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•August 1, 2009 • Comments Off on Distributed backup of Wikimedia contentRedefining position toward Domas
•July 30, 2009 • 2 CommentsAs Domas made clear what did he think with his position toward explicit sexual content, I am glad to redefine my position toward his candidature. Here is the overview of his and my positions and our communication:
Domas’ answer to the question:
Though better media tagging in general could allow better content repositories in multiple senses, we should discourage shocking juxtapositions, and always try to place information where appropriate. Though inclusion of various content is usually subject to community guidelines, it would be community action to use any implemented tagging or filtering measures.Wikipedia and other projects by itself are not that shocking, and one has to research and dig to get into problematic material – so this may seem bigger issue only after considerable time investment into it.
On the other hand, I believe that in lots of adult topics, Wikipedia can be way milder and neutral, than most of other internet media around. There’re always at least 5 entries of adult topics in our top-100 most visited articles, and we rank highest on search engines for lots of adult keywords. Once we look at that context, information we carry is needed, educational and way better than the surrounding environment. Being compendiums of knowledge, our projects do great job, and instead of running away from the audience interest, we should just always try to do better job on how we structure our information or media.
Something what can be shocking juxtaposition in one case, can be something needed and useful in another – and balancing at that is one of many issues we have to solve.
My position toward Domas and according to this answer was:
The next candidate about whom I was thinking is Domas. I would give to him 2 because he is a MediaWiki contributor for a long time. … Domas and Beauford Anton Stenberg want to have balanced censorship. So, they’ve got balanced 50.
Domas stated that I misunderstood him:
milosh, it was interesting to see my position on “having information shown where appropriate” as censorship. the current problem is that content gets tagged in interesting ways, including fetish or exhibitionist images in generic categories.
it isn’t censorship, it is question of classification – and I already said, it is better us carrying that information, than others, for people who search for it.
is that censorship?
After which I asked him to define more precisely his position:
The problem with “the rest of you” (except four candidates which I mentioned) is that I don’t know a lot about your positions and that I am reading what did you write there (as well as a lot of voters are doing that).
I’ve read your answer again.
* The context of the question is very clear: One person who tried a couple of times to *censor* Wikipedia asked the question and you are aware of that.
* You haven’t stated anything in relation to censorship.
* You didn’t define what “shocking pictures” are for you.
* So, when you are talking about them in this context, I am reading that “shocking pictures” for you are photos which present anal sex in the article about anal sex. And if it is so, it is a censorship.
If it is not your position, you should explain your position better (in your answer). There are enough of time for other voters. Also, I’ll write another blog post about your position (and correct this one).
And, he made it 😛
well, my position actually enforces having ‘anal sex’ images in ‘anal sex’ articles. what I suggest, is that the community should always take best effort to avoid shocking juxta-positions (e.g. consider gray areas in should anal sex image be in sex article? and obvious ones – leather fetishists shouldn’t be in “leather” article 
As he made it and I am happy with that, I am defaulting back to supporting him as the best option after my favorite candidates. His position is similar to the position of Adam Koenigsberg, but Domas did a lot in the development of MediaWiki. As Ting stated, it is important to have one MediaWiki developer at the Board. At the other side, I am not as satisfied with his previous involvement at the Board as I am satisfied with Ting’s and Kate’s. That means that I wouldn’t be perfectly happy with him at the Board instead of my preferred candidates, but, also, I wouldn’t be unhappy, too.
My vote can’t be changed (or I think so; I should check it with folk from Electoral committee), but I think that you should consider him as a serious candidate, too.
My votes
•July 28, 2009 • 13 CommentsI support public voting. Because of that, I’ll say how and why did I vote.
To be honest, my first four votes were already known. There are four candidates which I am supporting because I am convinced, according to their previous work, that they will be good Board members: Gerard Meijssen, Kat Walsh, Samuel Klein and Ting Chen. So, all of them got 1 from me. I would be perfectly happy if I would see any of three of them at the Board.
The next candidate about whom I was thinking is Domas. I would give to him 2 because he is a MediaWiki contributor for a long time.
Then, I went to check candidates’ answers to questions so I would be able to rank others. Thanks to Privatemusings for asking the question about the explicit sexual content.
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen will be at the sixth place and Jose Gustavo Gonora at the seventh (see below for the fifth one). The first one said nicely worded “fuck off” (which I really prefer as the answer to such question), the second one raised that not only explicit sexual content is a censorship-related problem. Yes, Muhammad cartoons are the same type of problem. Just persons who are totally unaware about multiculturality may say that explicit sexual content is not acceptible, while pictures of Muhammad are.
Because of the answer on the same question Gregory Kohs got 99 (just because I am not sure would 100 work; it is the bottom). I was thinking to give 99 to Kevin Riley O’Keeffe, but he got 98. I have some sympathies to genuine right-wingers. They are honest.
Because of the answer on the same question Adam Koenigsberg got 4, which means that he is at the eight place. He said that he is against any kind of censorship, but that it should be decided by community. Nice position, however, too polite answer. Maybe others would appreciate such answer more.
Domas and Beauford Anton Stenberg want to have balanced censorship. So, they’ve got balanced 50.
Because the rest of the candidates didn’t give answers to this question, I had to find another way for making decisions about them: Dan Rosenthal, Steve Smith, Relly Komaruzaman, Brady Brim-DeForest, Ralph Potdevin, Lourie Pieterse, Thomas Braun.
Dan was a candidate last year, so I tried to find a similar question from the previous elections, and, of course, I’ve found it. Dan gave last year the answer which I would give: “fuck off”+”try to understand that there are other cultures, too”. So, he is at the fifth place with score 2.
Steve Smith. He was the candidate last year, too. Nicely worded “fuck off”, so he will be together with Jussi-Ville at the sixth place with 3 points.
Relly Komaruzaman. This is the candidate who didn’t know what to state. 40 for participating in the race 🙂
Brady Brim-DeForest. Interesting and strong candidate. Unfortunatelly, I know approximately nothing about his involvement in Wikimedia projects. 10 points.
Ralph Potdevin. Weak statement, without any answer. 90. (I suppose that he would be better than Gregory and Kevin. It is really hard not to be.)
Lourie Pieterse. I know many 18 years old who would make much better statement than Lourie. Board elections are not about his dreams, but about our dreams. 95. Weak is better than dangerous.
Thomas Braun. Interesting. As with Brady, unfortunately, I know approximately nothing about his involvement in Wikimedia projects. 10 points.
Withdrawal of candidacy
•July 21, 2009 • 2 CommentsI was a candidate for the WMF Board for two days. So, it seems that I need to explain why did I withdraw my candidacy…
Actually, the most important question is why did I candidate myself. I couldn’t say that while I was in the race because I would sound too arrogant. Now, I can.
At the time of my candidacy, Ting was a candidate and I knew that Sj will be, too. Two of them were the only preferable candidates for me and there are three seats. OK, there were two more candidates who would be acceptable for me: Ad and Domas. But, I think that acceptable candidates are good as possible solutions, not as preferred ones.
There is one more important thing: I really don’t want to be a Board member 🙂 I have to have a strong motivation to accept that duty.
Being a board member means that you have to be a politician. I don’t want to be a politician. It means that you need to travel. I don’t like to travel. It consumes a lot of time. I would have to find that time. Besides that, I like committee work a lot more than public work.
Today I’ve seen that Kat is in the race, which raises a number of preferable candidates to three. Ad withdrew his candidacy, which means that, in my opinion, there are three candidates that I would like to see in Board and one backup candidate 😉 For me, this is good enough.
How WMF should help to the contributors
•July 19, 2009 • Comments Off on How WMF should help to the contributorsI am a candidate for the Board of Wikimedia Foundation. And, one of my statements is controversial, so I should give the answer on that question here. Some of you will read that via blog aggregators and I would have a possibility to give to others this link 🙂
- This idea is not about paying trips to Wikimania or so. WMF already manages to give stipends for such events to the most involved Wikimedians. This idea is about finding possibilities that Wikimedians should be able to live from the work similar to their Wikimedian work. Benefits of such approach are more than clear: some of the contributors will be motivated, those who are motivated enough already will have possibility not to devote their time to Wikimedia projects without having to think hardly what is their life priority: Wikimedian work or their career. Also, much more contributors will be strongly connected to the Wikimedia projects.
- I don’t think that WMF should pay volunteers. At least for now. Around one million of volunteers participated in building of Wikimedia projects up to now. Around 50.000 of volunteers are active. If WMF is willing to pay a volunteer just $100 per month, the amount of money needed for that would be 50 millions of dollars (and WMF’s annual budget is less than 10 millions of dollars). Simply, this idea is not a realistic one. Otherwise, WMF can pay some of the volunteers [for editing], but not the others, but, this may introduce a variety of problems inside of the communities.
- I don’t think that Wikimedia projects should gamble with its reputation because of payed editorial positions. Of course, it is not acceptable for me that Wikimedia projects allow protectionism to the persons and organizations which pay contributors.
- Nickj made a wiki project (I forgot the project’s name/link, I’ll add them here when I find them or he may add it as a comment 🙂 ) where MediaWiki programmers may add their names to be contacted by potential employers. Even without relevant promotion of the site, I’ve got two relevant job offers just because my name is listed there. Imagine that there is a place (this one, or another one) which is officially supported by WMF! The place where potential employers would be able to see what have some person done in the Wikimedia world. I think that a lot of Wikimedians would get job offers in that way.
- Some time ago, I realized that Wikimedians are much better equipped for journalism than the most of journalists. Actually, Wikimedians are much better equipped for many creative areas which deal with facts than many other authors. WMF may create a place where relevant work of Wikimedia contributors would be actively promoted. This idea, as the previous one, have a great potential to give many jobs to Wikimedians.
- And, of course, I am sure that there are a lot of similar or not so similar ideas which are appropriate for WMF involvement.
Google Wave and Wikimedia projects
•May 29, 2009 • Comments Off on Google Wave and Wikimedia projectsProbably, some of you already saw that Google made something for which I think that it will be the new form of the mainstream Internet perception. You may read Slashdot article [1], a good description at the blog “Google Operating System” [2] (not officially connected with Google) and, of course, you may see the official site with more than one hour of presentation [3].
I expected such kind of tool (a client connected with others via P2P XML-based protocol; with servers for identification). However, I didn’t expect that it will come so soon, that it will be done by one large corporation and that it will be done at the right way: open protocol, free software referent implementation.
At the official site they said that it will start to work during this year. As one large corporation is behind the project, as well as free and open source community is able to participate, I have no doubts that it will be implemented all over the Internet (and not just Internet) very quickly. Probably, in two years the basic component of one modern operating system will not be a Web browser, but a Wave client. Probably, Web will become a storage system, while all of the interaction will be done via Waves.
This development of Internet is very strongly related to the Wikimedia projects:
- I want to be able to edit Wikipedia through the Wave client.
- I want to add my own notes to articles, history of articles etc.
- I want to have collection of my knowledge at one place, including Wikipedia articles and my notes.
- I want to be able to make a program which would analyze articles on Wikipedia and to give program and/or analysis to my friends.
- I want many more things to be browsable or editable or whatever from a Wave client…
All of those my (but, in one year, not just my) wishes may be fulfilled just through work on MediaWiki and Pywikipediabot. So, I am calling all of you who are willing to think about it or who are at the position to think about it — to start with thinking 🙂
[1] – http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/05/28/1912226/Googles-Wave-Blurs-Chat-Email-Collaboration-Software
[2] – http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/05/google-wave.html
[3] – http://wave.google.com/
PR agencies, Wikipedia and liberals
•May 15, 2009 • Comments Off on PR agencies, Wikipedia and liberalsYesterday, I was listening a lecture of my friend, a liberal. He is a PhD student in psychology and his field of interest is decision making processes; and he is very good in that field. After that I was drinking beer with him and his friends in [something similar to] pub. One of them is working for one small PR agency from Belgrade, which has important enough clients.
First about liberals… There is a completely different meaning of the word “liberal” in Europe. Primary meaning of “liberal” in Europe is “economic right”, which is connected with social-darvinist ideologies. Of course, there is “American meaning” of “liberal” here, too. However, a person which is using “liberal” in the sense of “progressive” is very uneducated… I mean, very well educated just on Hollywood movies and EU propaganda machinery. So, usually, when you mark someone as “liberal”, you told to her that she is against universal healthcare, that she treats differently poor and rich people and the her ideology smells on Nazism.
Actually, according to the Political Compass test, my friend is a relatively strong leftist. But, he is a fan of Zbigniev Brezhinsky and if you are not Nixon, Obama nor a person which personal interests are closely connected to Brezhinsky’s strategic doctrines, you are suffering of some kind of psycho-pathology; like liberals (in “European sense”) do.
Another interesting moment was related to the science of decision making processes. Holly Thing, I am so happy because that science is so stupid! The only two persons who asked questions related to the basic methods were one physicist and I. Psychologists were asking ethics- and motivation-related questions. So, the good news are that financial, state and military structures will stay stupid.
And now about Wikipedia… There are just good news, too. In brief, we are [still] fancy and PR agencies are willing to follow our rules.
Even I had known rationally that this kind of things are happening on Wikipedia, this was the first time for me to talk with a person from one PR agency who is actually doing that. So, yes, PR agencies are actively working on Wikipedia. And they have problems because they are not introduced well in our rules. But, when I explained that they may read the rules, follow them and do their job, I didn’t find any kind of confrontation. Actually, “following the rules” is something which they like. And I suppose that I am not the first Wikipedian who were talking with a person from one PR agency.
The other issue is related to their trainings. Importance of collaborative communities and networks became the top issue in PR personel training. So, yes, this PR agency is interested to take PR of WM Serbia for free, which is a very good opportunity for WM RS.
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