User talk:Mdennis (WMF)

How can I help you?

I am the Senior Community Advocate for the Wikimedia Foundation and the volunteers of all the communities supported by the Wikimedia Foundation. My goal is to increase communication between community members and staff. Do you have questions? Do you have ideas? Please let me know. You can leave me a note here or e-mail me at liaison

wikimedia.org.

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WebCite

Hi Maggie. Perhaps this is premature, but after I saw some interest at User talk:Jimbo Wales (now archived), I posted over to m:WebCite this. And we should have a reply from a WMF tech staff person shortly. So if in a week there's not a reply at m:WebCite, perhaps you could follow up with tech, or do you recommend I just ask Asaf on meta to ask tech again? Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) 11:37, 1 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, @Biosthmors:. I'm happy to follow up with tech. :) Are you watching the issue? If so, can you post here when there's need? I'm traveling next week and would appreciate the timely reminder. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 11:57, 1 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sure I'll watch and contact you if necessary. Thanks! Biosthmors (talk) 12:24, 1 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

FYI

I also linked to you from User talk:Jimbo Wales. Best! Biosthmors (talk) 09:41, 2 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that could be interesting. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 11:30, 3 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

workshop on copyright, perhaps

Hi, I wonder if there is any possibility that WMF can somehow support a workshop on copyright, or something like that, to address some pretty serious disagreements among some Wikipedia editors. I mean this as a constructive alternative to engaging in arbitration and wp:ANI and other dispute resolution processes available within Wikipedia. I am interested in this because there are some good people misinformed, IMHO, and there is long-running badgering and dispute and accusations of copyvio going on, with accusations against me that I consider to be serious and also completely ill-founded. Fighting it out in ANI or elsewhere just seems to leave everyone more entrenched, and does not lead to learning.

The situation is that there are different views of what is acceptable, copyright-wise and perhaps also plagiarism-wise, among several editors of historic places listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places (which includes one percent of all wikipedia articles!) An editor or two or three active in the copyvio section of Wikipedia has been asked to weigh in once or twice and could be involved again, but I think something more is needed, some convening of useful discussion and teaching/learning, in order to actually attract/affect the occasionally disputing parties. Probably some improvement in the wikipedia coverage of copyright issues is needed, in fact, and the existing copyvio volunteers don't have it all perfectly handled. This could possibly involve some staff time or some fianncial resources or some legal consultations. I wonder, is there any program or are there any resources or ideas that you could suggest? I'll watch here, or please feel free to email me (email enabled at my Talk page). Sincerely, --do ncr am 22:06, 10 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, @Doncram:. The Wikimedia Foundation is happy when we have resources to do so to provide guidance and comments on general policies, although they cannot give legal advice, particularly on issues related to specific content. If you have general questions regarding policy and approach to copyright, I can pass them along for review - research on these are typically posted on Meta (for example, see meta:Category:Legal notes). Of course, no matter how much the WMF reviews policies or guides in developing them, there will always be questions around application of policies to specific issues, and these are always going to rely on community members reviewing existing policies and determining how they apply to individual media. Financial resources for policy review might be possible, but it's certainly a big question. If you want to explore funding through the existing processes, you would want to visit m:Grants. Meanwhile, I have floated your suggestion to the legal team and will let you know if they have any idea how they can assist beyond responding to general questions. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 22:37, 10 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your helpful reply. In that meta category, i see this note about Close Paraphrasing, which seems helpful, providing some guidance and pointing to cases and sources. I am imagining that the note is a work of the WMF legal people, or the outcome some process in which they were involved, or could have a say in if they wanted to. I wonder if creating a similar note about Quoting could be helpful to have, eventually, to provide similar guidance, if and when a discussion / workshop seemed to demonstrate a need for such a note. About how any legal people could help, I wonder if someone interested and/or knowledgeable in the area of copyright could be willing to participate informally, say in a conference call or series of a few conference calls that could be arranged. I recall participating in some free conference call, set up by appointment at some free service, which enabled me and others involved in some national-level non-profit initiative to join in without giving out identifying info to others, and which I wonder if could be used to convene a discussion with a few Wikipedia editors.

I would want there to be no obligation to come to legal judgement on behalf of the WMF about any specific quotation appearing in Wikipedia, but hope rather that a legal person could provide an uninvolved, informal view about what factors come to bear in considering copyvio, and whether Wikipedia guidance seems accurate or not, and so on. Perhaps in reference to some specific examples of quotes that could be shared in advance, but without requiring legal judgments on the examples, unless the legal person is completely comfortable with judging. I haven't just checked, but I seem to recall that Wikipedia copyvio guidance was lacking in terms of addressing something called "transformative" quality of quoted material, which is arguably relevant in determining copyvio of longer quotes. For short, fully attributed quotes, the guidance is and should be simple, but perhaps there can be discussion about length, what is short enough not to require other tests to be passed. Anyhow, I wonder if someone would be willing to participate in one or a few discussions, arranged well in advance, through some conference call service, if the other wikipedia editors I wish to work with, who are valuable long-term contributors, would agree to participate. I am just hopeful that something like this would be productive, by participation of non-involved legal people. --do ncr am 20:36, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Popular pages

Hello Maggie! I was wondering if you knew anything about that. Is that kind of inquiry, the one Doc James is asking about, something that is best dealt with by sending a random request on the Wikitech-l mailing list? I'm also curious and I would like this to receive support. It seems like a core technical function to perform in order to support the community. Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) 10:51, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, @Biosthmors:. :) Your best bet for something like that is to probably to speak to User:MPelletier (WMF). Alternatively, you can also put in a Bugzilla feature request, I believe. If you want information in general on how to get engineer time, you can speak to User:Okeyes (WMF), who is now a product analyst for the Wikimedia Foundation. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:36, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Jmh649:. Thanks Maggie! Biosthmors (talk) 19:42, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]