IRC office hours/2010-04-13

eekim: hi all

[8:59pm] Philippe|Wiki: hey eekim

[9:00pm] eekim: both philippe and i are heading to berlin tomorrow for the chapters meeting

[9:01pm] Philippe|Wiki: 5 Bloody AM in the morning.

[9:01pm] Mikemoral: That's early...

[9:01pm] eekim: that's philippe's fault for flying business class

[9:01pm] eekim: i leave in the afternoon

[9:01pm] Philippe|Wiki: heh, but on coach class fare, for the record

[9:01pm] eekim: true, true

[9:02pm] eekim: would love people's feedback on: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Movement_Priorities

[9:02pm] Emw: isn't there a developers' workshop in berlin running tomorrow through friday?

[9:02pm] Philippe|Wiki: yep

[9:02pm] eekim: yup

[9:02pm] Philippe|Wiki: and chapters after that

[9:02pm] Philippe|Wiki: colocating.

[9:02pm] eekim: btw, nice job with the counter, Emw

[9:02pm] eekim: it was you, right?

[9:02pm] Emw: yes

[9:02pm] eekim: great idea

[9:02pm] eekim: got a lot of people fired up

[9:02pm] Philippe|Wiki: Emw = sweet counter.

[9:03pm] Mikemoral: Oh, I forgot about the LQT. I'm used to the en.wikinews lqt.

[9:03pm] Philippe|Wiki: me <3 LTQ

[9:03pm] Philippe|Wiki: LQT, too

[9:03pm] eekim: how is it different?

[9:03pm] Mikemoral: It's great.

[9:03pm] Emw: it still needs more complete data, and getting that depends on henrik's willingness to push his data sets to a wikimedia server

[9:04pm] Philippe|Wiki: (PS, ya'll.... Tomasz and TimStarling made dumps work! the full Wikipedia dump! Buy 'em beer!)

[9:05pm] Philippe|Wiki: Mikemoral: What do you mean by "it's great"? What's diff?

[9:06pm] Mikemoral: What?

[9:07pm] eekim: lqt on wikinews vs strategy

[9:07pm] Mikemoral: Oh, LQT is great. I like it a lot.

[9:07pm] Philippe|Wiki: what he said.

[9:07pm] Philippe|Wiki: but how's it different on wikinews from strategy? what makes it different there?

[9:07pm] Mikemoral: Umm, I think we have some js customization, I dunno.

[9:07pm] Mikemoral: Ask bawolff.

[9:07pm] Mikemoral: He does all that js stuff.

[9:08pm] eekim: i'll go check it out. you've piqued my curiosity.

[9:08pm] Mikemoral: (And again, I think)

[9:08pm] Mikemoral: Oh he was working on the reader feedback form.

[9:09pm] Mikemoral: Look at the bottom of http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Vatican_criticized_for_cardinal%27s_claim_of_homosexuality_and_pedophilia_link

[9:09pm] eekim: interesting. only have it set up as "opinions" for articles

[9:09pm] NewYorker joined the chat room.

[9:10pm] Philippe|Wiki: yeah, it's just in the opinions namespace

[9:10pm] eekim: hi NewYorker

[9:10pm] Mikemoral: I think it should be in the talk namespaces, but it's not.

[9:10pm] Philippe|Wiki: hmmmmmm, is that readerfeedback they've got running with it?

[9:10pm] Mikemoral: yes.

[9:10pm] Philippe|Wiki: sweet

[9:11pm] apergos joined the chat room.

[9:11pm] NewYorker: sup

[9:11pm] eekim: hey apergos

[9:11pm] apergos: lurkin'

[9:11pm] eekim: that readerfeedback implementation is much better than ours

[9:11pm] eekim: can we steal it?

[9:11pm] Philippe|Wiki: yo, apergos

[9:11pm] NewYorker: Yes, lurking.

[9:12pm] apergos: yo

[9:12pm] Mikemoral: Darns it, I blocked myself on Wikinews.

[9:12pm] Philippe|Wiki: yeah, it;s much sweeter. and eekim.... free license and such.

[9:12pm] Mikemoral: MediaWiki:Feeback-gadge hack .js or what ever.

[9:12pm] Mikemoral: Try http://enwn.net/784d6

[9:13pm] eekim: we'll ping werdna to get it installed

[9:13pm] YellowMonkey joined the chat room.

[9:13pm] eekim: beautiful; look at those stats

[9:13pm] Philippe|Wiki: eekim: i've found it's most effective to hit him really hard, then offer booze.

[9:13pm] eekim: that's the way to do it; install, measure, compare

[9:13pm] Philippe|Wiki: i'm just sayin.

[9:13pm] Mikemoral: Is there a renaming policy on strategy?

[9:14pm] Philippe|Wiki: Mikemoral: the policy is, if it makes sense, do it.

[9:14pm] eekim: Mikemoral, love that you guys have your own url shortener also

[9:14pm] Mikemoral: Thank Shakata/

[9:14pm] NewYorker: Could I make a suggestion that we write protect all articles for notable people?

[9:14pm] Philippe|Wiki: i didn't know about enwn. i knew about enwp

[9:14pm] eekim: i will next time i see him

[9:14pm] Mikemoral: :[:[Wikinews:Tech]]

[9:14pm] Jamesofur joined the chat room.

[9:14pm] Mikemoral: en.wp is a semi-shortener.

[9:14pm] Philippe|Wiki: NewYorker: It's a good suggestion. It's been advanced, and frankly, I think it's logical. I'm gonna pass it on to Keegan, if that's okay.

[9:15pm] Philippe|Wiki: Keegan is running a Biographies of Living People task force at the Foundation's request.

[9:15pm] NewYorker: 83% of vandalism on Wikipedia is notable people.

[9:15pm] Mikemoral: Is there a 'crat to rename me? http://enwn.net/70FA2

[9:15pm] NewYorker: Okay.

[9:15pm] eekim: NewYorker, http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Living_People

[9:15pm] zscout370 left the chat room. (Quit: Leaving)

[9:16pm] Philippe|Wiki: Mikemoral: I'm pming you

[9:16pm] eekim: NewYorker, where's that stat from?

[9:16pm] Philippe|Wiki: NewYorker: Is that a hard stat, or an approximation?

[9:20pm] eekim: thanks for your post to strategy wiki, Mikemoral: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategic_Plan/Movement_Priorities

[9:20pm] eekim: two responses here

[9:20pm] NewYorker: Sorry, I have a bad habit of making up statistics.

[9:20pm] eekim: first, there's a task force set up to discuss content scope. you should definitely check it out: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Content_scope

[9:21pm] eekim: second, who's responsibility is it to promote smaller projects like wikinews?

[9:21pm] eekim: and what sort of work would you like to see?

[9:26pm] Philippe|Wiki: hmmm... can i focus on the first part of that?

[9:26pm] eekim: of course

[9:26pm] Mikemoral: The smaller projects?

[9:26pm] Philippe|Wiki: I think it's everyone's reponsibility to promote wikinews. I promote the hell out of wiktionary and wikiversity and (my new favorite project) wikisource

[9:26pm] apergos: good, they need it

[9:26pm] Philippe|Wiki: (btw, i <3 the fact that I found the complete text of executive orders on wikisource). that made me VERY happy.

[9:27pm] eekim: i think that's a good answer

[9:27pm] apergos: I think a lot of the time we have no idea who uses these projects til they show up cited in some academic text someplace

[9:27pm] eekim: that's a good point

[9:27pm] Philippe|Wiki: apergos: have you dug around wkisource? you're geeky enough to get VERY happy by it.

[9:27pm] Philippe|Wiki: It really excited me.

[9:27pm] apergos: I found yesterday a ref to a page on en wikibooks in a greek linguistics textbook for cripes sakes

[9:27pm] eekim: i think projects could be more aggressive about surveying readers

[9:28pm] eekim: finding out why people go there and what they do

[9:28pm] apergos: this sort of stuf fjust randomly happens but we don't get wind of it

[9:28pm] Mikemoral: Stuff like http://enwn.net/234 should help Wikinews get more readers. I remember checking the hits, it was over 250 (a lot for Wikinews) in the first hour.

[9:28pm] apergos: in the meantime people say "well I don't use it, and the community is small so it must not be important"

[9:29pm] apergos: impressive!

[9:29pm] eekim: brb

[9:30pm] Philippe|Wiki: eekim: I know that there's a serious push at WMF to do some significant reader surveys of the type that you mention. That's a real attraction for me (and, frankly, anyone on staff who's data driven)

[9:31pm] Philippe|Wiki: apergos: I really hate that mentality. The truth is, Wikisource is important to me because i found something there that i love.

[9:31pm] apergos: I'm invested in several projects for similar reasons

[9:31pm] Mikemoral: Wikisource is another great project. Working on the indecies of the books is fun.

[9:31pm] Philippe|Wiki: whether that's enough to justify funding.... <shrug> i know that it's important to me. And when I re-up my donation this year, i'll put "wikisource" on it.

[9:31pm] apergos: but that's not how "results" are judged at the moment

[9:32pm] Philippe|Wiki: how do you think results are judged?

[9:32pm] apergos: ad hoc

[9:32pm] apergos: anecdotally

[9:32pm] apergos: (for all buyt pedia)

[9:32pm] Philippe|Wiki: talk more about that?

[9:32pm] apergos: certain projects have a reputation as being small and useless

[9:33pm] apergos: that is a disincentive to gather real stats

[9:33pm] Philippe|Wiki: that's sad. i can tell you that from a strategy perspective, our push is "real stats, for all the projects"

[9:33pm] apergos: (stats btw != just the number of readers and editors

[9:33pm] apergos: *why* they read is also important, and how the info is used)

[9:33pm] Philippe|Wiki: apergos: so that speaks to the reader survey that eekim mentioned, yes?

[9:34pm] Philippe|Wiki: or how else would you think about getting htat data? that's the real question

[9:34pm] apergos: btw this is not a comment on our official statistician who does great work

[9:34pm] Philippe|Wiki: of course not. <3 Erik Z

[9:34pm] apergos: yup

[9:34pm] Philippe|Wiki: the magic that Erik Z works is amazing.

[9:34pm] Philippe|Wiki: for data driven people... it's like candy

[9:34pm] apergos: a reader survey is good, let's make sure we get a good range of questions in there

[9:34pm] apergos: 5 people reading to settle bar bets is one thing

[9:34pm] Emw: real data for all projects would be great

[9:35pm] Philippe|Wiki: apergos: so when it comes time to design that, I can count on you?

[9:35pm] Philippe|Wiki: And Emw?

[9:35pm] Mikemoral: A reader survey sounds like a great idea.

[9:35pm] Philippe|Wiki: oooh, and Mikemoral

[9:35pm] apergos: 5 people reading to use the information in sources that are referenced by others in their academic field is another (etc)

[9:35pm] apergos: well, when it comes time to design it you can count on people who know about designing those

[9:35pm] Philippe|Wiki: apergos: are the bar bet people less important than the academics? (me says this, having lambasted eekim for socratic questioning earlier today)

[9:35pm] apergos: I would do an off the cuff job which would not be effective, since I don't have that expertise

[9:36pm] apergos: in the long run we want to target both groups

[9:36pm] Philippe|Wiki: i love that answer.

[9:36pm] apergos: but, in the short run it would be easier to make a case for the importance or reach of a project given things like the second group.

[9:37pm] Philippe|Wiki: The trick is, how do we do it? I think it's so important that we get both groups... and everything in between, including my dear friend Casey who uses the 'pedia to get composer death/birth dates, and me, who uses 'source to get the text of executive orders.

[9:37pm] NewYorker: Also, I almost forgot. Does Wikipedia allow people to develop their own bots to detect vandalism and fix it?

[9:37pm] Philippe|Wiki: sure.

[9:37pm] apergos: if jimbo had started out saying "I'm going to make a web site to help settle bar bets" it might have been very popular... but very different

[9:37pm] Emw: NewYorker: yes, see WP:Bot

[9:37pm] Philippe|Wiki: apergos: i'd give $5 to that site... .but $10 per month? Nah.

[9:37pm] apergos: hahaha

[9:38pm] Philippe|Wiki: (all pledges are approximate)

[9:38pm] • apergos shuts up for awhile and goes back to lurking so others can speak up

[9:38pm] Philippe|Wiki: Mikemoral: you're a wikinews person: why do people use Wikinews?

[9:39pm] Philippe|Wiki: beyond the obvious " for news " - why wikinews and not cnn?

[9:39pm] Mikemoral: Well, Wikinews is not a bias load of fluff.

[9:40pm] Mikemoral: We report real non-celeberty news.

[9:40pm] NewYorker: Why wikinews and not quippd?

[9:40pm] Mikemoral: We write the more obscure news not too often seen in the main stream media.

[9:41pm] NewYorker: Mikemoral: Are you journalism majors?

[9:41pm] Philippe|Wiki: keep going?

[9:41pm] Mikemoral: Then there's the many ways to read it. Facebook, Twitter, etc.

[9:41pm] Mikemoral: (Well, twiiter for the headlines)

[9:41pm] Philippe|Wiki: okay, but again... Why Wikinews?

[9:42pm] Mikemoral: NewYorker: No.

[9:42pm] Philippe|Wiki: why wikinews and not drudge?

[9:43pm] Mikemoral: Becuase Wikinews needs you! Anyone can write, we get stories from anons (not often published however) and other all wanting to report the news.

[9:43pm] Mikemoral: *others

[9:43pm] Philippe|Wiki: so why do you think stories from anons aren't frequently published

[9:43pm] Philippe|Wiki: ?

[9:43pm] eekim: sorry folks, i'm back

[9:44pm] Philippe|Wiki: wb, eekim

[9:44pm] apergos: please tell me it's not the trust issue ... that poisons the attitude of admins on other projects

[9:44pm] Philippe|Wiki: Mikemoral: is that it?

[9:44pm] Mikemoral: Bad grammar, not stylistically correct, etc.

[9:44pm] Keegan joined the chat room.

[9:44pm] apergos: can't that stuff be cleaned up?

[9:44pm] Philippe|Wiki: ahhh... can those things be fixed and keep the story?

[9:44pm] Philippe|Wiki: what apergos said

[9:44pm] eekim: wow, all sorts of discussion happens after i leave

[9:44pm] Keegan: Hmmm?

[9:45pm] Mikemoral: Well, we tend to have a laziness issue.

[9:45pm] Philippe|Wiki: Keegan: welcome

[9:45pm] eekim: hey keegan

[9:45pm] Keegan: Hi everybody

[9:45pm] Philippe|Wiki: NewYorker: Keegan'syour guy for BLPs )

[9:45pm] Philippe|Wiki:

[9:45pm] Keegan: Wheeee

[9:46pm] eekim: on making the case for projects...

[9:47pm] eekim: we should be more rigorous than page counts and active contributors

[9:47pm] ekimmargni: Mikemoral: Are you sure it is a laziness issue and not simply a shortage of manpower?

[9:47pm] eekim: however, projects need to take responsibility for this

[9:47pm] eekim: wikinews has been one of the more innovative projects

[9:47pm] eekim: for that alone, it's valuable

[9:48pm] Mikemoral: And manpower too, yes.

[9:48pm] eekim: strategy has borrowed many things from wikinews: DynamicPageList, ReaderFeedback

[9:48pm] eekim: and not surprisingly, we're the only two projects using LQT

[9:48pm] eekim: but at the end of the day, projects need to take responsibility for their promotion

[9:49pm] Mikemoral: We have had OR since before I joined. There's an accrediation policy.

[9:49pm] Philippe|Wiki: Have i mentioned how much i love DPL, by the way??

[9:49pm] apergos: I dunno eekim

[9:49pm] Mikemoral: I know, right? It has image support now.

[9:49pm] apergos: wp doesn't need to take responsibility for its promotion

[9:49pm] apergos: cause it has these official projects of the foundation (for example)

[9:49pm] apergos: that back it

[9:49pm] apergos: and promote it

[9:50pm] apergos: and yet it has the most people to do promotion

[9:50pm] eekim: all projects get access to WMF infrastructure and branding. they all get listed from all the project pages.

[9:50pm] apergos: bookshelf project, usability project

[9:50pm] apergos: targeted primarily to wp needs

[9:50pm] eekim: one of the outcomes of the strategy process is that the Foundation should focus on things that have wide impact

[9:50pm] eekim: usability affects much more than wp

[9:51pm] eekim: multimedia usability is focused exclusively on Commons

[9:51pm] apergos: yes but it was done with wp editing styles in mind

[9:51pm] eekim: which in turn affects all projects

[9:51pm] eekim: so now we face a hard issue

[9:51pm] eekim: wiktionary, for example, could use a redesigned interface tailored to writing dictionary entries

[9:51pm] eekim: who should do that work?

[9:52pm] Mikemoral: Ugh, that's a pain to edit.

[9:52pm] Mikemoral: I admit.

[9:52pm] apergos: well what it could use is not to have an interface dropped on it that will make it weirder/harder to edit (I'm thnking of the collapsed template stuff

[9:52pm] eekim: given the foundation's limited resources, if it invests there, that means it can't invest elsewhere. so by what criteria should it make its decision?

[9:52pm] apergos: which is going to be an obstacle)

[9:52pm] Philippe|Wiki: apergos: whata bout the fact that vector rolled out to commons first?

[9:52pm] Philippe|Wiki: (after strategy, btw)

[9:52pm] Mikemoral: Does commons have DPL?

[9:52pm] Philippe|Wiki: Mikemoral: good question

[9:52pm] Philippe|Wiki: i dont know

[9:52pm] Philippe|Wiki: i'll check tho

[9:53pm] apergos: so what I would argue is not that wikt should get targeted features

[9:53pm] apergos: but that wp should not .

[9:53pm] apergos: see the difference?

[9:53pm] eekim: easier said than done

[9:53pm] apergos: vector rolled out there because it needed to be rolled out somewhere smaller than en pedia for a test case

[9:53pm] Mikemoral: DPL has a gallery thing and it would be great for commons.

[9:53pm] apergos: a very logical decision.

[9:53pm] eekim: i think you could argue that vector affects many more projects positively than it does negatively

[9:54pm] apergos: I think vector as it is has a number of good features which will be useful to all the projects

[9:54pm] apergos: however, it will have some things in it (unless the approach is broadened) that help wp and will be somewhat obnoxious elsewhere

[9:54pm] apergos: because a choice was made to focus on wp editing/reading needs.

[9:55pm] apergos: instead of being "project neutral"

[9:55pm] apergos: now that might be a feature of the grant...

[9:55pm] NewYorker: I don't want to sound too upset, but my biggest concern is, why do you guys keep deleting Lorenzo von Matterhorn?

[9:55pm] Mikemoral: Vector positivly affect Wikinews, imo. It's aestectically pleasing and have easy to use features.

[9:55pm] Philippe|Wiki: NewYorker: by "you guys", do you mean wikipedia?

[9:55pm] eekim: when you're trying to have broad impact and when you have a heterogenous set of projects, it's hard to be truly project neutral

[9:55pm] NewYorker: Yeah

[9:55pm] eekim: i hear you, apergos

[9:55pm] apergos: but one can make a stab at it, if that is the mandate one adopts

[9:56pm] eekim: i didn't realize that vector would have an adverse effect on wiktionary

[9:56pm] apergos: anywyas, time to lurk again, takin up too much space

[9:56pm] eekim: that sucks

[9:56pm] eekim: no way, you've been great

[9:56pm] Philippe|Wiki: NewYorker: here's the thing: dunno. This project is about issues other than WP policy.

[9:56pm] Philippe|Wiki: i honestly don't know the answer to that.

[9:56pm] eekim: we need to be conscious about these things

[9:56pm] apergos: (not vector as it is, but features currently in development. just ot be clear)

[9:56pm] eekim: we need to do things with intention, and when we make hard decisions, we need to do them with humility

[9:57pm] NewYorker: Philippe|Wiki: Ah, I see.

[9:57pm] Philippe|Wiki: NewYorker: We're dealing specifically with issues of wikimedia strategic planning. #wikipedia-en deals with that but i'm really really hoping you'll stay and talk about the meta issues

[9:58pm] NewYorker: Okay.

[9:58pm] eekim: apergos, if you get a chance, jump in at: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Content_scope

[9:58pm] eekim: would be good to get some of this feedback there

[9:58pm] eekim: i'll link to the logs once they're up

[9:59pm] NewYorker: Well, I'm tired from coding so I'm going to sleeplurk.

[9:59pm] Philippe|Wiki: i'll post them in.... 3 minutes

[9:59pm] eekim: office hours ends in a few anyway, NewYorker. thanks much for participating!

[9:59pm] apergos: where can I post a 1 para thing about mission statements and visions actually?

[9:59pm] eekim: for what? for wikimedia as a whole?

[10:00pm] apergos: um well the wmf mission and then what my realization of that owuld look like as a user

[10:00pm] apergos: *would

[10:00pm] eekim: best place to start that conversation would be: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Task_force/Strategy

[10:00pm] eekim: and on that note, it's time to end office hours

[10:00pm] eekim: thanks everybody for great conversation

[10:01pm] Philippe|Wiki: srsly

[10:01pm] eekim: have a good night / day (depending on where you are)

[10:01pm] Philippe|Wiki: i wish we could stay longer... but we have early flights

[10:01pm] eekim: see you on strategy wiki

[10:01pm] Philippe|Wiki: thanks, gang

[10:01pm] Mikemoral: G'Night.

[10:01pm] Philippe|Wiki: you rock