Kalliope (WMF)

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-- Wikimedia Commons Welcome (talk) 12:16, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Trout

WMF or not, please do not remove discussions form users talk page without it being a clear office action. This is censoring at a high level. Josve05a (talk) 21:51, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Deleting content from the talk page might cause the WMF now to be seen as content magaging and you might have just put the WMF's safe harbour at risk. Josve05a (talk) 21:55, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Josve05a I did not mean to delete any content whatsoever, only add a note for people to the AN/UP board so that they can follow the discsussion. I apologise if I accidentally deleted content in the process - it goes without saying that my action [of accidentally deleting content] can/should be reverted. Even though this is not an excuse, I do not have an editor's background and I'm barely versed with the tech side of discussion pages in the Wikis. Once again, I offer my apologies. I only wanted to place one post at AN/PU and one quick note on Denniss' talk page.Kalliope (WMF) (talk) 08:43, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Ok, then I fully understand, and it hapens to all of us sometimes. Just though this was an action by the WMF to "censor" the debate, given the recent comment on the AN/UP board, but if it was a mistake, then no real faul. Josve05a (talk) 09:24, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Absolutely no intention to censor. And thank you for raising your concerns! I will make sure to be more careful moving forward.Kalliope (WMF) (talk) 09:50, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Global bans

Dear Kalliope, I've raised this concern elsewhere but it's off-topic relating to some of the conversations we're having. James and Philippe were looking at ways of involving stewards and oversighters in the Global Ban process, so that members of the local community here could be better informed about the reasons for global bans, this was almost 9 months ago and as far as I'm aware, no member of the local community has yet to be briefed on the reasons for Russavia or any other banned user actually being banned.

Can you update the community on the global ban process and how close you all are to explaining at least some detail concerning the global bans of each user to their local communities ?

In light of James Heilman's removal from the board and the emergence of secret grants, I feel it's vital now, more than ever, we have the highest levels of transparency surrounding each and every user to be banned from Wikimedia projects, so I hope you will find a way to release as much information as you can to as many people as is possible, even if full transparency is not possible (sadly).

I look forward to hearing back from you with your proposals. Nick (talk) 14:54, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Hello @Nick: I agree that involving the Stewards and/or the Oversighters in the global ban process can be beneficial to both the WMF’s work in the area of Trust & safety as well as the community, in the sense that we [WMF and community] essentially join forces in keeping the projects civil. However, I don’t think that the way James and Philippe envisioned this to work includes release of information about globally banned contributors that is not released already. One person’s freedom ends where another person’s begins. In a broad manner of speech, this is exactly why the WMF is restricted from releasing pertinent information surrounding the global bans of certain contributors. Contributors don’t get globally banned for the fun of it. For the Foundation to take such final actions, major abuse on the contributor’s part is involved (abuse not always visible to the community) where community actions may have been tried already where possible, but have not yielded results. Reporters of abuse should be able to safely and confidentially report an issue and count of their privacy being respected. As such, releasing said information would not only breach the reporter’s right to privacy, but would also run the risk of them [reporter] re-living the experience through the community’s discussions of it. So, even though I’m in totally in support of transparency, it has to be clear that I do not support the release of private information without the reporter's explicit consent, especially when it can be brutally harmful for them [reporter].

That said, I should point out that some of this [getting the Stewards and Oversighters involved] has happened in the background already. For example, Jalexander-WMF has briefed the Stewards on every WMF Global Ban since Russavia's, partially because of the requests for some community insight into them. Going 'backwards', however, and briefing them on older bans where reporters were not aware that such briefing would happen is a different matter. I've asked James to swing by as well in relation to some of these thoughts and he should respond in the next day or two. Kalliope (WMF) (talk) 11:10, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Kalliope, thank you for answering Nick's questions in such detail. I agree that it appears that Philippe and James did not envision that this information would be shared with the community, however this has been brought forward as a possible solution as early as in July 2015. Nonetheless, it appears that a selected group of Wikimedia (Commons) volunteers were made aware of the reasons behind the ban, despite not being identified with the Foundation. Could you comment on whether this was indeed the case?

On the subject of identification, safety and confidentiality, and coming back to what @Nick mentioned above, Commons is in a lucky enough position of having 5 local battle-tested oversighters, all of whom have considerable experience in dealing and protecting non-public personal information, and in working hand-in-hand with the Foundation on fighting harassment and ensuring the safety and well-being of our contributors. As you are undoubtedly aware, all Commons oversighters have also recently re-identified with the Foundation after signing the new confidentiality agreement; in my case, the Foundation has also got possession of my full address as well as my mobile phone number (which I had to provide them with in an unrelated case). With that in mind, I think that framing this discussion as if it included discussing painful experiences by the community is incorrect; as is describing the potential solution as though it meant releasing someone's identity to the wider community.

What I have suggested—and what I think some in the community thought quite reasonable—was for the Foundation to release some information around Russavia's ban to local Commons oversighters who, as I said already, have years of experience in dealing with private information regarding our users, as I am sure @James, @Maggie and others can confirm. I believe that James himself has tried to put this proposal to users who have reported Russavia's behaviour to the Foundation, however I am not aware of him having made any progress; I am sure that James will be quite happy to update us on this and inform us about the potential bottlenecks that there might be.

P.S. COI declaration: I was elected a Commons oversighter in May 2012, so obviously any release of information to this group would include me. odder (talk) 23:38, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Hey, guys. Sorry for the delays in responding; the amount of work is pretty high at the moment (and we had an announcement going out this morning that sucked up some time). Trying not to bounce around too much, so will bullet point my responses :).

• To Odder's question about whether other members of the community were made aware of the circumstances of the case, all I can say is that the WMF did not say anything to anyone (identified or not) in that regard. Obviously that does not mean that Dschwen (or anyone else who says they were given information) is in any way lying; it's very possible that they were provided with evidence from someone else with knowledge, such as a victim (most of those reporting to us and asking us to think about action were mostly Commoners, contrary to the popular belief none of them were English Wikipedians... or founders). All I can speak to is the WMF.
• Odder is quite correct that I have proposed the thought of releasing some of the evidence to oversighters for this case to those involved. Unfortunately to date they have not been interested, and I have not pushed hard because I don't believe that's the right thing to do. As Kalli said, we did end up changing the process so that all global bans since Russavia have been passed through the stewards first before they were implemented (not for permission, but as a heads up and to hear their thoughts, if any, because it's useful to get the gut reactions whether they agree or not). We have not done that looking backwards for old bans, and, to be honest, I have no current intention of doing so.
• Speaking to some of the victims from the initial complaints (there have certainly been issues since those, some of which have been discussed on Commons, but I've always felt people are mostly looking specifically for the 'original' reasons), I don't think it's likely they are going to feel comfortable in the near future. Part of it is that there are specific people within Commons they are uncomfortable being part of the discussion (oversighter or not), but in the end I don't think even eliminating those concerns would fix the issue. While I will have some more conversations and see if anything else is possible, I think it's best for everyone at the moment to assume that there will be no release, both because I think that's the most likely scenario in the end and because if something changes it could be a relatively long process. People hanging around waiting for a response from me is unlikely to help anyone.
• I do want to add a couple of notes, though, about things that bother me in some of the more recent discussions about transparency on this:
  • I will say very clearly (not that either Nick or Odder have made this claim but others have) that the images Russavia had made of Jimmy Wales were not part of the decision. I DO actually believe that was harassment, and if it was done for basically anyone else other than Jimmy It would have been grounds for a ban. It is a despicable thing to do and served no real purpose other than to harass and shame. The Wikimedia Projects are not the place for that (neither is anywhere else, of course, but protecting the safety of our users is my particular concern). The argument that it was just to illustrate the article (which is, in itself, totally fine, imo, along with most image options for that article) fails the "sniff test" in my opinion given the evidence. If you want to illustrate the article, you can pay for a portrait of yourself or work to get one of his older paintings released.
  • While desire for transparency (whether I can give it or not) is completely understandable and legitimate, I think attempting to make the argument that this is more necessary given recent board issues (or, as has been claimed on other pages, concern about WMF office drama) is a red herring. They have nothing to do with each other, and I think that's clear given how long this has been going on. it is offensive to me that you would suggest it. I will be the first to agree that the board (and the WMF) have been having huge issues lately which MUST be addressed, but to use those as fuel for an older dispute like this is, in my opinion, uncalled for. For the record I would resign before I implemented a global ban I didn't agree with because of the demands or desires of anyone else (board or not). Jalexander--WMF 04:02, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi @James, thank you for this answer. This is certainly some progress. The fact that the alleged victims are mostly Commons contributors is, in my opinion, even more the reason that the cause of the ban should be explained to this community, or a part thereof. If we had missed harassment by (at the time) an active Commons administrator towards other Commons users, then this is definitely something that we should learn from; our not knowing the details is effectively preventing this.

As far as your clarifying that you have no intention to inform the stewards about the reasons behind the older global bans, I believe we have already been told this. However I find it concerning that you do not mention the reasons behind your not indenting to do so; I think we could all benefit from understanding why you're taking this course of action rather than a different one.

For your third point, which appears to me to be the crux of the matter here, well… perhaps you wanted to word it differently, but to see that there are Commons contributors who feel uncomfortable with other Commons contributors being part of this discussion—in other words, Commons contributors who want to exclude other Commons contributors from being part of this discussion—is extremely distressing to me. I cannot at this moment recall any situation like this, and I find it extremely troublesome that this should happen now.

Let us assume, however, as you said, that no information will be released regarding this specific ban. It has been over a year since the ban was implemented, and I would hazard a guess that it is still as much a contentious issue as it was on the day that it was made; perhaps even more so with everything that's happened since. I find it highly unlikely that the perception of the ban will change in any way, assuming that the community will be able to differentiate between the reasoning behind the ban and russavia's actions since the ban.

If this happens, then we've reached the ideal definition of an impasse. According to the English Wikipedia, an impasse is almost invariably mutually harmful. If we accept this as true, how do we move forward? Can we move forward in any way, or do we leave this matter unresolved? As mentioned by @Nick, the trust between the Foundation and the (wider) community is at its lowest right now — and even if the issues of the goings-on in the Board and regarding the Knight Foundation are irrelevant to this case (as they are), this issue still remains quite important, if only locally to Commons, and the Foundation should put effort and resources into resolving it, the sooner the better. odder (talk) 23:24, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

The impasse started around 2010 when the WMF founder started abusing his tools to vandalise Commons and was ratified in 2012 when the WMF board ratified the lack of consensus on such actions. It's sad that WMF employees, even new ones who ought to bring some fresh air, are only able to imitate and reiterate such mistakes. Nemo 09:31, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Please categorise your uploads

I refer to File:Evaluation Report- Stewards Visit 2015.pdf, can you please categorise your uploads as this will make the file easier to find, and takes the burden off the community in having to do unnecessary work on WMF uploads. Regards, 220.253.139.248 06:13, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

@220.253.139.248 Done. Let me know if you think other categories would be applicable and I'll be happy to do the deed. Kalliope (WMF) (talk) 10:09, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Those categories look good Kalliope (WMF), thanks 220.253.139.248 10:45, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

BTW, I do not believe echo-pings works for IP (anon)-editors. Josve05a (talk) 10:14, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

@Kalliope (WMF): Based on that it was apparently 'your' logged out edit, from what you said, I rev-deleted the IP address that was visible in the history of that file. If it wasn't you, or you actually don't care, let me know. There has been an ongoing thing with the devs logging everyone out 'randomly' because of some server issue. Revent (talk) 12:00, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

@Revent: It was me - didn't realise I was logged out till after the edit. All good and thank you for reverting/correcting. Kalliope (WMF) (talk) 12:34, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

About the Harassement Survey

There is a typo which is impactful. Slide 19 of https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Harassment_Survey_2015_-_Results_Report.pdf&page=19, the "stalking" is mentionned twice in the 3 graphs (once on the left, high frequency; once on the right, lower frequency). Obviously there must have been a wrong copy and paste. Could the survey be fixed and the right version re-uploaded ? thanks. Anthere (talk)

@Anthere: Thank you for spotting this and letting me know. I will see to it that it get fixed, asap. Thank you again! Kalliope (WMF) (talk) 10:20, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Generosity Crowdfunding Campaign for User:The Photographer

Please excuse me spamming you, which concerns Commons User:The Photographer, who has 86 Featured Pictures. His contributions cover the architecture and culture of Brazil and Venezuela. He has basic photographic equipment: an old D300 camera and 35mm lens, and lives in a poor country where photographic equipment is expensive. The Photographer has recently taken several images using the technique where multiple frames are stitched together to create a high-resolution panorama. However, many times frustrated with the stitching errors that result from trying to take such photos without a proper panoramic head for his tripod. This special equipment permits the camera to be rotated around the entrance pupil of the lens, and eliminates such errors. Having a panoramic head would greatly increase the potential for The Photographer to create sharp high-resolution images for Commons. In addition, the purchase of a fisheye lens would enable 180 × 360° panoramas to be taken, which are a great way to explore a scene as though one is really there.

Please see the discussion about the Crowd-funding campaign on User talk:The Photographer#Generosity Crowdfunding Campaign and visit the Generosity Crowd-funding Campaign page to consider donating. Even a modest donation will make a difference if many people contribute. Thanks. -- Colin (talk) 21:17, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Hi @Colin: , I have made a suggestion directly on the page. Hope it helps. Kalliope (WMF) (talk)

Thanks. Certainly will look into that. -- Colin (talk) 12:46, 23 November 2016 (UTC)