User talk:Mdennis (WMF)/Archive 1

Recent board resolutions and Commons

Hi, MRG. There's some discussion over at the Commons Village Pump on recent resolutions from the WMF Board on "controversial content" and "images of identifiable people". Mostly, it's confusion over what exactly the resolutions mean, and how they affect Commons operations and remit. Is this something on which the Commons community could ask for clarification? LtPowers 12:36, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Certainly it is. :) I think that the question is already being discussed, but I will look into it and let you know. --Mdennis (WMF) 15:08, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Just to let you know, I advised the Board of the discussion and the confusion over the matter. I see that Phoebe has weighed in. Could you let me know if you see any conversations emerging elsewhere about it? They are particularly interested in questions that repeat, since that suggests more than just individual confusion (the latter can be addressed by other members of the community). --Mdennis (WMF) 14:09, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

POV locked into Gregorian calendar, Julian calendar, Leap year, Mercedonius and Roman calendar

Margaret, my recent post to your WP talk page asked if you discussed this issue at your meeting with office staff in San Francisco last month. Please advise. 217.169.37.146 13:23, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

No. Such matters are outside of the normal scope of business of the WMF. But you have the address to contact the Wikimedia Foundation if you wish to discuss the matter with them. I am advised, however, that if you do not include an e-mail address in your letter you may not receive a reply. --Mdennis (WMF) 13:26, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm after an official reply signed by an official of WMF so that I know who I am dealing with. I note from your above post that you have appraised WMF of the situation - please let me know how deep the discussions have gone so that I can tailor my letter accordingly. 217.169.37.146 13:33, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

No, I haven't, actually. I simply asked them about mail contact procedures. I have not otherwise discussed your situation with the Wikimedia Foundation, as there is really no staff member whose job it is to do so. I think quite likely you will be referred to the Arbitration Committee, as I recommended to you earlier, since this is almost certainly to be perceived as a Wikipedia issue, not a Foundation issue. --Mdennis (WMF) 13:40, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Can you pass my above comment to them and let me know their response? 217.169.37.146 13:42, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

No, I'm sorry. I am not able to act as a go-between for you with the Arbitration Committee either in my capacity as a contractor or as a volunteer. You need to speak to them yourself. You indicated a lack of e-mail address as a reason you cannot follow the process yourself. Perhaps one of these will help? --Mdennis (WMF) 13:47, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the link, but none of these outfits offers a free computer :) Personally, I think going to Arbcom is taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut. WP rules require editors to be informed of AN discussions, and if an interested party removes the resulting statement to influence the vote that would seem to me to be abuse of process. What do you think? (Newyorkbrad will be happy to help out if you're not sure). 217.169.37.146 14:04, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I think this is out of scope for my employment, so I'm afraid I can't help.

If you are able to access the web to post here, I don't understand why you are unable to access a web-based free e-mail host, but then, I'm not the most technologically up-to-date, so I'm sure there are issues that I'm unaware of. I'm sorry to say that, if that's the case, there's nothing I can do about that either. You can call the Wikimedia Foundation (the number is at the contact page I've already given you), but you will very likely wind up in voice mail, and when they call you back they are almost certainly going to tell you to work with the community. I note that all of the members of ArbCom have user talk pages, so you may wish to contact to one of them for an alternative means of addressing them, if e-mail will not work for you. Though you are not permitted to edit Wikipedia, I presume you are not blocked elsewhere, and many of them may have accounts on meta wiki as well. New York Brad does. --Mdennis (WMF) 14:13, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

But what is the point of all this? During a vote one candidate can't just hide the statements of the others, period. It's not an arbitration issue, it's a disciplinary issue. Admins have been desysopped for less. 217.169.37.146 14:24, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I believe that the point of all of this is that you want assistance with a problem, and you need to find the right people to give it to you. The Wikimedia Foundation does not discipline community members. The community polices itself. If you think you have a disciplinary issue, you need to contact the people in position to evaluate that...as you are banned on English Wikipedia, that would be ArbCom. --Mdennis (WMF) 14:31, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that I was the one with the problem - it wasn't me that rigged the ballot. "He who seeks equity must come with clean hands" - my hands are clean, those of the thug administrators are dirty. Anyone can start an RfC/U, or whatever the process is.

See, for example, Re Arbitration between L M Fischel & Co. and Mann and Cook, [1918-19] All E.R. Rep. 584.

But this is getting off topic. The Arbitration Committee was not involved in putting up the offensive content and it can be taken down without reference to them. 217.169.37.146 10:59, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

You are the one with a problem in that you see an issue that you would like fixed. I am happy to point out the people who may be able to work with you within process, but I cannot work with you outside of that, either as a volunteer or in my professional capacity. On the English Wikipedia, you are banned. Under policy, you are not permitted to participate in Wikipedia in any way unless you negotiate change in that status, and the Arbitration Committee is the path to negotiating that change. They may also decide to pursue any disciplinary issues you may have if they view them as legitimate.

Speaking from my experiences as a volunteer here, if they do not, there is no higher court of authority on Wikipedia to whom you may appeal, and your best bet would probably be to consider en:Wikipedia:Standard offer. So far as I know, you are not banned or blocked on other projects, and if this is so you have an opportunity to demonstrate that you can work productively in another Wikipedia environment. Others have negotiated return through that process.

I need to be sure that I am clear, though, that I can only advise you who to contact. I will not hear or debate the particulars of your situation, as this would be inappropriate in either of my roles. --Mdennis (WMF) 12:46, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I think you are reading things into a situation which are not there when you say "you are the one with a problem in that you see an issue that you would like fixed." I see a problem - gangs looting shops and the police seemingly powerless to stop them. But that's not my problem - it's the problem of the thugs who are going to be locked up for the crimes committed. I've read the Standard Offer - to avoid giving a Get out of jail free card to the vote - riggers I make no admission in relation to that. In relation to point 2 - would you say that this [1] is sufficient? In relation to editing elsewhere, I would not have thought that necessary as only one editor has complained about my editing and in every case he was quite happy with the edit until he found out that it was made by myself. What is your view on that? 217.169.37.146 14:03, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't have one. My only involvement here is in advising you who to contact, and I haven't followed the link as I mentioned that I feel it is inappropriate for me to hear or debate the particulars of your situation. You need to work within community processes if you wish to advocate for change. At this point, as a banned user, you need to appeal to ArbCom if you wish to be able to do so. They are the only avenue open to you within the community. --Mdennis (WMF) 16:22, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

The point I am trying to make is that as a very small cog in a very large machine I don't feel it's my place to advocate for change. (The username I selected has nothing to do with reforming Wikipedia).

People who want change are presumably well - served by fora such as Village Pump. Or they could run for the Board. Banned or not, I don't see that ArbCom is the avenue for people who want change. As I understand it, their remit is to investigate disputes between editors, to make and/or consider improvements in the mechanism for doing this, and to impose and regulate sanctions on those who are alleged to have transgressed the rules.

But we are wandering further and further off - topic. The link I gave you to the offensive material is still there and it needs to be taken down as a matter of urgency. 217.169.37.146 10:19, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure what link you mean, but I'm afraid that I can't help you with that. The Wikimedia Foundation does not control content on its projects, and it is not within the scope of my contract to intervene in cases such as yours.

ArbCom is the avenue for people who want to be unbanned; successful appeal to them permits people who are banned access to other community fora. It may be that they will also consider taking action on the link that you feel requires urgent removal, although I don't know. --Mdennis (WMF) 11:42, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

The link to which I refer is no. 14 on [2]. I've noticed an error on this page: above "Please examine the evidence" insert

Wikipedia:Requests for bureaucratship/Hersfold

15:55, 19 July 2011 (Agathoclea)

17:31, 19 July 2011 (Zscout370).

This material is not allowed: see en:Wikipedia:NPA:

"...some types of comment are never acceptable...Accusations about personal behavior that lack evidence. Serious accusations require serious evidence."

See also Roger Davies' email to Lise Broer, 04:43, 27 Jan 2010:

"As you may know, there is a longstanding principle that the more serious the allegation the higher the burden of proof that must be provided to support it."

WMF is most certainly responsible for the public content on all its projects. 217.169.37.146 13:25, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't seem to have made myself clear here. I will not address the particulars of your situation, as I feel this is inappropriate for me in my roles as either volunteer or contractor. I am happy to talk to you about whom you need to contact for assistance, but I will not otherwise evaluate or engage this material. --Moonriddengirl 13:33, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

As previously stated, all I am asking you to do is pass my request for the removal of the material to the appropriate person. 217.169.37.146 13:36, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

If you do not wish to follow through with the contact information I've already given you, you have two options: the Arbitration Committee or infowikimedia.org. If you do not have access to free, web-based e-mail to which they may reply, you are welcome to craft a letter to the volunteer response team, and I will forward it on your behalf, but if they cannot contact you back you will not know what they decide to do. --Moonriddengirl 13:46, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

11th August, 2011

Open Ticket Response Service, Wikimedia Foundation.

Gentlemen:

[3] the claims are unsourced and untrue. Please remove them immediately. There is also a link to a noticeboard discussion which has been edited to portray me in the most unfavourable light possible. Please remove it also. Please respond to en:User talk:Vote (X) for Change using a WP userid.

Yours, etc.

Great service!

I cannot guarantee that you will receive a response on your user talk page. It'll depend on the person who handles the ticket. But I'll forward it to the volunteer response team. --Moonriddengirl 14:39, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

It has been forwarded. Within a couple of days, somebody should look at it and proceed with it one way or another. --Moonriddengirl 14:51, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Former commitment with Wikipedia

Would you mind to explain your former engagement with wikipedia on you userpage. I find it very strange, that somebody hired 3 months ago is responsible for user communication. I would expect that only longtime users should get this role, so please add your former wikipedia involment to your user page, as we want to know. --Eingangskontrolle 07:52, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi. First, my former engagement with Wikipedia is on my userpage. :) I am User:Moonriddengirl, primarily active on the English language Wikipedia and OTRS. In that capacity, I've been an active volunteer on Wikipedia for nearly four and a half years and an administrator for almost four. On that project alone, I have 106,972 edits.

But I need to clarify that I am not "responsible for user communication"; I am here to facilitate communication between users of the various Wikimedia communities and staff. Both as a volunteer and a contractor for the Wikimedia Foundation, I have found communities very capable for the most part of speaking for themselves. :) My goal is to provide clear paths for them to do so, and I have several projects under development to that end. --Mdennis (WMF) 11:40, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Banned editors

Margaret, following on from discussion above the administrators appear to be becoming incoherent (see NelsonSudan's latest comment at en:WP:AN). I've drafted some changes to en:WP:EW. Please have a look at them and let me know what you think. Best wishes.

There shall be created and maintained an unprotected page entitled "Wikipedia:User-specified list of IPs of banned users".

An editor who is

(a) indefinitely banned by the Community (but not the Arbitration Committee) or

(b) indefinitely blocked without talk page access

may edit as an IP provided that the IP number shall previously have been entered on the said list together with the name under which the editor is banned or blocked. Such edits shall be subject to normal editing rules.

Listed IPs may be blocked under normal blocking rules (but not merely because they are used by an editor specified under (a) or (b) above).

The specified page may only be protected for short periods (if necessary) as a response to repeated vandalism.

Editors who claim that they may have been categorised under (a) or (b) above as a result of administrator misconduct shall be treated as editors in good standing until their claims shall have been debated by the community and decided by consensus to be unfounded.

Administrators who protect pages merely because they are, or may be, edited by editors specified under (a) and (b) above shall be liable to desysopping. 217.169.37.146 12:18, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but this is a bit of a problem area. I can't get involved with this question as a contractor for the WMF, because it is outside of our scope. And I can't get involved as a volunteer, because you are banned.:/ Have you contacted ArbCom about that yet? --Moonriddengirl 15:19, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

I've made some observations on their talk page. They haven't come back - in fact, the clerk wiped them off, which doesn't sound promising.

I'm mystified as to why so much energy is being expended on a very simple case which it wouldn't take a judge more than five minutes to dispose of.

Motions to AN must be made on notice. If they're not they have no standing. This is a principle which lawyers and judges follow meticulously. For example, if you win £20,000,000 on the lottery you have 180 days to claim. If you claim at 12:01 a.m. on day 181 you get nothing (that happened to one very unlucky winner). The TV recently reported the case of a woman who made a home - made will, leaving everything to her husband's family. Only one witness signed it. The law says you need two witnesses. Result - when the beneficiaries went for probate the solicitor told them - "Hold on - this will isn't valid. And you're not blood relatives of the deceased so this is nothing to do with you." I hope you agree my analysis. If you're unsure, why not run it past WMF's General Counsel for an opinion and let me know what he says?

As a matter of interest, when your contract ends next month, will you be continuing your association with WMF or moving to pastures new? Regards. 86.163.206.242 12:44, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

I see that your attempt to address Jimmy Wales came to nothing as well, due to the fact that you continued editing other pages while talking to him. Given that he had voiced his support of a block of you if you continued editing other pages, I'm rather surprised you continued. I suspect you will never receive the hearing you desire until you approach it within the system.

As to my contract, all that is yet to be determined. --Mdennis (WMF) 11:03, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

When a case comes to Court the procedure is (1)The judge explains how the proceedings will be conducted (2)The plaintiff makes his opening statement (3)The defendant makes his opening statement (4)The plaintiff gives evidence (5)The defendant gives evidence (6)The plaintiff makes his closing statement (7)The judge sums up (8)The judge gives judgement.

This case got as far as the beginning of stage (5), at which point it was adjourned overnight. Before the resumption the judge decided he had heard enough and entered judgement for the defendant. A judge will never give judgement for the plaintiff before the conclusion of stage (5).

The case is over. Forget it and move on. If you're not clear on any point of procedure you may like to contact Newyorkbrad. 62.140.210.158 11:56, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps part of the problem here is some confusion. This isn't a court, and this isn't a case. This is a website with its own rules and procedures, which may not necessarily coincide with the court systems of whichever jurisdiction you're used to. --Mdennis (WMF) 12:08, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

IRC

Your user page says that you use IRC, but I never see you around. If you ever sign on, please drop me a line to talk about a few things (mostly dealing with your official position). Ottava Rima (talk) 21:04, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi. I do IRC, but not very often. I'm on for office hours and then at odd times usually when I sign on looking for somebody or when I have a scheduled meeting with somebody. I'm afraid I'm not very familiar with the IRC environment, but I'll try to drop you a line if I can figure out how next time I go on. Alternatively, we can try to schedule a time. Mondays and Fridays are generally busy days for me, but I am more flexible other days of the week. I work from the East Coast and am generally available between 7:30 and 3:30, although that, too, is somewhat subject to change. :) --Mdennis (WMF) 10:57, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I'll look for you during office hours. I tend to be on idling in #wikipedia-en around the same time I ever post anything on a WMF wiki. Ottava Rima (talk) 15:17, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Image filter referendum/en archiving

Hello, I don't understand how and why you're archiving this talk page. The page was split precisely to avoid archiving, because discussions are usually not archived when they're so recent and if you archive everything immediately people will just keep repeating the same things. Besides, if you're just considering age of threads, please avoid doing it manually and use MiszaBot. Thank you, Nemo 08:47, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi. :) How? I'm archiving to the best of my ability in accordance with instructions at Standard archival system, which doesn't mention MiszaBot but does say, "To add entries, simply cut and paste them from the main page to the archive." This is what I'm doing. If other procedures are available and preferred, it might be good to update that process page so that those of us who don't do that much here will know about them.

As to why, the page on the scale it was was unusable. Dividing the page helped, but did not change the fact that people are already repeating the same things; I'm afraid that the division actually caused some questions to get lost as latecomers placed them into the mountain of text unnoticed. The purpose is to facilitate discussion, by highlighting those discussions which are ongoing so that both those who are actively engaging in them and those who are new to the page can more easily find them. It's a good idea to have discussion subheaders, since it is focusing conversation into specific areas and I think is probably cutting down on new fracturing.

Attention to the discussion is becoming more focused into specific threads. I would not choose to set up an archive bot because the need to archive is already diminishing as the conversations are becoming more focused (it will eventually reach a point where archival is unnecessary at all). Too, manual scanning gives me a last opportunity to see if people have reached out for help and did not receive it; yesterday, I followed up personally with several people who had left requests and received no answer. Had I not been scanning for end dates, I might not have noticed them myself. Clearly, the participants at the talk page did not. :/ --Mdennis (WMF) 10:07, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Question from eswiki

Hello Maggie. While chatting in the #wikipedia-es IRC channel I got questions from some community members regarding Wikipedia and social networks. Some community members are concerned that the accounts wikipedia_es@twitter, wikipediaES@twitter and wikipedia.espanol@facebook may be false or impersonator accounts, since they're not marked as official neither on Twitter nor on Facebook.

Those editors have asked me if I knew if those accounts were indeed Foundation-approved accounts or not. I couldn't answer and I though that asking you as community liason would be the best thing to do (sorry if I'm wrong!)

Those editors suggested me, in sake of safety that if those accounts are indeed official Twitter and Facebook should be formally asked by the Foundation to mark them as official and, if they're not, that the Foundation requests its inmediate takedown as they can be used for good, but a bad-intentionated person could use them for bad purposes and damage the image of Wikipedia, the Foundation and its users.

Looking forward your answer, receive my best regards,

-- Dferg 15:31, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Hmm. I don't know, but I'll find out! I'll update you as soon as I have an answer. :) --Mdennis (WMF) 15:42, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

They are evidently not related to the Wikimedia Foundation or the Chapter. They seem to be unofficial. The legal department is aware of the matter now, though, and may determine if any action is necessary. --Mdennis (WMF) 13:44, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

On behalf of those editors that asked me the question let me thank you. I'll pass them the info. Best regards, -- Dferg 13:59, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Exemption doctrine policy and exemptions.

Hi Maggie. I'm Simone Larctia, and I'm a sysop at en.Wikiversity. Recently, we've had an image clean-up drive. Some (inactive) users on en.Wikiversity have photographs of themselves on their userpages, which they have not released with a free license, but instead state that they are copyrighted and can only be used non-freely on their userpages. This violates Wikiversity's current exemption doctrine policy, because the files are replaceable (as they are of living people), of no educational value, and being used in userspace.

Another sysop, Abd, has suggested that we amend our local exemption doctrine policy thus (see [4]): "A user may upload personal photos for use on their user page, asserting ownership of the copyright (or permission of the copyright holder, who should be specified if not the user). They may reserve rights as to further publication of these photos."

Would our exemption doctrine policy be in compliance with the licensing policy at [5] if it included this exception ? Thanks. --Simone 19:54, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Simone. :) I will ask the legal department if this is an exemption that would be permitted and get back with you. It may be a few days. --Maggie Dennis 20:28, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Simone. The legal team does not believe that an exception of this sort would be in line with the original purpose of the Exemption Doctrine Policy. They suggest that if contributors are uncomfortable releasing their own images, they may wish to use alternate images that are free. --Mdennis (WMF) 17:59, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much. --Simone 20:14, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

No problem; happy to help. :) As Abd had emailed me about the same issue, I conveyed the same information to him shortly after leaving this message for you. --Mdennis (WMF) 20:15, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Bot irony

I found it humorous that the following opened your message on the English Wikisource:

I apologize that you are receiving this message in English.

WMF is forcing linguistic imperialism on even the English language projects! How dare you?! ;-)

--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 13:25, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

LOL! At least we both got a laugh out of it. :D --Mdennis (WMF) 13:00, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

from sowiki

what do you want me to translate?? Terms of Use update? Maax 13:29, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi. :) Thanks for your interest in helping out. The translation request was hosted at Translation requests/WMF/Terms of Use 2, but I see that a bot has been brought to bear on it and it has become much more complicated now. To access the translations now, it seems, we need to go here. I've never seen this interface, but it looks like you would click on the blue links on that page and add your translation into the edit box it opens. After translation, you seem to have the option to "save". I'm going to have to check with somebody familiar with this process to make sure that I am following it correctly, and then perhaps I can put better instructions at Translation requests/WMF/Terms of Use 2! --Mdennis (WMF) 15:32, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Okay, User:Philippe (WMF) has placed some instructions at Translation/Introduction. The link for translation is located at the very top of Terms of use. I'll make sure that anyone else who follows our link to Translation requests/WMF/Terms of Use 2 knows where to go to help out. Thanks for bringing this to my attention! It's much better for us to clear this up than to have willing translators come by and depart, uncertain of the new processes. --Mdennis (WMF) 16:36, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Terms of Use discussion

Hi Mdennis, you recently closed as "resolved" a section that I started on the Terms of Use discussion: http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Terms_of_use&diff=3053810&oldid=3053805

It contained an element that is not yet resolved though, about copyright and DMCA compliance. I believe Geoff and I were pretty much in agreement on the appropriate changes in that section; he had asked me to propose some new text, which I did. But he has not yet responded to that proposed new text. Could you review that?

By the way, this concern aside, I think you're doing a bang-up job of keeping that complex discussion orderly and navigable. Great work! -Pete F 16:46, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Pete. Thanks for pointing that out! Geoff actually deserves credit for the order there. He sends me a list of sections that he has reviewed and believes dealt with, and I close sections based on that list. Since conversations have been sprawling, this helps keep Geoff from losing track of individual points within threads. That may have happened here, if you were waiting for response and didn't get it.

I've pulled the proposed text out and put it below the collapse box to help separate it out for Geoff and will email him to let him know that there is still material waiting response there. If we close down a section with outstanding issues, you might want to follow suit - I think this is probably a good way to get the material that still needs review front and center. :) --Mdennis (WMF) 16:52, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

P.S. Please let me know if this approach doesn't work for you! I'm assuming that you'll be okay with it, but there may be problems to it that I'm not considering. :D --Mdennis (WMF) 16:54, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

No, that works great! I figured it was something like that. Just wanted to check with you before pulling it out. -Pete F 16:56, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Translation requests/WMF/Answers

See, please. Cheers, Nemo 10:59, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

December 31

At what time will the official commenting end? What is meant by "on December 31st"? Do you meant by the end of December 31st? --Michaeldsuarez 18:00, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Good question, Michael! I've clarified after asking Geoff what he has in mind. --Mdennis (WMF) 18:27, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, but I have another question. Would the last minute of December 31st be considered 23:59 UTC-12, 23:59 UTC, or something else? --Michaeldsuarez 20:00, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

WMF works on UTC time, so the time-stamp would generally be the deciding factor. However, I doubt very much that Geoff would ignore something that came in after the deadline, unless he happens to be writing to the Board at the exact stroke of UTC midnight on New Years' Eve. (With Geoff, that is a possibility; I've seen him working at the craziest times. :D) I've been impressed with how reasonable Geoff is, and I'm sure if somebody raised a valid point, he'd take it into account whenever it arrived. But he wants to make sure that people realize that the time is approaching when he will be packaging this all off to the Board of Trustees for their adoption review, after which I think changes will not be made unless the Board themselves call for change. --Mdennis (WMF) 20:09, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Understood. Thanks. --Michaeldsuarez 20:24, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Terms of use-Summary

Hi. Regarding this edit, I'm not sure what you mean by "'Terms of Use' is the title of the document." It's, err, clearly not. The title of the document is "Terms of use". If there are other places where it's incorrectly formatted as "Terms of Use", those places should be adjusted, surely. Can you clarify? --MZMcBride 20:30, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi. :) The title of the document is "Terms of Use" in spite of the placement of the document. If you look at the Terms of Use, it is referred to in the title case throughout the document. Our community habit of eschewing title case notwithstanding, it is standard practice with legal documents, which is what this is. :) We neutralized a lot of the lawyerly application of capital letters when the community requested it, but at least as of our last conversation, Geoff was in favor of retaining "Terms of Use" as well as certain other titles in the document, including section titles and words like "Projects." (By the way, I didn't mention it in the edit summary, but I do appreciate your cleaning up the coding! I'm not so good with that kind of thing. The text was handed to me by the lawyers, and I did my best to format it per their request. :D) --Mdennis (WMF) 20:41, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

General principles

If your attitude toward wiki editing truly is that it should be reserved for experts (lawyers and the like), I'm deeply troubled by you acting as a Community Liaison. I think (I hope) this was simply a miscommunication, but if this is how you truly feel, it may be time for a larger re-evaluation of your role here. --MZMcBride 18:05, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure how you read my comments as meaning that I think only experts should be able to edit, but to clarify, although this is a public Wikimedia project, and anyone can edit, we're talking about a legal document written from the perspective of the Wikimedia Foundation ("we"), not a normal wiki page. As it is going to be presented by the Foundation as its official Terms of Use to the Board, it is singularly important that it remain accurate. The note at the top of the page made clear that input was welcome and where but avoided people getting the wrong impression about the document, if they view a version that has edits to it that are not incorporated by the Foundation. --Mdennis (WMF) 19:08, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Was there some sort of open editing period on the document? I was under the impression that it was going on now, but I may have missed it. Geoff's role is to ensure that the Wikimedia Foundation is legally covered, and he's certainly encouraged to step in as necessary to ensure that. But I don't remember any time, past or present, in which it was decided that the General Counsel owns the terms of use, particularly during a revamp/rewrite. If people are making horrible changes, they can be reverted and discussed and debated. But there absolutely should be open editing to allow for stylistic (and substantive, as the case may need to be) changes. If there are legal requirements that must be followed (using title case instead of sentence case, for example), those should be laid out clearly. Otherwise, this page, like any other page, should follow established wiki standards. (The international format adopted here, on the English Wikipedia, and on wikimediafoundation.org is to use sentence case nearly everywhere, isn't it?)

I think Geoff has been wonderfully engaged and communicative and responsive. That's great. My issue is with you (or anyone else) playing Guardian of the Wiki during an open comment period on a draft document, legal or otherwise. Again, if there are problematic changes legally, Geoff should and must step in. But if there are disagreements about philosophical issues or aesthetic issues or stylistic issues, Geoff, you, and I are all in the same position: boldly edit, revert as necessary, and discuss on the talk page throughout the process. That's the wiki way.

Then, at some future point, this document will be presented to the Board, will be finalized, and will be published on wikimediafoundation.org. It's at that point that the document will have a (deservedly) higher level of protection from changes. --MZMcBride 22:46, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

MZMcBride asked me for a sanity check. I've tested this kind of thing out for policy at wikipedia, but also for $multinational_companies for pay. I'll say that he's sane. If anyone were ever to appraise us, I think our current processes can probably be favorably compared with CMMI level 4-5. MDennis' proposal is essentially the equivalent of going back to square (and CMMI level) 1. --Kim Bruning 23:07, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

My proposal? What is my proposal? (I'm not being disingenuous here; I'm not sure what I'm believed to have proposed. :)) --Mdennis (WMF) 23:12, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, perhaps I'm confused now. Maybe there's a misunderstanding, and you're saying something totally different from what I think you're saying.

Could you maybe put your statement of 19:08 in other words? --Kim Bruning 23:17, 10 December 2011 (UTC) Also:I'm currently on IRC , as is MZMcBride, if you'd like to discuss in real time

Hmm, could you explain this edit to me please? Thank you! --Kim Bruning 23:28, 10 December 2011 (UTC) You have the right to an attorney ;-)

Hi. I don't have time to IRC right now; sorry. I'm on the east coast of the US and heading to a Christmas party very soon. :)

Maybe the point of disconnect (in terms of this being my proposal) is in an impression somehow that the handling of the Terms of Use is up to me. :) I am not actually involved in creating the TOU. It's above my pay grade, as it were. I have been facilitating Geoff, mostly with some formatting and with archiving old conversations. And admiring him for how well he works with the community.

What I've been trying to do is explain to MZMcBride why the notice was placed on the top of the page when it was created (as I understand it) and why I suggested that he talk to Geoff when I put it back. As I understand it, the Terms of Use is not a normal Wiki policy but is a contract between the Wikimedia Foundation and users of the sites. (You'll see that it specifically identifies "we" as "The Wikimedia Foundation" and "you" as "reader, editor, author, or contributor") It has not been presented to the community to write, but rather to offer input. This has been consistent with the way it has been handled from the beginning.

It actually makes sense to me that contributors who see it now need to know that they are viewing the actual document as it will be presented to the Board. If, for example, I disagreed with the harassment provisions and removed it, all the viewers of the document before that change was reverted (as I believe it probably would be based on the 500,000 or so kb of conversation I've witnessed on the talk page) would not have an opportunity to express their opinion about its inclusion or its wording. It would do a disservice to them and to the document by depriving them a chance to provide feedback on what it actually is.

In terms of explaining Geoff's edit, I sent staff a link to my conversation with MZMcBride, as I said I would here, letting them know that he disagreed with the banner. Geoff evidently felt that the banner needed to be returned. He seems to have left a note at the talk page explaining it himself, as I see you've discovered. More specific information should probably be sought from him. --Mdennis (WMF) 23:37, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Right; essentially, you're making up ad-hoc policy. Correct procedure in your hypothetical is to review page history. Anyway, I'll talk with Geoff :-) --Kim Bruning 00:15, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Is that the plural you or the singular? It's so hard to tell. :) I'm curious: can you link to the open editing period for the existing wmf:Terms of use? While I was certainly an active editor in 2009, I didn't pay any attention to how such policies were drafted at the time. I'd be interested in seeing how that differed. --Mdennis (WMF) 04:46, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Fundraising and Funds Dissemination/Recommendations

That's fine, and understood :-). I wasn't aware that that survey had even existed until you pointed it out, and I'd love to take a look at the raw data and run the analysis myself. So if you can find that I'd be really appreciative :-). Definitely understand the rest, without undervaluing your own expertise I understand that it's more a question for Sue or someone at a policy-making level to answer. Craig Franklin 13:08, 5 January 2012 (UTC).

Sorry also for posting on your user page... must remember not to get editing in the middle of the night in future! Craig Franklin 08:22, 6 January 2012 (UTC).

LOL! No problem; it happens. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) 11:07, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi Maggie! I saw that you put the "Wikimedia’s culture of sharing" entry below "Alternative recommendations" just now. Is it possible to leave it as a stand-alone section, as it is really more a vision than a recommendation? I agree with you that a separate discussion link isn't necessary, but I also feel that the previous location in the navigation structure was better suited for this entry. Thank you! --Boris Marinov (WMDE) 21:02, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Boris. :) I've altered the title from "Alternative recommendations" to "Alternative recommendations and philosophies", which I hope will eliminate your concerns. I wouldn't want to mislabel it! I also added in the name of the organization that issued it, since it has a specific author. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) 21:47, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Talk:Fundraising and Funds Dissemination/Recommendations

Hello, I'm not sure I see a pattern here and I don't want to dig too much, so could you please tell me after how much time you consider a section to be "stale" and you archive it? (I understand that you archived also "resolved" sections, I'm asking only about stale ones.) Thanks, Nemo 15:22, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi. :) As per my note at the top of that page, this figure has changed now that the page is not growing so rapidly and accessibility is less a concern. I had been using three days without activity. Since today is a holiday for the WMF and the page is not monstrously long, I hadn't looked to see the current situation, but expect that at this point five or even more days may be sufficient to keep the page accessible. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) 15:27, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Hello. Here on Meta, we don't archive discussions so quickly: 7 days is usually the minimum time for everything, to the point that we have essays (reflecting a community feeling IMHO) that deprecate the snowball clause: see Meta:Snowball. There are many reasons for this, and I can explain them in bigger detail if needed. Also, there's no accessibility reason to forcefully keep a talk at such a tiny size (100 kB??) while for instance this page consider only 400 kB to be a problem (and this talk is text-only, hence very light compared to most webpages nowadays). On the other hand, archiving topics and asking people to dearchive them or continue in a new section with a link to the previous one makes the discussion very hard.

For all those reasons, I ask you to refrain from such hasty archiving, and also to use MiszaBot for greater clarity, recognizability and transparency of the archive of stale topics, as on all high traffic pages such as Wikimedia Forum. I'm going to put it now on that talk.

Finally, and just as personal suggestions if you manage, when you archive a topic/section as resolved, it would be nice to mark it as such with this handy template which I think you know already and allows other people to understand the outcome of the section and save a lot time, while not costing too much to you (compared to reading them!). For maximum clarity, it would be better to leave resolved sections in the main talk for at least a day, unless the page is exploding. Thank you very much, Nemo 01:25, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Practices on all wikis are, of course, adapted to the needs of the situation, but if you're looking at Wikipedia's recommendations, since you link their page here, you'll see that Wikipedia actually recommends 50 kb for talk pages at w:Help:Archiving a talk page, guidance that is linked from Meta's Template:Archive box non-auto: "The talk page guidelines suggest archiving when the talk page exceeds 50 KB or has more than 10 main topics." My intent has not been to keep the page at 100 kb; if you look at the history, you'll see that for many of the days I have archived, it was more than twice that. However, I have been trying to keep the archives compact due to a problem with MediaWiki software that limits searches of archives to the first 100,000 words (bugzilla 32871). Since shorter archives cause no issue but will make sure that nothing is eliminated, I don't see a problem with keeping those brief. (Edited to add: I've done a word count on the archives at 180k, and it seems that they can take substantially more without triggering the bug. I'll monitor with word counts ongoing to make sure we don't risk the loss of search function.)

It is important to balance the needs of those with poor access to speedy internet services to be able to load and contribute to the page against keeping content on the page. I have no objection to MiszaBot, but we may need to adjust the seven days you request if traffic picks up enough to cause accessibility issues. While many of us are blessed with fast browsers, there are certainly many Wikimedians who are not who nevertheless have a legitimate interest in reading and weighing in on this topic.

I have not marked the sections resolved, generally, because I do not regard them as resolved. They are simply stale, which is a different matter. This conversation is not the same as the Terms of Use, wherein Geoff was actually weighing in and following or not following recommendations. In those discussions, matters might be resolved even if the original poster did not agree; that's very much not the case here. I will not mark conversations resolved unless the posters indicate they are. However, the collapse structure discussed at the top of the page may serve some of the same function without risking closing off further comments or offending the contributor by suggesting that his issues are discounted. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) 14:11, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I'm going to be having to manually archive comments that I've nutshelled in such a way as to confuse the bot. My nutshells do not advance conversation; they simply summarize. I've also archived the ones that are over the 7 day threshold you've suggested. The page is still about five times larger than recommended for talk pages, but I'll see if I can get more information on the accessibility issue. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) 14:53, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Ok, if they're not archiving as resolved please don't say so in the archives header, it's confusing.

I know that archiving must be adapted to context, that's why I've set a very fast archiving (7 days) which is way more than usual, but not a faster one because I think it's the best way to use this talk page (as many others on Meta).

I'm sorry that you archived setions manually, I don't think it was needed but in this way we couldn't test it. :-) If the signature confuses the bot, just remove it. Summaries are a neutral point of view, so they can be edited by everyone and there's no need to sign them (for instance, they aren't, by design, on LiquidThreads).

I also fail to understand your usage of collapsing to whole sections: normal headers here are enough to separate different topics and allow people to find them, while collapsing prevents search and discourages reply (in particular, inline reply is made impossible). Nemo 08:57, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm adding summaries and collapsing sections because I was asked to do so by Sue and by some of people on the internal-L mailing list because the page had become difficult to follow. I explained in the section called "Facilitation" on the top of the page why I am signing and timestamping them. Miszabot seems to have done just fine with archiving several sections that I had not nutshelled, so test successful. :) There's certainly no reason that they should not be archived manually as long as they meet the agreed upon parameters, and then the timestamp in my nutshells will not matter. It will have the benefit I described over a week ago without the cost of artificially prolonging conversations.

By describing them as "resolved" in the archive header, do you mean where I write, "These threads have been resolved or gone stale" as I had done here and as it still says here? Since some of them have resolved, I think it's probably more precise to use such language than to imply that all resolved threads have gone stale. Hopefully people will be able to understand that when I say "or" there, I am not meaning to imply that all threads are resolved. I'm not aware of having described any particular threads as resolved that were not; certainly, I've been trying not to. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) 12:16, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
(Just for my own notes, so I can keep this handy and won't have to look for it later: the archive is about halfway to the bug threshold now at 280,537 bytes. ~560,000 bytes seems to be a good split point for archives to avoid impairing search function. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) 12:59, 18 January 2012 (UTC))

But you said that no sections are being archived because they're resolved, so inactivity is always the reason; not mentioning "resolved" doesn't imply that they're not resolved. Not a big deal, though.

I've read the "Facilitation" section, but the signing and timestamping looks like an incidental characteristic which can be changed if it causes problems, I doubt there has been a specific consensus on this very point.

Anyway, the collapsing seems to have broken the automatic archival: it's probably better to remove it now. Moreover, in the current state of the page "removes" some sections without making any other more visible, because the non-collapsed active ones are just below, very accessible (unless one is not able to use the TOC, which would be weird). Nemo 07:12, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm afraid you misunderstood me. I didn't say that no sections were being archived because they're resolved. I said, "I have not marked the sections resolved, generally, because I do not regard them as resolved." As I recall, two sections have been resolved. There may be a few more I'm not thinking of. I don't see why automatic archival is essential when a human being is doing manual archival; there is nothing that I'm aware of that indicates a preference for automated archival on any Wiki. however, I'd be happy to discuss the relative values of automatic archival versus collapsing on the talk page, if you'd like. We can see how others feel. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) 11:03, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks!

Thanks for adding the template and categories to my recommendations! --Tango 00:35, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

My pleasure. :) I appreciate all the time you've been putting into this. Sue wanted to be sure that people didn't overlook your page. That talk page is a bit lengthy, and your page might not have been easy to find. Please let me know if there's anything I can do to facilitate your work there. That's what I'm here for. :)

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: [6]. 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? (One thing I can do is add it to the template! Off to do that now!) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) 12:31, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I only just saw your question. I think the problem with collaborative pages, rather than discussion pages and pages written by single individuals, is that we don't all agree on things. There isn't a "pro-chapter fundraising camp" and an "anti-chapter fundraising camp". The individual pros and cons are, themselves, controversial. I don't think we'll be able to write a single document as a group that is neutral. That's why I decided to create my own page, as an easy way to collect and summarise my thoughts somewhere where it could be absolutely clear that they are my thoughts and aren't intended to represent the views of anyone else (there isn't much on that page which is new, which is probably why there hasn't been any discussion around it, but it wasn't all in one place before). --Tango 17:41, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Non-steward edits from a steward account during a period where the encyclopaedia is unavailable for normal editing

Would you like to explain how this diff from en. represents Steward work while the encyclopaedia is uneditable due to community consensus. It looks like normal content or gnoming work; not stewardship. Fifelfoo 03:17, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I didn't know it was something only stewards could do. I'll check. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) 03:20, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Normal editing of the en. encyclopaedia is restricted; while actions which have a Stewardship obligation, and WMF actions in relation to promoting the current action are expected, normal content editing (such as correcting vandalism on a dead person's biography) is not expected activity. There is a very strong presumption from editors without additional user privileges that editors with such additional privileges will only edit for "emergency" reasons (legal, copyright, etc), or for reasons directly connected with the blacking action. (Of course, it isn't expected that you'll self-revert that edit; only, refrain from such editing until the encyclopaedia is open again for general editing). Fifelfoo 03:25, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

This is a rapidly changing scenario and it's something we've never dealt with before. Stewards don't want to do basic vandalism reverts, preferring to leave them to admins. Admins aren't sure when they can and can't edit, in the absence of clear rules. And poor staff are trying to thread the needle and working without a net. Maybe we could all agree that no harm was done and move on? Philippe (WMF) 03:26, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh certainly, this isn't disciplinary in the least, its just observing the blanking, letting people know about an expectation they might be unaware of, and marking issues resolved. I'm keeping a count of these edits mainly to show how rapidly and positively they're resolved, and to demonstrate that normal collegial editing can handle these edits if there's a need to lock the encyclopaedia against normal user editing in future. Fifelfoo 03:30, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

The question of this particular vandalism was raised on OTRS, and OTRS agents raised the question of what could be done to address such obvious vandalism, particularly in light of the fact that content remained fully visible for mobile users. I think that at the least this would be a pretty clear case of en:WP:IAR. It's hard to imagine that anyone could object to our removing content like that from publication at any point. But if we go through a blackout again at any point, maybe we should discuss in advance how such things are to be handled. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) 11:06, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree clarity is needed over that. But during the black out plenty of other obvious vandalism did need to sit. Unless the OTRS ticket indicated that there was a legal claim, I don't see how cleaning that kind of vandalism is different to letting Jo Q. Editor gnome over other encyclopaedia problems. (I read the vandalism, and saw that the ridiculous statement was aimed at a dead human). Clarity is needed for the future over these kinds of points, even if the reasons for locking editors out are different! Fifelfoo 13:38, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Actually, it's aimed at a currently marketed product which raises concerns of brand damage. Living people aren't the only ones who sue for that kind of thing. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) 13:39, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

fr & fd question list

Hi Maggie -- maybe we should break the questions that I posted into a subpage? I will probably keep working on them and ideally others will too. Might be easier just to have a space for pure questions (no answers) from me or others.

also, I have a request -- I know there are various alternative proposals being made and probably more will get posted soon. Is there any way to pull those out and link to them all in one place, so we don't have to go hunting for them? A little box somewhere or something? That might get complicated -- but I'd say if something is explicitly labeled as an alternate proposal (rather than argument on just one point) and is semi-fully formed, then it counts. -- phoebe | talk 15:59, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

duh, you already did this last thing. I hadn't looked at the template :) Thanks so much! -- phoebe | talk 16:01, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

my only suggestion would be -- I know there's at least one more big set of alt recommendations coming (from de) so maybe "alternative recommendations" needs to be a navigation page, with all of the proposals linked from it? Just so they are easier to find. -- phoebe | talk 16:04, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia front page

Hey Maggie!

I'm glad to have found someone I can contact about my query. I've just recently joined (the German) Wikipedia as a registered user. My question concerns the 'front page' of Wikipedia, found at the Internet address www.wikipedia.org.

At the top of the page, ten language editions of Wikipedia surround the logo of WP. I was wondering why all of the ten language editions are amongst the Wikipedia 'top ten' by article count, except for one. Dutch is the fourth largest WP edition, but instead the Chinese version is shown. As far as I can recall, about a year ago this wasn't the case yet. Replacing Dutch for Chinese may underline Wikipedia's global pretension, making sure people don't perceive it as a solely Western project. However, I find this unfair towards the Dutch-language WP. Some may lament a smaller language community having a 'more successful' WP edition than a bigger one, but I believe it is not Wikipedia's role to judge which language edition is 'the worthiest'. Rather, we should leave it to the global community of Wikipedians to decide which editions become prominent over time.

I'm not sure if you're the right person for my rather secondary request. I hope I haven't been too pedantic.  ;-)

Thank you in advance and many greetings to the East Coast! --Son-of-my-comfort 02:22, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm the right person to ask, because it's part of my job to try to find out answers to stuff like this. :D I'll see what I can find out! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) 15:29, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I've determined that this is a community, not Foundation, decision. The answer is found at Talk:Www.wikipedia.org template#Article count. It isn't top ten by article count, according to consensus here, but by visitor count. In August 2011, it was fixed to match the then-statistics, with Zh being more frequently visited than Nl. If I'm sorting the stats correctly, Nl is #11 by that matrix. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) 15:35, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

That certainly explains things. Thanks very much for your prompt reply!  ;-) --Son-of-my-comfort 01:14, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Fundraising and Funds Dissemination/Resource list

Hi Maggie. I see that my suggestion for funds for development of essential software has been removed from Fundraising and Funds Dissemination/Resource list. I admit that I may have misunderstood the purpose of this list, but the one advantage is that whoever removed it will now be aware of it. Kudpung 03:07, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Kudpung. Has it been removed or modified? I'll take a look. Some of the items listed are being changed from specifics into "high level" categories. :) Either way, I really appreciate your input there. You are the only community member who responded to my direct request. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) 11:45, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

It was removed by Sue Gardner at this diff. Kudpung 16:38, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Ah. Then that's one of those things that she is regarding as a given. We will continue to fund work in those areas. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) 17:00, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

I wonder if you could take a moment to check out this thread. There appear to be counter claims about the funding, and I'm not sure that it is understood that tbhe survey part of this development issue is a community initiative. The WMF was asked for legal and technical resources only, as clearly outlined at Research:New Page Patrol survey. The survey was actually closed on 7 November and nothing consequential appears to have been done yet according to the request - at least not to my knowledge. The request was made following a year-long empirical research made by a community task force. Legal issues were actually resolved quite quickly and we're still waiting for the mathematical extrapolations in order to make our report. Many thanks. Kudpung 01:57, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Sure, Kudpung. :) I'll have to get up to date on all this, though; I'm afraid I haven't had much involvement. I'll see what I can find out. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) 14:05, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Logo Copyright Status

Greetings. I spun up a discussion about the consistency of logo Copyright and Trademark at the Village Pump. During this discussion, your comment at Talk:Logo#Commons_discussion_on_copyrightability_of_logos came up, which seems to imply the WMF logo, at least, should not be using {{CopyrightByWikimedia}}, but rather a GFDL flag, along with the standard {{trademarked}}. Is this correct? Does this apply to other logos? 64.80.80.114 15:51, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi. It does not apply to other logos unless specifically stated, as they may have been created by staff or as copyright may have been transferred from the volunteer(s) who created them to the Foundation. In either case, {{CopyrightByWikimedia}} would be accurate, unless the WMF decides to freely license the material. In terms of the statement I carried over, I'm not really authorized to interpret so much as convey it, but I would think that you are correct in most respects. I believe, however, that the license would not be GFDL at this point, but rather dual, as it was uploaded and licensed prior to the licensing transition. At least, that's my understanding of en:Wikipedia:Licensing update#Media files. :) My interpretation of that statement, though, doesn't carry more weight than anybody else's. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:58, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Heya, thanks for the info. I think you missed one of my questions, which was whether your comment on the WMF logo talk page was meant to indicate that it specifically should not actually be using a {{CopyrightByWikimedia}} flag?

Also, whose opinion would carry more weight? IE, who decided that the Pepsi logo (which notoriously has a 27 page design doc called "Pepsi Gravitational Field") does not meet the Threshold of Originality, while something created by/for WMF (like this) does? 64.80.80.114 21:22, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, in terms of my job, the legal department's opinion would carry more weight. :) I'm here to get answers for community members from staff, but I'm not specifically empowered to interpret them. My interpretations of them have the same authority as any member of the community. However, when I said "I would think that you are correct in most respects", I was agreeing with your reading of the situation, except as I noted GFDL would seem to be incorrect, based on the licensing transition. I believe that's a proper reading of what they wrote. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 21:28, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Translation Done

Hi. You asked for a translation into Welsh of your banner; it's done here. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 05:36, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you so much! I have to talk to the people who are doing the actual software; they're having some problem with Welsh. I may have to find a workaround. :/ --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 11:17, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, unfortunately it seems that the software that runs the survey is not going to be able to accommodate two of our languages - Welsh or Esperanto - for several weeks, not until well after this quick survey has closed. :/ We'll be able to host the Welsh language version directly on the next survey (the people who make the survey software say they're adding it in), but for this survey I'm going to have to apologize and ask people to go the extra route of reading the Welsh linked from Meta as they answer the questions. I'm so, so sorry. I do appreciate your finishing off that translation, and I hope that people will be able to make good use of that work as they take the survey. I'll go announce it to the Welsh communities now. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 17:20, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Dutch/Danish

For the record: you put a story in Dutch (my mother tongue) on the Danish wiktionary. Our languages are not mutually intelligible. I can understand only about 30-40% of Danish. Jcwf (talk) 04:36, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm very sorry! We were pushing out notices to a lot of different language projects in one day, and I must have mixed up the Danish and Dutch translations. I appreciate your lettering me know, and I'll try to make sure that never happens again. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:41, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

TB

You have new messages

Hello, Mdennis (WMF). You have new messages at Philippe (WMF)'s talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Philippe (WMF) (talk) 04:25, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

FRD

Thanks for keeping track of the burgeoning discussion. It's been invaluable. Now if only we had as many clerks as we do admins, with flags and kudos to go along with it... –SJ talk   01:18, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, SJ. :) I'm trying to keep up! It's a very complex conversation. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:32, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Template text 2

Hello. Still a template test. --Mdennis (WMF) 14:09, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Terms of Use

Hello Maggie, Sergio here from Italy, homed at it.wiki and administrator on Commons. Thanks for the page you posted. I'm fixing the Italian translation of the Terms of Use.

Thanks for the work you're doing for the Wikimedia projects. -- Blackcat (talk) 21:19, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

You're welcome. BTW in matter of PD-Italy I just left this comment on Philippe's talk page (apologise for the English, I wrote fast and didn't review it :-/ ). -- Blackcat (talk) 21:54, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

RE: Thank you!

You're welcome. I believe that the archiving bot searches for a timestamp in the text, so the timestamp was needed. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 20:42, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Terms of use - Announcement (Portuguese)

Hi! The sentence is almost correct (just the verb need to be fixed, since "Terms of Use" is plural):

Nossos Termos de Uso atualizados entrarão em vigor em 20 de maio de 2012. Saiba mais.

About the "Find out more", there will be a hyperlink, right? Tomorrow I'll re-review the Portuguese Translation of the Therms of Use and finish the translation of its summary =).

I'm not fluent in Spanish, but I'm almost sure it would be:

Nuestros Términos y condiciones de uso actualizados entrarán en vigor el 20 de mayo de 2012. Más información.

(I hope that NaBUru38 confirm it). Giro720 (talk) 14:54, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Condizioni d'uso

"Our updated Terms of Use will become effective on May 20th, 2012. Find out more."

"Le Condizioni d'uso aggiornate entreranno in vigore il 20 maggio 2012. Per saperne di più ...."

-- Blackcat (talk) 18:50, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Spanish translation question

Hello, Mdennis! I'd love to help you with this.

"The sentences are:

Our updated Terms of Use will become effective on May 20th, 2012. Find out more.

I'm not sure if this translation is any good:

Nuestras Términos y condiciones de uso actualizados entrará en vigor el 20 de mayo de 2012. Más información."

The phrase is "Nuestros Términos y condiciones de uso actualizados entrarán en vigor el 20 de mayo de 2012. Más información." The second phrase means "more information" - you can replace it for "Descubre más", which is closer to the original. Thanks and good luck! --NaBUru38 (talk) 01:40, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

I've not seen this before. I was about asking you but seen the CentralNotice and I directly pushed the changes here and here. Thanks. —Marco Aurelio (audiencia) 14:05, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. :) Fortunately, another staff member will be handling any work in that area, as I'm completely clueless about it. :D --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 10:13, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Japanese translation of the ToU notice

Hi, this is a response to your request on w:ja:WP:NEWS.

更新された利用規約が2012年5月20日に発効します。詳細をご覧ください。

The one you presented was grammatically correct, but the above one would sound slightly more natural. --whym (talk) 01:15, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 10:07, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

pl

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Foundation_wiki_feedback#Terms_of_Use_.282012.29.2Fpl

Pls don't use Google translate TransPerfect, use community. Przykuta (talk) 07:35, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi. I'm very sorry to hear that there are problems with this translation; the Wikimedia Foundation would, of course, more than welcome community correction. Unfortunately, we can't force community participation, and in spite of the open translation request that has lingered for months, the community stopped working on this translation on January 13th. We were put in the situation that we either had to commission a professional translation or not put up a translation of the contents in the Polish language at all. The professional translation was added to the existing community text on April 5th, and a note was placed at the talk page of the Terms of Use inviting contributors to improve it if possible (Talk:Terms of use/pl). That invitation certainly still stands! If you can make it better, or know other translators within the community who would be willing to help, please encourage them to do so; we want the best version we can get. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 00:11, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Oh, I've just read the section you link. I'm afraid that the concerns voiced there actually seem to relate to community work, not the professional translation. :/ We did not have the summary translated by professionals because it had already been done by a member of the Polish language Wikipedia, who very kindly answered the call for translators. As I mention there, this is collaborative work just like the rest of the projects, and I'm sure that he or she would welcome assistance in correcting any errors or offering better alternatives. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 00:51, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I will try

1. step 1 - ask community
2. step 2 - if community don't work, ask professional and send info about this to the community
3. step 3 - ask community for feedback

Przykuta (talk) 10:18, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Polish Terms of Use

It is plagued by grammatical. and stylistic errors. For example część is incorrectly inflected as "częśćmi" just at the beginning of the text. Please hire someone speaking good Polish or use the community support, but don't produce an illiterate trash as an official edit-protected document. 77.112.49.152 10:48, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi. If you can help improve this document, you would be very welcome. :) Please see the section immediately above. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 00:12, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Some bits of feedback

Gday Maggie … some dot points

• With the new "Terms of Use", it would be useful to have a short summation of what are the differences from the existing. Is that possible on its talk page?
• The page is on a account restricted wiki, so there is no real ability for feedback in situ ...
• On the page itself, it is lacking direction to where to put feedback, especially for grammatical or translation changes, ie. comments should be directed somewhere.
• Your account there is a different name from your account elsewhere (where it has the '(WMF)' addition), and when you get there all one sees is MZM commentary, and again pretty well a locked page. Can I suggest that if where you are posting that you look to modify your signature so it directs to this meta talk page, or you look to a redirect at your Foundation talk page. Or it clearly links to a "mail me" component.
• A locked talk page that is restricted to a small elite is not a good look, and is discouraging, though often understandable.

Thanks. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:28, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi, billinghurst. :)

There is a short summation of the differences on the Foundation Wiki at wmf:New_Terms_of_use/en. I can certainly add this to the Foundation Wiki talk page, if that's what you mean. If you want it on the talk page here, I can do that, too. Just seeking clarification.

It is standard practice for WMF policies to be on the Foundation Wiki. It's where the existing Terms of Use are as well as the Privacy policy, the Code of Conduct policy, the Trademark policy and all the others. While it's true that these have historically been closed to editing (and I was frankly a little concerned about that myself), I was pleased to see that when individuals try to "contribute" they are directed to where feedback can be left. (I experimented with this.) The edit box you see when you try to contribute directs you to several email addresses before noting that "Unfortunately, wikimediafoundation.org does not allow open editing currently; however, we want everyone to be able to contribute" and offering a link to Foundation wiki feedback. If you think that the Foundation Wiki needs a more readily visible way to encourage feedback, I can bring that up with staff, certainly.

I don't know if it would be possible to unlock the talk pages on Foundation wiki, but I can ask about that, too. It may not be a good idea, though. I gather that the Foundation wiki does not have many users or watchers, and I worry that comments left there in less immediate situations than this might be overlooked. :/ I wonder if it would be possible to unlock a single talk page for a limited amount of time? I wonder if the developers will laugh at me if I ask? :D (I'll risk it.)

I have taken your advice about putting contact information on my talk page on Meta. Thanks. :) While it's on my user page there, I know that especially newer users may not find that, and it had not occurred to me that users might look for me through my edit histories there. Does it look okay to you? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:28, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, I found the Community Liaison, Product Development online (thank heavens for remote workers; the San Franciscans are by and large still sleeping). He tells me that "the issue is not that every page is protected, it's that LocalSettings.php has been altered to reserve the 'edit' action to certain classes of users. You'd have to either unlock all pages, or split up the edit right, which is tricky and would require install customisation." He believes that the amount of developer time this would require would make it unlikely. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:38, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Maggie, it was feedback on thought bubbles, not criticism. I don't mind where we put text about what changes are taking place, as long as it is logical, and easily findable, and hopefully linked to. My concern about basically locked talk pages is that we don't/aren't giving people a place to go. We either need to have softredirects or email links on talk pages to direct people to where to provide feedback, or otherwise email as that is the expectation with wikis. I have no expectation that the foundation wiki be opened, more reflecting on the look when only certain people, eg. MZM, can make comments. This is eyes wide open stuff. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:41, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

terms of use

you aware that the local wikipedia versions link to the localized name of the terms of use on wikimediafoundation.org (e.g. to http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Conditions_d%27utilisation), not to the "Terms of Use/code>" version? cheers, —Pill (talk) 11:36, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I just worked that one out thanks to Guillaume, who I had asked the verify the link. :) This is complicated! I'm preparing to make a chart of the languages to try to make sure that everybody finds the page they're looking for. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 11:48, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

yeah, the same is true for the other languages in the banner, i guess, at least it's true for german (local links point to http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Nutzungsbedingungen). hence: good luck ;). —Pill (talk) 11:51, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

That's helpful. I appreciate it. :) I'll fix that one and then keep plugging away at my chart. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 11:54, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Per Guillaume's suggestion, I'm redirecting the local language to the translated page - this will eliminate this issue in the future, since future versions of the ToU will be housed at the same title. The link will always point to the current. I hope fervently that all is working now for the 2012 de version? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 11:58, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Looks good. —Pill (talk) 12:44, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. :) I'm glad. I remember when I woke up this morning and optimistically thought, "Well, this should take about a half an hour." :D --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:45, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

WM:Emergency and stuff

On en:WP there seems to be a consensus that we need professional advice on the suggestion that we block suicidal users. We would also like to understand the way the WMF emergency response works. Who should we contact to get these two things dealt with? Rich Farmbrough 23:47 26 May 2012 (GMT).

Hi, Rich. :) Good to see you. I'm a good starting point. I'm actually part of the emergency response team, but am not sure how transparent we are with that (for reasons I know you know :/). I'll check with Philippe, my supervisor, who organizes it all and hope get back with you soon. He's in Argentina at the moment, but it shouldn't take long. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 23:56, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi Rich, questions about this could be addressed directly to me. Regarding the first: it's very very situational. I strongly urge people to follow their gut when it comes to this type of issue. Generally speaking, I have found it to be NOT helpful to block these users, but that's just me. Any admin or other user who feels uncomfortable making this call should absolutely NOT make the call - they should refer it to someone else. There's too much on the the line to be doing it when you're not comfortable with the judgment call. That's why the emergency address exists. Regarding the second question (how the emergency response works), I'm afraid that I'm not sure exactly what you're asking. I'll tell you, though, that we won't reveal too much about it (BEANS and all that) but I'm happy to give a broad overview if someone needs it. May I suggest that you either point me to the discussion in process or toss me an email with the particulars of the question that you're asking? Philippe (WMF) (talk) 13:22, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

OK the discussion is at the talk page of en:WP:SUICIDE. My main concern - apart from the blocking issue - is that someone hands stuff off to WMF:Emergency, and either there isn't 24/7 cover or there is some other breakdown in process - no contact numbers for Outer Mongolia, or whatever. I organised a (technical) 24/7 support system for a number of years, and I know how tricky this stuff can be, even before the human element and wider international element gets involved. Rich Farmbrough 15:40 29 May 2012 (GMT).

There is 24/7 coverage, and we have a system for managing the contact issue (basically, we use a partnership with a federal agency and an NGO, both of whom have a local legal attache that has all the correct numbers and translators in place. Between those two options, we have total global coverage, including Antarctica!). We've stress tested the network, and it has worked for us consistently. Internally, coverage is shared among a broad enough group of folks, in multiple time zones, and includes alarms that wake people up and call until they're cleared. Philippe (WMF) (talk) 15:46, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Logos and trademarks

This may be more related to you than Philippe: <https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Philippe_%28WMF%29&oldid=3818974#Logos_and_trademarks.3F>. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:16, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. Admittedly I've had my head down over a report today, but I haven't heard anything about the Wiknic logo. I'm not sure if you want me to try to look into it for you, since you've already asked Philippe? Or did you mean that "you" in "you're making trouble" as the WMF and not Philippe personally? In that case, if you can give me more detail, I'll see what I can track down. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:28, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

You haven't been in any discussions regarding the Wikimedia logos and trademarks lately? Maybe I'm getting you confused with someone else. Apologies if so. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:50, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Well, the only conversations I've had lately about logos is this morning, when Oliver Keyes asked me how to label logo derivatives (I showed him) and who to approach about logo use issues (I told him). Nothing about any specific logo or its usage, and certainly nothing that I can see as making trouble. :) Unless the example I dug up at Commons was wrong, but I don't think it was. What's the problem with the Wiknic logo? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 20:00, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't think there's any problem with the Wiknic logo. That's what I'm trying to clear up. There's some general confusion I think. Some people think that the Wikimedia Foundation objects to (aspects of?) the Wiknic logo, as far as I understand it. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:06, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

I'll send out a few emails and see if I can find out if there are any issues and, if so, what they may be. The LCA team in SF may be a bit tied up today, but I'll let you know if I get anything back. If you hear anything more detailed about what the problem may be, please let me know, since that may help me narrow down a more targeted approach. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 20:11, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Sent. I actually managed to catch the lawyer who takes lead on trademark and logo (Michelle), and she certainly wasn't objecting to it. She'd never seen it and thinks it's adorable. :) That said, she does think there needs to be some note made on the image page that it is a derivative of the WMF logo. The current PD release does not properly restrict reuse. She doesn't have any issue with its use on the projects and for this event, although any merchandising that carries it will evidently need to be free. I can get more information on that if you like. And I'll let you know if I find anybody who is objecting. Meanwhile, off to see what I can do to note the restrictions on reuse on Commons. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 20:22, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Okay, I've caught up with Philippe now, too, between meetings. He doesn't have any problems with the logo and is unaware of any. I got ahold of Oliver (since he's the only person I spoke to about logos), and I would suggest that if people are thinking the Foundation doesn't like the logo based on my conversation with him or his conversation with anyone else, there may have been some misunderstanding. I understand that he was talking to one of the logo's designers and told her that Michelle is the person to consult on logo derivatives based on our conversation. This much is true. :) I've asked him to pass along to the user in question (since he's already in contact about it) Michelle's compliments and the notes on reuse. If you should happen to hear anything that suggests that this is not the basis of the rumor that there's a problem, please let me know, and I'll look further. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 21:15, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, definitely a bit of a misunderstanding about which thing was what there, sorry about that. We were having a nice lovely argument in more than a few directions, something about trademarks and copyrights and policies and things that are just plain wrong and things that could go horribly wrong and other things and... and I guess it kind of got out of hand. Meantime I am so completely confused at this point that I don't even know what to say now, so uh. Hi. -— Isarra ༆ 00:41, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Hi! :) You and Dominic did a really nice job. I agree with Michelle; it's a great logo. I'm glad the confusion is getting straightened out. Do you have any outstanding questions about it? If so, I'm happy to explain if I know or find out if I don't. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 01:09, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Maggie, thanks for all your help. I really appreciate it. :-) I'm very glad that everything's been sorted. I hadn't realized that the Wikimedia logos have such a rich history. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:25, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
P.S. I've started collecting the red, green, and blue logos at Red, green, and blue.

Wow, that's a lot of logos. :) Thanks for pulling them together. And I'm happy that I was able to help clarify. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:52, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Wikisource Twitter account

Hi Maggie. I was wondering if you would be able to help us at Wikisource recover the @wikisource Twitter account, which seems to be held by a squatter. It appears Wikimedia usually allows community members to use its project names like this for normal promotion of the projects. In this case, though, we'd need WMF to actively step in to first claim the account as a violation of Twitter's trademark policy. The form for doing so is here: https://support.twitter.com/forms/trademark. Is there anything we can do? Dominic (talk) 23:47, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm on it. I'll see what I can find out. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:18, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Hello Dominic, I am in the process of reclaiming the account--I will keep you updated. Cheers, Stephen LaPorte (WMF) (talk) 16:43, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Dominic. Stephen has reacquired the account. It is now in the hands of the Wikimedia Social Media team. I would imagine you'd contact them to discuss details of using it. Thanks for bringing this up! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:12, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Re: I messed up your fuzzies

No worries: thank you for letting me know, I'll check and fix myself if something is still to fix. You know that you can/should use the "Do not invalidate" checkboxes for small changes which don't require updates, don't you? Suggestions/complaints about this feature and its documentations are always welcome, and I'm sure several translation administrators on Meta can help with the final marking and syntax checks (translators and people in need of translation shouldn't be forced to learn all details of the extension). Thanks, Nemo 07:44, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that's the documentation. A lot of effort was put in it, so feedback is very much appreciated to help improve it. Thanks, Nemo 23:17, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Answers

Hello, are the TR about "answers" still relevant? If not, please close them, but don't leave translations unused (if there are some unpublished ones). Thanks, Nemo 13:21, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, they are still relevant. All of the ones that have been completed are published, but, alas, there aren't very many of them. :/ Especially the instructions would be nice; I answer multilingual contacts fairly routinely (always a fun challenge), so I know that the system is used by people who do not speak English primarily. Should I switch it over to the new system? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:06, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Your French

Hi! I noticed your messages on the French-speaking projects. Thank you very much for forwarding this information (Programme d’aide financière aux frais juridiques), I'm so often saying that the WMF is ignoring non-en-Wikipedia projects that it should be noted when it's not the case.

But it's not the object of my message. In one word : you shouldn't be ashamed of your French [7].

Just because I understand you would like to improve your French, I dare to correct your message.

S'il vous plaît excuser mon mauvais français. Je voulais être sûr que votre communauté a été mis au courant. La Wikimedia Foundation espère un consensus fort, quel que soit le choix. S'il vous plaît n'hésitez pas à participer. S'il ya un meilleur endroit pour annoncer cela, s'il vous plaît aider à passer le mot. Je vous remercie beaucoup!

Most of the mistakes are in fact not really important, but may be judged as "bad French" by some people.

S'il vous plaît excusez (impératif) mon mauvais français. Je voulais être sure (une femme est féminine) que votre communauté a été mise (communauté est féminin) au courant. La Wikimedia Foundation espère un consensus fort, quel que (special respect : a lot French people would have made the confusion with quelque) soit le choix. S'il vous plaît n'hésitez pas à participer. S'il y (espace) a un meilleur endroit pour annoncer cela, s'il vous plaît aidez (impératif) à passer le mot (remarquable : passer le mot est une expression typiquement française). Je vous remercie beaucoup!

As a fact, I'm admin and crat on the French Wiktionary, that's probably the reason why finding someone at the WMF who is speaking a so good French stimulate me so much. est Bests regards. :-) --ArséniureDeGallium (talk) 18:33, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! I am glad to hear it is not as terrible as I fear. I must go very slowly. :/ I appreciate your tips. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:45, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

AsGa, le WMF ne s'intéresse pas spécialement au "non-en-Wikipedia projects". Philippe Beaudette est juste le copain de quelqu'un qui a des problèmes avec la justice alors il lui donne un petit coup de pouce. Pluto2012 (talk) 19:05, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Questions

Hi Maggie, would someone please respond to the questions at Talk:Legal and Community Advocacy/Legal Fees Assistance Program/FAQ? Thanks, Pine^✉ 20:22, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Pine. :) Thanks; I'm afraid I myself overlooked them. I'll see what I can do, but almost everybody is at an off-site for the next several days. :/ --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 20:24, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Translation of your request

Your request has been translated and published at wiki jv village pump. Regards.Pras (talk) 15:02, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you so much! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:03, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

On image formats

Hi Maggie! I noticed you'd uploaded this graph. It's in the .jpg format and rather large. The .jpg format is really only good for photographs. For images with large monocolored areas, like graphs, a .png or a .svg is a superior format. I tried to make a .svg of the image and uploaded it here. Notice the more crisp look of the image (no compression artifacts and you can zoom without pixelation) and in this case even the much smaller file size. I used RLPlot (GPL) to draw the actual graph part and then Inkscape (GPL) to edit the colors and texts etc. Take care! Palosirkka (talk) 04:46, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Identified

Hi Maggie. I'm just wondering why my name is not on this list. Not only have I identified to the Foundation, but I have also signed an NDA. Kudpung (talk) 08:16, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Kudpung. I don't know; I'll look into it and get back with you. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:15, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Evidently the people listed at that list are those who have identified through Philippe. He'd be happy to add (or perhaps have me do it :D) but would need you to send your ID to him. I think you have his email address, but, if not, please feel free to drop me a line at liaisonwikimedia.org or mdenniswikimedia.org. I'll be happy to send it to you. You can also transmit the id to me if you'd like and I'll give it to him, but if you'd prefer not, that's perfectly fine with me. I respect both your privacy and your need to feel comfortable in who you send that to. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:17, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Earlier this year I was asked to identify to the Foundation and on Howie's request I sent him my ID and the signed NDA he asked for. I find it odd that such official mail has been mislaid. Naturally I'd be happy however, to send this to you especially as you know me personally, but some investigation may be appropriate regarding the NDA. Thanks. Kudpung (talk) 03:26, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Unless I'm mistaken, IDs are not retained, although NDAs are. Howie's is a separate department and taken for a different reason than this board, which is for users requesting advanced permissions. :) I can ask Howie if he has the NDA on record, but probably the quickest way to get your name on the board is to send a copy of your ID to me, since you don't mind. I'll handle it from there. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 10:11, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Actually, now I've had a closer look, as I'm not a checkuser, oversight, steward, ombudsman, or Trustees, there's no need for me to identify myself. I was just curious because I was not not on the list and not aware that there are different departments for this kind of thing. Thanks anyway - sorry for wasting your time.

Not at all. Any time, Kudpung. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:24, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Logo guidelines

Hi, Maggie,

Some eager editors have begun a selection process for a logo for the new Wikimedia travel guide projects (you can find it at Travel Guide/Logo). I've been looking around Meta for information on how these logo contests were conducted in the past, and for any guidelines or requirements that WMF imposes on project logos, but I've come up mostly empty. I did find Logo, which details a few technical requirements, but doesn't really address design constraints. (For example, I'm of the impression that WMF would prefer new logos not to use the same red-blue-green color scheme as the WMF logo itself, but I can't actually find that written down anywhere.)

Can you point us in the right direction toward this information, before people start designing logos that would never be acceptable? Or, failing that, at least flag whomever might be able to point us in the right direction? =)

Thanks, LtPowers (talk) 02:54, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Will do. :) Let me poke around a bit, and I hope to get back with you in the next few days. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:43, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Okay, so I've poked around a bit, and I have some feedback.

While there may be some ideas to be gleaned from wmf:Wikimedia visual identity guidelines, there's no formal guidance or directive for creation of new Wikimedia project marks that I've been able to find. There is no requirement to use or avoid any particular typeface or color, although typically people do seem to gravitate towards traditional schemes - maybe in respect for heritage. Jay Walsh, the Head of Communications, remarked that he would himself be inclined to suggest that the new logo "bravely chart a new course", as - for example - Wikiquote did. He'd be interested in seeing a "new and vibrant identity" himself. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:57, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Maggie, thanks for the "poking". You've discovered about what I did in my own looking-around. I have found that during the Wikibooks and Wiktionary logo discussions, that participants were given the instructions to avoid a logo that exclusively used the WMF logo's colors and/or resembled it in design. (See, for example, Talk:Wiktionary/logo/archive-vote-4#Changing colors, or Discussion on the logo votes#The Color Complication.) Would it be fair to summarize the current feelings on the topic that any new logo should not resemble any existing project logo too closely? LtPowers (talk) 13:26, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, that seems a fair summary ca. 2006. I'm not sure that's still the feeling. :/ While Jay seems to think that innovative is better, he certainly doesn't say that RBG is verboten. Let me ping Guillaume about it; he seems to have been on that committee as well. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:40, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Not an issue, evidently. The committee does seem to be defunct, as I had imagined, and it was never authoritative, I understand. While you don't want brand confusion, there's no official prohibition on using the same color scheme. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:51, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your thoroughness! LtPowers (talk) 19:26, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

I hate to bug you again, but we need a bit of clarification. Logo says "If you propose a new logo for one of a Wikimedia project it must not be licensed under GFDL. Copyright should be transferred to the Wikimedia foundation instead." It occurs to me this may have been written before the license migration to CC-by-sa; does the same apply to Creative Commons licenses? Do all proposed logos need to have their copyright transferred to WMF immediately, or only the winning logo once it's determined? If the latter, how do we upload them for discussion? Thanks for your time. LtPowers (talk) 13:44, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

That is a very good question. I see that content was added in 2005 by Anthere, who was then chair of the Board of Trustees. Given the actual text, I have to wonder if she was quoting Jimmy. I suspect that this requirement has changed, but I will ask the legal department and see if I can get clarification on this. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:53, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

According to what I was told, the best practice may be to upload proposals on Commons under the Commons:Template:Copyright by Wikimedia, since the final trademark should be transferred to the Wikimedia Foundation. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:51, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Maggie! LtPowers (talk) 16:58, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Staff acc. check

Hi Maggie. Could you please tell me if User:Kpulec (WMF) is a legit staff user? Thanks! -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 13:47, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, indeed. A legal intern. I've tagged it. Thanks! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:26, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks to you for your assistance. Regards. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 18:30, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Re:Community logo

Thanks for looking into this, Maggie, I appreciate that! odder (talk) 21:52, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

OC

Hello Maggie. I see you just announced the new OC for this year. When permissions are ready to set, please ask me or other stewards to perform the appropiate global right changes. Another question: since it seems that for this year CUs will keep their permissions, should the OC members that had those permissions removed when joining the commission in the past years regain such an access? Best regards. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 14:18, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Thank you very much. :) I will. I think that's probably a very good idea. Let me look into that. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:28, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Note: PeterSymonds already gave the rights to the new OC members and removed them of Mwpnl & Dweller. Only Erzbischof should get the rights, but as he's not yet identified we can't give him those. Also: if people should get their CU bit back, please say so, for now they aren't restored. Thank you. :) Trijnstel_talk 22:53, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Erzbischof is now identified. And, yes, please, give back their CU bits. Thank you. :D --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:37, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Done. FloNight & Sir48 are a CheckUser again (on enwp and on dawp) and Thogo is a steward again! Thanks. Trijnstel_talk 18:56, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Terms used in the Terms of Use

The advice I've received from the UK Safer Internet Centre states that the use of the term 'child pornography' acts to legitimise images which are not pornography, rather, they are permanent records of children being sexually abused and as such should really be referred to as child sexual abuse. I suggest that the WMF makes a minor edit to the terms of use, to change 'child pornography' to 'images of child sexual abuse'... a small change, but an important one, I think. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 11:22, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I'll bring it up with the legal team. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:10, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

If I might add, while I understand the intention, I would find the proposed change very problematic. I only know German criminal law (not much, though), but "child sexual abuse" is a legal term here, defined by the law (http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stgb.html#p1493); I guess the same is true in other countries, as well. Here, from my understanding, "child sexual abuse" would not include a situation where, say, a child is unknowingly filmed while masturbating (and also is not induced to do so), and the material is later posted in a pornographic context on the internet. However, the resulting material would constitute child pornography (http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stgb.html#p1620). So changing "child pornography" to "images of child sexual abuse" could end up sending an entirely wrong signal, if you ask me. Cheers, — Pajz (talk) 17:54, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

That sounds like a very good point, Pajz. Chase me, Geoff would like us to list such proposed changes on the talk page (Talk:Terms of use, I mean :)) for consideration for the next update. There's no specified date for such an update, but he thinks it's probably best to discuss all such items at that time. If you're still interested in proposing this, I'd be happy to put it there, or you can. People around here are really amazing at in-depth evaluation of such things. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 17:58, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Don't worry

It's a good problem to have. ;-) – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 04:37, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

LOL! Thanks. :D --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 11:19, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Copyright on output (including graphs) from both Foundationand associate sites

There's a number of graphical outputs and others which are produced and have no license details. In particular the image I uploaded at File:Reqstats-monthly-20121029171901-pmpta-flatline.png (Commons) which comes from an associated site had no license, so it was deleted.

Also Foundation stuff such as http://nagios.wmflabs.org/cgi-bin/nagios3/trends.cgi?host=aggregator-test1.pmtpa.wmflabs&service=Current+Load has no license given.

Is this (getting CC-BY-3 licenses wherever possible) something that the Foundation can take on?

All the best, Rich Farmbrough 21:17 21 February 2013 (GMT).

Hi, Rich. :) I'd have to ask you to clarify what you mean, but I also suspect you're asking the wrong me. :D If you're asking something of me in my staff capacity, would you mind terribly taking this request to me to User talk:Mdennis (WMF)? I want to be sure that I'm not mixing my roles, which is not permitted. (And it's pure luck that I happened by here, as I typically never come to Meta while logged in as Moonriddengirl.) I'd really appreciate it if you could provide a little more context if you do. :) I'm not sure if you're asking me to have the Wikimedia Foundation put licensing terms on Wikimedia Labs or ask permission from somebody for content. I'm happy to try to help, but I'm not sure what to do. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 01:22, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, there's two things here. And your knowledge of the WMF and licensing are both assets in both things.

Firstly ensuring that technical output we (the Foundation) produce is licensed (retroactively if necessary) and tagged CC-BY-3 - I assume that there will be some enthusiasm for doing this at least in principle.

Secondly, and a more community related goal, which is by the way mirrored in our approach to academic researchers, to encourage and support those who use WMF data to make the presentation and analysis available under CC-BY-3.

All the best, Rich Farmbrough 17:34 27 February 2013 (GMT).

Thanks, Rich. :) I'll poke around at this and see what I can come up with. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:52, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

I've talked to Oliver about this, since I was not myself familiar with Nagios and the page is gone. :) From what Oliver tells me, it sounds as though that page was very likely automatically generated data and not eligible for copyright protection. I would imagine that server statistics might be a similar case, although I guess that presentation could be copyrighted, if it's not standard form. (Not being very familiar with computer systems, I'm not sure myself). That leaves me wondering if (if that's the case) labeling it with the license might be an issue of copyfraud. Certainly all work done by WMF staff and contractors in the course of their duties is now by contract released (code and other elements) under an OSI-approved license.

In terms of how others make use of that data, I understand that the research team licenses freely (given that they work for us) and tries to emphasise the importance of open licensing when approving external researchers. For content we've released under "SA" provisions (regardless of license), the resultant work may necessarily be SA as well. But external researchers can, of course, incorporate public domain data into their own derivatives however they like and without our permission if they choose.

I will point this out to our senior research analyst, in case it is useful in forming any policies or practices. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:54, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Our senior research analyst confirms that plots generated from services as Nagios don't contain any element requiring attribution or further licensing restriction. I'm told elsewhere that the Nagios interface may not allow specifying this. :/ --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:58, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

OK this is a step forward, I will have to allow that information to percolate for a little while. Rich Farmbrough 06:13 22 March 2013 (GMT).

Wikimedia humor

I hope you'll enjoy this. Scroll down to the bottom of the quote list to see the quote in a format that's easier to read. I wonder if Philippe would appreciate this also. https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=IRC%2FQuotes&diff=5259569&oldid=5259076. --Pine^✉ 20:24, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

LOL! As those who've spent any significant time with me will note, I am not hard to amuse. :) Well, for that matter, my user page notes it - I still laugh at myself over this one. :) I don't know if it'll hit Philippe's funny bone or not, but it hit mine! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 20:53, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm missing something. What is funny about adding the Inline template there? --Pine^✉ 18:23, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

It's in my edit summary - "Given large influx of copyvio material (hopefully all rewarded)...." Oi. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:42, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

I still don't get it, but that's ok (: --Pine^✉ 20:50, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Sorry. :) I often try to reword copyright issues; I seldom try to reward it. :D --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 20:51, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

OK, I get it now. This reminds me of a message that I got from my bank that was accidentally and strangely hilarious. (: --Pine^✉ 21:02, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Community logo and derivatives

Dear Maggie,

My recollection is that the Community Logo and all derivatives should not be trademarked; that was the whole point of creating it. (both the desire for a TM-free logo not subject to VIG, and the perennial awkwardness the WMF has had in supporting creative community uses of our marks).

I suspect this may have been a misunderstanding among people who weren't around when the logo was created - and were trying to helpfully protect any mark used by a big Project. I've left a note for Rkwon about this.

Assuming we can get the intent for that logo sorted out, I think the most accurate description of their status would be a purely positive template saying "free for community reuse" and linking to a detail page noting their history and status. –SJ talk  05:25, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, Sj. :) I've spoken to the legal team about this, and Michelle Paulson put some thoughts here that might be useful consideration. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:43, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Translation of your statement about the Trademark practices discussion in the Greek Wikipedia

Hello. Just wanted to notify you that I translated your statement in Greek. Bye! :-) --Dead3y3 (talk) 02:28, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! I appreciate that. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 10:16, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Miszabot

If you don't want it to take away the section (ever), the solution is to add text that doesn't end in a time stamp to the very end. Even hidden text apparently confuses the bot sufficiently that it will leave the section in place. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:15, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I thought I'd done that here, but it rearchived the sections the very same day. Can you see what I might have done wrong there? I'm so low tech. :/ --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:20, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I would have expected that to work. Perhaps the bot has gotten "smarter" on us. Well, there's nothing quite like reading the directions: The bot owner now recommends tagging the section with {{subst:DNAU}} en:Template:Do not archive until) as the way to prevent archiving of particular threads (forever; it will also take a date, but I figured that permanence was your goal). The template doesn't exist here, but I suspect that as it's subst'd, we could just take the subst'd text and re-use it. Would you like me to try? WhatamIdoing (talk) 13:06, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Oh, great! I've ported the template over as it seems like it could be useful for others. Let's see how it works. :) I'm giving it a go below. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:55, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Okay, it may work, but it's not pretty. :) [8]. I'm guessing it doesn't know how to handle en:Template:Substituted. :/ Porting that over seems pointless, as we don't have a bot that will automatically add it. Do you know enough about coding to make it work without that template? If not, I'll look around for somebody. :) (Of course, before doing that, we might want to see if the bot handles the template otherwise as expected. No reason to make it pretty if it just flat doesn't work! It entered the hidden comment.) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:02, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Coding is not my strength. My plan had been to subst the template into a sandbox on en.wp and then see whether the resulting code could be usefully copied. But there probably is a better way to do it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:35, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

So, this one turns out to be pretty easy. The bot recognizes hidden code; the template places this on your page: <!-- [[User:DoNotArchiveUntil]] 14:55, 21 April 2022 (UTC) -->. The bot respects that. :) Thanks much! I may wait a bit after the announcement before I test it at Terms of Use, though. I don't want Geoff's announcements to get pulled when I'm not looking. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 23:56, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Congratulations on figuring it out. I'm glad that we found a solution. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:50, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Fellowship News of August 2012

Fellowship News

VOLUME 1

August 2012

ISSUE 3

As you can see from this month's issue, Wikimedia Fellowship projects continued this month with lots of experimentation. Do you have ideas for a great new fellowship project? Submit a project idea, or tell us what you think about existing project ideas today! Continue reading...

• Dispute Resolution Project — Steven Zhang monitored a trial implementing changes to the dispute resolution noticeboard on English Wikipedia this month. An update on his findings is in the Wikipedia Signpost this week. Continue reading...
• Gender Gap Project — Sarah Stierch has started developing the first phase of a new WikiWomen's Collaborative project, which seeks to engage and inspire more women to edit using social media and clear calls to action. Continue reading...
• Help Pages Redesign Project — Peter Coombe has created three new introductory tutorials for the English Wikipedia, covering referencing, uploading images, and navigating Wikipedia. He also released the write-up from this summer's in-person usability tests. Continue reading...
• Small Wiki Editor Engagement Project — Tanvir Rahman has been building new step-by-step help pages on Bangla Wikipedia. The help pages will be connected into a portal page and the new help page system will be piloted in September. Continue reading...
• Teahouse Project — We've been working on improvements for hosts, including a simplified new host creation process. HostBot was approved for a trial to send out automated invites to new editors, contributing to a 50% increase in guest participation. Continue reading...

Fellowship News is brought to you by the Wikimedia Fellowship Team. You can change your subscription to this update here.

Fellowship News of September 2012

Fellowship News

VOLUME 1

September 2012

ISSUE 4

The Fellowships Program believes that supporting editors to lead on community improvements is one way WMF can help boost editor engagement. This month, Wikimedia Fellows worked on 5 projects that aim to do just that. Continue reading...

• Dispute Resolution Project — Steven Zhang compiled results of the August trial at the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard, community discussion favored closing Wikiquette assistance, and a Request for Comment on an easier way to file dispute resolution requests is underway. Continue reading...
• WikiWomen's Collaborative Project — Sarah Stierch and volunteer WikiWomen around the world launched the WikiWomen's Collaborative, a social media initiative connecting women who currently edit or aspire to edit Wikipedia. Continue reading...
• Help Pages Redesign Project — Peter Coombe completed a redesign of English Wikipedia's main help page and usability tests are being run to compare users' experiences with it. Results will be compiled and a redesign proposal will be brought to the community. Continue reading...
• Small Wiki Editor Engagement Project — Tanvir Rahman launched the new help page system on Bangla Wikipedia with pages that teach editors about new article creation and other popular editing activities. Metrics are still being collected but it appears article creation has nearly doubled. Continue reading...
• Teahouse Project — The Teahouse team refined automated invites and finished improvements that surface hosting activity. The Teahouse pages are going through a redesign to simplify usability for new editors, and we're looking at creating a new volunteer "maitre d" role. Continue reading...

Fellowship News is brought to you by the Wikimedia Fellowship Team. You can change your subscription to this update here.

Fellowship News of October 2012

Fellowship News

VOLUME 1

October 2012

ISSUE 5

As WMF narrows it's focus, the Fellowships Program will be winding down in early 2013. We'll be investigating other avenues for supporting individuals via grant-making, and meanwhile, Sarah, Steven, and Tanvir will be continuing their projects for several more months, so stay tuned to the News! Continue reading...

• Dispute Resolution Project — A Request for Comment closed in favor of a universal DR request wizard and implementation is in development on English Wikipedia. Steven is drafting a second survey to learn what motivates existing DR volunteers, in hopes of increasing the pool of mediators. Continue reading...
• Help Pages Redesign Project — In the final month of Peter's fellowship, the redesign of the English Wikipedia's main help page was usability tested with good results. Community response regarding implementation so far has been supportive. Continue reading...
• Small Wiki Editor Engagement Project — A 6 week pilot of help documentation improvements in Bangla Wikipedia is wrapping up and a midpoint progress report is available. The next Bangla experiment will focus on building a support system for new editors. Continue reading...
• Teahouse Project — Phase 2 of the project is complete. With increasingly stable systems built in, the Teahouse is now a volunteer-sustained space on English Wikipedia. The phase 2 project and metrics reports are now available. Continue reading...
• WikiWomen's Collaborative Project — Results of the first month of activities on Facebook, Twitter and the blog channel demonstrate that the WikiWomen's movement is growing. Sarah and WikiWomen volunteers around the world create content daily - join in at the organizing hub. Continue reading...

Fellowship News is brought to you by the Wikimedia Fellowship Team. You can change your subscription to this update here.

Fellowship News of November 2012

Fellowship News

VOLUME 1

November 2012

ISSUE 6

Three fellowship projects are still in full swing! Continue reading...

• Dispute Resolution Project — A second dispute resolution survey started running this month, in hopes of identifying new ways to retain and recruit more volunteers. An IRC office hours session was also held at the end of the month to solicit feedback and input from the community. Continue reading...
• Small Wiki Editor Engagement Project — Results from the 6-week help page pilot designed specially for new editors suggest that help page improvements have doubled the number of active new editors on Bangla Wikipedia. Continue reading...
• WikiWomen's Collaborative Project — The project has entered its second phase, the focus of which is to build more sustainable systems that can be maintained by the community as this fellowship comes to a close, and to focus on engaging with more women who are not yet editing Wikipedia. Continue reading...

Fellowship News is brought to you by the Wikimedia Fellowship Team. You can change your subscription to this update here.

PRISM

Hi Maggie—if possible, please do not update this page again. It really makes translations much more complicated, since people might not notice you updated it and we're stuck with outdated versions in languages other than English. Thanks :-) odder (talk) 15:13, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Odder. I'm certainly not updating it just for fun. This being Saturday, there are many other things I'd rather be doing. :D

(Fortunately, the translation tool seems to be really good at notifying when translations are outdated, so hopefully we won't have that issue!) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:18, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, actually it isn't—you don't get any notification that the translation has been updated and have to manually add it to your watchlist or check if there haven't been any updates—so that's why we need to be very careful when it comes to marking pages as ready for translations and not update them if not absolutely required to. odder (talk) 15:26, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Fantasy balloon

Hi Maggie, I forwarded your message to my friend (Lluis Valls), he will get back to you soon :) --Micru (talk) 00:08, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Dhow

Done. Thank you! --Pequod76^(talk) 12:44, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Wikivoyage logo proposal 2013

Hello Maggie. It's all right, I understand. I sent an email. Thank you. --Mystère Martin (talk) 18:34, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

I have sent it another time. --Mystère Martin (talk) 11:51, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Question

Hi. I am curious, as some 9 days ago I sent WMF an email with proof of my identity, but I can't be sure of this since no one bothered to even acknowledge it. Aren't regular editors allowed to have their identities confirmed? Why haven't I received any response yet? (Thanks.) ~ DanielTom (talk) 19:19, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

(Edit conflict.) Hi. The Wikimedia Foundation does not routinely process identity confirmations, except as required for restricted permissions (checkuser, oversight, steward, ombudsman, Board of Trustees), or other positions requiring access to personally identifiable data, as defined by board policy. The email is not often monitored because it is rarely used, and at this point it is even less likely to be swiftly checked because of Wikimania, which has staff otherwise occupied. If you are attempting to identify for other reason, I do not know if you will receive response. While I am authorized to process these, I am not usually tasked with doing so and don't know what the typical response is for identifications outside of those reasons. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:35, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I confess that your hint "I do not know if you will receive response" does worry me, as it's just basic courtesy to acknowledge an email once it has been received (even if the request for identification in it is declined). This year's Wikimania has already ended, to my knowledge, but I do not doubt that the WMF staff has better things to do than answering users' emails. ~ DanielTom (talk) 20:10, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Many of our staff have not yet returned to the office. Hong Kong is a long way away, of course, and the flight is pretty grueling. They will undoubtedly be returning to quite a backlog of their assigned duties. That email address has a very specific purpose, as I say, and is not regularly monitored. I do not know the practice for handling mails that are misdirected. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 20:13, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

(I can certainly empathize. I was in Hong Kong last year, and on the flight back to Spain, with the duration of some 12 long hours, where I could not sleep nor move, I resolutely promised myself never to fly again. Alas, I am told the journey by sea is even longer.) ~ DanielTom (talk) 20:27, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
I have sent you an email. Deskana often uses the disgusting trick of misrepresenting what other people say, and then adding that they have "exhausted all venues of appeal", even if the user in question has never appealed their block even once. That is a tactic Deskana uses to avoid having to address his own abuses and nonsense. In my email, I begin by showing how he misrepresented my own emails. You will also note his extremely unhelpful attitude, and attempt to ridicule and insult me. Finally, I hope you can appreciate how Deskana's incompetence (which I think makes him unfit to be a CheckUser, not to mention part of the Ombudsman commission), inability to tell a public rename from a sock, and confusion, had the intended consequence of damaging my real name. But of course, Deskana can do whatever the hell he wants.

Deskana is untouchable. He uses his influence to get what he wants, is completely unaccountable, and I daresay is more powerful than ArbCom. But his incompetence is so obvious to me that I have to complain.

Regarding the WMF, there is a broader point to be made here. If an incompetent checkuser like Deskana can't see the difference between a public rename and a sock, and that public rename happens to be the person's real name, think of the damage that does. Although not in my case, I take it that other people may want to change username from their real names to some other anonymous name, for privacy concerns. I suggest in my email that Deskana's incompetence, if acted against a troubled teen, could potentially lead to suicide (if it affects their image of themselves). I also suggest that if the WMF is not willing to protect people's real names, from attacks by vengeful admins, then it would be best to prohibit editors from using their real names on-wiki. Sincerely, DanielTom (talk) 18:48, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

@DanielTom:. Thank you for your email. I have received and will review it, and let you know if I see any points that seem unclear. If I do not, I will forward it to the appropriate personnel on Monday. If you have anything to add, please do so before then so that I can ensure that your concerns receive full review. You may be contacted by those individuals if additional information is needed. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:04, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

I have commented, elsewhere, that if I wanted to have a sock (I do not), I would have named it "starwarsfan93", or something like that. The very thought that I would be so stupid as to create a sock with a Portuguese name, with the same last name as me, is absolutely ridiculous. Isn't the whole point of socks to try to deceive and not get caught? Worse, "Diogotome" = Diogo Tomé, my brother's real name! Not to mention "Diogotome" couldn't be my account, as it was created by my brother in 2009, and I myself only learnt that people could edit wikis in late 2012. (I started out as an IP on Wikiquote, and registered my account Daniel Tomé in Sept. 2012.) Moreover, the claim that my brother's account is a "SPA" [how could they tell from just one edit?], or a "throw-away account", is also nonsense, not just because it is from 2009 — he also created an article about one of his college professors in 2012). Finally, people who dishonestly accuse me of sockpuppetry, when I am unable to respond, simply do not know me. I have always, since I was 12, edited with my real name online. I never hide who I am, I am the most open book out there! See, for example, a news website about Go where I used to write, and [9].

Deskana's last refuge seems to be to accuse me (or my brother) of meatpuppetry. Unfortunately for him, that is equally absurd. My brother has never voted like me, he has never given me any illusion of support anywhere, nor has he ever — ever — participated in the same discussions as me. Toddst1's allegation that there was a block evasion doesn't even make sense, as Diogo wasn't blocked then, nor was I (indeed, although I had said I didn't want to edit Wikipedia anymore, I wasn't blocked at the time my brother made his edit).

It is no surprise that every single admin whom I had ever criticized in the past all appeared in that staged SPI. They wanted to lynch me. This is not your fault, of course, but abusive people like Deskana make the English Wikipedia a horrible, horrible, horrible place. ~ DanielTom (talk) 18:48, 22 August 2013 (UTC) last edit: 20:03, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Going back to the original point. In my email, I didn't even link to the discussions at other wikis, where the sock tag was removed, and "Diogotome" was unblocked (Wikiquote, Wikisource, Commons). I think it is clear that there is zero evidence of sockpuppetry (there is evidence that we edit from the same IP, which is trivially true and was "admitted" weeks before that SPI, given that we live in the same house). In any case, I am not here to appeal my brother's block. He can do that himself, if he so wishes. This is, after all, about Deskana's incompetence, misrepresentations, and abuses.
I have not mentioned this in my email, simply because I cannot prove it, but it is my belief that Deskana constantly abuses his position to manipulate others into doing what he wants, namely not question his abuses. This is true, I think, even when it comes to blackmailing ArbCom. To be clear, I do not know whether Deskana has actually exchanged emails with ArbCom members saying that they should go along with his nonsense, yet I would bet my life that he has done so (he probably added some misrepresentations of my emails as well, as that is his trademark). I do not think Deskana could deny that he has influenced ArbCom in this regard.
Requests for evidence or clarifications of my assertions are welcome. I had told you that dealing with the consequences of Deskana's incompetence, attacks against my real name, etc., made me waste an obscene amount of time. So much so, that from one of the top students at my university, I am now at the point where I have to re-do a whole year of studies because in order to deal with this nonsense I had to skip several college exams. (Check your email for evidence.) Needless to say, Deskana is not wholly responsible for this, as part of my recent academic failure is due to me for apparently having the wrong priorities, but it nevertheless shows how seriously I take these attacks against my real name. Leaving aside Deskana's incompetence, inability to tell a public rename from a sock, and misrepresentations, one still notes how unhelpful he is, even when dealing with other persons' real names, he shows not a single care in the world (in fact, he tries to do the maximum damage to that person's name) and in my case, when I couldn't even edit my own talk page, and was completely helpless, Deskana still felt it was appropriate to publicly insult me and ridicule me: "I believe in unicorns but unfortunately for Daniel my beliefs are no more true than his." (Exact Deskana quote.) Is this considered proper conduct by the WMF? ~ DanielTom (talk) 21:27, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Balloon logo problems comment

Hello. It's a pity that the legal problems with balloon logo became known so late. I strongly dislike the "parachute bomb" variant. What do the legal team say about a square instead of the basket, a suitace or a semicircle? Ain92 (talk) 08:20, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi, @Ain92:. The legal team review had to take place after the modification period, unfortunately, so that all modifications could be considered. If we had more time, we could consider two modification periods, but we have to meet the deadline set by the WTO. It's something we can certainly talk about for future logo procedures.

In terms of this one, the legal team said that the rectangle would not work, so the suitcase was eliminated. I could ask about the square and semicircle, but I'm afraid that the modification period is over and the voting already begun. It would not be possible for us to insert a new design at this point - the legal team would need time to evaluate it against existing logos, and we do have that deadline we have to meet. If the parachute logo is selected, perhaps the community can consider modifying it once we've replaced the one we can't use anymore. I can ask at that point. (If the parachute logo is not chosen, the search would not be necessary.)

It's unfortunately difficult to judge simply by looking at the vote count which logos are doing best, because of the weighting and because people have three ranked choices, so I don't know if the parachute designs are in the lead. But we'll know how it all fell out in about a week. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:42, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

• Well, I wanted to say a bit different thing. IMHO, it's quite unfair that copyright problems with the "triple compass" logo became known earlier than with the balloon one, so the first has an ability to be modified quite seriously unlike the latter and thus got some unsporting advantage. It seems that it would be better if some review was done in the middle of modification period. The result of this can be election of worse logotype than it could be if (at least) we added information about possible modifications (maybe a brief summary of this threa?) to the election page. I can make variants with a square, oval and semicircle. Will it be against the rules if we add them as illustrations to the description of the situation? Ain92 (talk) 18:20, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
  • The problem with the "triple compass" was with the one that the community voted for. The problem with the balloon was not. It's not a matter of fairness, but simply unfortunate that the modification created a new issue. If the original balloon had had a fixable problem, I'm sure it would have been fixed, too. (For that matter, the balloon wouldn't even be a finalist except two of the original proposals that had more votes than it had issues that caused them to be eliminated altogether. The balloon was #5 in the original tally.) I'm afraid we can't introduce modifications at this point. We have no idea if any of the modifications you propose would be usable, and if people voted for the balloon logo on the expectation that they would then get to use a different logo that they could not, that would be an issue with fairness. The rules for the contest very clearly spelled out when legal review would happen - after the first round voting, to assess the finalists, and after the modification period, to assess the modifications. Maybe we can do things differently next time, but we really can't change this one now. :/ --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:25, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

I am going to close voting today, 23:59 UTC as set out in the timeline?! Should I augment my counting script to do the IRV analysis (since it's expected that a lot of votes are re-assigned)? If, should it save each step of the IRV in a new page revision like you did? -- Rillke (talk) 17:32, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

hi

Hi! I send you an e-mail at mdennis@wikimedia.org. Check it. --Κωνσταντίνος13 (talk) 14:29, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

I bring your attention to

This. You will note this is not (directly) related to the WMF – but as you have some background information on the issue, I think you could help me. So here is why that category disturbs me:

1. It is false;
2. It links an IP to my real name.

That IP only has one edit.[10] It is obviously not a sock, and was never used as a sock, as you can see in subsequent diffs (I initially edited without being logged in, by accident, and usually these are immediately oversighted, but I replaced the IP signature with my account signature just 2 minutes later). How was that IP ever used deceitfully? Where is the deceit?

Yet, you will note a special user page was created just for it, with a sock template, and the category "Wikipedia sockpuppets of DanielTom". (Of course all such categories are equally false and should be speedy deleted, but I can only deal with one abuse at a time). It seems perfectly obvious to me that calling this IP a sockpuppet is not only false, but only has one aim: public shaming. Part of Cirt's cross wiki harassment to attack my real name.

There is another issue – other than the userpage being false, as this IP with just 1 edit, which was made by accident, was never used as a sock, as my signature replacement quickly admits it was mine –, which is the oversight issue.

Publicly linking an IP to someone's real name is very problematic. Especially when there are crazy people who enjoy harassing others like Cirt. And even more when there is no need to create a user page with false information whose only intent is to attack someone's real name.

I don't mind that the IP is blocked. But the user page with the false sock category should be speedy deleted. This would solve the oversight issue, and the falsehood.

Do you see the problem? ~ DanielTom (talk) 17:48, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do about that. It's a community governance issue, and as you know I cannot interfere. You would need to go through community processes. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:43, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Which community process – are oversight issues decided by vote? ~ DanielTom (talk) 18:49, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

No. Oversight issues are decided by community-appointed oversight teams. See Oversight policy. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:59, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I read that policy a long time ago. A couple of weeks ago or so I contacted two different oversighters (both are stewards) on IRC. One of them agreed the page should be deleted, but didn't want to be involved in the issue, which he thinks involves ArbCom, the other said there could 'possibly' be an oversight issue, but he too didn't want to be involved on en.wiki, as far as I could tell (I have the logs of both chat, saved, though I don't know if they should be recorded—I dislike IRC and don't want anything to do with it). Anyway, it seems that these oversighters are afraid to take any action regarding this issue, for reasons you can imagine. It is all very straightforward, but no one cares much, as it's not their real names being defamed. Amusing. "An Hour will come, with Pleasure to relate / My Sorrows past, as Benefits of Fate." [11] DanielTom (talk) 19:19, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
One last thing. I think you, Maggie, understand WP:OFFICE better than most; I myself don't know if "defamation [or] privacy violations" include attack pages, false sock labels, and IP exposure for no reason. The policy reads, "These edits are temporary measures to prevent legal trouble or personal harm and should not be undone by any user" – and that is exactly what is needed, in mine and my brother's biased estimation (but whether I can convince people at the WMF of that is a different story). Anyway, take care. ~ DanielTom (talk) 20:08, 27 September 2013 (UTC) P.S. It seems to me that the cited policy was written with articles in mind, rather than the sort of petty, harassing pages which bother me, and (I think) should bother anyone with a conscience. These things have repercussions in real life. ~ DanielTom (talk) 20:16, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Help test better mass message delivery

Hi. You're being contacted as you've previously used global message delivery (or its English Wikipedia counterpart). It doesn't feel so great to be spammed, does it? ;-)

For the past few months, Legoktm has built a replacement to the current message delivery system called MassMessage. MassMessage uses a proper user interface form (no more editing a /Spam subpage), works faster (it can complete a large delivery in minutes), and no longer requires being on an access list (any local administrator can use it). In addition, many tiny annoyances with the old system have been addressed. It's a real improvement! :-)

You can test out MassMessage here: testwiki:Special:MassMessage. The biggest difference you'll likely notice is that any input list must use a new {{#target:}} parser function. For example, {{#target:User talk:Jimbo Wales}} or {{#target:User talk:Jimbo Wales|test2.wikipedia.org}}. For detailed instructions, check out mw:Help:Extension:MassMessage.

If you find any bugs, have suggestions for additional features, or have any other feedback, drop a note at m:Talk:MassMessage. Thanks for spamming! --MZMcBride (talk) 05:25, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Greetings

Hi, Dennis. Thank you for allowing me a reviewer access on mediawiki.org. May I ask you to update mw:VisualEditor/Portal/ja#予定表 which still says "Second half of August" and "Second half of August, one week later" as the scheduled date of deployment of VE for users on phase 3 wikis - where I almost made a little edit war with other ja translator because I tried to update ja translation without waiting for the update of the English texts (or else would you make me a translation administrator ? that may be OK, too ;)

Besides that, please allow me to reccommend you to promote User:Whym as a reviewer on mediawiki.org - certainly more qualified than me! Sincerely. --miya (talk) 06:08, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Talk:Legal and Community Advocacy#Draft of text for a binding Neutral Point of View WMF policy

I was wondering if you had thoughts on this? There is a discussion on the mailing list as well. -- とある白い猫 ^chi? 11:01, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi. :) It might be helpful to identify the problem that leads you to propose the solution so that it can be tailored to the needs of the situation. It seems like a potentially difficult task to draft a definition of "neutral point of view" that will be acceptable to and appropriate for all projects. For instance, Wikiversity has explicitly chosen to bypass NPOV in some situations (see also). It doesn't seem that NPOV as explained in the draft section ("Neutral point of view consists of summarizing all information regarding a subject that is published in reliable sources without adopting or favoring any particular point of view.") is the standard at Wikitravel, where people may ignore information in reliable sources and simply rely on their own experiences, and I don't know how it would apply to Wikisource, which is necessarily limited to material that is compatibly licensed or in the public domain and which may therefore be situationally extremely non-neutral. (Not by goal, but by simple availability.) They also do not summarize anything; that's not their goal. :) I would also share some of the concerns about how such a policy would be practiced or applied on Commons, which also does not summarize information and which may become situationally unbalanced as well. Let's take commons:Category:Apartheid, for instance. Is that category neutral? Is our content and coverage on Apartheid neutral? I wouldn't even begin to know how to assess that. :/ I suspect coming up with a globally applicable definition of what "neutral point of view" consists of would be a massive challenge, but certainly worthwhile if there is a problem that you think needs addressing. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 11:46, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I feel the need to clarify what challenge I feel needs to be addressed. :) The Wikimedia Foundation, Stewards or even Meta users will not try to micromanage such a future policy on a content page by content page basis and it would be unrealistic to draft a policy expecting or requiring it.

I am less concerned about how NPOV applies to individual content pages and more about how it applies to the entire wiki. So the worry here is more about site-wide bias or censorship. No WMF wiki, even technical ones such as MediaWiki wiki should be written from a specific political/religious/etc... point of view nor should they censor out views. This is very different concept from En.wikipedia's policy that manages neutrality on individual articles. I am unsure how widely what happened on ace.wikipedia is known. As it can be observed on Requests for comment/ace.wikipedia and Prophet Muhammad images & ace:Wikipedia:Bèk peuhina Islam, there was an attempt to enforce religious rules on a site-wide basis which could have lead to a WMF-wide basis (Requests for comment/Prophet Muhammad images around Wikimedia projects).

-- とある白い猫 ^chi? 03:55, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

I think, then, that perhaps your proposed text might need modification - "Neutral point of view consists of summarizing all information regarding a subject that is published in reliable sources without adopting or favoring any particular point of view" and "This policy states that their missions are best served not by advancing or detracting from particular points of view on any given subject, but by trying to present a fair, neutral description of the facts – including that various interpretations and points of view exist." seem to me to be content-focused and not so much related to systematic bias, or at least to readily lend itself to application to content. Even if the intent is not for the stewards to try to enforce that, I wonder how the users would resolve it with content like File:Obama Hitler political sign.jpg. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:59, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Indeed. I am not happy with the wording either. I'd be more than pleased if you can adjust or completely reword it so that it addresses systematic bias and censorship issues rather than a content-focused scope.

We always rely on local community to enforce such ideals. People locally advocating NPOV would have a simple global policy to fall back to. Importance of NPOV is obvious to you and me but not necessarily to an emerging language - particularly if English isn't well known among the native speakers. Such communities would easily be overwhelmed if they are thrown En.wikipedia's complicated NPOV policy. Translation of it alone would be a nightmare.

Should the local community deliberately choose to disregard NPOV (such was the case with ace.wikipedia) then stewards may end up getting involved after a meta discussion. This policy won't fix such issues. However, when such an issue is risen rather than talking about an unspecified notion of neutrality or NPOV, there would be the global policy as the starting point.

-- とある白い猫 ^chi? 22:37, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

If I had a quick fix, I would happily share it. :) Unfortunately, I don't. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:25, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I see, who would be a good address of this kind of an approach? The idea can't work well without good wording. -- とある白い猫 ^chi? 11:51, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Since it is a community proposal, it seems to me that crowd-sourcing whether or not there is support for such a policy would certainly invite people to help draft it if they think there is. It looks like right now there is not much interest. Maybe if you created an RFC and explained the need there, you would attract more interested participants. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:05, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Is RfC a good idea? It would be nice to have community consensus behind a board decision but I am not sure if the board would like this as it perhaps should be them seeking community approval rather than the other way around. Either way I feel I should have some sort of agreeable wording as people are trying to shoot down the idea rather than crowd source it at the moment. I heavily doubt any one of them supports inclusion of systematic bias/censorship on any project. -- とある白い猫 ^chi? 01:09, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Turkish Wikipedia and Non-Free Content

Did you know pages can be moved? --MF-W 19:37, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, which is why in my deletion note I explained that it was being recreated with repaired attribution. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:39, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

That makes no sense. The page could simply have been moved to Wikilegal/Turkish Wikipedia and Non-Free Content with the summary of that page's first revision being added in a null edit or as move summary; without you unnecessarily using delete. --MF-W 19:48, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused - is there a problem with the content being deleted? It fit the criteria of author request. If the issue is that we didn't tag it for speedy deletion instead, my apologies. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:50, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Only a little bit; I more find the whole deletion unnecessary. --MF-W 19:52, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

It seemed to be as handy a solution as moving the page, and it would put the attribution in the first edit. I didn't expect it to be controversial in any way. I'm sorry if I misjudged that. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:54, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, moving is one action, deleting and recreating are two, no? ;) --MF-W 15:08, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Question about legal stuff - linking from Wikivoyage to Wikitravel

Dear Maggie,

I remember you have been tirelessly committed to conducting the new Wikivoyage logo selection procedure in a timely and very satisfactory manner. I do not suppose you have been thanked enough for that, so let me start by expressing once again my personal, and I guess the entire community's, deep gratitude for that.

I am writing to you as I have found you to be very effective in communicating between the inner layer of WMF and us common editors, and helping get an answer that is truly to the point, while reaching deep inside enough to get it. I have what seems to be a simple question but I have never came across a straight answer.

Namely, you may be aware that many of the pages on Wikivoyage do link to their Wikitravel counterparts because they have been derived from them at a certain point (when WV was "carved out" of WT, so to speak). The problem is that by maintaining this link as a HTML hyperlink, we are somehow signalling to Google and other search engines that WV is a copy of WT, and this leads, or may lead, to WV pages being positioned inferiorly to WT pages in searches.

We have had very long discussions as to whether the search engines indeed do work like that or not, and whether it matters much or not at all, event to the point that I was startled to see lawyers starting to give advice on search engine optimization. But I have never got a straightforward answer as to whether WV is required legally to maintain those hyperlinks to Wikitravel.

Yet another clarification I need to make - I am absolutely aware there needs to be a very clear attribution of the content derived from Wikitravel to Wikitravel, and I am quite sure forever and ever we will carry on mentioning it for every article that was in any way derived from Wikitravel. I am asking absolutely and strictly about this being done as a form of active hyperlink, not just a text mention of Wikitravel and the particular article there.

So, again, my question is whether there is a legal requirement, either formal in some document, settlement with Internet Brands or elsewhere, or inferred from the laws deemed applicable to WV by WMF's legal staff, that would require WV to carry those links as hyperlinks?

I know this is probably on the very fringe of your responsbilities to help me with answering that, and that this is a question to our legal team much more than to yourself, but I find myself unsure on how to approach them knowing that they are not supposed to advise individual users. I also believe you are very effective in directing those issues to the right people and eliciting actions or answers from them quickly and effectively, which is why I turned to you.

I hope you will find the time and willingness to deal with my kind request. I would be most grateful to you if you could.

Kind regards, --PrinceGloria (talk) 07:55, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi, User:PrinceGloria, and thank you. :) I'm happy to ask our legal team if there's any guidance they can offer. I am not a lawyer and could not give legal advice even if I were, but in my own personal opinion their Terms of Use seem fairly clear on this point. Like our projects, they do not seem to be asking the contributors to their articles to relinquish copyright ("you always own the copyright in your work"). They specify that reusers "must give attribution to the creators" and "must retain the work and any derivative works under the same licensing." They do not say anything requiring attribution to the online service provider (Wikitravel) hosting the content. Likewise, if you copy an article from Wikipedia or an image from Wikimedia Commons, you are not required to mention or link to Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons, but only to attribute the copyright holder(s). We do offer the option of a link I believe for the convenience of reusers (mirrors would find it hard to get the full list of contributors for every article from history), but it can be bypassed altogether with that specific naming. (See Terms of use 7.b and 7.g) Anyway, I'll let you know what the legal team says! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:06, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you so very much for taking it up so promptly, Maggie, and for your wise words. My thinking was along similar lines, so I was just wanting to make sure there is nothing more complicated in legal terms behind the decision to maintain hyperlinks. I am most grateful for your time and effort to pursue this with the legal team and await any news on that front patiently. Have a great day/afternoon! PrinceGloria (talk) 14:34, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

User:PrinceGloria, I'm afraid that they don't have any input beyond what Geoff said here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikivoyage/Lounge#Google_PageRank_issues. I'm sorry I can't bring you a definitive response! :( --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:11, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Photographs of identifiable people

Hi Maggie:

Suppose my daughter found a picture of her in a Wikimedia site and felt not comfortable with it. She want it to be removed. What is the right procedure?

She is not a Wikimedian, don't know the internal structures and policies like so many interlinked projects, deletion requests, etc. etc. She is not interested to sign up here; or comment from an IP (due to privacy matters).

I see pages like Commons:Contact us/Problems and Wikipedia:Contact us - Subjects; but don't think they are the best options (as they are handled by volunteers).

So I think mailing to you is the best option. Am I right? JKadavoor Jee 12:50, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi, User:Jkadavoor. I'm afraid I don't have authority to remove content from the projects as staff - the Wikimedia Foundation does not create or curate content and is only authorized in limited circumstances to remove materials. If your daughter feels she has legal standing to have the picture removed (for instance if she feels it violates her privacy), she can write to legalwikimedia.org explaining why and making that request. If she doesn't have legal cause, the legal team is likely to have to ask the volunteers to remove it as a courtesy. If she does, they can remove it as an Office action. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:08, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the prompt reply. JKadavoor Jee 14:40, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I mentioned your opinion here. I/we think a mentioning on the Office action page is also required. JKadavoor Jee 15:59, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

User:Jkadavoor, that's just my statement, it's not spoken with the force of official policy. :) If anything is added to the page, I would suggest simply noting that legal communications should be addressed to our designated or registered agent listed at wmf:Contact_us. I would definitely not include anything about our passing things along to volunteers for courtesy requests, because our legal team does not have the capacity to be the first point of contact for everyone who wants a picture taken down. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:13, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. That is only a discussion; we will make a formal communication as suggested by you above if needed. BTW, why our contact us pages are so confusing to a newbie? I'm just curious. :) JKadavoor Jee 16:26, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

It's not meant to be, User:Jkadavoor. I think it's just a very complicated system. Even as it is, people write the wrong addresses all the time. I answer the email for "answers", and I'm constantly having to redirect people to OTRS. :/ --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 17:22, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Partially done; have a look at Commons_talk:Contact_us/Problems#Consent_Issues too, please. :) JKadavoor Jee 02:53, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for updating me, User:Jkadavoor! I've asked the OTRS team to help out. :) They spearheaded a redrafting of the "contact us" page on the English Wikipedia recently, so I hope that they'll be able to give good input there. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:10, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Hope it helps to reduce your workload too, as more mails will go directly to the relevant boxes rather than to answers and legal. :) JKadavoor Jee 12:35, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Hope the amended resolution is also relevant here. :) JKadavoor Jee 06:38, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Beginning of MassMessage, end of EdwardsBot

Hi. You're being contacted as you're listed as an EdwardsBot user.

MassMessage has been deployed to all Wikimedia wikis. For help using the new tool, please check out its help page or drop a note on Meta-Wiki.

With over 400,000 edits to Wikimedia wikis, EdwardsBot has served us well; however EdwardsBot will no longer perform local or global message delivery after December 31, 2013.

A huge thanks to Legoktm, Reedy, Aaron Schulz and everyone else who helped to get MassMessage deployed. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:36, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks!

Just wanted to share some flowers from last weekend's Wikicon with you! --Gnom (talk) 20:13, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

One of the bouquets given to the Wikicon 2013 volunteers. A part of my left arm and the campus of the University of Karlsruhe in the background ;-)

Beautiful! Thank you. :D --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:27, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Photoshop!

Someone photoshopped the horns and the flame-breathing nostrils <wink> and even before that you were 10x lovelier than me. <smile>  — billinghurst sDrewth 16:26, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

LOL! Thanks. :D --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:38, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Upcoming IdeaLab Events: IEG Proposal Clinics

Idea Lab

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Hello, Mdennis (WMF)! We've added Events to IdeaLab, and you're invited :)

Upcoming events focus on turning ideas into Individual Engagement Grant proposals before the March 31 deadline. Need help or have questions about IEG? Join us at a Hangout:

• Thursday, 13 March 2014, 1600 UTC
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Signed request for "Office Action" 'qua' article "India Against Corruption"

To: Maggie Dennis <mdennis@wikimedia.org> (Senior Community Advocate, Wikimedia Foundation)

Sat, Apr 5, 2014 at 1:19 PM

fwd: to various concerned persons

ELECTRONICALLY SIGNED COMMUNICATION per Section 2(1)(ta) Information Technology Act 2000 r/w Rule 3(4) of Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules, 2011 issued for redressal of grievance under the laws of India.

Dear Ms. Dennis

In terms of Wikimedia Policy [wikimedia.org/wiki/EN:Wikipedia:Office_actions], please be informed as under and act accordingly on behalf of Wikimedia Foundation.

That Mr. Sarbajit Roy is the National Convenor, since 2007, of the popular movement (including all its various campaigns and avatars) described as "India Against Corruption" @"IAC". That Mr. Roy and his Co-convenors of the India Against Corruption movement are the only persons authorised to use our movement's name or permit its further usage.

As IAC has not received any acknowledgment of previous communications addressed to you by your name, IAC is now constrained to formally convey the following signed request for an official edit to be immediately made by the Wikimedia Foundation ("WMF") concerning the article "India Against Corruption" on the English Language Wikipedia project. The said article is hosted on WMF computer servers and published by WMF computer resources and is viewable everywhere within the territory of India where India's cyber laws (and also other laws of India) apply.

To remove all doubts that it is WMF's hosting and publication, IAC brings to your notice that the article (hereinafter called the "impugned article") is accessible in India using the URLs (communication links)

• "http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/EN:India_Against_Corruption",
• "http://wikimedia.org/wiki/EN:India_Against_Corruption",
• "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India_Against_Corruption" etc.

It is apparent that ultimately all WMF's projects are hosted on Wikimedia.ORG servers and the accessible content is under the absolute control of the WMF and subject to WMF's "Terms of Use".

That IAC is also aggrieved that WMF's servers are used to store, upload and distribute large quantities of grossly obscene and pornographic content/ high-definition media and that our movement's name is thereby getting sullied by publication of the impugned article by WMF's pornographic websites/servers.

That IAC wishes to bring to your notice from 23.November 2013 onwards the WMF's impugned article was completely rewritten by the registered WMF "User" Sitush [12]. IAC says that the content uploaded and shared by WMF's User is false, inaccurate, defamatory, libelous, grossly disparaging, promotes impersonation and passes off impersonators of India Against Corruption as the real article.

On coming to know about these inaccurate edits to the article, volunteers of India Against Corruption, from 16th December 2013 onwards complained about the impugned article to the designated "Contact Us" email ID for affected article subjects and thereafter availed each and every internal dispute resolution forum proposed to us by Wikimedia's volunteers and site administrators to resolve the issue with WMF's user Sitush.

That the extent of IAC's bonafides can be gauged by that India Against Corruption volunteers even submitted to Wikimedia's ultimate dispute resolution mechanism "Mediation", a dispute resolution process conducted by a highly experienced and trained Wikimedia Administrator under WMF's rules and policies. It was repeatedly made clear to the parties by the Mediator that the article would have to comply with WMF's policies. It is pertinent that both IAC and User:Sitush had agreed to mediation to resolve the content dispute so that the mediation could commence.

The communication link (URL) to the Mediation record is http://wikimedia.org/wiki/EN:Wikipedia:Requests_for_mediation/India_Against_Corruption

The agreed core issues of the content dispute requiring Mediation is as follows:-

A) "Whether the appellations "Team Anna" and "India Against Corruption" unambiguously refer to the same entity or not"

B) "Whether defamatory / disparaging statements emanating from misuse of the India Against Corruption's title(s) by third parties should be associated with the actual India Against Corruption movement in Wikipedia's article(s), or if these should be taken to articles on Anna Hazare, Team Anna, Jantantra Morcha etc. ?"

India Against Corruption volunteers vigorously prosecuted these issues during Mediation, and WMF's User Sitush then stated that he would not be participating in further Mediation proceedings. User:Sitush thereafter ignored all "pings" by the Mediator to rejoin the Mediation.

Unfortunately, WMF's User:Sitush still continues to refuse to remove the content he has published about India Against Corruption and insists that Mr. Anna Hazare and Mr. Hazare's Team Members are the India Against Corruption movement.

Recently, when an India Against Corruption volunteer posted a public retraction dated 27.March.2014 by India's oldest English newspaper "The Hindu" on the impugned article's talk page for further discussion on this issue, WMF's User:Sitush repeatedly deleted IAC's discussion proposal [13] and [14] to prevent any discussion on his offensive content.

It is pertinent to mention that throughout the duration of the Dispute Resolution process, which culminated on 25.Feb.2014 [15] with the Mediator's remarks

Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/India Against Corruption Non-participation of some parties. Closed by mediator. Sunray (talk) 14:41, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

that no India Against Corruption volunteer / editor touched the impugned article as a token of our good faith. However, now our volunteers are getting increasingly disturbed by the grossly offensive and impersonatory nature of WMF's impugned article which is affecting their daily organisational activities and their own identity is thereby under a cloud. Our volunteers are unable to understand why WMF continues to abuse IAC and defame IAC in this manner while continuing to pass off our impersonators as the India Against Corruption despite the WMF User:Sitush conceding his inability to defend his edits and his sources and withdrawing from Mediation.

IAC is therefore formally requesting you through this digitally signed email to officially edit the impugned article and remove / disable all references to Mr. Anna Hazare and his "team" from it, preferably within the next 36 hours as required by India's cyber law such as the "Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines), Rules, 2011".

IAC is also marking a copy of this email to Ms. Bishakha Dutta, the WMF's Trustee in India. To Ms. Dutta IAC lays great stress on the vast amounts of grossly obscene / pornographic content which exists on the WMF's servers which are used to attract visitors from India to WMF servers to read WMF's abusive and fabricated articles like that on India Against Corruption.

IAC is greatly concerned that such grossly offensive pornographic content and imagery long existing on WMF servers and curated by WMF Administrators and distributed without suitable precautions including to minors and children and without any mandatory WMF Grievance Officer for Indians to complain to, is capable of inciting simple / unlettered Indian folk to commit vile cognisable offences including, rape, murder, bestiality, sodomy and other unnatural perversions etc.

With best wishes

India Against Corruption

User:HRA1924, I have not read the bulk of this notice, because the subject line alone is enough to tell me that I cannot help you. While I am authorized to enact Office Actions, I may only do so on direction of the legal team. While it is part of my role to help people reach out to the appropriate staff, since you have carbon copied me in your letters to our lawyers and our Board of Directors, I know that you are already in contact with the best people to whom I could connect you. I can only advise you to make your request to them. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 11:46, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Dear Ms. Dennis (Maggie), We sympathize with your wish not to be a part of this distasteful episode. Had we received a revert from either WMF's lawyer or WMF's Trustee from India to our emails we would not have been posting on your wall. Nevertheless, since you are empowered to initiate a WP:OA, and IAC has already sent you the digitally signed email (described above), please act as "postman" on IAC's request and forward it to whoever, in your opinion, can examine if "Office Action" is warranted, or not, for the inaccurate article India Against Corruption based on our brief facts and WMF's "Terms of Use" (ie. without quibbling over jurisdiction of the applicable laws). Any formal request IAC could make to WMF's Legal Dept at some future date could possibly be through our counsel and could be based on India's cyber laws. Standard Disclaimer: "This is not a legal threat" :-) HRA1924 (talk) 13:01, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

HRA1924, you may send it to the same attorneys you have already been writing. legalwikimedia.org is an acceptable general address if you do not wish to write to them as individuals anymore --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:13, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Dear Ms. Dennis. IAC has approached you for an "official edit" as an "office action". This is an internal administrative action by the Secretariat of the WMF. The WMF "Office" is free to seek advice from anybody, including WMF's Legal Team or the Office of the General Counsel or external lawyers (say in India), before accepting, or denying, IAC's request. Office Action is an important procedural stage, and it is essential that IAC knows why our request for redaction cannot be acceded to, so that a proper legal notice of claim can be sent to WMF, if so required. In other words, "Office Action" cannot be avoided or substituted by a request to "Legal".HRA1924 (talk) 13:52, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Dear Ms. Dennis. IAC shall make this very simple for you and WMF

• A)WMF's registered User:Sitush from 23.Nov.2013 onwards has constantly asserted that one Mr. Anna Hazare and his team are/were the real India Against Corruption movement ("IAC")
• B) We disagreed, and said that Mr. Hazare and his "team" are impersonators and were never part of IAC movement
• C) The content dispute reached "Mediation" conducted by an expert Wikipedia Administrator to enforce Wikipedia's policies
• D) User:Sitush could not defend his content and withdrew, and the Mediation was closed for reason of his withdrawal
• E) The content remains in the article because the "User" Sitush regularly misuses WP:ANI as a "Wikimobocracy" [16] for its dramatic effects
• F) In these circumstances when both the Wikipedia Administration as well as the affected person (IAC) have tried their level best to work with the concerned WMF User but without success, the only bonafide course of action now open to WMF is to immediately disable the disputed content as a courtesy to IAC. HRA1924 (talk) 15:53, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Dear Ms. Dennis, India Against Corruption is a small body of persons and values its privacy. Since Dec 2013 WMF's website Administrators have had actual knowledge of our claim that the article "India Against Corruption" is libelous and promotes impersonation of our body, but failed to remove the text as we requested. Accordingly, in addition to requesting that the disputed content be disabled / removed immediately, IAC also hereby asks WMF for a retraction/apology for the harm caused to our movement by the continued publication of the false content. Said retraction/apology to be issued by a senior officer of WMF. This additional request is issued without prejudice. Please convey this additional request to the persons who shall decide on our request for Office Action. HRA1924 (talk) 01:33, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Foundation wiki feedback#wikimediafoundation.org: Attribution of translation for :wmf:Terms of Use/de

Hello Mdennis,

thanks for your answering in this discussion and and for adding another edit on 16:50, 16. April 2014 to the revision history of wmf:Terms of Use/de. Nevertheless, I can't still be satisfied with this reivison of the wmf:Terms of Use/de page, since it is not proper attribution, as I've explained in detail again on the page Foundation wiki feedback#wikimediafoundation.org: Attribution of translation for :wmf:Terms of Use/de, where I've also described several possible solutions. I would be happy if something could be done about it,

greetings Rosenkohl (talk) 08:36, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Hello, User:Rosenkohl. I'm sorry that I didn't realize this was an ongoing concern for you; I appreciate the note at my talk page. I had noticed on May 1st that User:Nemo bis had kindly changed the edit summary - [17]. He linked to the discussion, so I had read it then and noted that this seems to be in line with your wishes on the matter. I presumed you were aware. I hope that this resolves your concerns. While the language that I used (unfortunately, later rather than sooner) is that recommended by English Wikipedia's policy for transferring content across projects, I certainly understand if you prefer different wording. Do you know by chance what is the language used in the German Wikipedia when content is copied or translated from other projects? You don't seem to have an equivalent policy to en:Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 09:41, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Pings

Hi Maggie, can you ask people to respond to the Wikimedia-l email threads about Sandole and leadership development? I'm surprised that no one has responded to the most recent questions about Sandole. I pinged Gayle about the leadership development questions because she seems very interested in that topic but no response has happened on the list yet. Thanks, --Pine^✉ 07:11, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi, User:Pine. I'm happy to ping people, but I'd probably stand a better chance with a targeted question than a general request for people to respond to Wikimedia-l threads. People tend to be busy, so in my own approach to staff I try to take them clear, concise questions with any background that they may need to respond. Those things are less likely to fall off the radar. :) Is it possible for you to frame such a question, or would you prefer that we just take our chances with a few general pings? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 10:43, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi Maggie, I think I was pretty clear with my request to Gayle but I am wondering if the ping got lost in her inbox so please just ask her to check her Meta talk page and let her know I would understand if she wants to delegate answering that question to someone else in her department.

As for the Sandole discussion, a number of users have asked questions in the Sandole thread that are still waiting for answers and it seems that the issue has fallen off of Sue's task list despite having implications for how chapters and thorgs do their work. If Anasuya wants to respond I think that would be ok although she may be busy with FDC activities, and Lila may not know enough about how these programs work to provide well-grounded answers. I think this is unfinished business that would be best finished before Sue leaves since at least some of the questions are about the announcement she made. If necessary we can ask Lila to modify Sue's decision later. Thanks, --Pine^✉ 06:49, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi, User:Pine. So you would like me to ping Gayle and see if I can get Sue to respond to the Sandole thread. Again, I'm more likely to be successful if I have a concrete question than to ask somebody to review emails on Wikimedia-L, but I'm game to give it a go. While I don't set their priorities, I'm happy to try. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:04, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, just noting here that we discussed this off-wiki. --Pine^✉ 06:34, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Hi, User:Pine. I have a response. :)

For transparency, this is the question we crafted in our discussion:

Sue wrote (here) saying that the Wikimedia Foundation would not fund direct content creation from our Wikimedians in Residence. The question is whether that directive would also apply to money that chapters receive or other organizations receive from the Foundation that they would then in turn, manage, redistribute to Wikimedians in Residence and then, one would hope, supervise and train their Wikimedians in Residence adequately. Does the directive about WMF-directly managed funds also apply to chapters and other orgs?

I’ve consulted with the grantmaking department, and may be able to offer some context here. What Sue said is that the Wikimedia Foundation would "not support or endorse the creation of paid roles that have article writing as a core focus". The grantmaking department does not interpret this as a blanket ban on content creation and feels that there’s much room for useful and effective Wikimedians in Residence and other models, especially on the lines of suggestions that have already come from expert community members. What the grantmaking team continues to believe is that content creation should not be the “core” activity of these models, which should instead focus on liaising between the hosting institution and the community, including matchmaking, tours, training, volunteer-empowering and outreach to volunteers to work with materials provided by the hosting institution.

Hope that helps clarify things! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:53, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Maggie, that is helpful. It also suggests to me that if another organization like a museum wants to use its own money to sponsor a WiR that adds content, then WMF won't object to that so long as the content is submitted in a way that is consistent with CoI and other policies. If I have a follow up question I will let you know. Thanks again. --Pine^✉ 03:14, 13 June 2014 (UTC)