings is never easy, I find that most of my queries just get ignored so I'm spending less time there. try this You could also try emailing the individual researcher and telling them you've put a query on the talkpage. I tried to steer researchers to useful topics in the Summer of Research and at other times, but I've yet to master the skill of tempting them into useful areas - as you've seen on Mediawiki it is less difficult but still far from easy to guide programmers. WereSpielChequers 11:02, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

I answered

on my disk. --Angel54 5 14:21, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Community Fellowships

Hi WSC! I wanted to let you know that we've got an open call out for Community Fellowships right now. I archived your earlier fellowship proposals because we've started a new process for submitting ideas (hopefully a bit improved now), and in the months since you first created your proposals I imagine your ideas have changed somewhat :-) But if you're still interested in the program, or have ideas for fellowship projects that someone should do, I hope you know you're welcome to submit something again!

Open Call for 2012 Fellowship Applicants!

• Do you want to help attract and deepen engagement with more new contributors?
• Do you want to improve retention of our existing editors?
• Do you want to strengthen our community by diversifying its base and increasing the overall number of excellent participants around the world?

WMF is currently seeking Community Fellows and project ideas for the Community Fellowship Program focused on the theme of boosting participation and editor retention. If interested, please submit a project idea or apply to be a fellow by the (extended!) deadline of February 15, 2012.

Thanks! Siko 23:33, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Adminship

If you didn't get it, I was hinting for you to jump into some other areas at Meta - recent change patrolling, opening new wikis, closing wikis, spam blacklists, etc. They can be tedious, but adminship and editing on Meta is tedious. :) Ottava Rima (talk) 04:14, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks yes I've done a little bit of recent changes patrolling here and lots on EN wiki, I'd have probably done more if I'd got the bit here but there's not much point if you can't block people when necessary. Spam isn't my bag but historically I move around rather than focus in one area so I'll remember your comment about the opening and closing of wikis for the next time I want a new area. But I don't know if I'll bother to run here again, or get "more involved" purely to position myself for another run. It is so limiting not being able to look at deleted edits when you see a candidate at RFA, I should probably just go back to EN wiki ...... Can't say I agree with you about editing here being tedious, if anything I come here to stretch my brain, if I want pleasant tedium I go categorising pictures on Commons. Some of the things I'm currently most involved in are here on Meta and I'll stick around at least until they are at a convenient break point. Not sure I want to be part of a community that believes in limiting adminship to those whose principle occupation is using the tools, my preference is for a self governing community where all trusted civil longterm users are admins, and the tools are things you use when you need them - which of course we all do on occasion. WereSpielChequers 14:01, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Try again later re-applying. Is that okay for you? --Katarighe (Talk · Contributions · E-mail) 00:07, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi Katarighe. Probably not. It took me two attempts to get adminship on the English Wikipedia, but there were several reasons why that RFA failed. Almost all the opposition this time was over "need for the tools" and that strikes me as a more fundamental divide over people's views as to how wikis should run. My view of adminship is that all longterm, civil users would find the tools useful in their ordinary editing, and would find themselves occasionally wielding the mop when needed. Active editors will come across pages that need moving or amending or editors that need to be blocked. The only person who truly doesn't need the tools is one who has stopped editing and won't be coming back. The alternative view of adminship is that admins should be a small exclusive cadre of editors who largely concentrate on admin work - the "be very cautious about handing out mops" vision as opposed to "mops are cheap - lets give them out to as many suitable volunteers as are available", or in other words policing by a separate elite rather than a self policing community. I don't currently want to be the sort of person who just focuses on admin type actions, I'm not even sure I want such sorts of users. But the fewer mops you hand out the more those who have those mops will be concentrating on using them - if only because of the requests that will turn up on their talkpages. Remember this isn't about experience. I have over 120,000 edits across 37 wikimedia sites and over 6,000 admin actions on EN wiki, that's taken me nearly five years work, it would take many years for those figures to look dramatically higher. WereSpielChequers 06:29, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Nutshell fixes

Thanks! :)

While I'm here, and since you've been so proactive in this discussion, I'd like to ask you something I just asked Tango at my own talk page.

One thing I wish I could figure out how to do: the page Sue set up at Fundraising and Funds Dissemination/Pros and cons, I'm not sure that people realize that they're supposed to boldly reduce that to a neutral, shared list rather than one representing Sue's viewpoint. Maybe it's just started too much as her viewpoint for it to be a workable approach to creating the kind of list she wants. But I haven't felt like there's much I can do, since (as you know) I've been told to stay neutral and simply help coordinate. Changing the text myself could be an issue.

Do you think that creating such a list is even doable? I've changed the header to try to make it more clear: [1]. Is there something else I could do to encourage people to be bold with it, or do you suppose that it just doesn't have obvious value?

I just added it to the template; that might help. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) 13:39, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi Maggie, I'm still waiting for Sue or the Foundation generally to accept that we have disproved their assertion that the WMF outperforms chapters when it comes to fundraising. At the moment there seems to be a lack of dialogue, it is almost as if the Foundation is relying on the archiving to get rid of awkward facts rather than revising their position or otherwise responding to criticism. I've been participating in the hope that this would be more like the TOU process, but at the moment it is beginning to look more like AFT. I'm not on a chapter board, nor am I on the Internal mailing list, so to be frank I'm close to dropping out of the debate, walking away from the impending trainwreck and waiting for a time when conciliation, collaboration and problem solving is back in vogue. WereSpielChequers 14:08, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi, WereSpielChequers. I would hate for you to walk away from this. For what it's worth, while conversation was ongoing on Internal L, I advocated strongly for bringing it here precisely because of people like you. There were others on Internal L, both staff and chapter members, who shared that perspective, but it's kind of hard to get people all at the same point. I'm sure you've heard the "herding cats" comparison. :/ At this point, there is no conversation going on about it on Internal L. I can only imagine that the drop in participation is related to the rise in attention to the SOPA blackout, which has certainly consumed a ton of staff resources and seems to be preoccupying Internal L as well, but I know that Sue is still actively reading the page. She pointed out something on it to me over the weekend, and we have an appointment to talk about how things are going on Friday. It seems Erik is still talking, too, although I haven't checked to see when he made his last note. (I'd be talking about things myself, but I'm not supposed to. :) I'm supposed to stay out of it and be neutral to the best of my ability, just facilitating.)

This is a little different than the TOU workshop, which I absolutely loved, but I think that's because Geoff was able to clear a lot of his calendar for that specifically and because he was creating a kind of collaborative document. This is ultimately Sue's recommendation (not the Foundation's, but her own), so it will reflect her opinion in the end, whatever that may be. While she may not be editing it at the moment, I don't believe she regards it as done by a long shot. I think she is paying attention and thinking about what is being said.

While I did love the collaborative work on the TOU, I think that this still represents a pretty major step towards transparency and collaboration on Sue's part. She could have just written her recommendation and sent it to the Board as it was, as I believe has been done before. She wanted to be open to input and at the same time provide a place for others to speak. Even if something said on the talk page doesn't influence Sue, it's still a pretty unique opportunity to get feedback out there for the Board, who are also aware of and able to visit the discussion (and its archives) at any time.

Archiving is really not intended to "get rid of awkward facts"; I've been doing my best to neutrally archive everything based on the date conversation concluded and no other factor. (I did skip over one of Phoebe's notes for a while, because it looked to me like maybe people were updating it without timestamps, but MiszaBot, alas, just does its thing. :)) It would be great if we could keep it all visible, but accessibility issues do factor in, especially for people from the Global South. I'm trying to make sure that the archives are as usable as possible, uncollapsing things and keeping it under the threshold necessary to avoid triggering the search limit bug.

Anyway, I'm sorry you're feeling discouraged. I think the conversation would be the worse, to be sure, if you walked away from it. And if it fires back up on Internal-L, I will continue doing my best to push it here, where everybody can take part. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) 14:40, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi Maggie, thanks for the reassurance re Internal, and yes I can appreciate that SOPA is currently the main show and crowding all else out. I agree that size is an issue and if we didn't have archiving of that page then by now I'd have been driven off. But the problem as I see it is that there is no dialogue, and no attempt to resolve anything, even where issues could simply be accepted and marked as resolved (or even just responded to). Combining that with a wiki page that mustn't be treated as a wiki makes for a frustrating experience. It isn't particularly personal for me, I wasn't involved in the fundraiser and I'm just an ordinary member of my chapter. For the people who were involved in making the UK fundraiser such a success it must be somewhat demotivating to have it incorrectly branded a failure. WereSpielChequers 15:30, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Ur invited

to contribute to that discussion [2]too. U r known for having clever ideas. So what?--Angel54 5 23:33, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Data

Culled from the surreal discussion on user talk:Kudpung: "...a precise list of the required math extrapolations..."

Purely out of mathematical curiosity, since I am having a hard time understanding the course of that discussion (which I saw only because the underlying data and research interest me tremendously), I ask: Do you know what the 'math extrapolations' referred to above are? Do they yet await extrapolation? –SJ talk   04:28, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) In order to allay any misunderstanding, with reference to the 'surreal' discussion on my talk page, we, the volunteer team, were never provided with the math extrapolations that were requested. It is possible that the WMF's survey report was based , in whole or in part, on that requested data, but it was not communicated to any members of the volunteer team. I will repeat that WMF assistance was requested to provide legal and technical support (i.e. a survey software solution and math extrapolations), and that it was the community team's intention to summarise the data and publish a report. --113.53.180.120 04:53, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi SJ. I never asked for a copy of the raw data of this survey so haven't been part of that dialogue. I think it was my idea to ask the Foundation to do the processing of the survey, a decision that I now consider to be a mistake. Unlike some people involved I'm not too troubled at the way some records were omitted. But I think it sets a bad precedent that the interpretation of the survey was done by paid staff rather than the volunteers who originally came up with the idea of the survey and would have done that bit for free. The UK chapter has taken the line that staff are only to do things that volunteers want to be done but don't want to do themselves. In an ideal world volunteers such as myself would have had access to the totals for each answer and a gopher who would do some requested cross tabulations. WereSpielChequers (talk) 13:11, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks

I just wanted to swing by to say thanks for your activity in the discussion of Research:The_motivational_arc_of_massive_virtual_collaboration. --EpochFail (talk) 15:29, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Research project

Hi, I put a proposal up at Research talk:Wikipedia is necessary, the internet implies it. however it has not been discussed. I discovered it was not added to the list when I used the automatic create page here. Can you suggest how I might take this forward as I am now facing tight deadlines? Leutha (talk) 22:15, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

London Meetup

This has been changed to 18 August to avoid a conflict with Wikimania Hong Kong. Philafrenzy (talk) 23:54, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Hello, this is Abdullah, we met last Saturday. If you ever want to contact me, please use the talk page and I should respond fairly quickly.--Aa2-2004 (talk) 19:37, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Unified Wikimania Wiki

Hey there! Interested in reviving this? :) Rehman 15:29, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm going to have to avoid that debate - I now work for the UK chapter which will be somewhat involved in next year's London Wikimania. So the debate is too close to my staff role for me to wade in. WereSpielChequers (talk) 18:46, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

The Real Problem

"this ban would still be under Arbcom's purview" - The assumption that ArbCom is independent of community consensus is the real problem. There is nothing that allows such an idea to exist, and nothing that allows the ArbCom to ever trump the community. WMF Wikis by definition are solely determined by the community, and no one can usurp that authority. You will always be ignored or dismissed as long as people are able to pretend otherwise. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:20, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi Ottava, generally I'm a supporter of indirect over direct democracy, and in theory Arbcom should be a good example of that. A group of people who are elected for fixed terms by the community are ultimately subject to community consensus, and in the past we have kicked out quite a few. OK we can only judge them on what is publicly known, and many of their decisions will be based on private information, but there are plenty of cases where everything including their judgement is publicly logged. Having said that in practice I have disagreed with them on the majority of the small number of cases that I have thoroughly looked at, so though I have a lot of confidence in the individual judgement of all but one or two of the seven or more Arbs I have known in real life, in practice if they reflect the consensus of the community, then I don't. Of course that's entirely possible, I've found more than a couple of issues where my views don't agree with the consensus on EN wiki. As for the real problem, I suspect there is more than one, but one that concerns me is the question of presumption of innocence. From my understanding Arbcom works on the same principle of rough justice that a pub landlord follows. Being barred from a pub is a private matter between the landlord and the customer, and normal justice does not apply. But Arbcom is different in that its deliberations can be very publicly logged and can have a rather more public effect than barring someone from a pub. Pubs do not have webpages listing who has been barred and what they are alleged to have done. We do, and in my view the corollary of that is that we should work on the basis of a presumption of innocence until proven guilty, rather than that of a balance of probabilities. WereSpielChequers (talk) 21:25, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

"plenty of cases where everything including their judgement is publicly logged" My second appeal was 50/50 with Iridescent not active (which would have been an unban). This was not posted publicly because it was embarrassing for my biggest opponents in ArbCom, of which you are in battles with. If you look at the ArbCom-l list, their public and private aspects are very different, and there is a lot of deception. They don't abide by the community nor care about it. When someone publicly admits that they have contempt for the community (as the quote above demonstrates), that should tip you off that the whole apple is corrupt so thoroughly they think they can be honest about their abuse. Ottava Rima (talk) 22:10, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi Ottava, I prefer to keep corrupt for use when I think someone is altering their judgment in return for personal gain. I really doubt that that applies to the Arbs, that doesn't mean that I agree with all their decisions, if I'd been an Arb for the last couple of years I would often have departed from their mainstream. But however much I disagree with their collective judgement I don't question their integrity. WereSpielChequers (talk) 20:45, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Altering judgment for personal gain falls under hypocrisy. Corruption is more tangible and an alteration of an essence/being. ArbCom is an entity that was created by the community so it is subservient to the community. Any change of that relationship is a corruption of the natural order of things. Ottava Rima (talk) 21:08, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Now we are getting a tad metaphysical. To me hypocrisy is not a criminal offence, corruption is. A politician who preaches "family values" whilst maintaining a mistress or who frets about climate change from behind the wheel of a gas guzzler is being hypocritical, but take an envelope of used notes to vote the other way and you are being corrupt. I don't regard all alterations of essence or being as corruptions, institutions need to adapt to the times, if IBM had stuck with mechanical business machines and not moved into computers then I believe it would have gone the way of the dinosaurs and the slide rule manufacturers. But getting back to Arbcom, as an elected body it is subservient to the majority of those who vote in Arbcom elections. That electorate is quite capable of kicking out those who it feels don't deserve another term. However if your views are not in accord with the majority of voters then Arbcom may not seem to represent you, it certainly isn't subservient to any individual, and that's probably a good thing. If Arbcom has changed at all it has done so in two ways, firstly Jimmy's role has become more that of a constitutional monarch and less that of a godking. In that sense Arbcom has become more rather than less subservient to the community. Secondly it has acquired its own culture and possibly an element of arbcom specific group think. I'm not sure how best to tackle the latter, I suspect that the workload means that Arbs must have far less time available to actually edit, and a side effect of that is to detach them as a group from the community. I suspect that the solution would be to subdivide them so that each case had a panel of five currently active Arbs rather than involve all Arbs in every case. WereSpielChequers (talk) 03:26, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Lets be honest - when have I not been metaphysical? :) And if we bring in criminality, there would be discussions of fraud, harassment, discrimination, etc., that are just not dealt with effectively by any of the WMF Wikis. Adaptation would not be a corruption because adaptation would imply a positive change to better serve an original mission (i.e. living and reproduction), whereas a corruption would be any change that takes away from that goal.

You posit that ArbCom would be subservient to a majority of voters, which is not consensus (by definition), not a reflection of the whole body (not community), and many voters have either disagreed with a person they elected immediately after because of fraud or those appointed didn't meet a threshold and were wiggled in by various explanation (such as when they began to dramatically increase the ArbCom member count).

And Jimbo's role is... no one really knows. I don't even think Jimbo knows what his role is. People sometimes listen to him and sometimes do the exact opposite of his recommendations. He has no real power while having a lot of power. Quantum Jimbo, always in flux.

As for your last item - I don't buy the workload nonsense. I've seen Arbs that complained about work load while simultaneously finding time to cause problems. I had no problem writing a lot of pages, and put together the Elegy page in one day. I have a full time job and my academics. Workload is always just an excuse for not doing something that doesn't really take much time to do. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:26, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Fraud, harassment and discrimination are big charges. Of the thousand or so WMF wikis I can only really claim to know one in real detail, and I haven't followed all the relevant cases there. So I've not got a sufficiently complete picture to confirm or rebut your charge. I've known a couple of harassment cases that I thought were mishandled, but consensus may be otherwise.

I share your concern that under this electoral system Arbcom does not have to get consensus support of the community, you could in theory have a third of the voters have opposed every single Arb who was elected, my preference for such a body is the sort of STV PR used in Southern Ireland. I think I proposed that in one of the reviews. Of course the disadvantage of such a system in some people's eyes is that if you are electing half a dozen then a popular maverick can easily be elected as one of the half dozen if more than a seventh of the voters support them. Personally I think that is a great way to avoid groupthink.

Re Jimbo he is a trustee of the WMF and a spokesman for the movement, both give him a lot of power in the movement. I'm not sure how much vestigial power he has outside of that.

As for workload, the Arbs we have are a subset of those who thought they had the time to do the job. My belief is that if we could reduce the workload we would tempt some to stand who would not now consider it. I may of course be wrong, but your concerns about the priorities by which existing arbs spend their time are tangential to that. WereSpielChequers (talk) 18:46, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

You keep mentioning work load. What is the work load? It seems to be just reading, because everyone provides everything else. The reading is easy. The coming up with decisions is quite easy too. I never understood any concerns regarding workload. Ottava Rima (talk) 13:59, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Reading and making decisions is the type of work, but workload is also about the amount of work and the deadlines involved. When I looked at it I concluded that I couldn't then spare the time to be on Arbcom, especially as the Arbs don't control when the scandals break and the work is heaviest (I'm now also barred because I am chapter staff). Of course I don't know if I'd have been elected, but I believe that if I was deterred by the workload others would be as well. Worse the Arbs we get would be people whose Wikipedia time became dominated by their Arbcom activity, and I don't think that is healthy. I worry when we have admins who only do admin stuff, if we could reduce the workload for individual Arbs we should be able to increase the amount of non-arbcom stuff done by sitting Arbs. WereSpielChequers (talk) 13:43, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

I think you can easily do an adequate job - you are able to put together well-thought out arguments about the philosophy of Wiki here in a short time. And banned because you are Chapter staff? Wasn't Coren or someone else holding two positions at one time? Ottava Rima (talk) 00:29, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi Ottava, I'm not sure about Coren, wasn't he in some sort of tech job? There might not be a conflict of interest there, at least not the sort I would experience. ChasemeLadiesImtheCavalry was an Arb and a chapter employee for a while, though he decided to stand down as arb. In my role for the UK chapter I deal with a variety of editors, including some who edit on one project but are blocked on others, if I served on Arbcom I would feel conflicted about dealing with UK based editors who were parties to arbcom cases, and I'm not sure we always know who is or is not in the UK. As a volunteer editor I can of course choose to avoid people who I don't want to work with - when I review at FAC there are two editors whose work I would not comment on. But as chapter staff you cannot pick and choose projects on the basis of whether you like the volunteers. Of course some of this could be resolved by people accepting that we wear different hats on different occasions, and at London meetups I've seen Arbs happily chatting to an arbcom blocked editor. However when I thought through the various scenarios I tried to put myself in the shoes of an editor who wants to get involved in a UK GLAM event, but sees that it is run by WereSpielChequers the Arb who has just topic banned and admonished him. Having thought through that possible scenario I decided not to run for Arbcom. WereSpielChequers (talk) 20:55, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Fixed link

Hi. I fixed a link you added here, but I don't know whether you meant to use w: or wiki:. PiRSquared17 (talk) 18:17, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm happy with your change. WereSpielChequers (talk) 12:06, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Welcome to Wadewitz-Wollstonecraft fun!

Thank you so much for saying you'll come to this event! It's a great boost to my spirits to know that someone who knows the London office will be there. Offering to bring a laptop is very kind. I have recruited a charming and wise elder, with very limited computer skills but a life of knowledge to offer, so that would be most useful. Would you also be in a position to bring swag? I'm thinking particularly of the booklets with Adrianne Wadewitz's face on the front, but also buttons and stickers would no doubt go down a treat. If you're not able to, I'll figure out the official channels to ask through tomorrow. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 18:01, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Consider me the official channels, I work part time for Wikimedia UK. Yes there will be swag, and we can fund sandwiches and biscuits. I think we have about five laptops for these sort of events, so I will aim to bring as many as are booked plus a spare. Do you know what the disabled access issues are re this location? We normally tell people whether access is step free or Wheelchair accessible, and if you can find out if they have a hearing loop we have a mobile one that can be brought. WereSpielChequers (talk) 09:24, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks so much. I have limited access to a computer that lets me consistently edit "behind the scenes" pages.

Swag - thanks. Biscuits and sandwich-equivalents - also. Would you like to buy them in Newington Green? Lots of choice.

Laptops - may I book two, please?

Disabled access - very good point. It's an old quirky building. The Wollstonecraft room is up a flight of stairs, but if someone did come who couldn't manage them, we could set up an extra workspace in the comfortable kitchen, on the ground floor. The only loo is right by the entry door. Hearing loop - I've not seen one in the building.

I will try to log in again tomorrow. Otherwise, see you at 10am on Saturday. (I'll be there from 9:30 to set up.) Thanks so much! Carbon Caryatid (talk) 21:50, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Letter petitioning WMF to reverse recent decitions

The Wikimedia Foundation recently created a new feature, "superprotect" status. The purpose is to prevent pages from being edited by elected administrators -- but permitting WMF staff to edit them. It has been put to use in only one case: to protect the deployment of the Media Viewer software on German Wikipedia, in defiance of a clear decision of that community to disable the feature by default, unless users decide to enable it.

If you oppose these actions, please add your name to this letter. If you know non-Wikimedians who support our vision for the free sharing of knowledge, and would like to add their names to the list, please ask them to sign an identical version of the letter on change.org.

• Letter to Wikimedia Foundation: Superprotect and Media Viewer
• Letter on change.org

I'm notifying you because you participated in one of several relevant discussions. -Pete F (talk) 22:24, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. As a chapter employee it probably makes sense for me to stay out of that one and leave it for volunteers. If those pages are so important then I would be happy for them to be restricted so they can only be edited by people who at least claim the coding skill required. So no problem having js pages coder right that included some but not all staff accounts and some but not my volunteer account. However I'm not seeing room for such a compromise proposal at present, possibly because what is not really at issue is preventing unskilled edits, the issue is whether these pages are under volunteer or WMF staff control. WereSpielChequers (talk) 15:43, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Re: The Valuation of Unprotected Works: A Case Study of Public Domain Photographs on Wikipedia

As you are mentioned in the paper, you may want to check w:en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-04-29/Recent research. --Nemo 14:00, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

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Seeking support/mentoring - More Female Architects on Wikipedia

Hello! My name is Eleanor Chapman and I am contributing to the current IEG proposal https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/More_Female_Architects_on_Wikipedia Thank you for offering your support for our grant proposal!

We have been contacted by the Wikimedia funding team with some further questions, including how we intend to engage with existing Wikipedians. We are all quite new to Wikipedia, and inexperienced with connecting with the existing community - though very keen to do so! I am currently based in Berlin, and representing the German network along with Anna Schmalen, although I am originally from Australia. Given your relative geographic proximity to Germany, the possibility of providing remote support to one or more events in Berlin is something we would be keen to talk further to you about. Please feel free to contact me at my talk page. Thanks!

Cheers Eljoch (talk) 14:35, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

How can we improve Wikimedia grants to support you better?

Hi! The Wikimedia Foundation would like your input on how we can reimagine Wikimedia Foundation grants to better support people and ideas in your Wikimedia project.

After reading the Reimagining WMF grants idea, we ask you to complete this survey to help us improve the idea and learn more about your experience. When you complete the survey, you can enter to win one of five Wikimedia globe sweatshirts!

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Last call for WMF grants feedback!

Hi, this is a reminder that the consultation about Reimagining WMF grants is closing on 8 September (0:00 UTC). We encourage you to complete the survey now, if you haven't yet done so, so that we can include your ideas.

With thanks,

I JethroBT (WMF), Community Resources, Wikimedia Foundation.

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What future IdeaLab campaigns would you like to see?

Hi there,

I’m Jethro, and I’m seeking your help in deciding topics for new IdeaLab campaigns that could be run starting next year. These campaigns aim to bring in proposals and solutions from communities that address a need or problem in Wikimedia projects. I'm interested in hearing your preferences and ideas for campaign topics!

Here’s how to participate:

• Learn more about this consultation
• Vote on and submit new campaign topics in the AllOurIdeas Survey
• Discuss campaign topics and ask questions on the IdeaLab talk page

Take care,

I JethroBT (WMF), Community Resources, Wikimedia Foundation. 03:34, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Transparency gap

I believe established practice at that page is to make suggestions on the talk page. It would probably be best to move the new threads accordingly. Best, Andreas JN466 13:40, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Ah so I have been either overly bold in making proposals without discussion or overly meek in making a proposal whilst being clear that initially it was just my concern. I don't particularly like the current format, but if no one blows the ideas away in the next few hours I will go down that route. A signed suggestion is one person's thought, once you move the discussion to the talkpage the proposal starts to seem a collective one, so ideally I would like more people to input first. Thus far the nearest to a criticism I've seen is on the mailing list where two people have said this isn't the main COI risk. Since I'm suggesting adding these to an existing policy rather than replacing that policy with just these things I'm not sure I need to change the proposal to meet that criticism. WereSpielChequers (talk) 11:15, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Strategy consultation

Hello, WereSpielChequers. :) Fortunately, I have last year's strategy consultation bookmarked, as it showed me that you had added some suggestions. I'm afraid they're likely to be overlooked there! This year's consultation begins at 2016 Strategy/Community consultation. I just wanted to let you know so you could choose the best areas to share your thoughts- this year we have three streams: reach, communities and knowledge. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:55, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Maggie, not sure how I wound up there, possibly it was just me searching and despite two sets of New Year's Eves forgetting we were now 2016. WereSpielChequers (talk) 14:03, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Future IdeaLab Campaigns results

Last December, I invited you to help determine future ideaLab campaigns by submitting and voting on different possible topics. I'm happy to announce the results of your participation, and encourage you to review them and our next steps for implementing those campaigns this year. Thank you to everyone who volunteered time to participate and submit ideas.

With great thanks,

I JethroBT (WMF), Community Resources, Wikimedia Foundation. 23:56, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Harassment workshop

Greetings! You are receiving this message because, at some point in the past, you have participated in a discussion around the topic of harassment. The Support and Safety team is holding a series of consultations gathering feedback on the best potential solutions to the problem. The next stage is a workshop where we hope to narrow the focus to individual actionable ideas and explore how to bring some of these ideas to life.

• Please join us at the Harassment workshop!

Best regards, the Support and Safety team via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:35, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Inspire Campaign on content curation & review

I've recently launched an Inspire Campaign to encourage new ideas focusing on content review and curation in Wikimedia projects. Wikimedia volunteers collaboratively manage vast repositories of knowledge, and we’re looking for your ideas about how to manage that knowledge to make it more meaningful and accessible. We invite you to participate and submit ideas, so please get involved today! The campaign runs until March 28th.

All proposals are welcome - research projects, technical solutions, community organizing and outreach initiatives, or something completely new! Funding is available from the Wikimedia Foundation for projects that need financial support. Constructive feedback on ideas is welcome - your skills and experience can help bring someone else’s project to life. Join us at the Inspire Campaign to improve review and curation tasks so that we can make our content more meaningful and accessible! I JethroBT (WMF) 05:38, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

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Open Call for Individual Engagement Grants

Greetings! The Individual Engagement Grants (IEG) program is accepting proposals until April 12th to fund new tools, research, outreach efforts, and other experiments that enhance the work of Wikimedia volunteers. Whether you need a small or large amount of funds (up to $30,000 USD), IEGs can support you and your team’s project development time in addition to project expenses such as materials, travel, and rental space.

• Submit a grant request or draft your proposal in IdeaLab
• Get help with your proposal in an upcoming Hangout session
• Learn from examples of completed Individual Engagement Grants

With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF), Community Resources 15:57, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Survey on content curation & review Inspire Campaign

Thanks for your participation in IdeaLab during the Inspire Campaign focused on improving content curation & review processes from February to March 2016. I'm interested in hearing your feedback about your participation during campaign, so if you're able, I invite you to complete this brief survey to describe how you contributed to the campaign and how you felt about participating.

Immediate results of the campaign can be found here. Please feel free to review them and let me know if you have any questions about the campaign or the survey. Thanks! I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 02:31, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

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Participate in the Inspire Campaign and help address harassment!

Through June, we’re organizing an Inspire Campaign to encourage and support new ideas focusing on addressing harassment toward Wikimedia contributors. The 2015 Harassment Survey has shown evidence that harassment in various forms - name calling, threats, discrimination, stalking, and impersonation, among others - is pervasive. Available methods and systems to deal with harassment are also considered to be ineffective. These behaviors are clearly harmful, and in addition, many individuals who experience or witness harassment participate less in Wikimedia projects or stop contributing entirely.

Proposals in any language are welcome during the campaign - research projects, technical solutions, community organizing and outreach initiatives, or something completely new! Funding is available from the Wikimedia Foundation for projects that need financial support. Constructive feedback on ideas is appreciated, and collaboration is encouraged - your skills and experience may help bring someone else’s project to life. Join us at the Inspire Campaign so that we can work together to develop ideas around this important and difficult issue. With thanks,

I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 17:46, 31 May 2016 (UTC) (Opt-out instructions)

Survey on Inspire Campaign for addressing harassment

Thanks for your participation during the Inspire Campaign focused on addressing harassment from June 2016. I'm interested in hearing your experience during the campaign, so if you're able, I invite you to complete this brief survey to describe how you contributed to the campaign and how you felt about participating.

Please feel free to let me know on my talk page if you have any questions about the campaign or the survey. Thanks! I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 03:24, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

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Inspire Campaign survey on outreach to outside knowledge networks

Thanks for your participation during the Inspire Campaign focused on outreach to outside knowledge networks from February 2017. I'm interested in hearing your experience during the campaign, so if you're able, I invite you to complete this brief survey to describe how you contributed to the campaign and how you felt about participating. I want to improve how campaigns are run, so let me know if there's something that could be done better for next time.

Please feel free to let me know on my talk page if you have any questions about the campaign or the survey. Thanks! I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 18:34, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

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Survey link error fixed

Hi there, there was a error with the Inspire survey link that caused the survey to be shown as expired, but has now been fixed. The link in the above message should now bring you to the survey. Apologies, I JethroBT (WMF) 19:20, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Adjusted text

There has been a request to inform all who voted in the RfC about interlinking accounts involved with paid editing about the following adjustment in the "statement of issue" on Sept 18th, 2017.

It was clarified that this effort will help deal not only with impersonation of specific Wikipedians but also claims of being in good standing made by those who are not.[3] Thanks. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:59, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Translation confidence scores

If Josh isn't the right person to talk to anymore, I hope he knows who is. Here is the Translate confidence score API. Happy to help! I had so much fun. James Salsman (talk) 14:34, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Time between edits

Hi James, en:Wikipedia:Time_Between_Edits is the data I mentioned, if you fancy it a graphic would be much appreciated. WereSpielChequers (talk) 22:28, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

The only tool I know of which correctly extrapolates transitional growth like Gompertz and the logistic sigmoid is en:TableCurve 2D with prediction confidence intervals, because it has goodness of fit statistics which were tuned to match model degrees of freedom. Do you know any free software which can do that? I hate having to install XP just to use software I need. Here is how to use R for simple exponentials which wind power can't be, but it's a useful starting point for what the transition will look like from File:Energy-trends.png. James Salsman (talk) 08:27, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Sorry James you lost me on that one (agree about not wanting to use XP though). Is the reason why this is complicated that you suggest extrapolating the line? If so I'm happy to go without extrapolating the future - it seems to be plateauing anyway. I'd heard that Wikidata has some graphing capability, for example. WereSpielChequers (talk) 10:00, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Extrapolation is complicated, especially when the underlying model is unclear. The only reason I recommend TableCurve 2D over R in this case is because its goodness-of-fit statistics are tuned by experimental observation to make sure they correctly match the models' degrees of freedom. James Salsman (talk) 14:05, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for maintaining this illuminating table, @WereSpielChequers. Just thought I will let you know that it seems (see note 3) actually refers to Notes: 2. if this makes sense to you? Ottawahitech (talk) 12:54, 24 November 2017 (UTC) Please ping me

The Community Wishlist Survey

Hi,

You get this message because you’ve previously participated in the Community Wishlist Survey. I just wanted to let you know that this year’s survey is now open for proposals. You can suggest technical changes until 11 November: Community Wishlist Survey 2019.

You can vote from November 16 to November 30. To keep the number of messages at a reasonable level, I won’t send out a separate reminder to you about that. /Johan (WMF) 11:24, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Coronavirus

Add your opinion here please. Philafrenzy (talk) 06:24, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

How to become an administrator on the English Wikipedia

Hello @WereSpielChequers I can be a moderator for this session. Once this sessions is been accepted and I am able to make it for wikindaba this year. If not then, then the programming committee will have to find someone to do the moderation. Contact you becauase i signed up on the volunteer page of Wikindaba 2023 to manage activities like these. If you are comfortable with this. Please let me know. Joris Darlington Quarshie (talk) 23:28, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, once you have confirmed that you will be attending just add yourself to the page. As we get closer to the event I'd like to have a google chat so we can run through how it would work, and I'll give you a couple of questions to ask if we don't get enough from the audience. WereSpielChequers (talk) 08:51, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

London book event for "The Editors"

Hello - Reaching out because I saw that you previously expressed an interest in a London Wikipedia meetup.

I am a writer who has covered Wikipedia for Slate, The Washington Post, and other publications.

My novel The Editors is inspired by Wikipedia and was published earlier this month. As part of the book tour, I will be in London on Thursday 29 of August at 6:30 PM at Newspeak House.

Details about the event here: https://lu.ma/ubri3176

Sorry for the short notice, but if you are able to attend the event, it would be great to see you there! No RSVP required; just show up at Newspeak house on Thursday evening. Stephenbharrison (talk) 22:25, 27 August 2024 (UTC)