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Starting anew

Archiving happened again. :-) Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 12:21, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

WMF / Community communication

It became clear to me from the Visual Editor fiasco that communication between the WMF and the community was, at best, broken. Although I accept that things may have got a bit better with regard to VE (which I keep half an eye on) the whole sorry story above makes it clear that there's still a serious issue. I also accept that the WMF is aware that communication is an issue but I've yet to see anything from the WMF that suggests you're trying to fix the problem. Now you may be discussing it amongst yourself, and I believe you are, but this doesn't seem a very good way to get the handle on the problem as you're going to have a biased view, only half the story etc. At the height of the VE stupidity I asked what the WMF was doing about the communication issue and was told you were aware on it and working on how to improve. Several months later I've still seen no attempt to engage the community on this. Have I missed where this is occurring? Surely you can see that the WMF saying here's what we think the problem is and here's what we're doing to fix it with no community input is only going to annoy the community, especially as it will seem so similar to what happened with VE. This seems to be a good time to ask this as Flow is already creating some similar issues to VE so although things may have got better they still seem a long way from good. Dpmuk (talk) 23:56, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

• Does the WMF react slower, or faster, to such concerns than the much larger private-market Symantec? Interesting question, I think. The last time Symantec messed up a major software release (which they did in a very big way), there was howling for blood, and the fixes were much too little, much too late. And continued to be so permanently :) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 01:05, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
• I am making motions off-wiki for community involvement far earlier in development processes. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. --Pine 08:26, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
• @Dpmuk: I speak to volunteer developers about their work on a nearly daily basis, to see if the engineers in my team can help them. I email the stewards and other holders of advanced permissions about changes we're making that will affect them (such as the OAuth rollout or the migration from oversight to suppression). I am engaging previous election administrators of SecurePoll elections so that our upcoming improvements to it are appropriately targeted to their needs. Is this communication with the community? Yes. Is it visible to most people? No. If there are issues you have with the communications about a particular product, then please do raise those issues and the relevant teams will try to sort them out. But remember that the Wikimedia Foundation and the community are not homogenous groups, and in my opinion you do your argument disservice by referring to them as such. --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 06:11, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

• DGarry (WMF) thumbs up on the communication. I think WMF has learned from VE and AFT5. I hope this has happened in time to keep the encyclopedia's characteristics and the volunteer population at sustainable levels. There are many issues that have contributed to volunteer decline and I hope projects like Flow and VE will assist with improving the trends when they are deployed. --Pine 05:55, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
• Dpmuk I think WMF has hired more community liaisons for some of the reasons you mention. It's a fair criticism that some of this should have been seen sooner but there's not much we can do about that now. It will also be interesting to see what the new ED does. --Pine 05:59, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

• @Pine: We're also recruting a Director of Community Engagement, a newly created position at the WMF. The position is meant to help improve the communication and engagement channels between the WMF and community which are, I think, sometimes a bit broken at both ends. I highly doubt it'll be a silver bullet that solve all of the issues, but it should help, at least. --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 06:23, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

• @DGarry (WMF): I think that community engagement director is going to be in a difficult position. I think there are communication problems at both ends and I think there are also a lot of other issues in leadership, ownership, and governance. Philippe is in this mess already and I think the engagement director will be also. I think the community feels that WMF can be authoritarian and overestimates its skill. This happens with product development like AFT5 and VE but also with programs like IEP and the recent problems with the board's decision about affiliates. I also think from the volunteer's point of view WMF is separate from the volunteer movement although individual WMF employees have said that they think the groups are homogenous. WMF has done some good work but the things that are most visible to the community seem to routinely cause friction. I think the board and the ED need to be working these issues with a broad scope. --Pine 20:39, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

I have been putting off responding to this comment because i wanted to say what I need to in a non-defensive posture, and I'm carefully choosing my words toward that. I've been an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation for 5 years. I'm a Director for one division, and my team is tasked with some incredibly broad reaching jobs, including supporting the negotiation of the new Terms of Use, the new Privacy Policy, the new Trademark policy, etc. My team deals with about major 100 cases per year (according to our case tracking system) - VE, for instance, counts as one case for that purpose, as does each of the things that I just listed - and several hundred more minor cases. We dealt with nearly 100 crisis interventions in addition to that (these are what they sound like: suicide threat responses, etc) and referred a significant percentage of them to law enforcement. In addition to that, we oversaw training every new staff member in the LCA team (including all interns) and a significant percentage of the other new staff hired by WMF this year in community interactions. In those five years, there have been exactly three instances (with which my team was involved - I obviously can't control ones where I'm not involved) where I would honestly state that something was broken with our communication. In all instances, I think there were significant external sources that added to the conflict as well. I think those three instances must be viewed in light of the thousands of positive interactions, many so quiet that they're rarely noticed, that we have been involved with. When we do our job right, you shouldn't even notice we've been involved. So, frankly, I refuse to stipulate to - or accept responsibility for - the whole premise. Does that mean things can't be improved? Of course not, and this incident has served to very personally remind me of that. There are those who say that "the sky is falling" on communications issues here - I don't think it is. We got a new Terms of Use, a new Trademark policy, a new Privacy policy, worked to deliver an upgrade to OTRS, and provided ongoing intense and expert advice to WMF staff about how to engage with the community, etc. It can get better - it always can - but I think the record of my team and my own communication are pretty good, on the whole. This community subjects us to scrutiny that's absolutely unbelievable, and still - on balance - I think we withstand that. I'm sorry that you don't agree.

I hope that the overall issues with communication between the WMF and the editing community can be healed - the hiring of the Director of Community Engagement (Product) should help with this, I think. But I'm hesitant to accept full responsibility here - even on behalf of the whole WMF - because I think it's a huge, broad question that needs to be considered from a number of angles, including determining what, if anything, the community can do to help with this effort. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 07:38, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

If you consider e.g. VisualEditor as one instance, then your count may be correct (seems low even so). But within VE, there have been at least a dozen communication breakdowns, and they seem to be ongoing. The opt-out / opt-in discussion was the major one, but far from the last. Something like the character insertor discussion is to me a major communication breakdown as well (the "I sent this to 1000 people and no one responded" defense and so on, and the complete disconnect seen in that discussion between the WMF team, including the so-called community liaisons, and the actual community). Fram (talk) 08:25, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Phillipe, thank you for the response. I wished you'd at least given a holding reply so that it looked like you weren't ignoring it (it took over 10 days for a response) - a small suggestion for improving communication there. I understand that it may not be the right time for writing a proper reply but even a simple "I've seen this and will reply later" is reassuring that we're not being ignored.

I have to agree with Fram here that your metric seems a bit wrong. Most of the things you list either apply to a relatively small group of people (e.g. OTRS upgrade) or are likely of interest to very few people (I think you'd have to suggest a pretty outlandish change to the terms of use for most people to care) so I think people not noticing your involvement in these things is more a sign of that then you doing it right. I'm not suggesting you're doing it wrong on these issues, merely that people not noticing you on them is not a good sign your doing it right. VE, by contrast, will have been noticed by most editors and several of them would have cared about it. Here you've very definitely been noticed and it would appear not in a good way.

You suggest that I don't think you're doing a good job. While that's the impression I get I accept that I don't know enough to make that call. And that's my point, from what every one at WMF says I don't think you do either as you seem to be basing your assessment on people's feed back on projects but unless you go and look for feedback from the wider community the people who give you feedback are likely to be very far from a representative group. For example you suggest you get very little negative feedback on how you dealt with the terms of use changes but is this simply because people weren't aware of it. Have you pro-actively done a survey to see how many people were aware of it and what there thoughts are once they were aware of it. The most vocal group are always going to be those unhappy with what you're doing so the result of such a survey may well be you're doing a good job but without doing something like that I can't see how you can say the community thinks you're doing a good job.

I will happily admit that the community could also have dealt with things better but without more interaction with them how can both sides find out what the other side thinks they did wrong and move forward from there? The WMF simply doing what it thinks will improve things seems unlikely to work.

You say that the community subjects you to unbelievable scrutiny like that's a bad thing. Any sort of comparison to a commercial organisation isn't really fair as Misplaced Pages isn't one it's a charity. Comparing you to normal charities isn't really fair to the size and nature of your volunteer base. Misplaced Pages is breaking new ground here and I think we'll still trying to find a model that works. Yes you got a lot of scrutiny but that may be because that's the only way to keep volunteers on board and without volunteers the project is nothing.

In short I do think WMF staff genuinely think they're doing a good job when it comes to interacting with the community and that you care about getting interaction right. I just think that you may be sticking your head in the sand too much and not really getting a good handle on what the community thinks. If you could say here that you'd got the views of a reasonable cross section of the community, not just those that are vocal about it, and that most people were happy - preferably with real results presented, rather than just a statement of fact - then I'd happily agree you're doing a good job and it's just a minority, all be it a vocal one that disagrees. However to date no one has been able to say that to me, let alone present evidence to support it. Dpmuk (talk) 03:03, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Interesting arguments. Taking the TOU for example, we ran massive banner ads and negotiated it with the community over huge discussions that included more words than the Steinbeck novel "The Grapes of Wrath". The Privacy policy? More words than "Catch-22", and the Trademark policy? "Hitchhiker's Guide" (Yeah, I like the analogical feel of the book titles, I admit it.. I suck at remembering word counts). There were a large number of community members involved. But, as you point out, nowhere near the full community - we can obviously only deal with those who show up. With all that said, you raise an interesting point about proactive surveys, and one that's well taken. I'll think on that some. Thank you for taking the time to expand on your comments, and for caring. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 18:11, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

PS - the comment about a "response coming" comment is also well taken, and quite correct. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 18:13, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

• Personally I think WMF Legal does a good job. I'm most familiar with the work of Geoff and Michelle and I respect them. I think that Community Advocacy for a number of reasons gets to deal with issues that are decided in other departments. I think James Forrester should get credit for holding regular IRC discussions about VE and I'd like to see similar initiatives in many departments of WMF. Legal does similar work with their public policy discussions. I think having more of these discussions would help with a number of issues including communications. I also think it would help to have monthly ED office hours. --Pine 07:21, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

I think you may have just strengthened my point as I was not aware that James Forrester held regular IRC discussions. Now personally I don't use IRC as I believe to much is discussed there that should be discussed on wiki but I wonder how many people either were also not aware of this, or if they were did not want to use IRC for whatever reason. This may be a case where the WMF think they're now doing a good job communicating but lots of editors may disagree due to the chosen medium - again I'm not saying that is the case just pointing out that I believe it's a plausible situation. Obviously by doing the discussions in the first place it shows the WMF are willing and trying to communicate with the community I just wonder whether they're doing it the best way. Of course people commenting here are also going to be an unrepresentative group as we've found this page. Dpmuk (talk) 13:05, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

We post to village pumps. We write emails. We use IRC office hours. We use video conferencing. We bring volunteers to the office. We hold hackathons both as dedicated events and also at Wikimania. We use central notices. We send emails to mailing lists. We invite people to email us directly. I've probably missed a few things, too. From where I'm standing, short of spamming people with endless emails and talk pages notices, and then those users either unsubscribe or totally tune out, we have no more options. Given that we do all of these things already, what is the way we can improve? I am not asking this rhetorically; if we're missing something, I genuinely want to know so we can fix it. --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 19:44, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

• Dpmuk and Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation if we're talking about VE only and about bulk public outreach only I think VE is now doing a good job. As the recent example with the board and Affcom shows there are still gaps. I can give some other examples. It took me months to get a reply to a question that I emailed to Legal, I never got acknowledgements to emails that I sent to Sue and her assistant in 2013, Finance told me February 12th they were working on annual plan information that would be posted in "a day or two" and nothing has happened yet that I know of, three emails to two people in HR were not acknowledged, and I asked a question here on February 11 that hasn't been answered. Most of these communications are about routine topics or even topics that other people had expressed a lot of interest in so I don't know why people aren't responding. This is frustrating and it happens all over the Foundation. The inconsistency is consistent. --Pine 20:52, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
• Dpmuk what VE communications do you read? They may be missing the announcements of VE IRC meetings. --Pine 21:13, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Dan Garry - I'm not sure the problem is so much with were you're doing things, it's how you, and I suppose the community as well, let people know where to look for these things. In no small part I think this is due a bigger problem with the wikimedia software - our help system is, IMO, still not fit for purpose (although having just looked at it I've noticed some improvements). It is far from clear that any new user could use the help system to find any of the venues you mention (using the search box on the main help page to search for software brings up a wikipoject as a first result for example). From personal experience it took a long time for me to find the village pump after I started editing Misplaced Pages. I still don't have a good handle on what mailing lists exist and where to find them. In many ways I think this is the root cause of the problem - the WMF think they're communicating well because they post to all the places they can but it's still not getting through to many editors at the coal-face - I hate to think what the situations like for readers. Do I have the solution, no, hence the reason I advocate a survey or similar to get a real handle on the problem and hopefully start working out where we can make things better.

I also think that this has essentially been the root cause of many of the VE, and probably other problems. The WMF thought they were communicating well and so have come across as being a bit standoffish - "we are communicating", while many editors thought that this wasn't the case and thought the WMF didn't care about editors because they didn't communicate. I'll be honest that was my first impression after the VE debacle and it's only after discussion with several WMF staff that I've realised you really do care about editors and are trying hard to communicate, it's just not working right. I suspect many editors who haven't had the discussion I have still have the impression you don't care and that's causing some of the bad feelings. This is something the WMF and community need to work together to solve, but at the moment I'm, disappointingly seeing very little movement on this front (well at least until Phillipe's comment above) - although of course, somewhat ironically, you may be doing things and I'm just not aware of it.

As to the problems Pine gives I would agree that it does reasonably often come across that WMF staff ignore communication - for example I posted to User talk:Tbayer (WMF) last year with a similar post to what started this and never got a reply. They may not have like my attitude (which I agree was a bit, unintentionally, confrontational), they may have been busy or there may have been several other reasons they couldn't give a proper reply but failure to give any reply is irritating. Then again I note we as a community are equally bad at this - for example reports at WP:ANI that get archived without anyone commenting on.

As to where I watch about VE, I have both WP:VEF and WP:VPT watchlisted although it's relatively easy to overlook a post on these pages given their high traffic. I do think the idea of a WMF noticeboard, once suggested by User:Mdennis (WMF) and written off as being another noticeboard may now be worth visiting given the major changes to the software etc we're now going through. Dpmuk (talk) 21:37, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Dpmuk you make several good points. Our help system and our many communications channels are spaghetti which makes everyone's jobs harder but this has been known for a long time and nothing has been done about this in a broad way. For the help files it would take a big effort on English Misplaced Pages to get those organized and would require so much work that an IEG grant might be appropriate. On the WMF side some of them are very good about their email and some aren't. I think a lot of them care but for some reason a number of requests, emails, and ideas fall through the cracks. I've heard that the WMF office culture is optimistic but disorganized and I think these traits are visible in the issues we're discussing here. --Pine 08:10, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

@Dpmuk: I've passed the idea of a WMF noticeboard onto Howie, the Director of Product at the WMF. Since we're already making posts in a lot of different places, I think a model like the Arbitration Committee noticeboard could make sense here; we could continue to post our notifications to multiple locations, but also post supplementary notifications to the WMF noticeboard with invitations to discuss on the respective page rather than at the WMF noticeboard. I doubt it would be a magic bullet to solve the problems, but it may help. I'll discuss that with a few people and see what comes of those discussions. Thanks! --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 01:22, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

@DGarry (WMF): and @Dpmuk: instead of creating a new noticeboard for people to monitor would it be easier and more effective to use the existing Meta goings-on list? A lot is announced there already. --Pine 21:01, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

@Philippe (WMF): in your CA role can you encourage WMFfers in general to be consistent about checking their email and watching the talk pages of reports that they publish? Thanks, --Pine 21:01, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I created a WMF noticeboard and it was deleted please see Misplaced Pages:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:WMF noticeboard and the deletion review. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 21:16, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

I did create WP:WMF out of what I learned from that experience, though. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 21:16, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

I was aware there had been past attempts, just not aware of that one. What I was thinking of more though was a notification only one. I would agree there's better places to discuss things, such as meta, the village pump etc, but a central page for the WMF to post notifications I think would solve a few issues. The two that immediately spring to mind are that it's easy to lose notifications on big pages such as VPT and the problem with meta is changes don't show up here so for people that don't frequent meta very often (or at all) they may not notice even if they have meta pages listed. I also noted that that page was deleted before VE was turned on by default and the issues that caused so consensus may have changed some. Dpmuk (talk) 21:31, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

DGarry (WMF) What you're missing is a sense of scale; there are 119,842 active users spread over 6,943,451 articles, most of whom will never run into contact with each other or the 848 admins, let alone the relative handful of WMF employees. What this means is that the "Misplaced Pages community" as some sort of coherent cognitive entity is as real as a Unicorn. A much better model is that of multiple overlapping sub communities. In practice what that means is when someone complains about "WMF not communicating with the community," what the means is "WMF has not recently communicated with the tiny section of English Misplaced Pages that I care about." If you wish to make the multiple communication venues more accessible, I suggest creating and maintaining a section in Misplaced Pages:Wikimedia Foundation listing the venues you've just mentioned. NE Ent 11:03, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

@NE Ent: I actually think that I'm not missing that nuance, as I alluded to in my first post in this thread where I explicitly acknowledged that both the WMF and the community are actually heterogenous entities, which is a different (but equivalent) way of putting it. Philippe, his colleagues, and others such as myself, are working on ways address these problems, but this is a highly complex problem that likely does not have a solution; instead we'll just have to work on incremental improvements. --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 18:56, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

@DGarry (WMF): and @NE Ent: I think WMF is working on globalizing watchlists. With or separate from that work someone could develop a system of global watchlist notifications. The notifications box will need to be organized and curated if it gets a lot of use but I think it would work. Do you know the status of global watchlist development? --Pine 23:16, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is working on global watchlists at this time. Such technology would be dependent on other things (Flow and GlobalProfile, most likely). --Jorm (WMF) (talk) 00:05, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

@Jorm (WMF): Ok, I've made a list of communications improvements that have been discussed or are in development.

• mw:Flow
• mw:GlobalProfile
• Global watchlists that could include global watchlist notifications
• Cross-wiki talk page notifications
• Newsletters extension

What is the next features project for communication after Flow?

Thanks, --Pine 05:28, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

The answer to "what is the next features project for communication after Flow" is "there is none." Ultimately, Flow will encompass global communication - in fact, that is a core feature of the product: cross-wiki communication and subscriptions. When fully functional, Flow will eliminate the need for a newsletter extension or global watchlist events on discussions. The idea of a "global watchlist" will then apply only to content pages, and that feature is so low on the priority list that you should assume that it won't be tackled by the Foundation until at least 2016 or later. Aside from that, there's an issue of technology prioritization: any "global" communication technology will be based on GlobalProfile, whose cross-wiki functionality will be based on Flow technology.

Now, it is entirely possible that there exists some (very) small splinter group of engineers and designers within the Foundation who are somehow developing some sort of global communications software without having talked to the product or design teams and may just spring it on everyone. I don't think that's the case, though: a big part of my job is having insight into what is going on across the board. And it's entirely possible that a volunteer development team has built something, or could build something, that does this. But even if that happened, that technology would have to be vetted against our product plan, which has been pretty solid since on or about the second week of March, 2012 (which is when we set down the plan) and how badly it would disrupt us or if it would even work with the roadmap.

Basically, I'm saying: No, global watchlists are not on the plan. They would be a distraction from the plan.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 06:37, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

@Jorm (WMF): it sounds like Flow will go a long way to fixing some of the issues we're talking about in this thread. That is great. --Pine 05:52, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Greek user needs legal assistance

In case you are not aware, please see WP:VPM#We are all Diu which concerns an el.wiki user who is the subject of a law suit for an edit to a politician's article. Someone may have notified the WMF, but I can't see mention of it. Johnuniq (talk) 05:10, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi Johnuniq. We are aware and are providing some assistance, though I'm not sure exactly what. I'll see if I'm free to disclose that. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 13:40, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

@Johnuniq:, please see this link for more info. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 18:43, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

What a lovely blog. I particularly like the references at the end. Yes, some people have a fundamental lack of understanding of how the intertubes work. Risker (talk) 18:53, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, that's a great response, and I see it is now at el:We are all Diu. I gather that Diu has edit warred to remove the material and has been blocked for three days. However, the user is still an admin and I would have thought that for their own protection all rights should be removed until this affair is over, and without the user having to request it. I'm not looking for a discussion on that—I just wanted to raise the matter for private consideration. Johnuniq (talk) 22:45, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Philippe and Mpaulson (WMF) --Pine 05:48, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Template:ArchivingSoon Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 07:46, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Please update us on these "new" standards /policies

Please update us on the new Misplaced Pages standards / policies to address BLP, privacy, defamation, etc issues. Where are these located ?

Please review and .

It is extremely distressing for defamed article subjects, including organisations (and their in-house legal teams) to be forced to become Misplaced Pages editors and have to deal with incompetent / unempowered OTRS volunteers, battleground editors, and also the numerous helpful editors and Admins who are helpless with community self-written policies and guidelines which encourage such BLP and Libel etc. violations in the name of "free speech" (especially anonymous free speech).

At the same time we appreciate that a significant number of complaints may not be fit to be taken up directly by OFFICE or the General Counsel.

In this context India's Highest Courts have reviewed the stand taken by US MNCs like Google , Facebook etc. and the present legal status in India is that on formal complaint by an affected person under the Concerned Legal Rule to the "internet intermediary" the disputed text must be first be disabled (preferably within 3 days) and the matter resolved within 30 days at the very most. These directives (also given to Misplaced Pages) were passed on a judgment of the Delhi High Court last year against Google and Facebook, now extended to all "intermediaries", the "penalty" for contravention including blocking the intermediary from India. We would like to know how WMF views the aforesaid directions and if any "Grievance Officer" or similar process exists for defamed Indian article subjects to complain to ?

DISCLAIMER: This is not a legal threat, but a request for specific information. HRA1924 (talk) 15:01, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Hello HRA1924,

Well, obviously, IANAL (I am not a lawyer), so I'm singularly unqualified to answer all your questions. However, I'll take a stab at what I can...

The Wikimedia Foundation is an organization that is organized and run from the United States, and is therefore subject to US law. With that said, however, there are existing complaint processes that you can utilize. As just one example, if there's a problem with "incompetent OTRS volunteers", then the OTRS admins are an escalation point. Wikimedians generally have provided for an escalation point for all issues - if you can't determine where it is, please feel free to ask me. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 19:54, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

We appreciate that you cannot answer all queries for the reason/s you have cited. We shall certainly approach an active OTRS-Admin to see if such Admins are now sufficiently empowered to remove from the impugned article (as a conflicted / affected party we shall not do so ourselves) the libelous text we specify (which the OTRS volunteers did not do) in terms of and considering that Admin:Sunray - the mediator appointed for our closed mediation case - has recorded ] that the other editor(s) to our dispute did not participate after the issues were settled and the issues we had provided were fit to proceed further with . HRA1924 (talk) 03:55, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

We have referred our cause to OTRS-Admin "Tiptoety" . In the course of our submissions there we linked to which in turn linked to - the previous version of which was this . What we want to bring to WMF's notice is that it took firstpost.com precisely 8 minutes (by the clock) to act on our email complaint that their article wrongly reported Anna Hazare as an IAC leader, and to remove all references to India Against Corruption from their news report. Misplaced Pages's performance for grievance redressal process to abused BLPs is pathetic in comparison. Can you highlight this within WMF ? HRA1924 (talk) 10:42, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

ANI that might concern you - see Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Tendentious_IDHT_even_after_mediation. - Sitush (talk) 11:27, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Dear Phillipe, can you please guide us to the policy which says that if a WP editor who has agreed to mediation drops out to avoid discussing his edits which are at issue, it is a behavioral issue for which the concerned editor can be banned for disruptive editing. As a defamed article subject, we resent such blatant attempts by disruptive POV pushing anonymous editors like "Sitush" who are abusing WMF servers (and other computer resources) to defame us and to thereafter "chill" our usage of WMF processes for grievance redressal - as we were invited by WMF to use by the WMF's OTRS facility. HRA1924 (talk) 13:57, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but that's not a WMF policy, and as I am responsible for roughly 700 wikis, I don't track the local (non-WMF based) policies on all of them. I'm conversant in the broad strokes (things like OR, and NPOV), but I don't track them on a more incremental level, such as you're addressing. So I'm sorry, but no, I can't guide you there - not because I'm not willing, but because I simply don't know. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 18:46, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Note to Philippe and TPS, this user has been blocked. --Pine 20:55, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Suggestions

Hey, Philippe,
Continuing our discussion from AN/I, I have held several elected positions of responsibility in nonprofit associations and what became quickly apparent was:

1. Unless you are handing out grant money, most people only contact you if they are upset about something.
2. If everything is going fine, few people show up to talk to you at open meetings or office hours unless it is a condition or responsibility of their position. I used to hold elaborate catered meetings and have 5 people show up. I used to be depressed at the low turnout until someone more experienced told me that it meant I was doing a good job because most (not all but most) people who show up do so to complain that they are unhappy with the way things are. Or for information on applying for grants. ;-)
3. No one but the previous person who held your position has any idea how much work you have to do just to keep things going in maintenance mode, not even your coworkers. You can keep busy just putting out fires and keeping the status quo and actually initiating lasting change requires a lot of work, communication, coordination and time. You can have a brilliant idea, try to make it happen several times, it falls short every time and the next person who holds your position makes the same proposal and it passes. Sometimes you can only plant seeds that will fruit at some later date when the time is right.

At least this has been my experience, especially when one is in a position where one is responsible to an entire "community". Bottom line, most editors do not know what you all do at WMF (unless it makes the papers) and they do not understand why changes aren't made or why the changes that seem obvious aren't made immediately. The more they know about both the nonglamorous work you do and some of the more crazy things that come across your desk, the better they can understand WMF as an organization and have reasonable expectations.
I think blog posts are helpful because they exist in perpetuity, they aren't just read for a week but can be read at any time in the future. I've read a lot of WMF reports and blog posts from the past five years and found them to be very useful. What is crucial is for any description about your work to be informational and relatable and that it doesn't come across as complaining. I'm sure many editors would love to work for WMF in some capacity and while it is interesting to know more about what you all do, you should acknowledge that despite the headaches, working for WMF is a pretty damn cool job!
Just some thoughts! Liz 17:53, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for those great thoughts, Liz. You're absolutely right, by the way - and I say it frequently - that I have the best job in the world. I've done some of the coolest work that I can imagine, actually. It's really important to point that out - and, frankly, it's an honor. I'm going to think on what you've said here. Thanks for taking the time to put some thought into it. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 18:11, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Ping

I think you missed this. --Pine 07:37, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Well, that's rather ironic, isn't it? See my response below, though.  :) Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 22:16, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Spammers in LinkedIn group

Hi there - I left a note on Jimbo's talk page concerning doing something about the WP LinkedIn group (due to all the spammers) and volunteering my efforts. He replied that he doesn't have the time at the moment and that you should be involved with it. If you can do something to get rid of the people who are members with the sole purpose of spamming, it would be appreciated! :) -- kosboot (talk) 16:29, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm actually not at all involved with that one. I am involved with the Wikimedia Foundation one, but have no involvement with the Misplaced Pages one. :( Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 18:08, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Email

Hello Philippe. The stewards have sent you a few emails now, and have been waiting for a response for a few weeks. Could you please reply to us as soon as you can? Thank you. --Rschen7754 01:54, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

@Rschen7754: I'm not sure what's going on with WMF. Sometimes they're great about answering emails, and Philippe usually is. Sometimes multiple emails and talkpage pings about routine issues lead to a dead end. I don't get it. If you don't get a response, you're unfortunately not alone. In Philippe's defense he may have been dealing with this headache recently. --Pine 08:03, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

• @Rschen7754:@Pine: - Hi guys, Philippe is out of the office due to a sickness in the family but he wanted me to let you both know that he will respond upon his return to availableness tomorrow. Jalexander--WMF 20:25, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

As James said, I've been out due to an illness in the family; my apologies. Pine, I'd love to say that I can promise that we'd all be faster at answering emails; the truth is, I have 18,890 emails in my box to read, and less than half of those are list mail. I could spend my life reading emails, and not getting any further in advancing the aims of the project, because I'd be spending all my time talking about what I would be doing if I weren't reading email. :-) And that's before we even hit the 700-odd wikis that we get messages on, and the phone calls, and OTRS... Sometimes, frankly, we have to triage. It sucks, but until or unless something changes, that's how it is, I'm afraid. You hit the nail on the head with your link to ANI - that was but one of several emergent issues that I dealt with last week (not least of which was the Terms of Use amendment). So all I can do is tell you that I try to respond as quickly as possible, but beg your tolerance in understanding that I'm triaging as best I can. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 08:21, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

I underestimated how many emails you get. If everyone in WMF gets snowed like this it's amazing that much of anything gets done quickly and correctly. I think it's time for something to change if things are this far out of hand. I'd be upset if you got heart failure dealing with the stress and I also don't want something important to get missed because communications are overwhelmed. I hope those are good reasons to make change happen. Just so you know you're one of the fastest email responders at WMF and I'd send you an email trophy if I could. --Pine 05:29, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

I wrote the stewards back yesterday, though, so I think that one is dealt with. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 22:14, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

• @Jalexander: thanks. Please also ask Philippe to respond to the IP below. --Pine 05:09, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

• The IP below is community banned editor Mbz1, whose outpourings Philippe has already dismissed from his talkpage, so there is no particular need to alert him to to the new demands for attention. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:57, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I won't be responding to that, for a couple of reasons: first, it's a strawman... logically, you could extend it to "and if Jimmy hadn't decided to create Misplaced Pages, none of this would have happened", so I'm not going to enter into that language game. Oh yeah, and it's a banned editor who I have told over and over that I won't be engaging with them further. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 22:14, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

OK. I thought he had some good points so it's unfortunate that he's worn out his welcome by something he's done before. --Pine 05:29, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Protection status

Hi Philippe. I hope you are doing well. It's been quite windy in the valley recently and kind of giving me a headache, but we'll be up to the 80s this weekend so that will be enjoyable.
As far as the protection status on your user talk that you enacted recently, it is highly irregular and generally frowned upon, especially indefinitely and especially with no recourse for anons to contact you on-wiki. Of course, as a Wikimedia employee, you value openness and the ability for people to discuss things with you on your talk page, even without an account. The general rule is to just revert and ignore people you don't want to talk to. Killiondude (talk) 23:59, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Of course Philippe knows all that. There is a certain situation here that is best handled with upfront DENY, and situation-normal will return ASAP. Johnuniq (talk) 01:44, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Quite. In five years at the WMF, I don't believe I've ever protected my own talk page. For me to do so is an exceptional response to an exceptional situation. I hope you're well, Killion. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 03:38, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Template:Did you know nominations/Theodore Katsanevas

Can you, from a WMF perspective, take a look at Template:Did you know nominations/Theodore Katsanevas please? We have stopped this from appearing on the main page for the moment, but I wondered whether the WMF had some indication of whether this is even allowed to run at the moment, or in what form. If the WMF has no binding opinion, enwiki will be quite capable to handle this further; but it is a bit pointless that we would spend a lot of discussion on something that the WMF wouldn't allow (or would be very unhappy with) anyway. Feel free to pass this on to anyone else at the WMF of course, it's not always easy to know who to appraoch best. Fram (talk) 07:58, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Fram, that is an excellent question. I'm asking legal. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 23:49, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

@Fram: thanks for asking - Legal does not wish to intervene in a community process, and therefore has no objection. So we're not going to block it or endorse it. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 23:58, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! Better safe than sorry. Fram (talk) 08:06, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Absolutely, and I appreciate you checking. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 08:19, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Have a Beer!

Only a Superman like you has the power and courage to read thousands of emails and deal with numerous issues that turn up every single day! I'm glad that WMF has one of the finest working people in the world, and also happy that my donation helps in running one of the greatest projects of mankind ever undertaken ;) I hope you do take rest sometimes :) Best wishes. -TheGeneralUser (talk) 22:07, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

If Philippe doesn't accept your offer I'll ask Gayle to block his email access for three days to give him a break. ;) --Pine 06:33, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

I accept, but only if I can give it to my team instead - they work as hard as I do, but they have one serious handicap - they have to put up with their boss. @Jalexander:, @Mdennis (WMF):, @JEissfeldt (WMF):, @AKoval (WMF):, these nice guys bought you drinks. :P please don't tell Gayle on me. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 08:56, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

It takes a lot of beer to manage Phili.... I mean, thanks! :D Philippe generously fails to mention his own handicap of putting up with all of us. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:22, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Sometimes I'm not sure if I use the beer to help manage Philippe or to manage having to do deal with Philippe but I appreciate the contribution regardless ;) Jalexander--WMF 17:35, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

That's enough of that! Back to the pit, you! Another year, hard labor!  :) Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 17:41, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, TheGeneralUser. Thanks, Philippe. Cheers to you both :) Anna Koval (WMF) (talk) 21:50, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

If we all end up at a Wikimania someday we can get a keg to share in person. (: --Pine 05:40, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

RfC on edit-counter opt-in

Hello Philippe, I wonder if I could draw your attention to something that concerns me.

There's an RfC at Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals)#Edit Counter Optin – due to be closed on 3 May by WJBscribe – about whether to remove the opt-in from the new edit counter that the Foundation hosts. The edit counter was created (or is maintained) by Cyberpower678 and is linked from each editors' contributions.

I'm concerned about this for several reasons. First, there was an RfC on Meta last year, which said no to removing the opt-in. Nevertheless, Cyberpower has decided to ask the English Misplaced Pages if they want to remove it anyway. My other concern is that it seems unfair to remove an opt-in when people have edited on the understanding that it would be respected. The argument is that this is public information, but its presentation effectively creates new information, which is intrusive and can be misleading. Here's one example of an opt-in (this editor used himself as an example in the RfC); if you click on the monthly stats, you'll see how some people might view it as intrusive.

Would you be willing to let the legal department know about the RfC and that there are privacy concerns about the proposal? SlimVirgin 19:13, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

wasn't this discussion hashed several times on meta? I will of course respect foundation wishes.—cyberpower _Online 20:08, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Hey SlimVirgin, Philippe's on vacation but I'm happy to bring it to legal. I'm not completely sure what the specific policy/legal question is you want me to bring them. I want to package it correctly so that they know how to approach the question, could you clarify that? Jalexander--WMF 23:22, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi James, thanks. There are a few ethical/policy issues (and perhaps legal as far as Europe is concerned, but I can't speak to that). First, it seems wrong that one person (Cyberpower) is in control of whether to remove the opt-in from everyone who has ever edited, when people have been editing for years on the understanding that the opt-in would be respected. I mean no disrespect to Cyberpower, but he has a conflict of interest in that he naturally wants the tool he created to be as informative as possible. He almost removed the opt-in on the English Misplaced Pages last year on the basis of 37 support votes, even after the Meta RfC said not to. It was only because I intervened that it didn't happen.

It would be good if the Foundation could become involved and offer some assurances. For example, should there not be another RfC on Meta, given the widespread concern? If there's consensus to remove the opt-in, whether as a result of the current RfC or some later one, can we have a consultation process, and a grandfather clause so that the removal isn't retroactive? I think this is an editor-retention issue; there may be editors who would prefer to stop editing, or to edit less, than have their contributions displayed in this way. For all these reasons I hope the Foundation can offer some input. SlimVirgin 19:59, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks SlimVirgin , I will discuss this with Philippe later today. Jalexander--WMF 20:36, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

I may be in control, but I only do what consensus asks me to do, and what the foundation asks of me, will clearly override any consensus. It was actually suggested that opt be set on a per wiki basis by a foundation employing on the discussion page of the privacy policy page, if I recall correctly. I'm couldn't care quite less if optin was switched on or not, so I can assure that I neither favor optin, opt out, or no opt any more or less. If I did favor one or the other, it would have been made clear. I am in favor of allowing the tool to be able to compile more information than it currently can. Such information will be placed into the opt controls of the compiler's core. Just for clarification.—cyberpower _Online 23:38, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I see that discussion here from February 2014, and it was LuisV (WMF) who suggested the per-wiki opt-in. But Cyberpower, you were about to switch off the English Misplaced Pages's opt-in in August 2013; did someone suggest it prior to that? It would really help if we had more clarity around this given that so many people are going to be affected. SlimVirgin 00:12, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

I see there was also this discussion on Meta in June 2013. That refers to the Toolserver privacy policy, which says: "Tools that allow profiling of individual user's activity (beyond what can easily be achieved directly on the public wiki sites) must only be applied with the respective user's consent (opt-in)." I wonder how that squares with what's being proposed here. It does also say that edit counters are allowed, but this particular tool's monthly breakdown, the most-edited articles, and the proposed edit-summary thing go beyond a simple edit counter. I'm pinging AFBorchert and NordNordWest because they've been following this and know more about it. SlimVirgin 00:58, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Completely valid concerns, however, that is a tool server policy. Toolserver is hosted in Germany, and is therefore bound by German laws. Since this tool is hosted on the labs infrastructure located in the USA, US law applies. As such the consent policy is unenforceable. I am allowed to remove the optin requirement, but will not as long as consensus for its implementation stands. The tool is set to have a global opt switch, and then it has local switches. Local switches override the global switch. Each wiki, has its own culture, and by that reasoning, each culture should have a say to how the opting system is set to work.—cyberpower _Online 01:53, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps it squares just fine; it's entirely possible to do everything that Cyberpower's tools can do on the public wiki and has been for years and years; the tool just makes it a bit easier. Also, this tool isn't on the toolserver. SlimVirgin, I'm worried that you're trying to create a situation where people *think* they're protected from someone working out their activity simply because a tool isn't easily accessible on a WMF server. It's such a false sense of security: anyone can operate these tools anywhere, the scripts have been available since before either of us started editing Misplaced Pages, and these tools are nothing compared to what already exists. This is even sillier than having to take your shoes off in the airport. Risker (talk) 01:58, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

I signed up for TSA PreCheck to avoid having to take my shoes off. :p—cyberpower _Online 02:03, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi all - as James points out, I'm on vacation until Monday, but I want to drop in and let you know what I'm thinking here. First, there's no critical urgency. Cyberpower has expressed his willingness to work with consensus and with the WMF on this, so I think that - while the RFC is closing - there is not a critical time path here. The RFC can close, and Cyberpower will respect consensus and will consider the desires of the WMF.

Independent of that, I want to address a couple of your arguments, Slim...

It would be good if the Foundation could become involved and offer some assurances.

I can't begin to tell you the number of times that I hear this one... and its counter, "the WMF weighs in where it's not wanted or needed." That said, there are sometimes legitimate requests for help and I believe this is one of them - delivered in good faith and requesting help honestly. So I'm glad to give my thoughts.

For example, should there not be another RfC on Meta, given the widespread concern? If there's consensus to remove the opt-in, whether as a result of the current RfC or some later one, can we have a consultation process, and a grandfather clause so that the removal isn't retroactive?

I do not believe this is an issue for the WMF. It feels to me as though it properly belongs to the editing community. I'm open to being convinced though. Can you tell me why you think it is the role of the Foundation to make these decisions? To my knowledge, we don't generally structure policy RFCs, preferring to leave that to the editing community.

I think this is an editor-retention issue; there may be editors who would prefer to stop editing, or to edit less, than have their contributions displayed in this way.

Is there evidence to support this hypothesis? If so, that would be compelling. Otherwise, my gut says that while there may be some limited number of editors who leave (and that is, indeed, a tragedy that we should try to avoid} there may also be editors who welcome the insight into editing behavior, and researchers who benefit, for instance. We simply don't know what the outcome will be. For that reason, I tend to prefer controlled tests for things like this.

Slim, I know these aren't the answers you were looking for. Nothing is carved in stone, and I'm open to being convinced. I'm truly of a very open mind on this, but my initial feeling is that transparency, as a core value, should be something that is not obfuscated without extremely good reason. The scripts exist - hiding them doesn't change that fact, so my initial instinct is to let some sunlight into them. (Indeed, that position seems to be supported by the legal team in their earlier finding on this.) Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 09:26, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Of course it is an issue for the foundation when tools start to violate EU privacy laws. And it would be very easy to stop all these discussions: Let's make it the decision of every single user if she or he wants to get her or his data aggregated or not – everybody for his own account, not a project for everybody who ever edited there. Those who like such tools get all what they want, those who don't have got a bit more privacy. And I would be great if that stupid "anybody could do this anywhere" would stop. Anybody could crash his car into a bridge but not everybody does. NNW (talk) 09:59, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) As I was kindly pinged by SlimVirgin, I would liked to comment. Please allow me to remove some misunderstandings first. The toolserver was never located in Germany but in the Netherlands. As I understand it, the location of the server does not matter anyway. As long as this tool is accessible from Europe and intended (among other Wikimedians) also for European users, it is subject to European law where we have Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data which restricts the processing of personal data even if it is publically available. (As this is an EU directive you will find this implemented in the national laws of all EU members. Hence it is not just a case of German law.) The original privacy policy of the toolserver took care of this issue and allow me to quote it:

• Tools that allow profiling of individual user's activity (beyond what can easily be achieved directly on the public wiki sites) must only be applied with the respective user's consent (opt-in).

Note: analysis of publically available data (data mining) may well lead to information that compromizes the privacy of individuals (profiling). The fact that anyone could in theory perform this analysis does not justify the publication of such information. Only if the data is available just as easily from the Wiki iteself, or if the data in no way interferes with the privacy of individuals, can it be made available on the toolserver without the user's consent. See also w:Data Mining#Privacy concerns and ethics and w:Profiling practices#Risks and issues.

Besides the legal issue, there are also moral issues: What is the benefit for the Wikimedia projects when Wikimedia resources can be used to generate profiles for individual users that also reveal working hours and vacation times over an extended period? As pointed out by SlimVirgin many people did not expect this to be revealed without a prior consent (opt-in) and trusted that this would be kept this way.

The common arguments for the removal of the opt-in requirement (as repeated above by Risker) are that this would provide a false sense of security and anyone can operate these tools anywhere. In my opinion, it is a huge difference whether someone else operates such tools or if such a tool is operated on WMF resources and directly linked to from WMF projects. The point is that we have a significantly different impact if we have a popular profiling tool that is linked to at Special:Contributions in comparison to an obscure tool which is not run on WMF resources and not linked to at prominent locations. Finally, there is an expectation that law is being followed. (There is no silliness in this expectation. Anyone violating this law can be taken to an European court as, for example, in the case LG Berlin, 06.03.2012 - 16 O 551/10 against Facebook.) We all know that en-wp has a truly international and very diverse community with many editors coming from Europe. Hence, it should not be surprising that many of them expect European law in regard to privacy and processing of personal information to be followed. Without this common expectation there would not have been a majority demanding opt-in at Meta. Even if they appear to be a minority at en-wp, we should not end up letting a majority deciding by vote to ignore the expectation shared by many Wikimedians that concerns in regard to processing of personal data will be respected. --AFBorchert (talk) 10:50, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

+1 to SlimVirgin, NordNordWest and AFBorchert. It is true that European law applies to any website that can be retrieved in any European country. When the Munich Oberlandesgericht banned paid editing on Misplaced Pages in May 2012 – OLG München, 18 July 2012, 7 O 525/10, JurPC Web-Dok. 10/2013, Abs. 1–42 – based on an EU directive, it was clear that this also holds true to any other Misplaced Pages language version and indeed to any other Wikimedia project. This is no fun, it is a truly serious matter, and the legal department is probably following this development. Privacy will only be the next step. Big American players regularly violate our privacy. But apart from the legal issues involved, the main concern I have is indeed that more and more useres will turn away from our projects because they turn away from U.S. cloud services and big data collectors anyway. The WMF is only one of the latter. And the question is whether the community has a say in these matters. We held a ballot on Meta last year which concluded that when Toolserver is replaced by WMFLabs the opt-in for such tools should be retained. This RfC tries to circumvene the RfC which was held for all language versions and projects. There cannot be a circumvention of this RfC on Meta. This would be a severe breach of trust in the WMF. It also is a precedent on whether you can trust the WMF on matters of privacy. It's a matter of fairness and civil rights. I also expect many users to leave the project. I certainly would.--Aschmidt (talk) 12:19, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

As more than likely, so would I. I have tied the hands of Google and Bing search history; (although I have no idea if that even works). I am no longer on Facebook or other social media. The idea that anyone could easily deduce which articles I prefer to have edited absolutely gives me the creeps. Perhaps what we should be polling is, if indeed, an editor would feel so strongly about maintaining privacy that stopping making edits would be considered or done absolutely. Fylbecatulous talk 12:40, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

I've quit all social networks. It began with Facebook in 2010. Then Google+. Twitter followed last autumn.--Aschmidt (talk) 20:17, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi Philippe, thanks for responding. You said you were open to being convinced, so here are the key issues that I see. There are two separable questions:

1. Should the opt-in be removed from a certain point onwards?
2. Should it be removed retroactively?

It seems self-evident that (2) would be wrong. People have edited for years on the understanding that they wouldn't be profiled without their consent, so to change that after the fact would be a betrayal of trust. (The argument that others might create a similar tool misses the point. This is the one that’s hosted by the Foundation and linked from editors' contributions, so this is the one that’s going to cause the loss of trust.)

As for (1), we're losing editors because Misplaced Pages doesn't feel like a healthy place for people. Profiling without consent won't ease that perception. A few editors will leave, others will choose to edit less (which will be good for them, but won't be good for Misplaced Pages), and everyone who would prefer not to be profiled will feel let down. We allow editors to opt out of List of Wikipedians by number of edits, which is much less intrusive.

Two examples of how profiling could damage people:

• The tool shows each user's most-edited articles (example; click on top-edited pages). This can be very misleading. A user who spent weeks years ago fixing our article on paedophilia, after it had been edited by pro-paedophilia advocates, might have that show up on his profile forever as his most-edited article. This is unfair, and it means users will be less likely to edit certain topics if they're going to be marked for all time on a public profile.

• The tool also offers a monthly breakdown of users' edits (click on monthly stats). Imagine a user who edited from work years ago, then regretted it and stopped. His employer would be able to see at a glance that, during that busy month in 2006 during a special project, his head of that project made 4,000 edits to Misplaced Pages. That could lead to someone losing a job or being sued for his salary years after the fact. Yes, an employer could find the information anyway, but it might currently involve wading through tens of thousands of edits.

Regardless of how this RfC is closed, given the widespread concern, can we have a consultation period before any other action is taken or RfC proposed, where the issues can be discussed in detail? For example, has the Foundation looked into the European legal issues, how will it respond if it receives takedown notices, has it explored the editor-retention concern, what are the actual benefits of removing the opt-in, as opposed to the drawbacks? It would be good to have some clarity around these issues before a decision is made. SlimVirgin 01:05, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Oh Slim. Every single article has a link to its contributors in its history page. It's even easier to find that than to find the tool that will run user counts, because it's right there on a publicly accessible page, and doesn't require any arcane knowledge of things Misplaced Pages. For that matter, the same employer can use Wikichecker and have the same result. And no, it's really not that hard to do the paperwork on this stuff, just a copy-paste to Excel or similar; I've done it myself when I've been doing sockpuppetry investigations and the applicable tools weren't available. Top-edited pages and/or total edits and/or monthly edits, and everything else Cyberpower's tools does has been posted on RFA pages since at least 2006, using various tools (most of which are defunct because their developers are no longer active). They are considered important elements in reviewing the activity of editors. We've had a process in place for people to run alternate accounts specifically to edit controversial subjects since March 2004, so the argument that people might not edit an article that's controversial with their main account has been invalid for 10 years. European law is not applicable to the US, any more than Iranian law or Chinese law, or Saudi Arabian law or Indian law, all of which have sections that affect WMF projects. Editing on a WMF project is a public activity. I know that some people have done things over the years that they think may have affected their "privacy", but it is almost invariably something they added themselves; I clean up a fair bit of it as an oversighter, or explain why certain edits can't be suppressed. I'm quite sympathetic to removing actual personal or private information; however, hiding people's editing history is neither. It's easily publicly accessible. We're just talking about whether the version of the tool that Cyberpower has on WMFLabs should have an opt-in/opt-out feature. It doesn't matter whether or not it does; the code for the tool is open source, and ANYONE can host it, and put links all over the project to it. Risker (talk) 02:53, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi Risker, en-wp is an international site and thereby subject to international law independent from the location of the servers. See, for example, here for a decision by a German court per lex loci delicti commissi in a case against the WMF concerning copyright and personality rights. And if you perform a time-consuming sockpuppetry investigation using your own private tools etc. this cannot be compared to a tool which provides this information readily available with just one click, prominently linked to from Special:Contributions. It makes a difference legally (from an European viewpoint) and it makes a difference to the editors (as documented at the Meta poll). You do not need to agree with that viewpoint but you should accept that this is for many editors a critical issue. In Germany we had a long fight for this civil right which started mainly with protests against a census in Germany which led to a landmark decision of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany in 1983 which formulated the fundamental right of informational self-determination (BVerfG, 15.12.1983 - 1 BvR 209/83; 1 BvR 269/83; 1 BvR 362/83; 1 BvR 420/83; 1 BvR 440/83; 1 BvR 484/83). This was subsequently integrated into the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (Article 8). --AFBorchert (talk) 08:32, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

There's one significant problem with your argument, AFBorchert. This isn't profiling. And it's not private information, it is public information. What Google and other groups do is based on non-public information. It doesn't take me seconds, it takes me maybe 3 minutes, to get the same result. But I could always take this tool, host it on my personal website, and use it there to get the same result - and it won't be illegal, even then, because it's public information knowingly put forward into the public sphere by the users who have edited. I've pushed for years to have the edits of unregistered users not publicly publish the user's full IP address (if you look far enough back in the history, you'll see that there was a time where it was only partially published), and on that point I think the WMF can do some work. There is no personal information, let alone private information, provided by the contributions logs. Wikimedia projects maintain an akashic record of edits, and it is fundamental to the collaborative nature of the projects. We can do more to educate people that their contributions will be removed, will remain publicly accessible and visible unless deleted for some other reasons, and that by editing they have surrendered any right to have their contributions removed. (That's another part of that ruling, incidentally, and if applied to WMF projects, we might just as well roll up our tents. We can't have people's contributions removed out of articles when they stomp off in a huff over something or other.) We can educate better, but having an opt-in/opt-out for this tool is not doing anything to protect anyone's privacy - particularly since there is no privacy violation. Risker (talk) 14:37, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Please, Risker, please try to familiarize yourself with these legal concepts which were developed in Europe and are contrary to US legal tradition. According to European legislation (as cited above) and the national laws of EU members, the publication of derived results from public data (i.e. the result of some sort of data mining) is not permitted without the consent of the persons to which these data refer to, i.e. you need an opt-in. You have a similar concept in copyright: When a picture is published by someone else, you do not have the right to create and publish a derived work for it just with the argument that the original image was already public information. (I know the analogy is not perfect. But it should be given a thought considering that so many novice uploaders use this line of argument.) --AFBorchert (talk) 15:00, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

I would like to add, Risker, would you please consider that there is a difference between the information in an article's history and what a tool like this makes from the said history? This is profiling. And there is a difference between any third-party projects and WMF projects. We do not want a tool like this on Wikimedia servers. Period. Also, it's against the law. English Misplaced Pages is not an American Misplaced Pages, it belongs to all of us. Besides, as I already said, English Misplaced Pages is not entitled to circumvene a ballot we held for all Wikimedia projects.--Aschmidt (talk) 15:05, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

First things first. If this tool's use was illegal anywhere, LuisV would not have been suggesting per-wiki opt-in/opt-out. Remember, he's a lawyer; he would not be advocating anything that violated the law. The judgment involved refers to private data, not data that is publicly available. There is no privacy in the fact of publicly editing; this is a core philosophy of the site that cannot change, as has already been described in great detail during the discussion on m:Talk:Privacy policy. The discussion on enwiki affects only enwiki, it does not affect other projects. None of the information collected is private, so again the judgment that you're referring to does not apply. (I've read it in translation, and am completely certain that LuisV read it in an even better translation with greater access to the context and relevant legislation, and likely also to appropriately knowledgeable local counsel. I trust his judgment here.) Now, we keep coming back to the fact that *anyone* can use this or similar tools to do exactly the same thing at any time, regardless of whether or not the tool is on WMFLabs. Why are you so determined to pretend this is not the case? Why are you trying to shield users on other projects from that fact? Just because the tool isn't hosted on a WMF site doesn't mean it cannot be used. It seems to me you're all sticking your head in the sand and insisting that the absence of this tool will Make Everyone Safe. Not true; in fact, it's more likely to increase the risk of development and regular off-wiki use of even more intrusive tools. Risker (talk) 18:49, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Risker, this discussion does not take us anywhere. It is absolutely useless to discuss whether something that is unlawful could be lawful still because it is unlawful. A community decision that does not comply with the law is null and void. That's all there is to say. So, it's EOD for me.--Aschmidt (talk) 22:34, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Aschmidt, that's pretty much my point: It is not unlawful. Your argument is based on a fallacy. Risker (talk) 23:50, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Focusing on European law (and arguing, as some did during the RfC, that the Foundation needn't follow it, if it does cover this kind of profiling) misses the point that lots of enwiki editors aren't from North America and may have different values. The best outcome would be to explore whether everyone's values can be respected; for example, switching from opt in to opt out (with wide notification) might be a good compromise. The point is that we need a period of consultation before the switch is flipped.

Some people use their real names, or their posts inadvertently lead to real names, locations, etc. This tool proposes to track and display their online habits without their consent. Even though the information is public, the data aggregation creates new value (otherwise the tool would be useless). Cyberpower intends to expand it in future, so it will become more intrusive. (There was even a suggestion on his talk page that he apply for funding.)

All the stakeholders (users, Foundation, tool creators) should be offered the chance to take part in a structured discussion about this. None of the key issues have been explored; I see a new page at Data retention guidelines, but it doesn't mention this issue. What is the primary purpose of removing the opt-in? Can we identify secondary purposes? Who is in control of the tool's expansion? Who will use the data? Will it affect editor retention by adding to the sense that Misplaced Pages isn't a safe place? It's important to let that discussion take place before a decision is made, and to make sure everyone is informed. There are editors who have privacy concerns who didn't comment during the RfC, and who I therefore assume didn't know it was happening. SlimVirgin 15:53, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

To clarify the funding issue, it was suggested to me that I apply for funding. However, receiving funding also is to receive a set of terms and conditions for such funding, one that may be incompatible with my goals, or even community consensus. I have chosen to make this a voluntary effort, but donations are appreciated.—cyberpower _Online 21:48, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Cyberpower, would you be willing to hold off until further discussion takes place, and perhaps more RfCs?

A rough roadmap: an RfC on Meta to ask whether the restrictions ought to be changed on a per-wiki basis (you added that to your close of the last Meta RfC, but it wasn't supported by consensus that I could see, and it has led to the current situation). If the answer were to be no, I don't know how that would play out because I'm not familiar with Meta–enwiki politics, and whether a decision there can tie the hands of enwiki. If the answer were that yes, restrictions may be lifted per-wiki, then we would hold a period of consultation to explore the options, formulate a series of neutral RfC questions, then hold an enwiki RfC asking people about opt-out as an alternative and/or a grandfather clause for opt-in removal. SlimVirgin 22:02, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

• Hi Philippe. I've been holding off on removing the option requirement for this wiki, per consensus, until I hear the foundation's stance on it. Having the foundation make a decision, would really help to settle things regarding the legal issue of this decision.—cyberpower _Online 12:31, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Cyberpower, are you willing to wait until we have further discussions (e.g. an RfC on Meta about per-wiki removal, or an RfC there or here about replacing opt-in with opt-out)? The advantage of an opt-out (with wide notification) is that it would offer a way of gauging the strength of feeling about this. If lots of people opt-out, then clearly it's an issue. If not many do, it won't affect the efficacy of the tool, so that seems to me to be a very good compromise.

The problem is that it was suggested in the previous RfCs only as a second-best to opt-in removal, so people didn't focus on it. To offer it as a stand-alone choice instead might change that (i.e. one question: "Should the User Analysis tool allow an opt-out option?"). SlimVirgin 15:31, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

I personally don't object, however, I'm getting pestered on and off wiki about optin still being in effect. While I can wait to hear from legal, because legal repercussions cannot be undone, consensus can. I also feel that after thirty days of waiting, that consensus should be enforced as soon as it becomes clear. It has become clear that there is consensus for removal, but to avoid any legal issues, it's removal has been delayed. In short, I'm not willing to push its delay even farther back. However, as mentioned, if consensus changes, I will be more than happy to accommodate those changes.—cyberpower _Online 23:39, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry you're being pestered, Cyberpower. The thing is, once you've removed the opt-in, that's it, you've exposed people's profiles without their consent. It's quite a big step given that most of the people involved don't even know it has been proposed. We really need a structured discussion about how to set up an RfC (or series of RfCs) that are neutrally worded, so that everyone feels happy about the outcome. And with the widest possible notification, and no giving people less weight because they're from non-enwiki parts of the movement. (Or, if that's to be done, let's decide to do it in advance, rather than after they've commented.) I'm asking for a rational debate, followed by a decision-making process that everyone will accept as fair, even if they disagree with the outcome. SlimVirgin 23:48, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm pinging Petrarchan47. She's an editor who has expressed concern about privacy in the past, and who wanted to set up a "The Day We Fight Back" page on Misplaced Pages. I was surprised not to see her (and other like-minded editors) comment in the RfC, and it led me to wonder whether there are privacy-concerned editors out there who just didn't know about it.

Petra, as a matter of interest, were you aware that the opt-in from the User Anaylsis tool is about to be removed? (It shows monthly stats, most-edited articles, will in future show edit summaries, files uploaded, and edit analysis, though I don't know what that is.) SlimVirgin 23:58, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

I was unaware of this RfC - I'm not sure I understand the implications of this opt-in. I don't immediately see how it would affect privacy matters. petrarchan47tc 00:05, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Petra. There used to be something called X's edit counter, which was hosted in Germany if I've understood correctly. It presented aggregated data from users' contribs to show editors' profiles (how many edits made per month, to which namespaces, most-edited articles, etc). It could be quite revealing of location and interests. The information was based on public data (contributions), but the presentation of it made certain things very easy to find.

Because it was based in Germany, European privacy legislation (again, if I've understood correctly) prohibited this public profiling without users' consent, so we all had to opt-in if we wanted the stats to be displayed. Recently (last year or so), the tool was moved to the Foundation's servers in the United States, so privacy concerns no longer apply.

Cyberpower, who maintains a new version of the tool called the User Analysis tool, is planning to remove the opt-in after an RfC that gained only 57 percent in favour of removing it. Doing so will expose the profiles of everyone who has ever edited the English Misplaced Pages. I am here trying to persuade him and the Foundation that this is unfair, a privacy violation, that lots of people didn't even know about the RfC (I pinged you as an example), and that we need to hold another RfC on a dedicated page, with very wide notification, perhaps exploring opt-out as an alternative. SlimVirgin 00:18, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

I completely agree "this is unfair, a privacy violation, that lots of people didn't even know about the RfC". We do need to hold another RfC. Let me know if I can be of help. petrarchan47tc 00:30, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Petra, do you use a watchlist? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.255.176.248 (talk • contribs)

Why do you ask? petrarchan47tc 02:03, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Petra, I ask because you say you didn't know about the discussion and it was advertised at the top on every watchlist during the time the RFC was running. It was also advertised on the edit counter itself. Someone above said it needs to advertised better, just trying to figure out how it could be advertised better. 69.255.176.248 (talk) 10:40, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. It was advertised on Template:Central discussion, the edit counter, and on everyone's watch list. There is no way I can think of to advertise it better than that other than spamming everyone's user page. So I am going to say that any registered who failed to notice that advertisement on the watch list, is partially at fault for that one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cyberpower678 (talk • contribs)

I do use a watchlist, and did not see this. My participation here has been pretty regular of late, with some days off. If it was a short run, it's possible I wasn't around for those few days. petrarchan47tc 17:16, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

An RfC about an issue that directly affects everyone needs to be on a dedicated page, so that edits to it aren't overtaken on the watchlists by edits about some other issue; those cause people to forget/not notice. And links to the RfC need to be posted a couple of times throughout it on various pages to remind people that it's taking place. SlimVirgin 21:05, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Petra. It's currently a question of alerting privacy-minded people to the fact that this is happening, so that Cyberpower and the Foundation see that there is real concern about it. An RfC about something like this needs to be discussed in advance of being opened to agree the parameters, to decided on a central location, wording, etc. That wasn't done and it has tainted the outcome. (This is not a criticism of Cyberpower; he was trying to manage this on his own and I know how time-consuming these things can be; plus it appears he's under some pressure to remove the opt-in, so he's in an awkward position.)

Cyberpower, one thing that puzzles me is why people are pestering you. What do they plan to do with these profiles that means you have to remove the opt-in asap? This is the other thing that needs to be discussed: what is the point of this? We are about to make a lot of people unhappy and we don't even know why. SlimVirgin 00:41, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

This is concerning. What is the source of the pressure to remove opt-in, if any exists? petrarchan47tc 02:03, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Mostly emails, and IRC, and one on-wiki talk page comment.—cyberpower _Online 12:34, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. I wondered if the pressure came from any sources outside of WP. petrarchan47tc 17:16, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi folks - just wanted to say that I'm not ignoring this; I'm still here and reading this discussion, and thank you all for your spirited debate. I continue to observe and see where we end up. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 08:36, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Are you talking to User:LVilla (WMF) about this topic? Unfortunately this discussion with him came to an end without any result. It would be nonsense to repeat the discussion. NNW (talk) 12:25, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

No answer is a answer, too. Community – who cares. NNW (talk) 07:53, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Philippe. I was worried about taking up so much of your talk page with this.

It would help if we could have some clarity around how this has come about, and what people want to use the tool for. Perhaps we should go ahead and set up Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/User analysis tool and begin by inviting stakeholders to that talk page to offer some background, and to compose questions for an RfC (e.g. should the opt-in be movement-based, project-based, individual-based; would opt-out be a good compromise between opt-in and nothing; should there be restrictions on how the tool is developed in future? etc). If we're going to publish the profiles of everyone who has ever edited the English Misplaced Pages without their consent, it deserves a careful discussion on a dedicated page, and we need to make sure that everyone knows about it (watchlist notices only go so far, as people have a tendency to tune them out). SlimVirgin 18:43, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

I've opened Misplaced Pages talk:Requests for comment/User analysis tool to discuss whether to hold another RfC. There seems to have been a misstep after the closure of the July 2013 Meta RfC (which opposed removing the opt-in), with the assumption that the choice could be made on a per-project basis, rather than per-user. There was no consensus for that decision anywhere that I can find. It means that users from other wikis have been left without a voice about their current or future profiles here; when they commented in the latest RfC, their views were given less weight. Also, I think the way opt-out was presented as a second-best meant it was overlooked. So overall another RfC might be the best way forward. SlimVirgin 20:54, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Kudpung

New Terms of Use

I was wondering if there was any update on the ETA for the new Terms of Use for disclosure of a financial connection. My concerns are two-fold: (a) the way the draft was written, I am technically non-compliant and I'd like to see what comes out in the final copy (b) the idea of petitioning for enforcement of the FTC's laws from law enforcement has arisen many times, but it makes sense to stall any such efforts until the Terms are updated.

I was also wondering if - for example - an attorney general was investigating a Wiki-PR-type case, if WMF would cooperate with them or discourage them from pursuing it. CorporateM (Talk) 17:33, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I don't have any further information as to schedule on that. I expect it in the next few weeks, I'm sorry that I can't be more definite than that. As to your second question, I think it would depend upon the specifics of the case involved. It's very difficult to speculate on hypotheticals. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 14:01, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

That's about what I was expecting - legal intervention being only appropriate in the most extreme cases. I've been talking to Sucomo Consulting in Germany and they actually have a lawyer send a letter to new astroturfing services as they pop up, citing the German court case, effectively creating a system of self-regulation within the industry. I don't have the resources for lawyers, so I've been pushing here and there to see if I can get someone else like the FTC or an attorney general to do it.

user:Smallbones, myself, Sucomo, and others are advocates for this kind of thing (enforcement of the law) and after I saw smallbones name pop up somewhere, I realized I've been slacking on this front and haven't done anything to push it forward in a long time. I think the announcement of the new Terms of Use would be a good time to publicize a petition for the FTC to get the issue on their radar. Misplaced Pages being the only major crowd-sourced website where there have been no legal repercussions for deceitful marketing tactics. CorporateM (Talk) 16:39, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm a bit iffy right now on all this, I think we have to wait for the WMF to take the lead based on the results of the Terms of Use rfc. The longer we wait, of course, the more likely it is that somebody will file a complaint with the FTC against a specific paid editing company - the companies are not at all shy about advertising their services. I'm afraid that might complicate the WMF's job and ultimately slow it down. I don't think a petition at this point will put the issue on anybody's radar - it is already on just about everybody's radar. (BTW - I've heard through the grapevine that a law review article on the topic may come out this summer). The problem - both long term and short term - is possible complaints to the FTC - how to handle them? Does the WMF plan to have a process where complaints are filed through it before sending them to the FTC? I'd guess not - they wouldn't want to do anything that might get in the way of a person filing a complaint. Probably the easiest solution would be to state, at the same time the WMF states that they don't give legal advice to paid editors, that they also do not advise or restrict anybody from filing a complaint with the FTC. Perhaps WP:No legal threats might be interpreted as discouraging complaints, but the easy way around that is just not to make any legal threats. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:12, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

I would love to see the law review article if/when it's published. In my position I am privy to a lot of real-world information about astroturfing practices and it's frustrating not being in a position to do anything about it. However, I previously pinged someone from WMF legal involved in the new Terms of Use regarding where to report these things and he just deferred me to the normal community processes. This ultimately leads to blocks of throwaway accounts and editors asking for "evidence" that could only be obtained through subpoenas. I think the question is, and it's a big one, who should we be asking to invest the legal resources to enforce the law? Someone at the Misplaced Pages conference in New York was saying that the community itself has enough lawyers to pursue it without WMF support. WMF could pursue it, but I've heard conflicting opinions on whether they have or want to spend the legal resources. Though the FTC sets the law, it's often local attorney generals that enforce it. Another option is finding a law firm that does pro-bono work for social causes. Obviously there are a lot of cases where people don't know better, but we've also got a long line of businesses already eager to take Wiki-PR's place with more effective tactics to hide their financial connection. CorporateM (Talk) 18:57, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Are you familiar with Banc de Binary? They have been closed down in the US by the CFTC and SEC. They reportedly have offered 5 figures to rewrite their Misplaced Pages article back to the way they originally wrote it (See User talk:Jimbo Wales for details. I can't imagine anybody would have any problem with an FTC complaint on them. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:45, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Actually that is a very poor example. It seems that everyone has gotten "up in arms" about it without actually reviewing the article's content and sources. The entire Regulatory Issues section is cited to primary sources. That is equally as embarrassing for the community as it is to the company involved. It seems to me that they were trying (even if poorly) to address BLP-type issues. CorporateM (Talk) 20:20, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

I have looked through it and done my own research - it's not just that one section, but the entire article does not have a single quality source, nor do many exist except regarding this one lawsuit. I have nominated it for deletion and encouraged any editors that take an interest to start a properly sourced article on the lawsuit. CorporateM (Talk) 00:08, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

WOMMA?

Hi Philippe. A year or two ago I asked if someone from WMF legal would speak on disclosure laws and Misplaced Pages at the annual Word of Mouth Marketing Association Summit and the team declined. WOMMA is a trade association like PRSA, but compliance with the FTC's .com disclosures guide is a big part of their focus. Many of their members are lawyers at large corporations that want to make sure their marketing is legally-compliant.

As before, a couple WOMMA members and a WOMMA event organizer have suggested that I speak on Misplaced Pages at the next conference, November 17-19, 2014 in Hollywood, CA. Yet, just as before, I find that a lawyer from WMF would be a much more appropriate speaker or panelist. I'm certainly banging on the same old drum as before, but I thought that now that the new Terms of Use have been published, that things might different. That WMF would feel a need to educate the folks the new terms apply to. CorporateM (Talk) 22:15, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

I would guess you mean that even a person from WMF would be more appropriate? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:36, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

@CorporateM: I'll pass the request along.  :-) Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 08:16, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! Today is actually the deadline for speaker submissions. Let me know if someone from WMF submits and I'll drop a note in with the selection team. CorporateM (Talk) 13:45, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

WikiExperts

I don't know if you're the right person to bug about this but presumably you know who is and can pass it on. I keep getting sidebar ads for these guys on facebook, and they are using the Misplaced Pages globe logo in them, surrounded by little stick figures. If you click on the link you also see screencaps of WP pages where the logo is visible. I thought I remembered the WMF telling them to cut it out a while back? Beeblebrox (talk) 23:39, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Beeblebrox. :) Would it be possible for you to email a screencap of the sidebar ad to me (mdennis@wikimedia.org) or Philippe? It could be helpful! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:40, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Hmm. I'm using an ipad and I'm not sure I know how to do that with it. I'll see if I can figure it out. Beeblebrox (talk) 15:44, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Beeblebrox I am providing their twitter. That should resolve this. https://twitter.com/WikiExperts Confirm that you see it, if you would. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:46, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Press the home button and the power button at the same time. :-) Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 15:47, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I can see that. Thank you, Beeblebrox and Bluerasberry. :) I'll pass that on to the trademark team. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:48, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

The thing I saw was slightly different, in your inbox now. And I learned a new ipad trick. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:14, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Me too. I just learned athatipad trick - it pays to stalk Philippe's talk page :) --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:22, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Media Viewer RfC arbitration case - motion to suspend case

You are receiving this message as you have either commented on a case page or are named as a party to the case. A motion has been proposed to suspend the Media Viewer RfC arbitration case for a maximum of 60 days due to recent developments. If you wish to comment regarding the motion there is a section on the proposed decision talk page for this. For the Arbitration Committee, Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs). Message delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 02:33, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Documentation explaining global staff rights group (en-WP and meta)

Hi Philippe, I hope you are well (it was good to meet you at Wikimania). I'm dropping by your talk page to follow up on a comment I made recently here. What I say there (where I mentioned your name) is relating to what was said in the draft here. I realise you must be busy right now with the other matter relating to staff account names, but what I was wondering was whether you or someone who knows how best to phrase things was considering updating the page at Misplaced Pages:Global rights policy to include mention of how staff rights are used by the WMF developers or members of the Engineering team (currently it only mentions use by LCA people). The other page that I came across while looking into this was User groups (on meta). The table there is incomplete - it looks from the page history that you started to fill in the table a few years ago and never came back to it. I'm pointing that out in case you wanted to complete that table or include a link to other relevant pages (elsewhere on that workshop page, Jalexander included a link to m:WMF Advanced Permissions - I don't think many people are aware of that link). Carcharoth (talk) 01:17, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Hello, Carcharoth, and thanks for the note. That page is perpetually on my "to do" list to update. And it needs to actually get done. Therefore, with this edit, I'm asking @PEarley (WMF): to take it over.  :-) Thanks for the reminder, and it was a pleasure meeting you in London. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 01:44, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

(shuffles in from Stage Right) Master, you summoned me? Oh, I can add that to my list (which gets cleared out a bit quicker than Philippe's). It was also nice meeting you in London, Carcharoth. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 05:33, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. While I'm here, there is something else that puzzled me. When looking down the list here I noticed that one account ('Jlohr (WMF)')is 'unattached or doesn't exist locally' (a SUL problem?) and two accounts exist locally but have a user page that is a red link ('DFoy (WMF)' and 'Guillaume (WMF)'). Am I right in thinking that WMF staff have to have a disclaimer on their user pages (or a redirect to a page that has a disclaimer)? I initially thought that maybe this is only needed if they have made contributions, but even if someone hasn't made contributions, the potential to make contributions (or take actions) is still there, so wouldn't a disclaimer always be needed? The other thing I noticed was a similar set of redlinks and unattached accounts when looking at the equivalent list on the German Misplaced Pages (here). Just more of them. It was at that point that a vision of the hundreds of other wikis and redlinked user pages floated into my mind. I suppose bots creating redirects to the meta user pages would be overkill? Carcharoth (talk) 20:19, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Good questions all. The reason they don't exist on this wiki ('locally') is because they haven't edited from that account here, and they haven't logged in with that account here. So the SUL system hasn't created their account here. WMF staff are asked to put a disclaimer on their userpage on any wiki where they have non-trivial contributions from that account. So, I don't have one on all 900 wikis, for instance. But when I engage in an issue, I better get one up there. We've toyed with bot-creating redirects, and we may end up with something similar, though I'd just prefer to wait for global profiles. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 20:50, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

These global profiles sound interesting (similar to CentAuth and SUL?). Do you have a link for that? Getting back to documentation explaining how staff rights work, I looked at the changes made to meta:User groups since I last looked at it and I see that 'superprotect' has been added there already (though like other permissions, the rationale for it remains blank). The local policy regarding 'superprotect' has been updated. One other things I wanted to ascertain was whether, from the point of view of those at the WMF, that update is accurate, and whether the creation of that section as a subsection of 'Office Actions' is correct (i.e. is superprotect really a subset of the protection tools used to take Office Actions)? The reason I'm asking is that 'superprotect' was introduced (and first used) by WMF Engineering staff. What is not clear is whether the superprotect tool is one that the Legal teams and the Community Advocacy teams would use as well? I understand that this is not something you may be able to give an authoritative answer on, or indeed any sort of answer without referring it further up (and indeed you may not be around now it is the weekend), but would it be possible to: (a) make sure the local documentation is not misleading and/or point to global documentation on 'superprotect'; and (b) say when a definitive update is likely. Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 15:30, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Global profile info is here. :-) No, super protection is not a subsidiary action of the OFFICE actions set - I will make that change, thank you. I have no intention of ever using it as part of that toolset. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 21:49, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Philippe. I'll bump the header level up to make clear it is not associated with WP:OFFICE actions. I'm guessing your update will come later as you reach it on your list. Actually, I see the header level had already been adjusted with this edit earlier. I somehow missed that. Still, good to hear it confirmed explicitly (though I vaguely recall you saying the same thing somewhere else at some point). Carcharoth (talk) 23:40, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Pathoschild set up their userpage bot again, and there are scripts for autocreating accounts everywhere, if that helps. But that being said, the documentation for who has what in terms of staff rights could be improved... --Rschen7754 16:40, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

What, in your opinion, should be improved there, Rschen? I think we've pretty clearly laid out use cases for every staff with advanced permissions. Is there something we're missing, other than to fix the documentation table, which I've asked Patrick to take on? Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 21:49, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

arbcom election commission question

Please see Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_comment/Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2014#How_should_the_selection_of_the_election_commission_be_conducted.3F NE Ent 20:08, 31 August 2014 (UTC) .. and Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_comment/Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2014#Reminder_to_election_organizers NE Ent 20:23, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer, I've commented. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 21:51, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Alerting you ...

Hey Philippe, WMF might be interested in this thread which relates to this AFD. Go Phightins! 01:29, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Unfortunately, it looks like this one has gone mainstream, so I don't think we can get the genie back in the bottle here. The WMF is unlikely to intervene at this point. Sorry.  :( I have nothing but the deepest of sympathies for his families, but I trust the editing community to make the hard decisions. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 01:53, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

I have no particular viewpoint, but just wanted to let you know as the WMF liaison. Thanks, and I too have the deepest sympathy for his family. Go Phightins! 02:02, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Major Flow problems

You may be interested in WT:Flow (all sections) and User talk:DannyH (WMF)#Only warning. This really isn't acceptable any longer. Fram (talk) 12:03, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Problematic file

Hi Philippe. I saw that you deleted File:India against corruption.png from Commons per a DMCA takedown notice. There is what I think may be a duplicate file on English Misplaced Pages at File:India Against Corruption.png. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 11:35, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. Yes, it appears that one may be similar. However, we narrowly comply with DMCA takedowns, and that one wasn't included in the takedown. Should we receive one for that file, we will of course comply there as well. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 03:12, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

ANI

Hi, Philippe. I don't know if this block review might interest you. Bishonen | talk 18:39, 21 September 2014 (UTC).

Thank you, Bishonen. I'm keenly interested, but rather limited as blocking is outside the WMF's purview. However, the related circumstances are well-inside that purview and I'm keeping a close eye there. I've commented on one section. Thank you for the pointer. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 19:03, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Recent ANI filing RE OTRS

Greetings Philippe. If you feel the recent issues raised at ANI in regards to editing by OTRS team members has received adequate effort and attention, please leave a message on my talk page. In the interest of not expending the valuable time of yourself, OTRS admins and English WP admins, I am willing to drop the issue at this time. I have posted to ANI but if a dead horse is being beat, I'll drop the stick at your suggestion. Thank you for your time and attention in this matter and for your contributions to the encyclopedia. On a happy note, I have access to Highbeam, BMJ, OUP and Cochrane via the WP Library (thanks, yeah!) and look forward to focusing on content development when my schedule permits. Best wishes and happy editing. - - MrBill3 (talk) 00:40, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Phillippe, I'm aware of the WMF initiatives in this respect, and I welcome them. Since OTRS is in some respects the interface between the Foundation and the community, establishing and policing their practices must be done jointly. On the whole, I think OTRS works pretty well, certainly better than many other things here, but like all processes it will take a continual positive effort to maintain and improve standards. By the nature of the project, all WP processes are subject to the idiosyncrasies of individuals; this cannot altogether be avoided, but the harmful effects can be minimized; this will take the cooperation of everyone. If I seem to be taking a lead position here, it's only because I can perhaps explain clearly the general opinion, not because I'm being particular concerned.

You will also understand that from the perspective of most of the active enWP volunteers, statements that the WMF is on top of a problem do not currently have much traction. We've heard it too often in cases where the WMF has in fact been wanting. It's all to easy for the central executives of a organization to say this, but it often represents a desire, not a reality. In many organizations the central authorities an hope that their statements will go unchallenged at least within the organization, but WP is not one of them.

I'll certainly be glad to talk with you further about this on or off wiki. Email me if you are interested in doing this off-wiki. DGG ( talk ) 08:24, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

DGG, that's sad, but understandable. Truly, it really does make me sad. But I can't say - in all honesty - that I don't understand. I do. I'm happy to discuss it further with you, but I'd like to suggest that we include my colleague Rachel diCerbo, the Director of Community Engagement for our product team. She was hired to directly combat this issue from the product team's perspective. Would such a conversation by productive in your eyes? If so, I'm happy to do it. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 18:06, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Having become aware of additional assertions of authority by the same OTRS team member and reading comments by other OTRS team members I have a two serious concerns. 1) Assertions of authority by OTRS team members and the lack of clarity/emphasis that their edits are subject to normal WP policy, challenge etc. 2) COI driven edits made by OTRS team members without appropriate disclosure. Regarding 1 I think that is probably being handled by OTRS admin. Regarding 2 I think a review of edits is in order. Further I think a clear policy at OTRS stating that COI direction/inspiration/origination of ANY edits made by an OTRS team member MUST be disclosed on the talk page of the article(s) edited is needed urgently. Thank you for your time and attention. Please share my concerns with the appropriate parties. - - MrBill3 (talk) 05:04, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree. This seems to be at the heart of some of the problems we keep witnessing. Edits made by OTRS volunteers are by nature COI edits, and are thus proxy/meat puppetry for people/organizations who naturally will tend to pull content away from NPOV. That some OTRS volunteers don't understand this is very alarming. The way to stop this is to make it very explicit, in writing, for all to see. -- Brangifer (talk) 05:48, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

I asked an OTRS admin for a pointer to the OTRS policy on COI and did not receive a reply with a link. If you could provide a link to this policy it would facilitate ongoing discussion of this important issue. Thanks. - - MrBill3 (talk) 19:29, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

I don't know what this about really, but I thought the whole point of using OTRS (from a COI's perspective) was for cases where privacy may be needed to avoid confrontation, real world consequences, or other issues. For example, an employee at a company may feel that there is an important issue on their company's page, but not want their employer to know they were involved, so they would ping OTRS. OTOH, I would just throw out a gander that there may be some non-neutral off-wiki notifications (canvassing) done through OTRS, a frequent type of problem with COI bullies and advocates. CorporateM (Talk) 21:56, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

I think the anonymity of an OTRS correspondent and the confidentiality of the correspondence can be maintained while still acknowledging that the impetus for an edit comes from an OTRS correspondent with a COI. Thanks for your input CorporateM, I value it as I think you are an above board COI contributor. - - MrBill3 (talk) 00:10, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Like MrBill3, I too have encountered stonewalling and IDHT behavior from an OTRS administrator. It's frustrating when they don't AGF and take these concerns seriously. They are not trying to see it from our POV. We represent an outside POV, and they think that what they do from the POV of their hidden walled garden satisfies us. Well, it's not enough. We don't need assurances, we need visible, written statements which are visible to editors and visitors alike.

CorporateM, many people who approach OTRS are very much COI conflicted: they can be often are the subject of the article, or a family member or friend; they can be people paid to represent them; they can be PR people working for a politician, corporation or organization; and they can be Misplaced Pages editors acting as undeclared paid editors. In fact, one of the worst things we could have is someone who is a paid editor who manages to get OTRS status and/or checkuser status. I don't know for sure of anyone in that position, but it would be tempting for someone to do that, and we must guard against it. I'm surprised that relative newbies have OTRS status. That shouldn't happen.

Unless it's unequivocal BLP matters (in which case normal editing procedures suffice), OTRS volunteers are to be treated in the same way we would treat anyone with a COI, and they should follow our procedures as if they are such a person. They must understand that and accept that such is the nature of their role. They have less rights because of that and should tread lightly and extremely collaboratively. We are certainly willing to work with them, but not when they act like they have super powers and forbid reversions for non-BLP matters. We're tired of this happening. -- Brangifer (talk) 06:58, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Please moderate the discussion on WP:AN

Dear Philippe,

FYI: Please find below a transcript of messages which User:Sitush is reverting repeatedly .

As a senior member of India Against Corruption "IAC", who is outraged by the lies and canards against our body being spread by a small cabal of ill-informed Western editors of Misplaced Pages, I say the issues here are actually as follows:-

1. That the article on IAC is factually incorrect
2. That members of IAC have used almost every Dispute Resolution forum of Misplaced Pages to enforce WMF's legally binding Terms of Use which govern the international use of domain names and websites.
3. That IAC cannot be compelled to follow the self-written (and legally foolish) policies of the English language Misplaced Pages community which is controlled by cabals of racist editors living in their self constructed dreamworlds where they act out their role playing fantasies.
4. That IAC, as a body, reserves the right to take on individual editors of Misplaced Pages in the real world for any factually incorrect statements published on Misplaced Pages projects.
5. That IAC stands for Openness, transparency, FLOSS, Free Speech etc. which is why IAC has given a very long rope to the English Misplaced Pages community to self regulate themselves, and has always communicated civilly with WMF's senior officers in this process.
6. That it was User:Sitush who walked out of "En.Misplaced Pages"'s mediation after IAC produced numerous reliable sources to trash his article on IAC (and refused to rejoin despite being pinged by the mediator) directly on the pre-agreed issues for mediation.
7. That IAC is holding written communications (shared with WMF) from (a) Prof Meera Nanda (b) Prof Ramachandra Guha (c) Prof Alison Brysk, all objecting to the misuse of their books in the IAC article which have been inserted by this user.
8. That the WMF's users (editors) should be aware that it is not only US laws which apply in cyber space.
9. That if anybody has been "harassed", it is the IAC and its subscribers by such systematically constructed falsehoods about it which constitutes "cyber impersonation".
10. That WMF should immediately appoint a Grievance Officer as mandated under Indian cyber law and directed by the High Court of Judicature at Delhi, exclusively for aggrieved Indians to get their content disputes (including the reporting of child pornography) resolved without having to interact with Misplaced Pages's users / uploaders directly. X the hamster (talk) 04:54, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

• @User:Bishonen: It ought to be a really serious concern for WMF if Admins "with so many checkusers in their pocket" are not on their records :-) X the hamster (talk) 06:46, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

• That's a misunderstanding about checkusers in my pocket. I was referring to Bishzilla's pocket. She's got all sorts of people in there (as well as Victorian furniture, kitchen appliances, etc). They jump in; I have little control over it. It's a handy place to find checkusers, but actually anybody can find them, they're listed. Bishonen | talk 12:26, 15 October 2014 (UTC).

• I would also like to interact with User:Rachel DiCerbo if that would be useful. The link to her talk page is not working. X the hamster (talk) 07:05, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

• Do you have a question about the design for new features of mediawiki? If so, she would be helpful. If not, she would not. Her remit is the product (software) design and community engagement specifically around that issue. Your problems appear to be governance related, which places them squarely in my lap, along with that of the legal team. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 08:13, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Is this a legal threat? It looks like it, so X the hamster should be blocked:

• "That IAC, as a body, reserves the right to take on individual editors of Misplaced Pages in the real world for any factually incorrect statements published on Misplaced Pages projects."

There are other legal threats i there. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:13, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

It is NOT a legal threat. Just a reminder to editors of what is contained in Terms of Use.X the hamster (talk) 07:15, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

WP:DENY - see Misplaced Pages:Long-term_abuse/India_Against_Corruption_sock-meatfarm. - Sitush (talk) 07:16, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

IAC as a body having many senior lawyers and former judges as its subscribers, has been extremely restrained so far. Whatever happened on the domain name issue with Sitush's domain is a private affair in which IAC is not involved. X the hamster (talk) 07:18, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

@Sitush: "Responsibility – You take responsibility for your edits (since we only host your content).". per ToU X the hamster (talk) 07:20, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Full version "You are responsible for your own actions: You are legally responsible for your edits and contributions on Wikimedia Projects, so for your own protection you should exercise caution and avoid contributing any content that may result in criminal or civil liability under any applicable laws. For clarity, applicable law includes at least the laws of the United States of America. Although we may not agree with such actions, we warn editors and contributors that authorities may seek to apply other country laws to you, including local laws where you live or where you view or edit content. WMF generally cannot offer any protection, guarantee, immunity or indemnification." — Preceding unsigned comment added by X the hamster (talk • contribs) 07:23, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

• FYI, as part of IAC's formal understanding with Mr. Anna Hazare over the IAC name issue, the IAC has the right to sue and sign on Mr. Hazare's behalf for any action concerning usage of the IAC brand name by Mr. Hazare. X the hamster (talk) 07:28, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

X the hamster, you may or may not have some type of legal right to sue an editor here, but under Misplaced Pages policy, you are not allowed to intimidate or make legal threats against another editor. Period. That's a VERY blockable offense. There is a difference between legal rights outside of Misplaced Pages, and our policy against legal threats here. You have crossed that line very clearly. -- Brangifer (talk) 07:32, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

IAC is here after being repeatedly INVITED by WMF and OTRS to resolve the matter with the "community". Any legal actions initiated have been done so by individual person/s who Sitush posted abusive emails to from those domains. These are not IAC actions, and "I" have never initiated any legal action or made any legal threat. X the hamster (talk) 07:40, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

@X the hamster:, I would like to ask you to remove the comment about Sitush in the previous comment. No one here has seen or is qualified to adjudicate on those alleged emails, and referring to them in that manner is unfair to Sitush. I'd rather neither side was unfair to the other, please, and particularly not on my talk page. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 08:20, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

AND whether you like it or not, libel and defamation and impersonation are real world criminal offences (in both USA and India) against which WP community policies are no legal defence whatosever. SOMEBODY has to be penalised for them and at some point of time WMF will have to take the call on either shielding their user or entering into a very public spat with a prominent Indian entity who stands for the same values WMF claims. X the hamster (talk) 07:45, 15 October 2014 (UTC)