IRC office hours/2010-02-17

eekim joined the chat room.

[9:57pm] kevin_g joined the chat room.

[9:58pm] Philippe|Wiki: hey all

[9:58pm] Philippe|Wiki: hey eekim

[9:58pm] eekim: howdy everybody

[9:59pm] jps: hi Philippe and EEKim!

[9:59pm] Philippe|Wiki: hey jps

[9:59pm] eekim: hi jps

[9:59pm] Prodego joined the chat room.

[10:00pm] jps: thanks for posting logs of these at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiK5-oAaeUs

[10:00pm] jps: whoops

[10:00pm] jps: sorry

[10:00pm] juliancolton: meeting?

[10:00pm] Philippe|Wiki: hey juliancolton ... office hours

[10:00pm] jps: thanks for posting logs of these at http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC

[10:01pm] juliancolton: same thing

[10:01pm] • juliancolton will idle and watch from the sidelines

[10:01pm] Philippe|Wiki: be more fun to join in, wouldnt it?

[10:01pm] • KFP will sleep.

[10:01pm] KFP: ...And read later.

[10:01pm] bastique joined the chat room.

[10:01pm] KFP is now known as KFP_sleep.

[10:02pm] eekim: hi bastique

[10:02pm] Philippe|Wiki: hey bastique

[10:02pm] Risker joined the chat room.

[10:02pm] Philippe|Wiki: Risker!

[10:02pm] eekim: juliancolton, feel free to idle or participate

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[10:02pm] Risker: hello Phillippe! Thought I'd drop in

[10:02pm] eekim: jps: of course!

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[10:03pm] Mike_lifeguard joined the chat room.

[10:03pm] eekim: wow, good crowd tonight

[10:03pm] jps: I don't know if you have a list of things you want to talk about, but congrats on the $2 million from Google. How'd that happen?

[10:03pm] Philippe|Wiki: jps: Some seriously hard work by some folks on teh WMF staff (props to Sara Crouse among others)

[10:03pm] Mike_lifeguard: Sara Crouse is a god?

[10:03pm] Mike_lifeguard: oo, I even spelled it right!

[10:04pm] Philippe|Wiki: and, of course, Google's impressed with the massive work done by Wikimedia's contributors

[10:04pm] eekim: Mike_lifeguard, that's not so far from the truth. She's awesome.

[10:04pm] Mike_lifeguard:

[10:04pm] Philippe|Wiki: so really, that's how it happened. Contributors + Sara.

[10:04pm] jps: I sent Sara email today asking if she would match what I could raise for a Mediawiki extension.

[10:05pm] eekim: jps, that's not really sara's thing

[10:05pm] Mike_lifeguard: I'm not sure that's her decision

[10:05pm] jps: I think the Foundation could make a lot of progress by expanding Mediawiki development efforts. The people on #mediawiki mentioned it's an "eternal" topic of discussion

[10:05pm] Mike_lifeguard: Luckily, we actually have a CTO now!!

[10:06pm] eekim: that's one outcome of the strategy project we're sure of

[10:06pm] Mike_lifeguard: (though nobody's seen her? is she working in the office by now, or still getting settled, or...?)

[10:06pm] eekim: the Foundation will be expanding development efforts

[10:06pm] Philippe|Wiki: Mike_lifeguard: she's there

[10:06pm] eekim: she's around, Mike.

[10:06pm] jps: I asked about this at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Sponsorship_of_development_proposals today

[10:07pm] eekim: a big part of expanding developers is supporting open source development

[10:07pm] Mike_lifeguard: heh, "eternal" is a great word for that

[10:07pm] cimon: 2 million isn't peanuts

[10:07pm] eekim: it sure ain't

[10:07pm] Philippe|Wiki: It's important, also, to point out that this is $2M in "unrestricted" funds, which is highly unusual for a gift of this size.

[10:07pm] Mike_lifeguard: will that buy us a redundant data centre?

[10:08pm] eekim: jps, that's a good question. bastique, do you know the answer?

[10:08pm] eekim: or maybe Philippe|Wiki?

[10:08pm] jps: my attempt at independent fundraising for a particular extension that some college kid just volunteered to do was deleted twice, perhaps because someone thought I was trying to profit from it. I would like it if the Foundation had a way to do bug bounties and community development sponsorship pools, so flithy lucre need not taint those of us who are trying to get things moving

[10:08pm] • Philippe|Wiki has no idea about data center stuff

[10:08pm] eekim: Mike_lifeguard, it's definitely coming

[10:08pm] bastique: Please point to the question

[10:08pm] eekim: bastique, jps's question at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Sponsorship_of_development_proposals

[10:09pm] bastique: I'm afraid that question is beyond my ken

[10:09pm] eekim: jps, I'll try to find someone who knows the answer to that question

[10:09pm] jps: the Foundation traditionally does sponsorship of mediawiki development with contracting, hiring, and Google Summer of Code, but those are all limited in various ways and don't really represent how open source development occurs in the wild

[10:09pm] Philippe|Wiki: My understanding is that the Foundation has done traditional sponsorship (ie, paying someone to develop something) but never anything beyond that

[10:09pm] britty joined the chat room.

[10:09pm] Philippe|Wiki: hey britty

[10:10pm] britty: hey

[10:10pm] britty: (sorry for late coming and disturbing guys)

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[10:10pm] eekim: hi britty. no apologies necessary. welcome!

[10:11pm] eekim: i owe you an email.

[10:11pm] eekim: although we can talk here as well.

[10:11pm] Philippe|Wiki: britty: we're mostly just fantastically pleased about the google foundation gift

[10:11pm] Mike_lifeguard: jps: I'm not sure it is clear what you're asking the Foundation to do. Anyone can develop an extension if they want to (and can). Do you want WMF to pay anyone who does so?

[10:11pm] jps: bug bounties have been around for a long time, and they often work best when they're informal. If I had $2000 lying around and some college kid who knows PHP way better than I do puts themself on a CC list of a bugzilla bug, I could just write them a check

[10:11pm] britty: Philippe|Wiki, yay

[10:11pm] Philippe|Wiki: jps: what involvement is it that you're suggesting the Foundation have?

[10:12pm] jps: but I'm hoping, Mike_lifeguard et al., that we'll eventually get a way for the Foundation to set up community development pools, where anyone could tag their contribution with a bug # for example

[10:12pm] jps: I know there's a lot of inertial resistance to earmarked contributions, but if it's managed well, I think it has a lot of potential

[10:12pm] britty: eekim, no worry, we can talk on that

[10:12pm] Mike_lifeguard: jps: By herding staff and volunteer devs (and hiring contractors when focused development is needed), the Foundation maximizes use of resources

[10:13pm] Mike_lifeguard: jps: AH, I see. Well, you're free to offer to pay people to do work for you, the Foundation needn't be involved in that

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[10:13pm] Mike_lifeguard: did you just want some centralized place to hire people for that kind of work? There is a mediawiki-users forum which would be quite suitable

[10:13pm] jps: it's not entirely clear to me that most of the bugs and feature requests that I think most people would like to see addressed are anywhere near the level of even a contract, let alone a hire

[10:14pm] Mike_lifeguard: Right. But you haven't stated clearly what you want to *do* to fix that.

[10:14pm] jps: so that means the low hanging fruit is addressed by permanent staff, long-term projects get contractors and staff, tidy demonstration projects get Summer of Code, and everything else falls through the cracks

[10:16pm] eekim: come on, jps, that's a total exaggeration

[10:16pm] Mike_lifeguard: Well, low-hanging fruit are hopefully being handled not by staff, we pay them to do more work than fix typos in the comments of the codebase

[10:16pm] jps: I want the Foundation to allow earmarked contributions so I can tell the Open Source For America Education Working Group (and similar) to go to this URL and type in their credit card to sponsor this or that particular bug they agree they want in Mediawiki's Quiz extension, for example

[10:16pm] eekim: bounties are a valid form of incentivization, but they are not the end-all-and-be-all

[10:16pm] eekim: in any case, why does the Foundation need to be involved in all MediaWiki bounties?

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[10:16pm] Mike_lifeguard: But your point is somewhat valid - some stuff does fall through the cracks.

[10:16pm] bastique: Bounty is the quicker picker-upper!

[10:17pm] Mike_lifeguard: However, that isn't an argument for bug bounties, earmarked incentives, or anything involving the Foundation, really.

[10:17pm] jps: eekim: are you saying that there isn't a class of both bug and feature requests on bugzilla which don't get addressed even though they have a numerous and sincere constituency?

[10:17pm] Mike_lifeguard: The Foundation has quite different priorities at the moment, which involve getting the code review process working, handling longer-term issues like backups, building out a new datacentre, etc

[10:18pm] jps: Mike_lifeguard: how do you think the issue can be addressed more effectively?

[10:18pm] eekim: no, i'm saying that increased investment in resources will help. that could include bounties, but having more staff will definitely help.

[10:18pm] Mike_lifeguard: I think a working code review process would make a huge difference.

[10:18pm] eekim: absolutely

[10:18pm] Mike_lifeguard: *huge*

[10:18pm] bastique: Flagged Revisions!

[10:19pm] bastique: Actually, I would like to see someone upgrade OTRS in my lifetime

[10:19pm] Philippe|Wiki: +1

[10:19pm] britty: ++

[10:19pm] Mike_lifeguard: While we're on the subject... I've not seen lots of commits to the extension from the people contracted to handle flaggedrevs... what's going on?

[10:19pm] Philippe|Wiki: I have these grand dreams of integrated customer service processes... OTRS interfacing with donor databases... ahhhh

[10:19pm] bastique: so we can make it a system worthy of us.

[10:20pm] bastique: I wonder if we can use some of that Google money

[10:20pm] eekim: Mike_lifeguard, not sure

[10:20pm] eekim: i'll ask eloquence next time i see him

[10:20pm] jps: I'm totally in favor of more staff, but I can come up with 100 academics who would love to see Wikiversity adopt a low-stakes, learner-adaptive, self-study quiz question sets, but if I can't convince the Foundation that it's worth staff time, nobody but the volunteer college kid is going to do it. Earmarks are naturally resisted, but let's say total earmarks are limited to 10% of contributions, so the option to earmark go

[10:21pm] jps: ....would that address the concerns?

[10:21pm] bastique: Mike_lifeguard, who is that, Pietri and Schultz?

[10:21pm] Mike_lifeguard: yeah, probably

[10:22pm] lar: I just want to see flagged revisions.

[10:22pm] eekim: jps, why does the Foundation need to accept earmarks? MW is open source. As Mike_lifeguard pointed out, the Foundation's role here is to eliminate bottlenecks (such as code review).

[10:22pm] lar: in my lifetime

[10:22pm] eekim: in other words, people can post bounties without Foundation intervention

[10:22pm] Mike_lifeguard: eekim: And that particular bottleneck is a bottleneck on the *whole* process

[10:22pm] eekim: exactly

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[10:22pm] Mike_lifeguard: it affects staff, contractors, volunteer devs and our user communities

[10:23pm] Mike_lifeguard: luckily we've hired a new dev to solve that problem like three different times now or something

[10:23pm] jps: I agree that flagged revs is failing. I learned that the Foundation has never been sued for copyright, but faces frequent defamation suits. A schedule for Flagged Revs on enwiki BLPs was promised by "mid-January" and not only do we not have commits, and no schedule, the en.labs project page directs back to an enwiki page for updates which hasn't been edited since October 2009

[10:23pm] Mike_lifeguard: point being: more staff won't necessarily solve that

[10:24pm] lar: more staff won't solve community breakage

[10:24pm] lar: nor will having more idscussions or votes

[10:24pm] Mike_lifeguard: jps: I'm not so sure enwiki should be rushing straight ahead. enwikibooks has ad a really bad experience with it, and we will hopefully get it removed entirely soon

[10:24pm] jps: in particular, http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/01/flagged-revisions-your-questions-answered/ points to http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page points to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Flagged_protection_and_patrolled_revisions

[10:25pm] juliancolton: Mike_lifeguard: what problems did enwikibooks have?

[10:25pm] juliancolton: flaggedrevs worked wonders for enwikinews

[10:25pm] Mike_lifeguard: Yes, but review is very important for you.

[10:25pm] bastique: works

[10:25pm] Mike_lifeguard: It killed contributions on enwikibooks - people *really* need to be able to have their edits go live immediately

[10:26pm] jps: eekim: with earmarks, I don't have to worry about collecting money and all the paperwork (and deletionism at the Village Pump) that entails. With bug bounty / community feature sponsorship pool earmarks, I only have to direct people to a URL to vote for a bugzilla bug with their wallet

[10:26pm] Mike_lifeguard: Furthermore, we have the concept of book communities (which may be zero or more users) which is totally unsupported

[10:26pm] bastique: Different environment, Mike_lifeguard

[10:26pm] kevin_g: Mike_lifeguard: what did it do for the overall quality?

[10:26pm] Mike_lifeguard: kevin_g: nothing

[10:26pm] juliancolton: ah, I see

[10:26pm] juliancolton: heh, looks like a few contribs I made a month ago are still unreviewed... guess you're right

[10:27pm] Mike_lifeguard: less than worthless, unfortunately

[10:27pm] britty: i'm not sure if it is a technical problem

[10:27pm] Mike_lifeguard: it really is killing our project

[10:27pm] britty: juliancolton, that is what we experience on jawikinews - review system, no reviewers and a ton of deletion

[10:27pm] Philippe|Wiki: jps: Again, why does the Foundation need to do that? Why not just go do it?

[10:27pm] Mike_lifeguard: So, I totally understand why the Foundation wants to hire people to handle flaggedrevs for enwiki. If only they cared so much about anything else

[10:27pm] eekim: jps, i don't disagree about the potential value of bounties. all i'm saying is 1. bounties aren't a panacea for things slipping through the cracks; and 2. the Foundation doesn't need to have a role in that

[10:27pm] Mike_lifeguard: like, y'know... the 750 other projects

[10:28pm] britty: Mike_lifeguard, if you don't like to have reviews, it's not the time to activate FlaggedRev, isn't it?

[10:28pm] britty: you = enwb community

[10:28pm] Mike_lifeguard: jps: Actually, there are very strong reasons to have the Foundation *not* be involved

[10:28pm] eekim: it's worth having a broader conversation about what the Foundation should be involved with and how

[10:28pm] eekim: did everyone here read Sue's letter to the board (on strategy wiki)?

[10:29pm] • bastique blushes in shame

[10:29pm] jps: Philippe|Wiki: imagine you were me, and you had a bunch of people on a mailing list and a college kid trying to get the job done. If you had to try to raise the money yourself, you might be deleted e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)&diff=344498035&oldid=344494604 & http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)&diff=344468747&oldid=344468432

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[10:29pm] Mike_lifeguard: If they are involved, the potential for the system becoming a further avenue for the Foundation to pursue its own goals - but that is the problem your proposal aims to solve right? Because the Foundation is letting all these oh-so-important things fall through the cracks!

[10:29pm] • eekim looks scornfully at bastique

[10:29pm] Philippe|Wiki: jps: I'd just set up a spot on a message board somewhere.

[10:29pm] britty: eekim, sorry yet, url?

[10:29pm] • britty tries to smile angelicly

[10:29pm] Philippe|Wiki: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation/Feb_2010_Letter_to_the_Board

[10:29pm] britty: Philippe|Wiki, i love you

[10:30pm] Philippe|Wiki: it's a common sentiment in people dealing with me

[10:30pm] Philippe|Wiki:

[10:30pm] jps: Philippe|Wiki: but if the Foundation offered earmarked bug bounties or community feature development pool earmarks, nobody would ever accuse you of trying to profit from the development

[10:30pm] eekim: sue's letter: http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation/Feb_2010_Letter_to_the_Board

[10:30pm] britty: you too eekim

[10:30pm] bastique: Lots of reading

[10:30pm] • eekim laughs

[10:30pm] jps: Mike_lifeguard: I don't understand

[10:30pm] eekim: Philippe|Wiki beat me to the punch as usual

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[10:30pm] eekim: and thanks, britty

[10:31pm] britty: yw

[10:31pm] Mike_lifeguard: jps: The problem is that the current development model, which relies heavily upon the Foundation directing efforts isn't satisfying you. But your solution is simply another mechanism for the Foundation to direct efforts. It should be independent of the Foundation (if it exists at all)

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[10:32pm] eekim: one of the things that we still need to do is articulate the different movement roles

[10:32pm] Philippe|Wiki: Mike_lifeguard: that's an interesting framing of it. Thanks

[10:32pm] eekim: let's take the Foundation as a starting point

[10:32pm] jps: Mike_lifeguard: are you saying earmarks would take control of projects away from donors? If you can earmark, that gives you more control of your donations. As long as no more than 10% or whatever gets earmarked, it shouldn't cause any trouble for day-to-day operation

[10:32pm] eekim: in general, the Foundation should invest in things that have _broad_ impact

[10:33pm] eekim: it's even more important because the Foundation has a relatively small role to play in the movement, at least when it comes to the movement

[10:33pm] Mike_lifeguard: jps: No. The Foundation's resources should be directed towards the *Foundation's* priorities.

[10:33pm] jps: Mike_lifeguard: ah, I see what you're saying. No, giving donors the limited ability to earmark takes away, in small part, the ability of the Foundation to direct everything

[10:33pm] jps: Mike_lifeguard: that assumes the Foundation makes perfect decisions. I'm not sure that's in evidence

[10:34pm] Mike_lifeguard: I never said that.

[10:34pm] Mike_lifeguard: I'm sure you can find witnesses to my gripes about the Foundation's mistakes

[10:34pm] jps: you said resources should be directed towards the Foundation's priorities. That assumes the Foundation will always be the best arbiter of how to implement their priorities

[10:35pm] Mike_lifeguard: No, I didn't say that either.

[10:35pm] jps: :[20:33] <Mike_lifeguard> jps: No. The Foundation's resources should be directed towards the *Foundation's* priorities.

[10:35pm] lar left the chat room. (Quit: What is profound to you may not be profound to a Praying Mantis)

[10:35pm] Mike_lifeguard: jps: There is a difference between "resources" and "the Foundation's resources"!!

[10:36pm] britty: Mike_lifeguard, so what includes the former then? of community a/o?

[10:36pm] Mike_lifeguard: a/o?

[10:36pm] juliancolton: ao?

[10:36pm] britty: and/or

[10:37pm] britty: you would think some other possibility?

[10:37pm] Mike_lifeguard: Sure, the community has resources which don't belong to the Foundation and vice versa.

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[10:38pm] bastique: Mike_lifeguard, I'll say.

[10:38pm] Mike_lifeguard: Sadly, I don't get a share of the 2M *snif*

[10:38pm] Mike_lifeguard: jps: I think the best option for implementation is the following:

[10:38pm] Prodego: Mike_lifeguard: yes, 93% of it is allocated to 'Prodego research' I believe

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[10:38pm] jps: okay, let's talk about a different aspect of the same problem. Suppose your local chapter wanted to hold a meetup and you wanted to get the foundation to provide scholarships for your meetup so low income admins could attend. If the Foundation's expectations are that you have to raise all the money yourself, you're screwed. If you actually do have to raise all the money yourself, you're vulnerable to people accusing you

[10:39pm] jps: ...then you wouldn't have to handle any money and you could still raise it through the Foundation.

[10:39pm] Mike_lifeguard: Start up the program in a way that the Foundation isn't responsible for it. Show that it can be successful. *Then* argue that the Foundation should match earmarks, or should contribute it's own earmarks or something

[10:39pm] bastique: "low income admins"?

[10:39pm] Prodego: meetups are unneccesary, why waste money on them at all? or wikimania for that manner?

[10:39pm] Prodego: for that matter, for that matter

[10:40pm] juliancolton: Prodego: I disagree completely, meetups are part of building and maintaining the community

[10:40pm] Mike_lifeguard: jps: what do you mean by "vulnerable to people accusing you"? O-o

[10:40pm] jps: bastique: okay, middle class admins. I hope you are familiar with my opinions on the rate and utter devastation of active admin attrition to the community

[10:40pm] juliancolton: and reaching out into the real world

[10:40pm] eekim: i agree, juliancolton

[10:40pm] bastique: why focus on admins at all?

[10:40pm] jps:

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[10:40pm] Mike_lifeguard: bastique: because we will ban you if you don't?

[10:40pm] Mike_lifeguard: no, that can't be it

[10:41pm] Philippe|Wiki: nah, i'll unban him.

[10:41pm] Philippe|Wiki: as long as one admin disagrees......

[10:41pm] Mike_lifeguard: because we write all the content!!! No, wait...

[10:41pm] bastique: I like to think that regular editors, who do the most work as a whole, are worthy of attention

[10:41pm] bastique: New editors too

[10:41pm] bastique: or readers who have never edited!

[10:41pm] juliancolton: admins are not a special group of contributors

[10:41pm] juliancolton: they are editors who happen to have a couple extra things to do

[10:42pm] Mike_lifeguard: nonsense, they haven't had their own "View by X" in every RFC and RFARB since 2004, they can't be important at all!

[10:42pm] • britty tried not to recall when she wrote the content last time

[10:42pm] • Philippe|Wiki sucks at content writing.

[10:42pm] Mike_lifeguard: </3 enwiki

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[10:42pm] bastique: Let's just focus on rollbackers!

[10:42pm] juliancolton: bastique: only a handful of projects have rollback as a separate group

[10:43pm] juliancolton: IIRC

[10:43pm] bastique: Mike_lifeguard, you're a steward, you're above all that.

[10:43pm] jps: bastique: I've been collecting talk page comments from admins who believe "the atmosphere is becoming more hostile" and the like. I believe the explanation is quite simple: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship/Archive_191#New_graph

[10:43pm] britty: juliancolton, right

[10:43pm] Philippe|Wiki: juliancolton: I think bastique was attempting to be funny. Failing, though.

[10:43pm] juliancolton: yes, quite

[10:43pm] bastique: jps: why are only admins being polled?

[10:43pm] jps: helping to sponsor more community events with travel, room and board scholarships, and helping to hire more developers, even if they are more part-time than traditional contractors, should help

[10:43pm] Mike_lifeguard: I'm not above that because I'm a steward. I'm above that because my home wiki hasn't gone insane (yet)

[10:44pm] Philippe|Wiki: jps: I actually agree with sponsorships

[10:44pm] Mike_lifeguard: jps: the Foundation has done some part-time hires recently

[10:44pm] jps: bastique: because admins are responsible for mopping up, the thankless jobs that we all take for granted but get really upset about when they aren't done

[10:44pm] Mike_lifeguard: I haven't been paying attention to how well (or not) that has been going

[10:44pm] juliancolton: jps: people get really upset when they are done too

[10:44pm] juliancolton: which is why so many backlogs exist on so many projects

[10:44pm] britty: hm all the talk above suggests adminship is now a huge deal on enwiki?

[10:45pm] britty: (and some others too)

[10:45pm] • britty ducks

[10:45pm] Mike_lifeguard: Have we noticed an increase in $metric since those hires? Or are we paying them to continue what they did for free previously? (not that that is necessarily a bad thing)

[10:45pm] • juliancolton gives britty admin on enwiki, NBD

[10:45pm] britty: nooooo

[10:45pm] Mike_lifeguard: smart girl

[10:45pm] jps: Mike_lifeguard: your suggestion, in terms of the meetup scholarship example, would require all of the fundraising to be done by a very few volunteers prior to any foundation support

[10:45pm] bastique: jps: I don't know that I follow your line of reasoning that because someone is an elected admin they should get special treatment

[10:45pm] britty: i mean if it is so huge enough wmf has to fund

[10:45pm] britty: to improve that

[10:45pm] britty: (and it's an entire community matter)

[10:45pm] bastique: I know an awful lot of featured contributors who are not admins

[10:46pm] bastique: other contributors too.

[10:46pm] Mike_lifeguard: jps: I made a suggestion about a meetup? maybe I am lost and confuzzled

[10:46pm] britty: Mike_lifeguard, if so before i joined

[10:46pm] bastique: Halifax is wayyyyy past due

[10:46pm] juliancolton: there are certain projects where all active editors are admins/working to be an admin

[10:46pm] bastique: I bet you could even get Jay to show up.

[10:47pm] juliancolton: like simplewiki, enwikinews, metawiki (though to a lesser extent)

[10:47pm] britty: eswiki is alike, juliancolton

[10:47pm] Risker: I do think there are issues with admin retention in multiple projects; however, I am not sure it is something the WMF can do a lot about.

[10:47pm] britty: most of all eswiki admins were b'crats too in some time

[10:47pm] Mike_lifeguard: bastique: Surprisingly, I got a grand total of zero (0) responses to a "Are there any Wikimedians" email to my CS dept mailing list

[10:47pm] jps: Mike_lifeguard: I'm just saying, if everything had to prove they were viable before they qualified for Foundation support, well, there probably would be no Navajo or Swahili projects

[10:48pm] juliancolton: eh?

[10:48pm] Mike_lifeguard: not that there might not be some elsewhere, but I would have expected to find one or two

[10:48pm] britty: swahili has now a sane community btw

[10:48pm] Mike_lifeguard: jps: um, they did prove they qualified to be open O__o

[10:48pm] jps: yay

[10:48pm] bastique: Risker: continuously work on making the environment more pleasing...

[10:48pm] Nihiltres joined the chat room.

[10:48pm] eekim: hi Nihiltres!

[10:48pm] Nihiltres: hi

[10:48pm] Mike_lifeguard: bastique: "less toxic" would be a good start, let's not start with the fantasies straight off the bat

[10:49pm] Risker: bastique, it is not just that, we are unable to replenish the ranks due to the impasse at RFA

[10:49pm] bastique: toxic is one of those charged words

[10:49pm] jps: Mike_lifeguard: proving a constituency to be open on Meta isn't the same as raising a stipend for a summer student volunteer. The former is merely a matter of demographic data, the latter might get you deleted from the Village Pump for spamming

[10:49pm] Mike_lifeguard: I know, that's why I chose it

[10:49pm] Nihiltres: I just realized that after being all "I'm at the computer and free! I can attend!" I got distracted and missed most of the fun

[10:49pm] Philippe|Wiki: lol@Nihiltres

[10:49pm] juliancolton: Nihiltres: fun?

[10:49pm] Mike_lifeguard: jps: go wifflebat someone on enwiki, I am not interested in that fight

[10:50pm] eekim: nihiltres: no worries. we've got logs.

[10:50pm] Philippe|Wiki: jps: My understanding is that the suggestion you posted was about wikiversity. Why not post it there?

[10:51pm] jps: I'm not trying to fight, Mike_lifeguard, I'm trying to convince you that there are clear institutional reasons that the Foundation will not always make the decisions which are (1) aligned best with the Foundation's stated goals, and (2) even in the Foundation's own best interest. I don't think you disagree that large institutions aren't always perfect

[10:51pm] Mike_lifeguard: So, is http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges supposed to be impressive? Has the outreach project been cancelled and nobody remembered to tell the volunteers I see still editing?

[10:51pm] jps: Philippe|Wiki: I have

[10:51pm] bastique: Risker, because nobody is willing to stand?

[10:51pm] Philippe|Wiki: jps: so why would posting it at enwp be helpful?

[10:51pm] Nihiltres: eekim: any logs live yet? I'd like to catch up if possible

[10:51pm] Philippe|Wiki: Nihiltres: I'll send you mine right now

[10:51pm] Mike_lifeguard: jps: Yeah, and I'm trying to tell you that your earmark idea is really terrible.

[10:52pm] Risker: bastique, we have few people willing to stand anymore

[10:52pm] Mike_lifeguard: it is fundamentally wrong in at least 2 ways, which I've already stated

[10:52pm] jps: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Colloquium#Please_support_GIFT_format_and_extensions gets not so much traffic

[10:52pm] Mike_lifeguard: maybe you disagree, that's fine, but there you have it

[10:52pm] britty: Mike_lifeguard, actually i've never heard of outreach wiki

[10:52pm] jps: okay, so, let's get into the reasons

[10:52pm] britty: and sure my project ppl won't join, since it's engish environment

[10:53pm] Mike_lifeguard: britty: nobody has!

[10:53pm] britty: (that is what i'd like to discuss later w/ phillipe and eekim)

[10:53pm] Mike_lifeguard: They're writing textbooks there too, which is just dandy!!

[10:53pm] eekim: jps: I think many of us here agree with you. Given that, why ask the Foundation to do something that others are better suited to do

[10:53pm] Mike_lifeguard: OK, they aren't actually doing much of anything, but apparently they /plan/ to write textbooks there someday eventually

[10:53pm] britty: textbooks for outreach?

[10:53pm] britty: or you just meant wikibook?

[10:54pm] juliancolton: I'm not sure what outreachwiki was for

[10:54pm] juliancolton: I think people got bored

[10:54pm] Mike_lifeguard: Textbooks on best practices and outreach and whatnot (on outreach.wikimedia.org instead of wikibooks)

[10:54pm] Mike_lifeguard: juliancolton: surely not! it will be as successful as qualitywiki... oh wait

[10:54pm] jps: Who is better suited to collect money for various community-building and software-building projects? Is that really something that individual volunteers should be stuck with having to do? Donation earmarks could relieve so many frictional problems

[10:54pm] Philippe|Wiki: outreachwiki, as I understand it, was a place to gather data directly related to the Foundation's outreach initiatives - specifically the public policy and article modeling examples and the Bookshelf project.

[10:55pm] Philippe|Wiki: But I could be totally wrong

[10:55pm] bastique: Yes, Philippe|Wiki

[10:55pm] juliancolton: for about an hour and a half

[10:55pm] Mike_lifeguard: QUICK! someone open a wiki for earmarks, then jps' idea will soar forevermore! new wikis fix all problems!

[10:55pm] bastique: Mike_lifeguard, make a bug

[10:55pm] Philippe|Wiki: Mike_lifeguard: don't be idiotic. You have to have a mailing list for that.

[10:55pm] britty: ah for bookshelf project? so i would make a sense

[10:55pm] • juliancolton opens a simple.outreach.wikimedia

[10:55pm] bastique: make a bug for the mailing list

[10:55pm] Mike_lifeguard: YAY, the staff are taking me seriously now

[10:56pm] jps: Mike_lifeguard: I don't think that's fair. Are you talking about Wikiversity or Wikibooks? Take a look at all the content on http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Category:Quizzes that people have painstakingly added but never gets used because the delivery system for it sucks

[10:56pm] britty: Mike_lifeguard, bastique likes to be kidding

[10:56pm] eekim: jps: any number of organizations could collect money for that purpose. if there is energy around that idea and there is not currently an organization that exists to do it, one could start such an organization

[10:56pm] Mike_lifeguard: I know, I was kidding too

[10:56pm] jps: well, now I'm confused

[10:56pm] Mike_lifeguard: jps: There are things we can and should be doing that would have *massively* broader and/or deeper impact

[10:57pm] eekim: folks, we have a few minutes left for office hours

[10:57pm] eekim: this has been a great conversation

[10:57pm] jps: Mike_lifeguard: than earmarks or than a particular project?

[10:57pm] eekim: and i think it speaks to a point I made earlier about one of our (strategy project) major tasks at this point

[10:57pm] eekim: articulate the movement roles

[10:57pm] eekim: i hope y'all will join in that conversation on strategy

[10:58pm] Philippe|Wiki: eekim....

[10:58pm] Mike_lifeguard: jps: both

[10:58pm] Philippe|Wiki: maybe it would be helpful to define movement roles?

[10:58pm] Philippe|Wiki: that's sort of an obtuse term

[10:58pm] jps: Mike_lifeguard: okay, like what?

[10:58pm] Mike_lifeguard: but... bedtime for me

[10:58pm] eekim: movement roles = who are the different players in the Wikimedia movement, and what are their roles?

[10:58pm] Philippe|Wiki: ie, what should the Foundation do? What should independent volunteers do?...

[10:58pm] Philippe|Wiki:

[10:58pm] eekim: e.g. Foundation, Chapters, editors, admins, devs, etc.

[10:59pm] Blurredpeace joined the chat room.

[10:59pm] jps: oh, no, you're really going to make a statement that you know of projects with massively broader and/or deeper impact, not say what they are, and then go to bed, Mike_lifeguard?

[10:59pm] Mike_lifeguard is now known as Mike||gone.

[10:59pm] jps: sheesh

[10:59pm] eekim: okay, folks

[10:59pm] jps: don't say I don't try

[10:59pm] eekim: thanks everyone for another lively conversation

[10:59pm] eekim: i need to run; have a good night everyone!

[10:59pm] Philippe|Wiki: I'm gonna go take cough syrup and go to sleep

[10:59pm] Philippe|Wiki: ya'll have a good night

[11:00pm] eekim: (and britty, i'll send you an email before i go to sleep)

[11:00pm] Nihiltres: thank you Philippe|Wiki for the transcript; I seem to miss most of these

[11:00pm] You are now known as Philippe|Away.

[11:00pm] Philippe|Away: Sure, Nihiltres

[11:00pm] You have set yourself away with "cough syrup with codeine".

[11:00pm] eekim: no worries, Nihiltres. we do these every week.

[11:00pm] • bastique hopes to sleep tonight too.

[11:00pm] eekim: okay, bye all!

[11:00pm] jps: thanks again for recording them at http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC

[11:00pm] bastique: bye!

[11:00pm] eekim left the chat room.

[11:01pm] You left the room.